Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

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118 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human Valuesphysical” (1985), where - in explaining the ultimate sense ofhis “theory of justice” - Rawls specifies, in passing, the ultimate,or near ultimate, sense of his own individualism. 91 With agreat deal more clarity than in the essay by Habermas that I quotedfrom earlier, Rawls begins by pointing out that his proceduralconstruction refers only to our present democratic societies and inthis light we are to interpret the condition of the contractualpartners (that is, “free and equal subjects”) in his mental experimentconcerning the original position. (With or without the “veilof ignorance,” they are the citizens whom we daily meet and whotake part in our day-to-day political life, in addition, of course, topersonifying the “liberal political doctrine.”) 92 And this is whyRawls’s conception of the individual or the person needs no morethan the overlapping consensus 93which, in a society that is pluralisticas to religious beliefs and ideology in general, allows thecitizens to agree on certain “basic principles of justice.” Moreoverhe is saved from having to contemplate - as Rawls himselfexplicitly admits - any “stronger” conceptions of the “subject,”such as the Kantian one. 94As Rawls himself acknowledges, “when [in his theory ofjustice] we simulate being in the original position, our reasoningno more commits us to a metaphysical doctrine about the nature ofthe self than our playing a game like Monopoly commits us tothink that we are landlords engaged in a desperate rivalry, winnertake all.” 95We may be, then, the same in real life as in the originalRawlsian position, just as Saul of Tarsus remained in some sense91 J. Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy andPublic Affairs 14 (1985) : 223-51.italics.]92 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness,” 231ff.93 [<strong>The</strong> words “overlapping consensus” were in English in the original; J.M.’s94 Ibid., 245ff.95 Ibid., 239.
[MUGUERZA] <strong>The</strong> Alternative of Dissent 119“the same” when he became the apostle Paul on the road toDamascus. But it is more likely that in real life one feels lessequal and less free than in Rawls’s mental experiment. And, bethat as it may, it still seems reasonable to say that, after all, a littledaily “metaphysics” keeps the doctor away.Of course, I have no intention here of reviving the Kantiandoctrine of the two kingdoms, the empirical or phenomenal andthe moral or noumenal ones. But one could still maintain that the“moral subject” and the “empirical subject” are not completelycoextensive. Of course, with this we are not saying that the moralsubject and the empirical subject are actually distinct, but ratherthat the first one is the integral subject, but a subject that is farfrom being reducible to just its empirical manifestations. Forexample, even the most hardened criminal could never be reducedto his observable conduct, since the latter does not allow us toscrutinize his most secret motivations and intentions, and this factis a powerful reason never to cease treating him as a moral subject,which is like saying, as “an end in himself.” Another example:as empirical subjects we humans are different as to talent, strength,beauty, and so on, but none of that keeps us from considering ourselves“equals” as moral subjects. Just as, to give a final example,the fact that we, as empirical subjects, may have to suffer a wholeset of natural or sociohistorical conditions does not allow us to saythat we are thus kept from being “free,” unless at the same timewe renounce our status as moral subjects. Our self-consciousnessand our self-determination as an indissoluble unit are derived fromthat moral subjectivity which seems to be the seat of “humandignity,” that is, what makes us “subjects” and not “objects.” 9696 <strong>The</strong> thesis of the indissolubility of “self-consciousness” and “self-determination”has been brilliantly defended by Tugendhat in his study Selbstbewusstsein undSelbstbestimmung (Frankfurt am Main, 1979). As Tugendhat points out, AndreasWildt - in Autonomie und Anerkennung (Stuttgart, 1982) -was the first to givehis considerations an explicitly moral-theoretical meaning, an interpretation UrsulaWolf also stresses (Das Probleme das moralisches Sollens), and in his turn, he hasdeveloped this point in his Probleme der Ethik, 137ff., discussing the thesis of
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Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

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