This article analyzes one of the controversial modern theories, presented in John Rawls's Theory of Justice (1971), in which the political thinker develops many ideas of the Enlightenment, creates a model of universal political theory based on the principle of rationality, through which two principles of justice are chosen. J. Rawls uses the mental experiment “Original Position”, for which he constructs the contractors of choice, imposing certain restrictions on their knowledge, values, attitude to risk, etc., to substantiate the choice of universal principles. In this article, we are going to show that John Rawls's hypothetical mental construction - the "original position" - is not a convincing basis for adopting universally valid principles of justice and constructing a universal theory of social order. It contains the problematic and contradictory moments, because it is built on a certain sense of justice of the author, which is based on a certain view of the world, a certain attitude to certain values, and also a certain understanding of what is due, widespread in Western democracies.And rationality is not a universal tool for choosing two principles of justice in the original situation.
