Philosophy Commons^™

Rawlsian Self-Respect And Limiting Liberties In The Background Culture, Kyle William Chapel

Masters Theses

John Rawls tells us in his landmark work, A Theory of Justice (1971), that self-respect is the “most important primary good” (TJ 386) and that “the parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect” (TJ 440). The importance of self-respect is a theme that continues throughout the body of Rawl’s work; in Political Liberalism (1993) Rawls tells us that in considering different principles of justice parties in the original position put a great deal of emphasis on “how well principles of justice support self-respect” (PL 319). Given the …