This particular notion of the nature of the person as embodying a public and not just private sovereign good we may take not unreasonably as generating a first suggestion for helping re-articulate the nature of social justice today in France and in the EU particularly with respect to such very serious persisting social disorders as destitute street children.

If some Paris street children are understood however destitute as nonetheless persons necessarily embodying a certain public sovereign good, then the most basic primary social good they may be said clearly to lack is the individual and communal recognition118 of the public sovereign good they incarnate. Consequently, if they are to be fi nally effi cacious with respect to social justice,119 any attempts to remedy such a basic lack must start not just from an inventory of the primary social goods these persons also lack but from the realization of what these persons basically lack. And what destitute children in France and the EU today basically lack is the effective recognition of the public sovereign good they embody, the public sovereign good they may be said more resonantly to incarnate.