This is the idea of the original position and the idea of the veil of ignorance. The individuals in the original position are also not aware of what their conception of the good will be.
Division of the two principles
The Communitarian objection
Sandel's metaphysical objection
Therefore, the moral value of the subject is before the goals that are chosen. The essential unity and priority of the self is given before the goals he chooses.
The moral subject
This distancing of the self from her goal is essential to keep the identity of the self intact. These attachments are not allowed to go beyond feeling to touch the identity of the self.
Maclntyre and liberalism
In Sandel's eyes, mutual disinterest and cooperation to realize different goals make it impossible for the subjects to pursue community-oriented goals. They are also understood in a limiting way, since their communities can never be constitutive of their identity.
Emotivism at fault
This means that the self is not conditioned by any contingencies it may encounter in the course of its life. The value of the self is not to be found in the ends it chooses.
Identity of the self and community
The two communitarians I look at claim that John Rawls's theory of justice presupposes a certain metaphysical view of the self. In this chapter I will argue that Rawls's theory does not commit to the metaphysical view of the self that these communitarians envision. Michael Sandel and Alasdair Maclntyre believe that the objections they raise against Rawls essentially concern the metaphysics of the self.
A plausible interpretation of the 'nature of being' is to see a substance in relation to what essentially constitutes it. When Maclntyre and Sandel claim that Rawls is committed to a particular metaphysical view of the self, this can only mean that they are saying something basic about what the self is. To get an idea of the approach to the self from a metaphysical point of view, I will start by looking at the work of Derek Parfit.
I think Parfit's work is a credible example of the nature of the metaphysics of the self debate.
Parfit and Personal Identity
His view of the person is that it is an entity that has a body and thoughts and other experiences. Unlike Andrew Brennan, I will not develop any concept of the person based on the Parfitian model. It is important to note at this point that the nature of the self is important to moral questions.
A possible objection at this point might be that it is unfair to limit a discussion of the metaphysics of the self to such a narrow concept as relationship over time. It is possible that an objection can be raised in the sense that limiting the metaphysics of the self to identity excludes other important aspects of human life. This is the widely held view taken as the standard form when discussing questions about the identity of the self.
Rather, the point has been absorbed into the minds of the people who themselves have such an identity.
Sandel: metaphysical objection
No matter how conditioned he is by his choices, the self is always before his conclusions. The first problem is that Rawls's conception of himself lends himself an unusual relationship to his ends. These goals become things that the self can choose to distance itself from or connect with.
Sandel accuses Rawls of excluding any relationship between the self and her ends that is not. It is now important to see whether the claim made by Sandel, that Rawls is committed to a certain metaphysical (and objectionable) conception of the self, is accurate. The truth of the matter is that the self can be identified independently of any given purpose.
Losing one's purpose or end can hardly be considered a loss of self.
Maclntyre: metaphysical objection
In short, Maclntyre's charge is that liberals are committed to a view of themselves that is incoherent and emotivist. I will address his charge that liberalism leads to the incoherence of the self, since this self is unable to articulate a narrative about its life. Hence Maclntyre's critique of modern society and the modern self as an unencumbered emotivist self.
This criticism of the self in the original position is the result of a misunderstanding of the purposes of that position. Will Kymlicka argues that the original position has been wrongly assumed to represent a certain metaphysical commitment to the self. To develop an understanding of the veil of ignorance, we must look at the motivations behind it.
When we think of the self, its facts tell us something about its moral behavior.
Rawls's denial of any metaphysical commitment
Communitarians interpreted the term to represent a certain metaphysical account of the self. So Rawls tries to explain what the freedom of the person actually means in this context. He says that there are three senses in which citizens can be understood as free without necessarily committing to a metaphysical account of themselves.
The first is that citizens are free in the sense that they see themselves and their fellow citizens as having the moral power to develop and have a certain perception of the good. He says that although a person may change her conception of the good, she remains with the same duties and obligations (Rawls. He says that claims arising from a citizen's conception of the good or moral doctrine will also count as self-originating.
This is what Rawls has to say about the freedom of the person and her relationship to her society.
The original position and social cooperation
Persons born into this society are supposed to be capable of being normal and fully participating members in life (Rawls, 1993:301). The fair conditions of social cooperation in this case determine the content of the political and social conception of justice. These two powers are the ability to feel right and justice (the ability to respect fair conditions of cooperation and thus be reasonable) and thus the ability to conceive of the good (and thus to be rational).
In more detail, the capacity for a sense of justice is the ability to understand, apply and normally be moved by an effective desire to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles of justice as the fair conditions of social security. cooperation. The capacity for a conception of the good is the capacity to form, revise and rationally pursue such a conception, that is, a conception of what we consider for us to be a valuable human life. A conception of the good normally consists of a well-defined scheme of ends and objectives, and of desires that certain individuals and associations, as objects of attachment and loyalty, should flourish.
Rawls argues that these two moral powers are taken as a necessary and sufficient condition for an individual to be recognized as a full and equal member of society when dealing with matters of political justice.
How my response differs from Rawls's response
We have a traditional understanding of the terms used when we talk about identity in time. Arguments must be limited if those connections fully represent what the identity of the self is. It is here that I show that what Sandel and Maclntyre are engaged with is not a strict metaphysics of the self as we understand it from personal identity theory.
My emphasis lies in attacking the paradigm shift undertaken by communitarians in discussing the metaphysics of the self. Our understanding of the metaphysics of the self is that it involves discussions about what makes a person the same over time. Anyone who wants to enter the debate of the metaphysics of personal identity will have to speak the language that involves an entity remaining one and the same over a period of time.
Rawls on the other hand recognizes the importance of morality and the conception of the good.
Preference of responses
To say that I am lost without my ends, or that I cease to be when my ends suddenly change, is not the same as claiming that I have numerically ceased to be the same person as I was a few years ago. Sandel and Maclntyre must accept that if I lose my ends in a dramatic and sudden way, then I have ceased to exist in the sense that I would not be the same person in every sense of the meaning of the phrase, no longer the same person . For all communitarians, then, a person is an entity for whom goals and morals matter, and who should share her values with her community, should not lose them, or she will cease to be one.
Although the self should have goals and interests for itself, they are not those goals. The ineffectiveness of the communitarian position and its mistaken view of the metaphysics of the self stems from this mistaken view of the relationship between goals and the self. It is simply a matter of relations between a subject that remains the same and a certain period of time.
Communitarians give us a distorted suggestion of what constitutes the self and that constitution has no power in strict metaphysics and leads them to unacceptable conclusions.
Further research
A further interesting question will be to investigate whether it is possible for benign social stereotypes to fall together with a strict metaphysical identity of the self, or whether the two can be separated. If they fall together, it would be interesting to see if a new understanding of self can be developed. It would be worth seeing whether what I have advocated as a definition of the metaphysics of self-identity can accommodate what communitarians advocate in the definition of the self.
But if, on the other hand, it can be shown that benign social stereotypes and metaphysical identity cannot be brought together, then what is the role of goals. I didn't deny that goals are important, but at the same time I didn't suggest the right role. An interesting question would be to find the role of endpoints without necessarily confusing them with our identity.
