Self-Ownership and the Separateness of Persons

One of the main objections to utilitarianism is the separateness of persons thesis. According to it, each person possesses a unique subjective perspective, making it impossible to aggregate the well-being of individuals. At first glance, this assertion is purely descriptive and therefore cannot justify any normative conclusions. However, it can be understood as pointing to a significant normative fact: each person has intrinsic value, and therefore their well-being should not be considered simply as part of some aggregated social good. This objection was used by two of the leading Kantian moral philosophers of the 20th century, John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Although they agreed in their rejection of utilitarianism, they differed on how we should treat our talents. Nozick supported the self-ownership principle, according to which each person has exclusive ownership of their talents, while Rawls proposed that the distribution of natural talents should be considered collective property. Rawls’s and Nozick’s positions on talents can be reconciled with the reciprocity principle, which requires an egalitarian distribution of the fruits of social cooperation. However, this principle leaves the interests of the disabled inadequately protected. To address this problem, a duty-sensitive self-ownership could be adopted to accommodate the natural duty to help those in need. But even such an extremely weakened form of self-ownership, if we are to consider it self-ownership at all, must prohibit paternalistic interventions. However, separateness of persons, if we associate it with the intrinsic value of human persons, must allow for some forms of paternalism, since its complete denial demonstrates our disregard for the good of others. Thus, Rawls’s position is more consistent with the idea of separateness of persons, but only if we interpret it as a rejection of self-ownership, rather than an acceptance of its more modest liberal interpretation.