Contemporary social contract theory is practically identified with the work of John Rawls (1921–2002). In his best known book, A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to generalize and carry to a higher level of abstraction the social contract theory of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. In Rawls's version of social contract theory, people are to select the principles of justice they are to live by in imagined ignorance of whether natural or social contingencies have worked in their favor. His theory requires that we should choose as though we were standing behind an imaginary "veil of ignorance" with respect to most particular facts about ourselves, anything that would bias our choice or stand in the way of unanimous agreement. Rawls calls this choice situation "the original position" because it is the position we should start from when determining what principles of justice we should live by...