3 El contenido del derecho

full realisation of innate capacities which (as the Aristotelian principle states) human beings enjoy. But few people have the talent to follow the J plan and many end up living a K life. But given that the Aristotelian principle is relativised to a person’s aspirations and situation, the K people should be in no worse a position than the J people with respect to their self-respect. Thomas challenges this by asking:

... what about those persons whose abilities are extremely minimal? Are we to suppose that they can have a secure conviction of the worth of their life plan simply by associating with persons whose abilities are equally minimal? Surely not.^^

The claim that success according to social criteria of excellence is sufficient for self-respect counter-intuitively rules out and in certain types of

L.L. Thomas, ‘Morality and Our Self-Concept’, p. 261. Thomas invokes the companion effect to the Aristotelian principle to support his criticism, but I don’t think this is necessary or that he gets the companion effect right. He claims that the companion effect implies that K people will want to be like J people for they will want to exercise the abilities latent in their nature that they observe being exercised by the J people. The problem here is that the companion effect only supports this argument on the implausible assumption that all people have the same latent talents and abilities. In this case the K people experience a blow to their self-respect in virtue of their failure to exercise the J talents they have hidden within them. But what if the J plan is cross channel swimming and all K people lack legs, and therefore the latent ability to be a cross channel swimmer? In this case the K people may admire the J people, be glad that they live J lives, and even regret the fact that they lack legs and are themselves unable to live J lives. But there is no reason to think that they will experience a blow to their self-respect just in virtue of having no legs. However, even if Thomas’ specific argument is flawed, the general point he makes remains challenging.

people as candidate self-respecters. Anyone who succeeds according to social criteria of excellence and yet does not identify herself with these criteria must, according to the claim, have self-respect. And anyone who fails according to social criteria and yet rejects these criteria must lack self-respect. Neither of these claims are acceptable.

These criticisms show that the most plausible reading of Rawls’ claims about the relationship between participation in communities of shared interests and self-respect is one that allows that self-respect affecting standards may diverge from social standards. Self-respect affecting standards correspond to what I have called individual criteria of excellence. There is no suggestion on Rawls’ part that we must stake our self-respect on success according to the standards implicit in any or each of the communities of shared interests in which we participate. Instead, our self-respect depends on ‘finding our own person and deeds appreciated and confirmed by others who are likewise esteemed and their association e n jo y e d ’. That is, our self- respect depends on success according to the standards adopted by those with whom we identify ourselves. If we do not identify ourselves with many of the communities in which we participate then failure according to the standards of these communities will be irrelevant for self-respect. If we do not identify ourselves with any communities then our self-respect affecting standards will have no social aspect at all. Of course there are, in reality.

very few genuine hermits, and of those that there are there are it is reasonable to think that there are very few self-respecters. Shunning the world is more indicative of a lack of confidence and a sense of one’s own value than the reverse. Alternatively, there are very few people who, as a result of their own effort, are undoubted and esteemed successes in their communities (and who know this) who would claim to lack self-respect. Nonetheless, both these types of cases do provide a possible framework for self-respect. The account I have given of self-respect accommodates them, and there is nothing in Rawls to suggest that he cannot.

The second important aspect of my account of self-respect concerns the nature of the self-conceptions enabling self-expression congruent with them to support self-respect. I claimed that self-conceptions capable of supporting self-respect must not undermine agency by preventing or damaging the capacity for strong evaluation. Is there a counterpart claim in Rawls’ account of self-respect? Here we must examine claims Rawls’ makes about self- respect in Political Liberalism:

In a democratic society we expect, and indeed want, citizens to care about their basic liberties and opportunities in order to develop and exercise their moral powers and to pursue their conception of the good. We think they show a lack of self-respect and weakness of character in not doing so.?*

Self-respect is rooted in our self-confidence as a fully co-operating member of society capable of pursuing a worthwhile conception of the good over a complete life. Thus self-respect presupposes the development and exercise of both moral powers and therefore an effective sense of justice.^®

Rawls’ claims about the relationship between self-respect and liberty will be examined in chapter 4. For the moment I want to note how these two passages make a connection between self-respect and the exercise of the two moral powers. Rawls claims that:

... since persons can be full participants in a fair system of social co-operation, we ascribe to them the two moral powers ... namely, a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good. A sense of justice is the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterises the fair terms of social co-operation. Given the nature of the political conception as specifying a public basis of justification, a sense of justice also expresses a willingness, if not the desire, to act in relation to others on terms that they also can publicly endorse. The capacity for a conception of the good is the capacity to form.

to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good.^^

Exercising one’s capacity for a conception of the good is a pre-requisite for self-respect because without having exercised this capacity one will lack the substantive sense of self necessary for strong evaluation. If a person has no projects, values, commitments or obligations then it is hard to see how they can make non-contingent judgements about the desirability of this or that course of action. This suggests that my description of self-respect as connected with self-conceptions enabling strong evaluation maps on to the Rawlsian conception of s e l f - r e s p e c t .

Explaining the connection between the capacity for a sense of justice and self-respect is more tricky, and will emerge in chapter 4. For the moment let me just assert that action fit to ground self-respect requires a degree of