The Separateness of Persons and its Implications for Political Liberalism

The Separateness of Persons and its Implications for Political Liberalism John Rawls's political theory mainly addresses a question that has direct implications for all of us: namely, how is it that a stable and just society can exist when there are major disagreements between individuals with regard to their commitment to values and their conceptions of the good. Rawls answers this question by asserting that, in the context of value-system pluralism, individuals will reach an "overlapping consensus" in their political arrangements. The individual, he argues, should bracket her own particular moral convictions with regard to outcomes, but she is free to include them in her arguments aimed at leading to a system of fair social cooperation. Although Rawls wants to ensure that personal autonomy and the system of a modern society are capable of residing within a framework of mutual interconnectedness, it is not clear whether his considerations regarding fair social cooperation lend support to a concept of personal autonomy, because he seems merely to acknowledge and recognize the individual's autonomy, without actually implementing it, in the sense of encouraging persons to express their autonomy. This dissertation propounds the view that Rawls's thesis de-personalizes the individual. My aim is to examine the roots of personal autonomy in order to argue that it entails an account of the separateness of persons that goes beyond the distinctiveness of persons - the rather descriptive concept upon which Rawls's views on a stable and just society are based.