THE INDIVIDUAL RATIONALITY OF MAINTAINING A SENSE OF JUSTICE

Let us say that an individual possesses a principled preference if she prefers satisfying her preferences without violating the principles o f justice governing her community to satisfying her preferences by vio lating these principles. Although living among possessors of principle d preferences benefits individuals, maintaining such a preference is i ndividually costly. Further, individuals can benefit from others posse ssing principled preferences without themselves possessing one. In thi s paper, I argue that occupying a choice situation which mirrors key a spects of our own situation, maximizing rationality requires individua ls to develop and maintain principled preferences. To establish that m aintaining a principled preference is individually rational for the oc cupants of such a choice situation, I define a range of individual str ategies for them, model their choice of individual strategies as a gam e, and argue that this game involves an equilibrium in which all of it s participants would choose to develop and maintain a principled prefe rence.