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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 443 which are to regulate their interaction (TJ 11, 31), and further that they do this without a knowledge of their more particular ends: They implicitly agree, therefore, to conform their conceptions of their good to what the principles of justice require, or at least not to press claims which directly violate them. An individual who find that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment (TJ 31). The evidence here is strong that Rawls is canvassing the possibility that one such individual might discover, when the veil of ignorance is lifted, that his prior personal interests conflict with the principle he has chosen in the original position. Rawls's response is that such interests are simply to be disregarded. Further, his controversial claim that "it may turn out, once the veil of ignorance is removed, that some of [the parties in the original position] for religious or other reasons may not, in fact, want more of these [primary] goods" (TJ 142) provides additional support for the thesis that the parties in the original position are continuing persons, partially determined by their psychological histories, for whom the original position is an event among others in their conscious lives. This is because the implication here, as in the passage quoted above, is that the parties in the original position might subsequently discover in themselves psychological tendencies or desires that are in no sense determined by the decision made in the original position, hence must be determined by forces prior to that event. Nevertheless, those forces must continue to operate after it in order for the requisite discovery to be made. Again, the same point is made even more strongly later: How can the parties possibly know, or be sufficiently sure, that they can keep such an agreement? ... any principle chosen in the original position may require a large sacrifice for some. The beneficiaries of clearly unjust institutions (those founded on principles which have no claim to acceptance) may find it hard to reconcile themselves to the changes that will have to be made. But in this case they will know that they could not have maintained their position anyway (TJ 176). Finally, there are auxiliary passages which, when taken together, clearly buttress the conception of the continuity of the parties as identifiable individuals both prior and subsequent to their participation in the original position. On page 166 of A Theory of Justice, Rawls observes that "The persons in the original position know that they already hold a place in some particular society;" and later, in discussing the strategic advantages of the four-stage sequence, he says, "So far I have supposed that once the principles of justice are chosen the parties return to their place in society and henceforth judge their claims on the social system by these principles" (TJ 196). These two passages establish that the original position as an event is integrated into the continuing personal histories of the parties ((2) of the continuity thesis). © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
