Rethinking Self-Respect: A Phenomenological Approach to Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice'

This project advances a reinterpretation of Rawlsian self-respect - one of the distributive goods of Rawls' society - as an 'existential feeling'. In doing so, it seeks to resolve a tension between attending to the needs of citizens outside of economic goods, and maintaining a commitment to liberalism, in not endorsing any particular conception of 'the good'. This project resolves this tension by arguing that self-respect helps individuals as agents, which only contingently benefits their well-being. This thesis then explores the consequences of this position and considers a distributive paradigm for language-usage, grounded in self-respect.