Algoritmo de Denavit-Hartenberg

It is

In virtue of their two moral powers (a capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good) and the powers of reason (of judgement, thought, and inference connected with these powers), [that] persons are free.³⁴⁴

As outlined in Political Liberalism, and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, a person's freedom has three aspects.³⁴⁵

(i) Persons are free in that they are capable of developing and revising their conception of the good. Persons do not see themselves as tied to any of their particular ends. They are able to reflectively appraise them and decide whether they affirm them.³⁴⁶ Being free in this way follows directly from the members of the well-ordered society having the moral power of rationality.

(ii) Persons are free in that they regard themselves as “self-authenticating sources of valid claims”. They take themselves to be able to make claims on their shared

342 See further PL, p. 48 fn1 343 PL, p. 19

344 PL, p. 19

345 I do not investigate how these accounts given in the later philosophy are foreshadowed in A Theory of Justice and its immediately subsequent articles. But I believe that they are so foreshadowed, and that they do not represent drastic departures from anything found there. They are first introduced in this form in

“Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory” (CP, chapter 16)

346 PL, pp. 30—32, JF, pp. 21—22. See also TJ, pp. /131—132, 408/358—359, 416/365—366, 561/491—492

91 institutions. In regarding themselves as able to authenticate those claims themselves, they do not regard themselves as only able to make claims in virtue of prior “duties and obligations owed to society”.³⁴⁷

Though Rawls is not explicit, I believe that this aspect of freedom is best seen as arising from the fact that persons are, and view themselves as, reasonable. Reasonableness considers not just others apart from the agent, but the agent themselves as well, and the relationship between the agent and others. Each must be seen, and must see themselves, as a source of valid claims in order for a fair and mutually advantageous arrangement to be generated.

By contrast, rationality appears to be perfectly compatible with not viewing ourselves as the ultimate sources of the claims we make. As an example of those who do not see any claims they may make as ultimately originating from themselves, but from others in their society, Rawls cites slaves who have completely internalised the way they are regarded by a slave-owning polis. It is arguable that such slaves could still be described as rational.³⁴⁸ The idea would be that they can sensibly organise, pursue, and perhaps even to a certain extent adapt the ends which another has ascribed to them.³⁴⁹ But such slaves cannot act reasonably so long as they fail to recognise themselves as a sovereign agent as well.

(iii) Persons are free in that they understand themselves to be responsible for their ends, given the just institutions of their society. They do not take the simple strength of any of their desires on its own to constitute a reason for society to fulfil that desire, or for them to act as they can in order to meet that desire themselves.³⁵⁰ Rather, reasons are based on the authority which a desire possesses, due to its being endorsed as reasonable, and, perhaps, rational.³⁵¹

This aspect of freedom may be seen to derive from persons’ reasonableness and rationality. Rationality allows us to separate out the strength of our desires from their authority, as we can view a powerful desire which we acted on as nevertheless against our own rational interest. Reasonableness furthermore leads us not to make demands on our society which go beyond what is fair, even if we strongly desire that such demands should

347 PL, pp. 32—33, JF, pp. 23—24

348 Dudley Knowles has urged me to remember that some would disagree with this – Hegel most prominently. I think that the position I give here, however, is likely to be Rawls’s position, given how he understands rationality.

349 Given how these notions have so far been formally defined, the fully compliant slave appears to have an attitude equivalent to altruism. Even if conceived like this however, rationality can still be ascribed to the slave. Altruistic interests, like any others, can be pursued rationally or irrationally.

350 PL, pp. 33—34, 185—187 351 See PL, pp. 82—86

92 be met, or that we should make such demands.

Once again, neither freedom nor equality are sufficient by themselves to ascribe any first-order interests to the members of the well-ordered society. Simply saying that people regard each other as having equal possession of the moral powers does not suffice to ascribe them any aims, as the interests connected to those powers are all second-order.

Regarding the aspects of freedom: saying (i) that the members of the well-ordered society do not see themselves as unavoidably tied to any of their particular aims does not tell us anything about what those aims could be. Seeing one's claims as having some kind of authority independent of what society demands of you – (ii) – and seeing yourself as responsible for whatever claims you make, providing your society is reasonably well-ordered, and that you cannot reasonably claim whatever you might desire – (iii) – similarly do not determine what the claims and desires in question are.

In particular, regarding (ii), note that Rawls's account does not commit him to the position that people in the well-ordered society will see themselves as a self-authenticating source of valid claims per se. This would allow us to say that their first-order interests include interests in themselves, i.e. in their own well-being. But this is not so. Rather, the persons in the well-ordered society see themselves as a self-interested source of valid claims with respect to the rest of their society as a whole. According to their own understanding of their first-order interests, these interests may not be conceived as primarily their interests at all. They may be of a largely altruistic cast of mind, and see their interests as only instrumental for others interests — such as those of their family, or club, or ethnic group. Whole groups of people – even whole societies – may have this kind of mindset, if they simply see their interests as ultimately based on the interests of

fictional, transcendent, or non-human being or beings. I may view my interests as validated solely because they serve the interests of God, the Animals, Nature, or the Justified

Ancients of Mu Mu. Of course, some of these are outlandish possibilities, given human nature (we might think). But formally, nothing in Rawls's account of the conception of the person rules them out. That these possibilities are compatible with his account of freedom is clearer in Rawls's later philosophy.³⁵² But they follow from the earlier account as well.³⁵³

Finally, we might assert that the conception of the person is as yet incomplete.

352 See, for example, PL pp. 32—33

353 E.g. TJ, pp. 127/110. I believe that several aspects of Rawls's account of moral development, and discussions of self—respect and self—esteem, do not properly respect this fact (e.g. TJ, pp. 463—465/406—

408, 498—501/436—439). This may be one reason why the original account of Justice as Fairness needed to be revised (see subsections 12.1, 12.2). But I do not explore this issue here.

93 Though we have described the two moral powers, and the nature of the equality and

freedom that follows from them, it must be remembered that the conception of the person is of a person living their life in a well-ordered society. We must be able to ascribe first-order, non-public, intrinsic interests to such persons – a person can hardly be described to be living their life if they have no interests or desires which actually spur them to action.

The picture will be completed in the next section.

To summarise this section: all the characteristics so far attributed to the members of the well-ordered society merely serve to narrow down the possibilities of the first-order interests the members of the society. So far, the members will ideally not pursue their interests and attachments in ways which are obviously irrational.³⁵⁴ They may have interests which would be unreasonable to claim, but they will not press for those interests to be met. They will consider themselves as equal in possessing the powers to be able to act this way. And they will consider themselves to be free of being tied to a particular set of commitments, to be free to claim the authority of their own claims, and will see their claims as outcomes of their free agency, and hence as their responsibility. They will have an understanding of what their happiness is. This all narrows the range of possible

conceptions of the good — of possible systems of ends. But we have still specified nothing positive about the first-order, non-public, intrinsic interests of the members of the well-ordered society. Without such interests, none of these second order interests, or attitudes towards our interests, will have any application.