Quote:
2. Which of the following is an assumption of the contractarian model, as presented by the author?
(A) The decision makers act before acquiring any place in the social order.
(B) All members of the contracting group will place a high value on personal liberty.
(C) Justice can only be secured by ensuring that all positions in the social order have equal power and status.
(D) The contracting parties will seek to safeguard their own liberties at the expense of the rights of others.
(E) The members of society will accept restrictions on personal autonomy in order to gain peace and security.
Q2 is a detail type of question, means you will find this information in the passage itself. I got it after spending good 20 minutes on the passage, as I found this one difficult.
Para 2 of the passage (refer bolded part below) answers this question.
Para2: Rather than adopt Rousseau's vision of naturalman—a picture almost impossible to conjure up in the face of more recent scientific knowledge—
the new contractarians postulate a group of rational men and women gathered for the purpose of elucidating a concept of justice which will guide their affairs. They further assume that these people make their decision behind a veil of ignorance; that is,
they are totally ignorant for now of their position in society—their race, their gender,
their place in the social order. Yet the principles at which they arrive will bind them once the veil is lifted.
Thus, option A.
Quote:
3. The author implies that a party to the social contract who "chose to gamble on the outcome of the social order" would select a principle of justice
(A) allowing an unequal access to liberty and other social goods
(B) based on equalization of material conditions and unequal personal liberty
(C) based on the greatest possible equalization of both personal freedom and material circumstances
(D) that explicitly denied inherent inequalities among the members of society
(E) that valued the benefit of society in the aggregate over the freedom of the individual
Let's understand the question first. Again a detail type of question. If we understand the question, we can find the answer easily.
In the last Para, those who "chose to gamble on the outcome of the social order" refer to someone who is not actually a contractarian but may just blindly support the concept.
This means, they would do anything that is opposite of the idea of contractarian theory.
Para 3 outlines the things that contractarians support. Anything that states the opposite of those points would be the answer.
Para3: Starting from this original position, it can be logically demonstrated that rational beings would arrive at a decision ensuring the maximum possible justice and liberty for even the meanest member of society. Thus, freedom of speech, for example, would be inviolable, whereas the utilitarian could easily justify its abridgment for a greater social good. Second, social and economic inequality, which are the inevitable result of the lottery of birth, should be arranged such that they inhere in offices and stations in life available to all and thus are, by consensus, seen to be to everyone's advantage.
Injustice, then, is defined as an unequal distribution of good things, with liberty being first among them.
The bolded part appears in Option A!