Abstract

John Rawls' argument that greater relative economic equality is sometimes required to forestall injury to self-esteem and his argument for equal civil and political liberties are each open to serious difficulty. Meeting these difficulties will involve an appeal to objective criteria of the relative importance of competing claims on social resources. Use of these criteria is controversial. I explore the nature and justification of these criteria and examine the role to which they have been put in a consequentialist theory of rights. ;In the first chapter, I argue that Nozick's account of the basis for self-esteem does not rule out those equalitarian arguments which appeal to the support equality often offers an individual's self-esteem. I also argue that Nozick's account of the nature of self-esteem is incomplete at best, and I provide an alternate account which incorporates his as a special case. In the second chapter, I argue that self-esteem is not something to which one is ordinarily entitled; but, in chapter three, I determine that certain injuries to self-esteem warrant greater relative economic equality. In chapter four, I show why, on a reasonable interpretation of Rawls' argument for the priority of liberty, priority is not established. In chapter five, I explore the virtues and difficulties inherent in a consequentialist theory of rights; and, in chapter six, I try to meet common objections made to the use of objective criteria of relative well-being--criteria essential to a defensible, consequentialist theory of rights and to Rawls' argument for greater relative economic equality