What is the main point of the passage?

Not knowing your own position is a way to test whether a rule is fair. (The veil is presented as a test: it removes the knowledge that would make a rule attractive for selfish reasons.)

According to the passage, what do people behind the veil not know?

Whether they will be rich or poor, healthy or ill. (The first paragraph lists exactly this: rich or poor, healthy or ill, majority or minority.)

In this passage, portable means

easy to carry over and use in other cases. (The writer says the test is portable and then shows how to use it on any rule, whatever you think of Rawls's conclusion.)

Choosing Behind A Veil: Level 4 Reading Comprehension Questions

Q: Why do self-interest and fairness stop pulling in opposite directions behind the veil?

Because anyone who harms a group might turn out to belong to it. (The passage says the attraction of a rule favoring the strong disappears because you might turn out to be anyone.)

In 1971 the political philosopher John Rawls proposed a test for fair rules. Imagine that you must design the basic institutions of a society, its laws, its schools, its share-out of wealth, before you learn anything about your own place inside it. You do not know whether you will be rich or poor, healthy or ill, a member of the majority or of a small minority. Rawls called this chosen blindness the veil of ignorance.

The device works by removing bias at its source rather than by asking people to resist it. Under normal conditions, a rule that favors the strong is attractive to the strong. Behind the veil, that attraction disappears, because you might turn out to be anyone. Self-interest and fairness stop pulling in opposite directions.

Rawls argued that people reasoning this way would not gamble on landing at the top. They would secure a floor first: basic liberties for everyone, and unequal rewards allowed only when they also lift the position of the worst off. Whether or not you accept his conclusion, the test is portable. Before defending a rule, ask whether you would still defend it without knowing which side of it you would stand on.

Comprehension questions