A Habsburg Behind the Veil of Ignorance

Read this ridiculous post before I regret it!

This happened because I was re-reading Paul W. Kahn’s Putting Liberalism in Its Place when I should have been working.

Tonight, on Restoration Radio: A Habsburg tries to peek behind the Veil of Ignorance!

A Philosopher: Hello, I am a lover of justice.

Karl Otto-Maria von Schnitzel-unter-Rhein: Yikes.

A.P.: Tonight we’re going to ask you to imagine the polity you’d create if you had no idea who you would be—what role you would play in the world or what status you might hold in society.

KO-MvS-u-R: Oh sure. My family calls this game “The Twentieth Century.”

AP: If you like. You’ll have to craft a polity based purely on the common needs of all humanity. You won’t know if you’re rich or poor, what race you’ll be, what religion or nation you were born into, or anything else which might lead you to favor one faction over another. You won’t know whether you’ll have every advantage possible in this society, or every disadvantage.

Karl: Am I still a Habsburg?

AP: No, you’re just like everybody else.

Karl: When my dear ancestress, the Empress Zita, died in a Swiss nursing home, her body was brought to a Capuchin monastery. The marshal stopped at the gate and knocked, and declared the arrival of the Empress Zita, and he recited every title the family held, so that it took ten minutes simply to read out the names of all the places. “When the recitation was over, the abbot said: ‘We do not know her. Who seeks entry?’ ...The marshal went on to the shortest title: ‘Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia.’ Again the abbot said: ‘We do not know her. Who seeks entry?’ Then the marshal said: ‘Zita, your sister, a poor sinner.’ And the gate was opened.”

AP: ...Behind the veil of ignorance, you will not be the Empress Zita.

Karl [diverted by this thought]: Will I be a woman behind the veil of ignorance? Can I be a lady?

AP: No, you’re—look, think of it like, you’re both.

Karl: I’m intersex? Huh.

AP: No! You—you don’t know, okay? You don’t know anything about your body that would lead you to favor men over women. You don’t know if you’re weak or strong.

Karl: How old am I?

AP[starting to show some irritation]: A normal age. Basically, you know what human beings need and what we value, but you don’t know your own social position. Okay?

Karl: Gotcha.

AP: So what kind of society, under these circumstances, would a reasonable person design?

Karl [promptly]: A Catholic monarchy.

AP: You’re not listening—you have to imagine that you don’t have any of your personal characteristics! You’re not a Catholic in this thought experiment.

Karl: Sure, but you’ve said that I know what human beings need and value. So I know that we bear the imago Dei, that we like hierarchy especially if it’s got lots of jewels on it, that we’re corrupted by inborn sin but retain the memory of Adam’s happiness, and that our erotic longings prepare us for relationship with God. Also we’re a sexually-reproducing species, which suggests that our polity should be structured around the marriage of sovereigns.

AP: When I said “needs,” I meant more like, people need to eat food.

Karl: Oh right! Sorry, yes, my polity subsidizes sausages and beer.

AP [deep breath]: But how can you know any of these things behind the veil of ignorance? You can’t prove any of them.

Karl: Prove to me that they’re wrong.

AP: Given that a Catholic monarchy is not exactly a universal or even frequent development in human societies, it seems pretty obvious to me that the burden of proof is on the person who says it’s inherent in our nature!

Karl: Prove it.

AP: Don’t be childish.

Karl: ...Fine. [muttering] Nobody said I had to imagine myself behind the veil of being a daggone fool.

AP: Do you seriously, in all sincerity, believe that if you could no longer remember anything from your personal history, your family history, or your religious education, you would think that the best form of government was a Catholic monarchy?

Karl: Do I know how many saints lived under one?

AP: Good grief.

Karl: I’m just saying, give me a graph of non-martyred saints divided by governmental structure, and then I’ll answer your question. So many things can be learned through science!

AP: …

Karl: I would say that a person behind the veil of ignorance would devise a Catholic monarchy led by a family which has always attempted to make faith reasonable and scientific, but I guess that really would be swaying it too far toward my personal interests. Probably people could do okay under the Bourbons too, I guess. [a pause] Nah, I take it back.

Next week on Restoration Radio: We kidnap a member of the House of Savoy and attach him to a famous violinist!

With apologies to the Habsburg family, Paul Kahn, and… fine, okay, yes, and John Rawls. May we all seek to become the least-advantaged.