 In constructing the “original position” from which deliberators select principles of justice in A Theory of Justice, Rawls assumes that the imagined deliberators are not motivated by various psychological propensities. One of these is the propensity to envy. One justification Rawls offers for this stipulation is that what principles of justice are chosen should not be affected by individual inclinations, which are mere accidents. This rationale is less persuasive if envious concerns are universal in human nature. Another justification is that parties in the original position should be concerned with their absolute level of primary social goods, not with their standing relative to others as  such.[26]  He then proceeds in the second part of the argument for the principles of justice to consider whether, in fact, human propensities being what they are, the tendency to envy will undermine the arrangements of a well-ordered society (in which case the principles of justice would have to be reconsidered). The ‘Problem of Envy’ is the possibility that widespread envy might do just this. The reason that Rawls takes this to be a live possibility is that “the inequalities sanctioned by the difference principle may be so great as to arouse envy to a socially dangerous  extent.”[27]