This essay focuses on the significance of disagreement in what Cavell has coined “Emersonian” perfectionism. This moral outlook holds that everyday moral duties and choices, unlike epistemological cases, ultimately rest on our personal assessment and justification of an action. It is therefore possible (and likely) that disagreements point not to moral incompetence, but to a conflict of desires - crucially including a conflict of ones own desires. As a consequence, the demand of making oneself intelligible is a primary and constant moral duty, without which we lose sight of the means of coming to an agreement. Perfectionism further assumes that, since people are not transparent to themselves, conversations with friends form a decisive part of the moral life as well. Thus touching at once on individual needs and desires as well as on the foundations and limits of community, these assumptions challenge both models dominating American moral thinking:  (Mill's) utilitarianism and (Kantian) deontology. I will primarily engage with a critique of the latter model, according to which disagreement merely signifies moral flaws. Moreover, to the extent that self can be distinguished on the basis of inclinations, desires, opinions, and a voice of one’s own, Kant, in his demand for the moral realm to be pure and for the voice to be universal, seeks to keep this self out of the moral realm altogether, thus founding what a perfectionist would call as a selfless and friendless moral fantasy. To Cavell, the self and its desires and inclinations do not pose a serious threat to moral reasoning - not per se at least. Instead, he aligns himself with a tendency he sees recurring throughout the history of philosophy (and literature, film, etc...); a tendency of thinkers who take conformity of the self to the community speaking for it to be the most threatening attitude, especially in democratic societies. The importance of friendship becomes yet more apparent in this context, as I shall illustrate through Cavell's discussion with Saul Kripke on the moral implication of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in the second half of this paper. I shall first outline the importance of the self for a perfectionist moral outlook by contrasting it to Kantian deontology.