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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 419 by all individual parties to the agreement, and so to protect a certain degree of social stability, order, and individual freedom for all. Thus each individual trades unlimited - but insecure and unstable - freedom and power in the state of nature for a more limited but secure and stable freedom and power under the social contract. Limited but secure and stable freedom and power under the social contract are instrumental goods deemed more efficient means for pursuing one's ends than the alternatives available in the state of nature. Social Contract Theory ranks unlimited power for everyone in the state of nature lower in priority than the benefits of instrumental rationality, and so gives a higher priority to the limitations, constraints and regulations of power that instrumental rationality requires. It answers Nietzsche's devaluation of the character dispositions of rationality with the argument that power is exercised most effectively only with their help. 3. A Theory of Justice 3.1. Rawls's Metaethics 3.1.1. The Original Position Rawls's metaethical justification of the social contract bears comparison with the traditional one only in certain respects. It is roughly similar in its conception of human nature and agency in the preconditioning circumstances. Here, too, human beings are more or less equal, motivated by desire, instrumentally rational, and primarily concerned to advance their selfinterest, that is, they instantiate the Humean conception of the self. However, Rawls introduces a broader conception of self-interest as a conception of the good. By "good," Rawls means basically "what it is rational for someone with a rational life plan to desire" (TJ 399, 405). A rational life plan is one that is consistent with the principles of rational choice (TJ 410-416) and chosen with full deliberative rationality (TJ 408). He distinguishes between interests in the self - i.e. egoistic desires as traditionally understood, and interests of the self, of which egoistic desires are only a subset (TJ 127). Other interests of the self might include other-directed interests such as particular moral commitments, religious convictions, or altruistic social concerns that define an individual self without being directed at the individual self. Thus individual conceptions of the good might still conflict even though they are not primarily egoistic. By stipulating that the parties in the preconditioning circumstances are also mutually disinterested, i.e. that they take no interest in one another's interests (TJ 13, 127-130, passim), Rawls insures that even though each may hold a conception of the good guided by other-directed concerns, the others to whom these concerns are directed do not include the other parties in the original position. This enables Rawls to conceive the parties as having © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
