ABSTRACT
Imagine that a child is born with severe restrictions on the quality of her life, and that her parents might have prevented such an outcome if they had taken certain precautions prior to conception. Contractualism aims to provide a plausible framework for explicating the rationales of the principles, or normative standards, of that aspect of morality concerned with the regulation of interpersonal conduct and consideration. Relating to one another on terms of mutual respect for one another’s value as persons requires compliance with these principles. In directing attention to the violation of legitimate expectations as the basis of a claim to have been wronged, contractualism implicitly shifts the focus from what has happened to the person wronged to what was done. The shift in focus is the crucial move that makes it possible to then declare contractualism to be immune to the non-identity problem.
