Rawls Frame The Rational With The Reasonable

pure practical reason to ‘‘frame the Rational with the Reasonable.’’ As seen in the Dewey Lectures Rawls emphasizes that ideal agents are not only rational, but must also reasonable. Rationality for Rawls carefully calculates the means which lead to certain ends, which may be traced to Kant’s hypothetical imperative or what Rawls terms empirical practical reason. Ideal moral agents not only learn how to achieve ends efficiently or rationally, but also how to achieve such ends by employing a moral a point of view, which agents construct to approximate objectivity within the applicable social context.
The goal of Rawls’ construction is thus both epistemological and normative. On the one hand, he aims to de-mystify Kantian pure practical rationality
Rawls himself admits as much. While he argues that he is ‘sufficiently’ Kantian, it is unclear whether he succeeds in this endeavor. At the very least, since Kantian notions like autonomy are not a matter of degree but actuality, i.e. all action is either autonomous or it is not, then I hold that Rawls would be better served to drop the Kantian connection altogether, which he actually did in his later writings by introducing a strictly political account of justice as fairness based on an overlapping
In these two cases maxims of selfishness and lying are evidently incompatible with one’s purposes to help others and keep promises. However, when O’Neill considers the Kantian maxim of failing to develop one’s talents, this pragmatic argument is less convincing. O’Neill claims that,

Forming and universalizing maxims would commit either a world in which no talents were developed, or a situation in which the necessary means were lacking not just for some, but for any sort of complex action (O’Neill Constructions 99).

This type of maxim, O’Neill believes fails to be volitional inconsistent. However, I hold that O’Neill is misleading us by assuming that a slothful person, not committed to any sort of complex action is in view. To presuppose such a person and his or her attendant non-commitment may be appropriately seen as an achievement in the context of that person’s set of underlying purposes.
In addition, the pragmatic account fails to handle one of Kant’s favorite examples: suicide. When consistency with one’ own purposes is the only test, then surely we can imagine an agent whose final purpose is suicide and who holds no other competing