2 La eficacia del derecho

The account of self-respect as perhaps the most important primary good has stressed the great significance of how we think others value us. But in a well-ordered society the need for status is met by the public recognition of just institutions, together with the full and diverse internal life of the many free communities of interests that equal liberty allows.*

Granting a person a degree of political liberty suggests two things. First, that this person has the freedom to do certain things which she would not have been able to do without this liberty. And second, that she is deserving of this freedom in virtue of certain of her features. These reflections about what it means to accord a person political liberty explain why Rawls thinks there are two ways in which a principle of equal liberty supports the social bases of self-respect. First, equal liberty for all ensures equal access for all to communities of shared interests, participation in which is normally necessary for self-respect.^ And second, the public affirmation of a principle

* J. Rawls, A Theory o f Justice, p. 544.

^ In the discussion of self-respect in A Theory o f Justice Rawls claims that:

what is necessary is that there should be for each person at least one community of shared interests to which he belongs and where he finds his endeavors confirmed by his associates, (p. 442)

of equal liberty discourages the development of self-conceptions unfit to ground self-respect by encouraging people to think of themselves as equal in worth to all others. I will refer to these arguments respectively as the access

and status arguments. The status argument is concerned with the recognitional bases of self-respect, and the access argument with the resource bases of self-respect. Given the claim above that the resource/framework and recognitional/framework bases of self-respect are aspects of the basic structure providing a supervenience base for the resource/associational and recognitional/associational bases, I will focus first on arguments that equal liberty ensures the resource/framework and recognitional/framework bases of self-respect. I will then— briefly in this chapter and more fully in the next—assess arguments claiming that the framework bases support the associational bases.

Let me begin with the access argument for equal liberty as a resource/framework basis of self-respect. This is simply that without equal liberty not all persons will be equally able to form and participate in the communities of shared interests normally providing the empirical conditions for self-respect. This argument reveals a hidden assumption about liberty as

One page prior to this claim he states that:

It normally suffices that for each person there is some association (one or more) to which he belongs and within which the activities that are rational for him are publicly affirmed by others, (ibid., p. 441)

Membership of a community of shared interests is, for Rawls, normally necessary and sufficient for self-respect.

a social basis of self-respect. This is that maximin with respect to the social bases of self-respect demands an equal distribution of liberty as one such basis. The access argument establishes equality in the resource/framework liberty-bases of self-respect because equal liberty ensures equal access to the relevant communities of shared interests.

Moving on to the status argument for equal liberty as a recognitional/framework basis of self-respect, this argument relies on the idea that a subservient conception of oneself as of less value than others— and, in virtue of this perception, as bound to promote their interests over one’s own—undermines self-respect. A political system in which all have— and know they have—equal basic rights and liberties is one which encourages all, as far as politically possible, to conceive of themselves as equal in worth to all others. Affirming a principle of equal liberty encourages the development of self-conceptions appropriate to self-respect. Rawls states that when rights and liberties are given an equal distribution:

... everyone has a similar and secure status when they meet to conduct the common affairs of the wider society. No one is inclined to look beyond the constitutional affirmation of equality for further political ways of assuring his status. Nor, on the other hand, are men disposed to accept a lesser than equal liberty ...

This hidden assumption is well brought out by Henry Shue in ‘Liberty and Self- Respect’, Ethics, Vol. 85, 1975.

[This would have] the effect of publicly establishing their inferiority as defined by the basic structure of society. This subordinate ranking in the public forum experienced in the attempt to take part in political and economic life, and felt in dealing with those who have a greater liberty, would indeed be humiliating and destructive of self-esteem.

Self-respect depends on a conception of oneself as equal (in value to others) and thus free (from the necessity of promoting the interests of others in virtue of their perceived greater value). The best way to promote framework conditions conducive to these self-respect supporting self­ conceptions is by asserting that people are free and equal with a principle of equal liberty. A publicly affirmed principle of equal liberty shows that