Abstract
This article is a contribution to a critical exploration of the liberal project of normatively justifying basic political principles. The specific focus is John Rawls's use of the idea of public reason. After briefly discussing the evolution of Rawls's ideas from A Theory of Justice to his most recent writings, the key components of his conception of public reason are set out. Two principal lines of criticism are developed. The first is that the criteria of legitimacy Rawls establishes for a democratic procedure are unworkably demanding. The second is that there is no reason to think that resort to the idea of public reason will significantly constrain the scope of substantive political disagreement within a constitutional democracy. The article concludes with a few speculative reflections about the relevance of the limitations of Rawls's account of public reason for the project of liberal justification more generally.
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2For helpful comments on earlier and much longer versions of this paper, I am grateful to Margaret Canovan, Hidemi Suganami and other members of the political theory group at Keele; to participants at the panel on ‘Liberalism: Political Philosophy Without Politics’ at the PSA Annual Conference in Manchester in 2001; to Elizabeth Frazer, George Klosko and other participants at a similar panel at the APSA Annual Conference in San Francisco in 2001; and to Gary Browning, Cecile Laborde, Andrew Williams and two anonymous referees for this journal. I owe an especial debt of gratitude to Glen Newey for his extensive help with this paper, and with my thinking about the issues it addresses more generally.
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Horton, J. Rawls, Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Justification. Contemp Polit Theory 2, 5–23 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300070
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300070