Even Rawls himself seems to sense the faulty thinking and unsteady ground his argument rests on, as he suddenly offers a new description of the Self to bolster his argument. He begins to question individuality, essentially removing the borders and lines between persons. He allows that under certain circumstances, the description of the Self may include more than one actual person. Thus, he immediately contradicts himself. Where his first argument was stressing so completely the difference between individual beings, and even separating individuals into "selves" and their "attributes," he suddenly creates an intersubjective idea of the self. He seems to embrace this idea as it presents itself as the only logical way out of his self-created labyrinth of faulty argument. As Rawls strives to avoid allowing his difference principle to force him into becoming overly utilitarian, his only hope seems to be changing the subject of possession to a werather than an I.
This sudden change in perception leads to the fairly obvious question of why he did not just pursue this course from the outset. Rawls creates a communal Self, including more than one person, for his own convenience, as a type of catch-all. He hopes to use this perception of the self to bail him out when his argument for the separateness of personal attributes comes under fire. But by doing so, he inadvertently destroys most of his own argument. If men agree to see themselves not as separate beings, there is no need for the difference principle, for any improvement to any member will be an improvement to all. If there is no Self to fulfill, no "who am I?" to understand, only "what ends do I choose?" then how does Rawls claim that "the self is realized in the activities of many selves"? (565). The Self fundamentally cannot be "realized," as that would indicate that the self is not prior to its ends, but is in fact created by them. Thus the holes and problems in his theory of justice become extraordinarily, excruciatingly clear. He has destroyed his essential deontological base while trying to salvage his own theory.
What little is left of Rawls' theory is easily shaken by Sandel. The unencumbered Self is the cornerstone of Rawls' entire argument. If, as Sandel shows, it is faulty, his entire theory falls apart. "We cannot be the sort of beings the deontological ethic requires us to be" (Sandel 65), so justice cannot be primary in the way Rawls, and other deontological writers, make it. If the attributes and talents we possess from birth are indeed an integral part of who we are, then Rawls' difference principle and the justification behind it also crumbles. And without the foundation of his difference principle, his theory has no legs to stand on. No further theorizing Rawls can do will be effective once his primary theory has been discredited.
In short, Sandel has completely and convincingly negated Rawls' Theory of Justice. He has shown that the self cannot be prior to its ends, and even shown that Rawls cannot help but agree with him. He has challenged the idea that humans can ever become the sort of being needed for the deontological argument to be effective, and he has neatly dispatched the faulty idea that suggests that personal attributes can be considered and used as common assets, thus falling subject to the difference principle. Sandel's critique is a very thorough, convincing and well crafted one.
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The Flying Porqupine
