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Show Chapter X. Rawls's Instrumentalism 456 must be regarded as self-determining in the very strong and liberal sense that in the original position, they determine the kinds of persons they are to be, the kind of psychology they will have, and the kinds of moral constraints they will be prepared to accept, by deciding what principles of justice are to regulate their interactions. The circumstances of the original position must then be viewed as a radical discontinuity in their adult lives, after which they become the kinds of persons who are constrained and partially determined, not by the continuity of their previous psychological histories, but by their choice of moral principles in the original position. At the same time, those passages we have cited from A Theory of Justice and The Dewey Lectures that lend support to the continuity thesis must be similarly bracketed. We must, for example, interpret Rawls's discussions of the expectations of the parties in the original position in the same hypothetical light as we do the concept of the original position itself. The parties must be conceived, and must conceive themselves, as deciding on principles as though such principles were to govern their life prospects. For they recognize that they are in fact choosing principles not for themselves, properly speaking, but for the persons they thereby choose to become. Thus they must regard themselves as advancing in the subsequent society not only their conceptions of the good, but indeed their idealized self-conceptions which the choice of principles determine. Rawls's arguments regarding the strains of commitment must be qualified in much the same way: The issue then becomes not whether the parties can adhere to the chosen principles, but instead whether the preferred self-conception includes this capacity. This implies, first, that the capacity for a sense of justice cannot be stipulated as a motivational assumption of the original position, independently of this preferred self-conception. Secondly, it implies that the capacity for a sense of justice cannot be used as a criterion for differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable principles of justice. For we can expect a great variety of such principles to be successful in tailoring a self-conception that will stably adhere to them. Finally, the abandonment of the continuity thesis entails the abandonment of the Instrumentalist strategy of justification that is, for many, centrally definitive of the social Contract-Theoretic tradition. That tradition is founded on the reasoning that a justified society is one by the rules of which individuals who are instrumentally rational and self-interestedly motivated to improve their lot in the state of nature would agree to be bound in it, in order to regulate their interactions. In this picture, the state of nature, the selfinterested and instrumentally rational individuals, and the social contract are jointly continuous but hypothetical relative to our actual society. But by abandoning the continuity thesis, the modifications we have traced in Rawls's later writings eliminate the state of nature, the self-interest, and the instrumental rationality of the individuals; and stipulate the hypothetical © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
