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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2017 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR- PROPRE IN RAWLS Xinghua Wang University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Wang, Xinghua, "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR-PROPRE IN RAWLS. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2017. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4507 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Xinghua Wang entitled "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR-PROPRE IN RAWLS." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. David Reidy, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: David Palmer, Jon Garthoff, Mary McAlpin Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR-PROPRE IN RAWLS A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Xinghua Wang May 2017 Copyright ©2017 by Xinghua Wang All rights reserved ii DEDICATION To my Daughter, Julie Meinuo iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Dr. Reidy, who is my thesis supervisor, for his help with my dissertation throughout the past the two years. He reviewed every draft of each chapter of my dissertation and provided invaluable comments, without which, this dissertation would not be what it is now. I also thank him for lecturing and helping me in the several courses, in which I was a grader. I learned both how to improve my and the students’ writings in these courses, and, more importantly, how to do philosophy by reading classical texts. I also thank Dr. Garthoff for his help with my dissertation. He reviewed most drafts of my dissertation and provided invaluable suggestions. We met regularly to discuss these drafts and these discussions often give me inspiration. I also thank Dr. Palmer and Dr. McAlpin for being members of the dissertation committee and giving constructive suggestions on some of the drafts of my dissertation. Dr. Palmer also helped me with my philosophical writings in the first two years of my PhD program, for which I am grateful. I also thank all the other teachers who lectured me during the first three years of my PhD program. They showed me the exemplary way of being a teacher in one way or another. They include: Dr. Aquila, Dr. Berenstain, Dr. Boylu, Dr. Coffman, Dr. Cureton, Dr. Kohl, Dr. Nolt, and Dr. Shaw. Last but not least, I thank all my friends for their company. Without them, these years wouldn’t have been so enjoyable. I thank my parents and my mother-in-law for their selfless support during these years. I thank my daughter, Julie Meinuo, for bringing so much joy to my life. I thank my husband Jun for proofreading almost every draft of my dissertation, and for his love and being the best friend of mine. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation defends the view that there is a Rousseauvian interpretation of Rawls’s political philosophy by focusing on the significance of amour-propre in Rawls’s political philosophy. In the first chapter, I introduce my central thesis and chapter arrangements and compare my Rousseauvian interpretation with other interpretations of Rawls. In the second chapter, I introduce Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre and try to defend Rawls’s wide view of amour- propre, according to which, amour-propre has both a positive and a negative form. In the third chapter, I argue that Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre plays a significant role in Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness. Thus, I show that one of the main reasons why parties in the original position would choose Rawls’s two principles of justice over other conceptions of justice is that justice as fairness meets the demands of amour-propre while other conceptions of justice do not. In the fourth chapter, I argue that Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre plays a significant role in Rawls’s stability argument. This argument has three parts. The first part involves showing that Rawls’s moral psychology is an illustration of Rousseau’s thesis that moral sentiments are derived from natural sentiments. The second part argues that Rawls’s congruence argument and his overlapping consensus argument are based on Rousseau’s conception of persons. The third part argues that Rawls’s argument from the absence of special psychology is also grounded in Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre. In the fifth chapter, I argue that Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre plays a significant role in Rawls’s law of peoples by showing that three themes of Rawls’s law of peoples, the two international original positions, the idea of a realistic utopia and the distinction between peoples and states, parallel, and are grounded in, Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre. In the final chapter, I consider two objections against my assumption that the legitimate social bases of self-respect are equal basic rights and v liberties and their substantive fair value. I argue that these objections are groundless. I thus conclude that there is a Rousseauvian interpretation of Rawls’s justice as fairness and law of peoples. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1 1. The Central Thesis of This Dissertation and The Aim of This Chapter .......................1 2. The Kantian Interpretation and Its Shortcomings .........................................................2 2.1 The Kantian Interpretation of Rawls ..................................................................................3 2.2 The Objections Against the Kantian Interpretation ...........................................................5 2.3 The Existing Defenses of Rawls’s Kantian Interpretation .................................................7 2.4 Understanding Rawls’s Kantian Interpretation from a Rousseauvian Perspective ..........13 3. The Rousseauvian Interpretation of Rawls ...................................................................17 3.1 Other Roussseauvian Interpretations of Rawls and Their Shortcomings ........................18 3.2 My Rousseauvian Interpretation of Rawls .......................................................................20 4. The Task of Each Chapter, and How It Contributes to the Overall Project .............24 CHAPTER 2 ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR-PROPRE ............................ 29 1. The Traditional View of Amour-propre ........................................................................31 2. The Wide View of Amour-propre ..................................................................................34 3. An Argument Against the Wide View of Amour-propre .............................................40 4. My Defense of the Wide View of Amour-propre ..........................................................43 4.1 The Role of Pity vs the Role of Self-love or Self-esteem in the Second Discourse ........43 4.2 The Role of Pity vs the Role of Self-love or Self-esteem in Emile .................................45 4.3 The Role of Pity vs the Role of Self-love or Self-esteem in Rousseau’s Other Works ...50 5. Conclusion and Some Afterthoughts .............................................................................53 CHAPTER 3 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR- PROPRE IN RAWLS’S JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS ................................................................. 57 1. A Brief Introduction to Justice as Fairness ...................................................................59 2. The Argument from Self-respect for the Two Principles of Justice ...........................62 vii 2.1 The Utilitarian Principle Fails to Meet the Demand of Amour-propre ............................64 2.2 The Two Principles of Justice Meet the Demand of Amour-propre ................................70 3. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................83 CHAPTER 4 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ROUSSEAU’S CONCEPT OF AMOUR- PROPRE IN RAWLS’S STABILITY ARGUMENT .............................................................. 85 1. Amour-propre and Rawls’s Moral Psychology ............................................................87 1.1 A Brief Introduction to Rawls’s Moral Psychology ........................................................88 1.2 The Parallel Relations Between Rousseau’s Concept of Amour-propre and Rawls’s Moral Psychology ...............................................................................................................................94 2. Amour-propre, the Congruence Argument and the Overlapping Consensus Argument 106 2.1 Amour-propre and the Congruence Argument in Theory ..............................................107 2.2 Amour-propre and the
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