RESUMO O artigo examina se há alguma incompatibilidade entre práticas de discriminação privada e as duas partes do segundo princípio da justiça de Rawls, o princípio da equitativa igualdade de oportunidades e o princípio da diferença. Argumento que a discriminação no trabalho e em outras áreas importantes para o desenvolvimento das aptidões inatas somente atenta contra o PEIO quando tem como efeito geral o de tornar substancialmente desiguais as chances de cidadãos com similares aptidões inatas e motivação exercerem determinadas ocupações. (...) Comento também algumas dificuldades para considerar vedados pelo PEIO dois casos comuns de discriminação, a discriminação baseada em qualidade de reação e a discriminação por indicadores. Em relação ao PD, defendo que a proibição à discriminação privada se relaciona ao bem primário das bases sociais do autorrespeito e está circunscrita aos casos de discriminação degradante, como tal entendida, de acordo com Hellman, aquela cujo sentido expressivo é o de negar o igual status moral das pessoas pertencentes a um certo grupo. ABSTRACT This paper investigates the incompatibility between practices of private discrimination and the two parts of Rawls' second principle of justice, the fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. I submit that discrimination at workplace and other sectors that are crucial for the development of natural talents only violates FEO when possessing the general effect of rendering substantially unequal the occupational chances of citizens with similar innate talents and motivation. I also point to some difficulties in proscribing, according to FEO, two common instances of discrimination, reaction qualification and proxy discrimination. Regarding the DP, my main statement is that a ban on private discrimination is related to the primary good of the social bases of self-respect and is circumscribed to instances of demeaning discrimination, defined, according to Hellman, as discrimination whose expressive meaning is denying people belonging to a given group their equal moral status. (shrink)

A central feature of John Tomasi’s ‘Free Market Fairness’ is the emphasis it places upon the good of self-respect. Like Rawls, Tomasi believes that accounts of justice ought to offer support for the self-respect of citizens. Indeed, this is a key way in which Tomasi aspires to engage with the ‘high-liberal’ tradition. Unlike Rawls however, Tomasi argues that this support is best provided by our treating a broader set of economic liberties as basic liberties. In this paper I raise two (...) concerns about this latter claim. Firstly, I trace a number of significant ways in which Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect differs from that of Rawls. Whilst such divergences are not necessarily problematic, I argue that they serve to limit the purchase his account has on left-liberals. Further, I argue that the ideal of self-respect is more deeply ‘hard-wired’ into Rawls’s account of justice than Tomasi recognises. As such, Tomasi fails to address the full range of additional ways in which Rawls expects his principles of justice to support citizens’ self-respect. I argue that this also limits the force of Tomasi’s claims. Secondly, and more seriously, I argue that there are significant tensions between Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect and his most forceful argument in favour of the market democratic model he proposes. I argue firstly that Tomasi’s account of when citizens’ self-respect is jeopardised does not allow us to readily distinguish between economic security born of systems of welfare and redistribution, and economic security born of market forces and historical contingency. And more troubling still, is Tomasi’s belief that self-respecting citizens must view themselves as a ‘central cause’ of their situation. Such self-conceptions, I argue, can only coexist alongside the greater wealth thesis if citizens engage in quite naked self-delusions about their causal power. I argue that theorists of justice have good reason to be suspicious of promulgating such delusions and, as such, that this poses a serious problem for a justification of market democracy which aspires to rest upon an appeal to self-respect. (shrink)

Richard Penny argues that Rawls’s commitment to self-respect puts him at odds with his endorsement of unequalizing incentives. Penny draws on G.A. Cohen’s distinction between ‘lax’ and ‘strict’ readings of the difference principle to make this point. Given this, Penny concludes that Rawls faces a dilemma: either Rawls weakens his endorsement of unequalizing incentives or weakens his commitment to self-respect. By taking the difference principle in isolation, Penny creates a false dilemma. I will argue that once we place the difference (...) principle in the context of Rawls’s theory as a whole, we find that unequalizing incentives pose no danger to the self-respect of the least advantaged. Moreover, I will argue that a strict reading of the difference principle is incompatible with the self-respect of all citizens in a well-ordered society given the fact of reasonable pluralism. My arguments reveal the importance of seeing self-respect as a threshold good, rather than a relative one. (shrink)