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Show Chapter X. Rawls's Instrumentalism 450 So either the parties must be viewed as motivationally uncommitted to making a specifically moral choice,24 in which case a return to the unjust status quo is a viable alternative; or else we must assume a priori that they are morally motivated to choose the two principles of justice, in which case it remains an open question how those principles are to be independently and objectively justified. As we have seen in Chapter IX.4, this choice of alternatives is inevitable, and fatal, for the committed Instrumentalist. But how committed an Instrumentalist has Rawls ever been? Is there any remaining justificatory force in the original position for the two principles of justice, now that Rawls has made this recent modification? The answer is yes. However, this force does not derive from the demonstrated instrumental rationality of the two principles of justice; for as we have seen in Chapter IX.4, it is vacuously true that an agent will choose what she has special motivation to choose, other things equal. This fact cannot justify that choice to us unless we, too, have that special motivation, or would have it under appropriate circumstances. Now we have just seen that the relevant circumstances on which the significance and justificatory force of the original position originally relied were supposed to be the more practically compelling circumstances of justice, in which the parties were realistically portrayed as competing on an equal basis for scarce resources for achieving their ends, not a highest-order interest in their sense of justice. And it is controversial whether this moral motivation is as essentially reflected in our actual lives; i.e. whether it is in fact more important to us to obtain for ourselves an equitable allocation of the scarce resources we need to survive comfortably, or to develop and exercise our sense of justice. This moral motivation may be more an expression of our idealized self-conceptions than well-grounded in a conception of the self that is adequate to the psychological facts about us. If the two principles of justice are to be generated by a highest-order interest that we do not actually have, or have only to a relatively minor degree, then as we have seen in Chapter IX.4.3, the extent of their persuasive force for us will be inversely proportional to the extent of the remoteness of the ideal self-conception that includes that interest from our actual emotions and dispositions. In this case, the justification of the two principles will require that we be convinced, first, that the parties in the original position represent characteristics and dispositions that we have, or do or should aspire This possibility is supported by the stipulations that (i) the parties are mutually disinterested (TJ 13, 127); and (ii) they are not bound by prior moral ties (TJ 128). If these things are true of them, then why should they commit themselves to choosing principles of justice when each could stand to benefit from injustice? Clearly the additional stipulation of risk aversion is inadequate to answer this question, since each might value the benefits of injustice highly enough to risk being victimized by it. 24 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
