Abstract
Rawls argued that the difference principle leads to see otherwise the differences of talents. Their distribution is a “common asset”, in particular for the worst off. Nozick had seen there the avowal that a Rawlsian Society considers itself as the owner of our qualities, of us, if one discards the fantasy of a “purified self”. Rawls had proposed a powerful criticism of the absence of a theory of the human persons in Utilitarianism, “not taking seriously the distinction between” them, but a similar argument would be valid against Rawls (‘Tu quoque!’). Nozick’s supposed confutation is a fallacy: not the set of the talents is a common asset, but their differential distribution is one, forming a good basis for complementarities (Rawls would allude to Ricardo, but Arrow, against Nozick’s argument, had made the same point in pointing an analogy with division of labour according to Smith). The answer is that we own our talents, but the environment that made their flourishing possible explains why we may understand that part of our benefices can be redistributed by society. Via Arrow, who quotes Pascal (“Qu’est-ce que le Moi ?”), one suggests that all purely welfarist conceptions lead to the elimination of the self in favor of a concept of individuals as “containers” of satisfactions. The debate between economists and philosophers is necessary. For instance, according to Rawls, a person is a legitimate source of claims for me, and not being reduced to a container of possible satisfactions, it is stratified in incommensurable levels.