To begin, we must distinguish norms from meaning, staying within the rules from living a life experienced as one worth living. A person can live a morally proper life, in the sense of living within all of the moral rules that she acknowledges or that others use to evaluate her behavior, yet still live a life that appears to her to be desperately without meaning. …

…Each of these oppositions marks a distinction between rules and identity. One wants not simply to be just, but to be someone.
—Putting Liberalism in Its Place