| OCR Text |
Show Chapter X. Rawls's Instrumentalism 444 Further evidence of the continuity thesis is to be gleaned from the concluding paragraphs of the Dewey Lectures21, where Rawls claims of the parties in the original position that persons so conceived and moved by their highest-order interests are themselves, in their rationally autonomous deliberations, the agents who select the principles that are to govern the basic structure of their social life (DL 572; emphasis added). Moreover, in this later discussion, Rawls frequently characterizes the parties in the original position in terms similar or identical to those which characterize the members of the well-ordered society (see, for example, the description of each as self-originating sources of valid claims at DL 548, 564, and 543 respectively). From all these claims jointly, we are quickly led to the conception of particular individuals, mature and partially formed by their own pasts and the previous conditions of their society, who voluntarily come together and, temporarily assuming the constraints and veil of ignorance of the original position, choose principles that are henceforth to govern their claims upon one another. The veil of ignorance is then lifted gradually, in accordance with the four-stage sequence. These individuals recover knowledge of themselves, their pasts, their habits, interests, and conceptions of the good, and immediately proceed to realize their chosen well-ordered society in conformity with the two principles of justice. This is the conception the continuity thesis expresses. The truth of the continuity thesis gives credence to an implication common to each of the early criticisms of Rawls mentioned earlier. Schwartz and Nagel both claimed that someone of a strongly socialist or communitarian persuasion might be frustrated in her efforts to realize her conception of the good in Rawls's well-ordered society. Gauthier argued that individuals with the economic rationality Rawls ascribes to the parties in the original position would repudiate the two principles of justice for others that better enabled them to pursue their individual interests. And similarly, Miller's criticism can be understood as suggesting that someone with a highly individualistic, ruling class-determined conception of the good might be frustrated in realizing it by choosing the difference principle. Now if the continuity thesis is true, the parties in the original position must at least consider the possibility that in fact they may be any of these types of people, in addition to numerous other possibilities (for example, that their conception of the good includes seeing other persons in positions of the lesser liberty). They must consider the possibility that by choosing as they do - however they choose - they risk at the very least the extreme frustration of their deep-seated desires and conceptions of the good; or at most their gradual extinction as continuing personalities 21 Rawls, Dewey Lectures, ibid. Page references will be in the text, preceded by DL. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
