On John Rawls and Public Reason

Dissertation, Northwestern University (1998)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This is an essay on John Rawls' conception of public reason. The goal is to understand and to criticize the philosophical position of public reason in Rawls' ideal theory of modern liberal democracy, a theory he calls "political liberalism." Rawls introduces his conception of public reason to explain how it is possible to create an ideally well-ordered state with a liberal conception of justice in a pluralistic society. The defining characteristic of Rawls' conception of public reason is that the common good in part is an artifact of constructive deliberation. I argue that the idea of democracy implied by Rawls' conception of public reason is a weak view of democracy because there is potentially an unauthentic and paternalistic relation between the political consensus and the political sentiments of the members of society. Habermas' and Gutmann and Thompson's alternative deliberative conceptions of democracy are no more successful than Rawls' in conceptualizing an ideally well-ordered political society under conditions of pluralism

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Introduction: Convergence Justifications in Public Reason.Kevin Vallier - 2011 - Public Affairs Quarterly 25 (4):257-260.
Rawls and Kant on the public use of reason.Kostas Koukouzelis - 2009 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 35 (7):841-868.
The Idea of "Free Public Reason".Catherine Audard - 1995 - Ratio Juris 8 (1):15-29.
Convergence and Political Autonomy.Paul Weithman - 2011 - Public Affairs Quarterly 25 (4):327-348.
Public Reason/Private Religion? A Response to Paul J. Weithman.David Hollenbach - 1994 - Journal of Religious Ethics 22 (1):39 - 46.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-04

Downloads
0

6 months
0

Historical graph of downloads

Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references