CONCEPT
Primary Goods
Rawls's technical term for the basic resources — income, wealth, opportunities, powers, rights, and the social bases of self-respect — that every rational person wants regardless of her particular conception of the good life.
Primary goods are Rawls's answer to a problem that plagued earlier contractarian theories: how can parties in the original position rank alternative institutional arrangements without knowing their particular conceptions of the good? Rawls's solution was to identify a class of goods that any rational person would want more of, regardless of what she happens to want out of life. Whatever your life plan, you will be better able to pursue it with more income than less, more opportunities than fewer, more rights than fewer. Primary goods are the currency in terms of which distributive claims are evaluated — not because they are the only things that matter, but because they are the things that matter to everyone independently of what else she happens to value. The list Rawls settled on includes basic rights and liberties, freedom of movement and occupation, powers and prerogatives of office, income and wealth, and — most importantly — the social bases of self-respect.
