We set out to assess Rawls' claim for the primacy of justice and found that it required a certain conception of the moral subject. We sought then to examine this conception in the light of Rawls' moral theory as a whole to check for its consistency with that theory and for its plausibility generally. We hoped eventually in this way to assess first Rawls' theory of the subject and finally the claim for the primacy of justice it must support.

Thus far we have considered Rawls' theory of the subject primarily in relation to his theory of justice, or conception of right. But as Rawls points out, a full moral theory must give some account of the good as well as the right, and the final third of his book seeks to provide one. Indeed the primacy of justice is itself a claim not only about justice but about the relation of justice to those virtues falling under the concept of the good. So before we can assess this ultimate claim, we must consider Rawls' theory of the subject in relation to this theory of the good as well.

THE UNITY OF THE SELF

We might begin by recalling the main points of correspondence between Rawls' moral theory on the one hand and his theory of the subject on the other. Where the morality of right corresponds to the bounds of the self and speaks to that which distinguishes us, the morality of good corresponds to the unity of persons and speaks to that which connects us.