Abstract
Standoffs between right and good thwart philosophy’s public purpose. John Rawls treats the right and the good as separate and irreducible. Justice precedes individual choices. Rawls rejects Kant’s transcendental philosophy but sticks to the pure self as legislator of justice. Separating right from good and conditions of action from aims builds false philosophy into Rawls’ foundations. Rawls rejects utility as the foundation of justice but relies on it for individual choices. A bad abstraction, utility voids goods. Affinities between economic and political freedoms need closer examination. The state cannot be neutral about capital accumulation. The right prescribes conditions of choosing; the good concerns what is chosen. Preferences displace goods. But genuine freedom is not a pure self’s power to prefer. Choice is an aspect of human existence, but choices do not originate what is good. Living amid goods makes the self’s choosing intelligible. Neither the right nor the good makes sense outside their inseparability.