Book contents
220 - Unity of self
from U
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
Summary
A person is a human being with the two moral powers – to form, revise and pursue a conception of the good and to propose and honor fair terms of social cooperation – with a determinate, if revisable, conception of her good. We may think of each person as a particular human life lived according to a rational and reasonable plan. She says who she is by stating her ends and purposes (TJ 358). Rawls argues that justice as fairness offers a distinctive conception of the unity of particular persons, or selves, so understood. He sets out this conception by way of contrast with the conception of the unity of particular persons, or selves, implicit in average utilitarianism, the most plausible teleological rival candidate conception of justice to justice as fairness. While this contrast is brought to its conclusion in §85 of Theory, Rawls begins to develop it in §§83 and 84. He aims to show, first, that average utilitarianism rests on a conception of the self (and so is likely, if institutionally embodied, to encourage in us a self-conception or self-understanding) that is neither descriptively accurate nor normatively attractive. He then argues, second, that justice as fairness rests on a distinct conception of the self (and so is likely, if institutionally embodied, to encourage in us a self-conception or self-understanding) that is both descriptively more plausible and normatively more attractive. This two-part comparative conclusion captures one of two general lines of objection Rawls presses specifically against average utilitarianism.
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- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 853 - 857Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014