Rawls on Egoism

Rawls presents a very interesting argument for why egoistic conceptions are ruled out by the formal constraints of the concept of right. He arranges these constraints under five general headings—two of which are critical in rejecting the presence of egoism. 

The three egoistic conceptions are:

1.) First-person dictatorship: Everyone is to serve my interests

2.) Free-rider: Everyone is to act justly except for myself, if I choose not to

3.) General: Everyone is permitted to advance his interests as he pleases

The first two conceptions are easy to reject due to the generality condition, which states, "it must be possible to formulate [principles] without the use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions" (113). Because a description or rough understanding of a proper name is needed to fully comprehend the implications behind each case, both the first-person dictatorship and free-rider conceptions can be eliminated. Generality, however, does not rule out the third egoistic conception because, "The principle here can clearly be expressed in a perfectly general way" (117).

Instead, general egoism is rejected by the ordering condition. Rawls believes that a conception of right must be able to resolve conflicting claims by ordering their priority. Furthermore, this ordering must be independent from an individual's social position or capacity to intimidate or coerce. If everyone is truly permitted to advance their interests as they please, then men would be free to use arbitrary factors to successfully secure their self-interests, such as the power to effectively intimidate others into submission. Essentially, it is impossible to fairly rank competing claims if the factors of force and cunning play a role in determining the outcome.