Tekst razmatra Rolsovu ideju javnog uma kao sredisnji deo njegove koncepcije politickog liberalizma. Ideja javnog uma je shvacena dvostruko, kao norma opravdanja i kao politicki ideal. U tekstu su takodje razmotrene neke kritike Rolsove koncepcije i naznaceni moguci nacini na koji se Rols moze odbraniti od njih. Osnovne teze u tekstu su da se Rolsova koncepcija javnog uma moze odbraniti od standardnih kritika, ali i da sama razotkriva ogranicenja politickog ideala liberalne demokratije. Dosledno shvacen, politicki ideal liberalne demokratije mora se (...) odreci pretenzija na moralnu superiornost i oslanjati se na moralni konsenzus koji moze biti potvrdjen javnim umom politickog drustva.. (shrink)

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and (...) class='Hi'>moral--coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and (...) class='Hi'>moral--coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze the theory of legitimacy at the core of John Rawls’ political liberalism. Rawls argues that a political system is well grounded when it is stable. This notion of stability embodies both pragmatic and moral elements, each of which constitutes a key desideratum of Rawlsian liberal legitimacy. But those desiderata are in tension with each other. My main claim is that Rawls’ strategy to overcome that tension through his theory of public (...) justification is ultimately unsuccessful, because the account of consensus it envisages is unstably placed between the extremes of moralized redundancy and pragmatic free-for-all. In other words, what counts as consensus is either regulated too tightly, or not enough. -/- . (shrink)

For over twenty years, Paul Weithman has explored the thought of John Rawls to ask how liberalism can secure the principled allegiance of those people whom Rawls called 'citizens of faith'. This volume brings together ten of his major essays, which reflect on the task and political character of political philosophy, the ways in which liberalism does and does not privatize religion, the role of liberal legitimacy in Rawls's theory, and the requirements of public reason. The (...) essays reveal Rawls as a thinker deeply engaged with political and existential questions that trouble citizens of faith, and explore how - in firm opposition to political realism - he tries to show that the possibility of liberal democracy and the natural goodness of humanity are objects of reasonable faith. The volume will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, moral theologians, and religious ethicists. (shrink)

(In German.) The book addresses Rawls's post-1985 political liberalism. His justification of political liberalism -- as reflected in his arguments from overlapping consensus -- faces the problem that liberal content can be justified as reciprocally acceptable only if the addressees of such a justification already endorse points of view that suitably support liberal ideas. Rawls responds to this legitimacy-theoretical problem by restricting public justification's scope to include reasonable people only, while implicitly defining reasonableness as (...) a substantive liberal virtue. But this virtue-ethical grounding of political liberalism is itself unreasonable. The phenomenon of disharmony of practical reason gives the reasonable reasons to take it that political legitimacy does not obtain if and where moral-political principles are acceptable from their point of view only. (shrink)

John Rawls's transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism was driven by his rejection of Theory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see Rawls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that Rawls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public reason relies on (...) a condition of consensus that we argue is unrealistic in modern, pluralistic democracies. After rejecting Rawls's conception of public reason, we offer an ‘indirect alternative’ that we believe is much more robust. We cite experimental evidence to back up this claim. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess John Rawls' repeated claim that the duty of civility is only a moral duty and should not be enforced by law. In the first part of the paper, I examine and reject the view that Rawls' position may be due to the practical difficulties that the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might entail. I thus claim that Rawls' position must be driven by deeper normative reasons grounded in a conception of (...) free speech. In the second part of the paper, I therefore examine various arguments for free speech and critically assess whether they are consistent with Rawls' political liberalism. I first focus on the arguments from truth and self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I argue, rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I claim, can be justified instead on the basis of Rawls' political conception of the person and of the two moral powers. However, Rawls' wide view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls' opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition, I claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of unconstrained freedom of speech grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy. Yet, I conclude, while public reason and the duty of civility are essential to political liberalism, unconstrained freedom of speech is not. Rawls and political liberals could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech, and endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, while remaining faithful to political liberalism. (shrink)

This paper proposes an interpretation of the conception of morality that remains relatively vague in John Rawls’ political liberalism. It begins with Rawls’ remark that the political conception of justice is also a moral conception, which is puzzling when taking into consideration Rawls’ explicit avoidance of comprehensive moral doctrines in constructing the political conception of justice. In response, this paper proposes the public conception of morality that is structurally justificatory rather than substantively foundationalist. (...) This conception is then further developed by addressing two critical questions concerning the necessity of avoiding comprehensive moral foundations and the source of objective prescriptivity in a justificatory view of morality. The former is situated in an analysis and reinterpretation of Alasdair MacIntyre’s reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, and the latter is demonstrated through a comparative study of two leading justificatory theories of morality by Rainer Forst and Thomas Scanlon. Finally, the public conception of morality is fully developed to show that it both defines and defends the political conception of justice. (shrink)

Compared to standard liberal approaches to public reason and justification, the asymmetric convergence model of public justification allows for the public justification of laws and policies based on a convergence of quite different and even publicly inaccessible reasons. The model is asymmetrical in the sense of identifying a broader range of reasons that may function as decisive defeaters of proposed laws and policies. This paper raises several critical questions about the asymmetric convergence model and (...) its central but ambiguous presumption against coercion. By drawing on the theory of structural coercion, a main conclusion of the paper is that the asymmetric convergence model ultimately encounters the very incompleteness problems that its proponents often associate with more familiar consensus models of public justification. The paper also develops an alternative, Rawlsian-inspired account of public justification that includes elements of both convergence and consensus but not asymmetry. The Rawlsian model enables us to understand how democratic decisions may possess a degree of procedural, but still morally significant, liberal legitimacy under conditions of pluralism even when citizens fail to agree fully about either the premises of or conclusions to their political arguments. (shrink)

Public reason theories are characterized by three conditions: constructivism, representation, and stability. Constructivism holds that justification does not rely on any antecedent moral or political values outside of the procedure of agreement. Representation holds that the reasons for the choice in the model must be rationally explicable to real agents outside the model. Stability holds that the principles chosen in the procedure should be stable upon reflection, especially in the face of diversity in a pluralistic society. (...) Choice procedures that involve at least two-stages with different information, as Rawls’s theory does, will be path-dependent and not meet the condition of representation since it will not be globally coherent. Attempts to solve this problem without eliminating the segmentation of choice in the procedure will run afoul of constructivism or stability. This problem is instructive because it highlights how public reason theories must evolve in the face of increased concerns about diversity. (shrink)

Reasonable individuals often share a rationale for a decision but, in other cases, they make the same decision based on disparate and often incompatible rationales. The social contract tradition has been divided between these two methods of solving the problem of social cooperation: must social cooperation occur in terms of common reasoning, or can individuals with different doctrines simply converge on shared institutions for their own reasons? For Hobbes, it is rational for all persons, regardless of their theological beliefs, to (...) consent to the sovereign's power. But for Locke, only Protestants with a shared theology could be party to the social contract. Rousseau thought that private reasons are not part of the general will, and in Kant's hypothetical contract, pure noumena reach common principles for the social order through the same reasoning process. In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls agreed with Rousseau and Kant: selecting the principles of justice requires modeling parties to the original position as having identical reasons. But in Political Liberalism, Rawls embraced the idea of an overlapping consensus, which accords distinct reasons justificatory force. (shrink)

Public justification-based accounts of liberal legitimacy rely on the idea that a polity’s basic structure should, in some sense, be acceptable to its citizens. In this paper I discuss the prospects of that approach through the lens of Gerald Gaus’ critique of John Rawls’ paradigmatic account of democratic public justification. I argue that Gaus does succeed in pointing out some significant problems for Rawls’ political liberalism; yet his alternative, justificatory liberalism, is not voluntaristic enough (...) to satisfy the desiderata of a genuinely democratic theory of public justification. So I contend that—pace Gaus, but also Rawls—rather than simply amending political liberalism, the claims of justificatory liberalism bring out fatal tensions between the desiderata of any theory of liberal-democratic legitimacy through public justification. (shrink)

This article aims to explore critically John Rawls’ concept of political liberalism which is meant to be a response to the conflict and contestation of ideologies, religions, and other comprehensive doctrines in contemporary plural society. The key question is how the universalized principles of justice can be formulated in the conditionof radical pluralism characterized by contestation of different comprehensive doctrines. In answering this question, John Rawls suggests the concept of overlapping consensus and public reason. While taking (...) accountof the fundamental contribution of John Rawls’ thought in the process of overcoming conflicts in a plural society, this essay discusses further some weaknesses of Rawls’ concept of political liberalism, and at thesame time proposes a new model of political philosophy which provides room for fundamental dissent. This new political philosophy can be called liberal fundamentalism. Fundamentalism basically expressesitself in public sphere in the form of liberality. This essay argues that liberal fundamentalism can create a social condition where fundamental moral differences are accepted, respected, and recognized. Abstrak Tulisan ini bertujuan membahas secara kritis konsep liberalisme politik John Rawls sebagai jawaban atas konfl ik dan kontestasi pandangan hidup atau doktrin komprehensif yang menandai masyarakat kontemporer yang plural. Pertanyaan pokok yang dibahas dalam tulisan ini ialah, bagaimana prinsip-prinsip keadilan yang berlakuumum dapat dirumuskan dalam kondisi factum pluralisme atau pertarungan doktrin-doktrin komprehensif tersebut. Untuk menjawab pertanyaan ini, Rawls menganjurkan dua konsep yakni overlapping consensus dan public reason. Tanpa mengabaikan kontribusi Rawls dalam menyelesaikan konflik dalam masyarakat plural, tulisan ini lebih jauh menunjukkan kelemahan konsep liberalisme politik John Rawls, dan menganjurkan sebuah filsafat politik baru yang harus memberi ruang bagi disensus-disensus fundamental. Filsafat politik baru itu dapat dinamakan posisi fundamentalisme liberal. Sebuah fundamentalisme yang mengungkapkan diri di ruang publik dalam bentuk liberalitas. Artinya, kondisi sebuah masyarakat yang memberi ruang bagi pertentangan-pertentangan etis fundamental, namun dihadapi dengan sikap pengakuan dan penghargaan atas perbedaan fundamental tersebut. (shrink)

Public reason liberals from John Rawls to Gerald Gaus uphold a principle of public justification as a core commitment of their theories. Critics of public reason liberalism have sometimes conceded that there is something compelling about the idea of public justification. But so far there have not been many attempts to elaborate and defend a ‘comprehensive’ liberalism that incorporates a principle of public justification. This article spells out how public justifiability (...) could be integrated into a comprehensive liberalism and defends the claim that what is worthwhile about public justification can be extracted from public reason liberalism. (shrink)

The ‘consensus’ model of public reason, associated with John Rawls’s political liberalism, has been criticised for excluding certain reasons from receiving consideration where the justification of the constitutional essentials is concerned. One limitation of these criticisms is that they typically focus on the exclusion of reasons political liberals are committed to excluding, notably reasons based on religious and comprehensive views. I argue that public reason excludes some reasons, central to the interests of many oppressed (...) groups, that public reason advocates will agree should not be excluded.L’idée de raison publique comme «consensus», associée au libéralisme politique de John Rawls, a été attaquée du fait de sa supposée incapacité à permettre la prise en compte de certaines raisons dans les cas où la substance même de la constitution est en question. Une limitation de ces critiques est qu’elles se concentrent habituellement sur l’exclusion de ces raisons que les libéraux eux-mêmes s’efforcent d’exclure, en particulier des raisons fondées sur des vues globales ou religieuses. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la raison publique exclut de fait certaines raisons, essentielles aux intérêts de nombreux groupes opprimés, que les tenants de la raison publique eux-mêmes considèreraient ne pas devoir être exclues. (shrink)

We have already stated that Rawls situates his political liberalism within the liberal tradition. The practical meaning of so doing now becomes clear. Rawls presents his theory as a resource for public reflection and self clarification of that tradition. He hopes thereby to bring the process of reflection, which has occupied the liberal tradition for a considerable time, to some conclusion. One might also speak here of a hermeneutic turn in Rawls’ thought. His political philosophy does not (...) withdraw from the world, nor does it claim to discover the truth by its own methods of reason, “apart from any tradition of political thought and practice.”. Rawls recognises that philosophical argumentation on its own is probably not in a position to lead to agreement.For this reason he considers it more fruitful to seek out “bases of agreement” which are implicit in the public culture of democratic societies and, more particularly, in their underlying conceptions of the person and of social cooperation. It is perhaps true that such “bases of agreement” are obscure and can be understood in a variety of ways. Rawls endeavours to show, however, precisely how such concepts can be understood, and how the notion of the original position can be used to connect them to certain principles of justice which themselves belong to the tradition of moral philosophy.Rawls is not seeking to give foundation to our moral insight; instead he sees the task of philosophy as consisting in showing the “coherence” of these insights with other ideas, thereby bringing order to our convictions, from the most general to the most particular. The original position plays a central role in this reflection. It must contribute to our attainment of an unimpeded vision of the demands of justice, if society is conceived as a scheme of fair cooperation between free and equal, reasonable and rational persons. Carried by the fundamental ideas of the liberal tradition, Rawls’ political philosophy must bring this tradition to unity and consensus. (shrink)

Unlike his theory of justice as fairness, John Rawls’s political liberalism has generally been spared from critiques regarding what is due to the disabled. This paper demonstrates that, due to the account of the basic ideas of society and persons provided by Rawls, political liberalism requires that the interests of numerous individuals with disabilities should be put aside when the most fundamental issues of justice are settled. The aim is to accommodate within public reason the due (...) concern for the disabled while upholding political liberalism. To achieve this aim, a revision of the basic ideas of persons and society is proposed. The idea of persons should be regarded as more fundamental than that of social cooperation, and persons should be defined in terms of minimal moral powers. (shrink)

(Please note: the main ideas of this paper are restated in revised/developed form in: "On actualist and fundamental public justification in political liberalism" and "Patterns of justification: on political liberalism and the primacy of public justification". Both papers are available from philpapers.) The paper suggests the deep view of Rawls-type public justification as promising, non-ideal theory variant of an internal conception of political liberalism. To this end, I demonstrate how the (...) deep view integrates a range of ideas, views and commitments at the core of political liberalism’s justification structure, including pro tanto justification, full justification, political values and their priority, justificatory neutrality, the role of reasonable comprehensive views, the nature public reasons, the wide view of public political culture, the role of overlapping consensus and political legitimacy, and not least, the status of reflective equilibrium and the Original Position. I then contrast the deep view with Quong’s ideal theory variant if the internal conception, and argue that we should prefer the deep view. Thus, the prospects of political liberalism depend not so much on whether we find ways to make ideal theory relevant for non-ideal purposes. Rather, it depends on whether political liberalism can devise a credible response to the problem of public dogma. (shrink)

Steven Wall has two compelling arguments for what I shall call public reason liberalism's reflexivity requirement. The political concerns to reconcile persons who hold diverse moral views, and to avoid authoritarianism in politics not only require the public justification of coercion but the public justification of the standard used to determine when coercion is publicly justified. The reflexivity requirement is said to entail that public reason is self-defeating. Once RR is correctly formulated, (...) however, cases of self-defeat will be rare, as citizens seldom employ public justification requirements as reasons. When they do, such requirements are rarely their sole reason for supporting political coercion. A properly formulated reflexivity requirement, therefore, does not imply self-defeat. It also allows for a more ecumenical understanding that establish the processes of public justification. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

John Rawls argues that A Theory of Justice suffers from a “serious problem”: the problem of political stability. His theory failed to account for the reality that citizens are deeply divided by reasonable and incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral comprehensive doctrines. This fact of reasonable pluralism may pose a threat to political stability over time and requires a solution. Rawls proposes the idea of an overlapping consensus among incompatible comprehensive doctrines through the use of public (...) reasons in his later Political Liberalism. -/- Rawls’s proposed solution to the problem of political stability has received much criticism. Some, such as Kurt Baier, Brian Barry, George Klosko, and Edward McClennen, argue that an overlapping consensus is relatively unnecessary. Rawls should have acknowledged existing resources in his account that might secure political stability over time without major changes to his original views about justice. Others, including Kent Greenawalt, Michael Sandel, Leif Wenar, and Iris Marion Young believe that an overlapping consensus is too fragile to secure political stability. Rawls correctly identifies a major problem for his original account, but he fails to provide a satisfactory solution. -/- I believe these objections rest on a mistake easily overlooked. Each objection claims that, for Rawls, the possibility of future political stability is to be guaranteed by an overlapping consensus alone. This perspective fails to recognize the central importance of the social minimum in securing political stability. There is, in fact, more resources to secure political stability than Rawls or his critics have recognized. -/- My discussion will begin with a brief explanation of why the problem of political stability raises an important challenge to Rawls’s views on justice and why he argues for an overlapping consensus as a solution to it. I will next consider the more important objections to Rawls’s solution and why these fail. I will argue that the social minimum might better support political stability if it is broadly understood in terms of the capabilities approach. This approach is compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism and it provides a more robust understanding of a just social minimum. Political stability does not rely upon an overlapping consensus alone — and it may be better secured where the capabilities approach plays a more central role. Therefore, Rawls does provide a illuminating solution to the problem of political stability that is more compelling if we incorporate the capabilities approach into political liberalism. (shrink)

This article tries to develop a moderate reading of political liberalism applicable to post-Islamist, Muslim-majority societies. Contrary to the strong reading, which considers political liberalism as limited in its scope to those societies that already have a strong liberal tradition, I argue that Rawls’ project does have something to offer to reasonable post-Islamist, Muslim individuals. In part I of the article the idea of a post-Islamist, Muslim-majority society is conceptualized and explained. Part II focuses on the Rawlsian ideas (...) of justification, demonstrating that the conceptions of justification available in political liberalism, i.e. political constructivism, wide reflective equilibrium and a wide view of public reasoning with its ideas of declaration and conjecture, can justify the political conception of justice for reasonable individuals living in any society, including post-Islamist ones. Focusing on Rawls’ notions of stability in part III, I argue that the idea of overlapping consensus should not be considered as the only account of stability offered by political liberalism. Put another way, notwithstanding the strong reading of political liberalism in real western and post-Islamist democracies, liberal stability is always a mixture of overlapping consensus and modus vivendi. (shrink)

In ‘Public Reason and Prenatal Moral Status’ (2015), Jeremy Williams argues that the ideal of Rawlsian public reason commits its devotees to the radically permissive view that abortion ought to be available with little or no qualification throughout pregnancy. This is because the only (allegedly) political value that favours protection of the foetus for its own sake—the value of ‘respect for human life’—turns out not to be a political value at all, and so its invocation (...) in support of considerations bearing upon the permissibility of abortion is beyond public reason’s remit. Thus, it will scarcely if ever be legitimate to restrict women’s equality and bodily autonomy for the sake of the foetus, even at full term. In this paper, I argue that Williams fails to establish that Rawlsian reasonable citizens must endorse the radically permissive stance vis-à-vis abortion. Citizens can, I claim, reasonably accord the value of respect for human life weight, and indeed converge on the claim that it outweighs other salient political values, during later stages of gestation. Nevertheless, Williams’s argument gets something right in that it reveals why the value of respect for human life is inadmissible at the bar of public reason in early stages of pregnancy. But then, far from throwing Rawlsian public reason into disrepute, Williams’s argument actually (albeit inadvertently) provides arguably more compelling grounds than any hitherto rallied for endorsing Rawls’s much maligned claim that opposition to the duly qualified right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy is ‘unreasonable’. (shrink)

This book advances a novel justification for the idea of "public reason": citizens within diverse societies can realize the ideal of shared political autonomy, despite their adherence to different religious and philosophical views, by deciding fundamental political questions with "public reasons." Public reasons draw upon or are derived from ecumenical political ideas, such as toleration and equal citizenship, and mutually acceptable forms of reasoning, like those of the sciences. This book explains that if (...) citizens share equal political autonomy—and thereby constitute "a civic people"—they will not suffer from alienation or domination and can enjoy relations of civic friendship. Moreover, it contends that the ideal of shared political autonomy cannot be realized by alternative accounts of public justification that eschew any necessary role for public reasons. In addition to explaining how the ideal of political autonomy justifies the idea of public reason, this book presents a new analysis of the relation between public reason and "ideal theory": by engaging in "public reasoning," citizens help create a just society that can secure the free compliance of all. It also explores the distinctive policy implications of the ideal of political autonomy for gender equality, families, children, and education. (shrink)

Political liberalism holds that political decisions should be made on the basis of public considerations, and not on the basis of comprehensive religious, moral, or philosophical views. An important objection to this view is that it presupposes doubt, hesitation, or skepticism about the truth of comprehensive doctrines on the side of reasonable citizens. Proponents of political liberalism, such as John Rawls and Jonathan Quong, successfully defend political liberalism against several objections of this kind. (...) In this paper, I argue that recent developments in the epistemology of disagreement require us to revisit these skeptical concerns. I will argue that the correct understanding of political liberalism’s epistemic commitments, in combination with a conciliatory view about peer disagreement, lead to a new skeptical problem for political liberalism. All reasonable citizens who also hold a set of religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, I will argue, suffer from a breakdown of epistemic rationality. I will show that existing answers to skeptical objections fail to resolve this problem. (shrink)

Mainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others (...) by the coercive power of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all. (shrink)

In “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” John Rawls suggests an approach to a public conception of justice that eschews any dependence on metaphysical conceptions of justice in favor of a political conception of justice. This means that if there is a metaphysical conception of justice that actually obtains, then Rawls’ theory would not be sensitive to it. Rawls himself admitted in Political Liberalism that “the political conception does without the truth.” Similarly, in Law (...) of Peoples, Rawls endorses a political conception of justice to govern the society of peoples that is not concerned with truth, but instead concerned with being sufficiently neutral so as to avoid conflict with any reasonable comprehensive doctrines. The odd result is that this neutrality excludes any conception of truth at all. Therefore, in times of crisis that demand incisive decision making based on scientific, economic or moral considerations, public reason will stall because it can contain no coherent conception of truth. (shrink)

I will argue that the natural law theory of morality, when extended into a political theory of justice, results in a picture of political justice much like that of public reason liberalism. However, natural law political theory, I argue, need not entail a natural law theory of morality. While facts about what societies ought to do supervene upon facts about what is good for human beings, there are distinct goods involved and distinct reasons for action. Rather, (...) considerations taken from the common good as guiding public policy results in a two-layer approach to public reasonability, resembling features of both consensus and convergence accounts of public reason. Consequently, the differences between natural law and classical public reason liberalism are significant but are not as significant as might have otherwise appeared. In fact, natural law political theory might be a more consistent development of the idea of a public reason than those of classical liberalism. (shrink)

moral foundation of liberalism can be defended in one of three ways: (1) as a conception one accepts as a result of one’s affirmation of political liberalism, (2) as a conception one must affirm as a presupposition for political liberalism, or (3) as a philosophical truth about practical reason and persons. The first option makes it impossible to distinguish a moral consensus from a modus vivendi . The second renders the moral foundation of liberalism dogmatic (...) because it affirms a moral foundation for which no justification is provided. Since there are good reasons for rejecting (1) and (2), that leaves option (3). I argue that (3) should be the preferred option for liberals who advance liberalism as a political doctrine with a moral foundation. (shrink)

In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies I examine political parties and partisanship within the context of John Rawls’s theory of political liberalism. I argue that parties and partisanship are vital to Rawls’s political liberalism, since they offer a distinctive and crucial contribution to the process of public justification that is central to it, which combines the articulation of public reasons with the channelling into the public political realm of (...) the particular values and conceptions of the good emerging from parties’ specific constituencies. Furthermore, I argue, partisanship generates a special kind of political obligations, and this further contributes to state legitimacy under conditions of reasonable pluralism. In this paper, I respond to three commentators who have raised important criticisms against my argument. More specifically, Section 1 provides a response to Lea Ypi’s argument that my normative account of partisanship wrongly presupposes that existing liberal societies are reasonably just. Section 2 answers Daniel Weinstock’s concerns regarding the plausibility and internal consistency of my account of partisan political obligations. Finally, Section 3 addresses Kevin Vallier’s criticisms, which challenge my account of public reason and propose an alternative one. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, the principle of public justifiability requires that the exercise of political power be justifiable to each and every person over whom that power is exercised. The idea of being justifiable to every person means being acceptable to any reasonable or otherwise qualified person, without such persons having to give up the comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrine they reasonably espouse. Public justifiability thus involves a partly idealized unanimity requirement, or as I will say, a criterion of (...) multi-perspectival acceptability. The demand for public justifiability can be specified in different ways, depending on what exactly has to be publicly justifiable, who is supposed to apply the principle, who counts as reasonable or otherwise qualified, and so on. One of these dimensions concerns the notion of acceptability. Should we care about acceptability to each reasonable perspective, based on all of the reasons that perspective accepts, or should we care about acceptability to all, based on only those reasons that all reasonable perspectives accept? This choice has been referred to by the distinction between "consensus" and "convergence." Sometimes people agree about practical conclusions but for different reasons, in which case their reasoning can be said to converge from different moral or philosophical starting points. Other times, people agree about their moral or philosophical starting points, but reach different practical conclusions, based on different beliefs about the factual context, different rankings of shared concerns, or different judgments about how to apply these concerns to specific situations. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this (...) paper is to defend the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, the principle of public justifiability requires that the exercise of political power be justifiable to each and every person over whom that power is exercised. The idea of being justifiable to every person means being acceptable to any reasonable or otherwise qualified person , without such persons having to give up the comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrine they reasonably espouse. Public justifiability thus involves a partly idealized unanimity requirement, or as I will say, a criterion (...) of multi-perspectival acceptability. The demand for public justifiability can be specified in different ways, depending on what exactly has to be publicly justifiable, who is supposed to apply the principle, who counts as reasonable or otherwise qualified, and so on. One of these dimensions concerns the notion of acceptability. Should we care about acceptability to each reasonable perspective, based on all of the reasons that perspective accepts, or should we care about acceptability to all, based on only those reasons that all reasonable perspectives accept? This choice has been referred to by the distinction between "consensus" and "convergence." Sometimes people agree about practical conclusions but for different reasons, in which case their reasoning can be said to converge from different moral or philosophical starting points. Other times, people agree about their moral or philosophical starting points, but reach different practical conclusions, based on different beliefs about the factual context, different rankings of shared concerns, or different judgments about how to apply these concerns to specific situations. (shrink)

This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, I explain the foundational differences between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, despite the fact that Rawls maintains the Two Principles of Justice in both works. Moreover, I expound why, in view of the fact that reasonable people would subscribe to different comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, Rawls needs a new foundation for social stability in a constitutional liberal democracy. I explain the connection between Rawls’ (...) ideas of overlapping consensus, political conception, and public reason. Moreover, I explain Rawls’ idea of “duty of civility” and the condition under which a controversial issue can be legitimately resolved by way of voting. Further, instead of pursuing Rawls’ idea that bioethical issues could be resolved by way of “reasonable balancing” of “political values,” I turn to T. M. Scanlon’s contractualist approach, which is congenial to Rawlsian political liberalism and can resolve moral, political, and bioethical issues. In the second part of this chapter, I try to resolve the problem of medical assistance in dying by using Thomson’s/Scanlon’s idea that permissibility is not affected by intention. I deal with the Slippery Slope Arguments, the argument from abuse, and the argument from pressure on elderly patients who might feel obligated to die. Finally, I argue that Scanlonian contractualism is preferable to utilitarianism, and that contractualism can defuse the problem from pressure which has plagued utilitarianism. (shrink)

This article explores the historical and philosophical backgrounds that inform the appropriation of the term “public reason” in liberal theory. Particularly, it studies the differing nuances attached to public reason by Kant and Rawls. The article suggests that, while Kant viewed the public use of reason as a conditio sine qua non for Enlightenment to take place within the Prussian society, Rawls’s notion of public reason in Political Liberalism serves a different purpose in our contemporary (...) world. Rawls sees public reason as a tool, which would enable citizens of the pluralistic liberal state to unearth tolerable bases for coexistence, despite their trenchant and often conflicting ideological, cultural and religious differences. Moreover, Rawls’s notion of public reason aims at liberal legitimacy: the normative and political justification of the legal power of the state in liberal democracy. (shrink)

As we read his work, John Rawls was developing an innovative approach to political philosophy, and Political Liberalism struggles with different ways to model these new insights. This article presents four models of political liberalism, particularly focusing on understanding the nature of overlapping consensus and its relation to public reason. Beyond clarifying Rawls’s insights, we aim to spur readers to reassemble the rich elements of Political Liberalism to produce tractable and enlightening models of (...) class='Hi'>political life among free and equal citizens under conditions of deep diversity to advance the public reason project. (shrink)

What sorts of reasons are i) required and ii) morally acceptable when citizens in a pluralist liberal democracy undertake to resolve pressing political issues? This paper presents and then critically examines John Rawls''s answer to this question: his so called wide-view of public reason. Rawls''s view requires that the content of liberal public reason prove rich enough to yield a reasoned and determinate resolution for most if not all fundamental political issues. I argue that the (...) content of liberal public reason will prove inadequate in this regard far more often than Rawls suspects. (shrink)

In Political Liberalism, Rawls emphasizes the practical character and aims of his conception of justice. Justice as fairness is to provide the basis of a reasoned, informed and willing political agreement by locating grounds for consensus in the fundamental ideas and values of the political culture. Critics urge, however, that such a politically liberal conception of justice will be designed merely to ensure the stability of political institutions by appealing to the currently-held opinions of actual citizens. (...) In order to evaluate this concern, I suggest, it is necessary to focus on the normative character of Rawls's analysis. Rawls argues that justice as fairness is the conception of justice that citizens of modern democratic cultures should choose in reflective equilibrium, after reflecting fully upon their considered judgments regarding justice. Since judgments in reflective equilibrium are grounded in considered judgment, rather than situated opinions, I argue that the criticism fails. Key Words: justification • objectivity • political liberalism • Rawls • reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. This anthology of original essays suggests new, groundbreaking applications of Rawls's work in multiple disciplines and contexts. Thom (...) Brooks, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, Paul Weithman, Jeremy Waldron, and Frank Michelman explore political liberalism's relevance to the challenges of multiculturalism, the relationship between the state and religion, the struggle for political legitimacy, and the capabilities approach. Extending Rawls's progressive thought to the fields of law, economics, and public reason, this book helps advance the project of a free society that thrives despite disagreements over religious and moral views. (shrink)

RESUMO: Esse trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o construtivismo político da Terceira Conferência da obra Liberalismo Político, de John Rawls. Especificamente, vamos tentar compreender como, limitando o universo de construção aos parâmetros estabelecidos pelo discurso político, podemos estender o alcance dos princípios acordados na posição original para uma comunidade muito mais ampla frente às doutrinas morais abrangentes. Demonstraremos o construtivismo político coerentista não em oposição ao intuicionismo moral utilitarista nem ao construtivismo moral kantiano, mas como capaz de (...) absorver modelos com esse grau de razoabilidade. Isso será disposto através de uma justificação pública tanto do conteúdo quanto da forma do modelo adotado. Assim, o consenso sobreposto apresentado por Rawls é responsável direto pelo resultado democrático que esperamos de uma sociedade onde a publicidade ocupa espaço enquanto fato e possui um valor aceito como legítimo. Nosso método de trabalho envolve uma leitura analítica do texto e de comentadores pertinentes ao assunto proposto.ABSTRACT: This study aims to objective analyze the political constructivism of the Third Conference of the work Political Liberalism, by John Rawls. Specifically, we understand how limiting the universe of construction to the parameters by the political discourse, we can extend the reach of the principles agreed in the original position to a much larger universe in the face of comprehensive moral doctrines. We demonstrate what political constructivism no consistent as opposed to utilitarian moral intuitionism or the Kantian moral constructivism, but as capable of absorbing models with this degree of reasonableness. This will be provided through a public justification of both the content and form of the model adopted. Thus, the overlapping consensus presented by Rawls is directly responsible for the democratic results we expect from a society where democracy takes up space as a fact and has a value accepted as legitimate. KEYWORDS: Constructivism; justification; liberalism. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing on an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies (...) governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier. (shrink)

One source of controversy surrounding John Rawls's later work — a source of both criticism and praise — has been the impression that he abandoned the philosophical project of figuring out what is truly just, in favour of the political project of working out a feasible consensus for people from a particular political tradition. One aspect of this controversy is the question of whether Rawls could advance his theory as being worthy of endorsement on the basis of (...) good reasons without also claiming it to be true. In preferring to claim reasonableness rather than truth, Rawls's main concern seems to have been to distinguish the ‘whole truth’ as represented by a particular comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrine, from the truth about politics given that reasonable people will inevitably disagree about the whole truth. (shrink)

This book explores and elaborates three theories of public reason, drawn from Rawlsian political liberalism, natural law theory, and Confucianism. Drawing together academics from these separate approaches, the volume explores how the three theories critique each other, as well as how each one brings its theoretical arsenal to bear on the urgent contemporary debate of medical assistance in dying. The volume is structured in two parts: an exploration of the three traditions, followed by an in-depth overview of the (...) conceptual and historical background. In Part I, the three comprehensive opening chapters are supplemented by six dynamic chapters in dialogue with each other, each author responding to the other two traditions, and subsequently reflecting on the possible deficiencies of their own theories. The chapters in Part II cover a broad range of subjects, from an overview of the history of bioethics to the nature of autonomy and its status as a moral and political value. In its entirety, the volume provides a vibrant and exemplary collaborative resource to scholars interested in the role of public reason and its relevance in bioethical debate. (shrink)

Political liberalism’s central commitments to recognizing reasonable pluralism and institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice are inconsistent. If reasonable pluralism applies to conceptions of justice as it applies to conceptions of the good, then some reasonable people will reject even many liberal conceptions of justice as unreasonable. If so, then imposing these conceptions of justice on citizens violates the liberal principle of legitimacy and related public justification requirements. This problem of justice pluralism requires that political liberals (...) abandon their commitment to institutionalizing a substantive conception of justice. Instead, political justification should be limited to the public justification of a modest scheme of rights and a set of constitutional rules. Justice pluralism chastens the ambitions of political liberalism while pushing the political liberal research program in new and promising directions. (shrink)

'Public reason' in Rawls's stipulated usage signifies propositions that can legitimately be used in deliberating on and deciding fundamental issues of political life and legislation because they are propositions which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse: their use is therefore fair (respects the moral principle of reciprocity) and preserves the public peace which is at risk from contests between comprehensive doctrines, contests exemplified by wars of religion. This attractive set of suggestions is ruined by (...) irresoluable ambiguities, truncation of reason's resources and of public discourse just when they are most needed, and incipient capitulation to some radical injustices. But public reason may nonetheless be an opportune phrase for conveying the gist of four permanently valid theses in the classical political thought that develops from Socrates/Plato to Aquinas and beyond. That tradition has been significantly modified by recognition that a human right to immunity of religious beliefs and acts from coercion extends – precisely by reason of the importance of finding and adhering to the truth about the divine source of reality and value – to mistaken as well as correct religious beliefs and practices. That immunity is subject to limitations necessary to preserve public order; likewise, a religion's legitimacy as a source of reasons for public actions is dependent on its willingness to foster genuine public discourse. Analogously, a political or legal philosophy's rational warrant is dependent on the compatibility of its theses with the worth of authentic discourse and the support they give to institutions, including the rule of law, which favour such discourse. Habermas's account of discourse ethics fails by overlooking some truths about discourse, truth and friendship that Plato made clear in Gorgias. And (the rule of) law, too, is most adequately understood as a product and articulation of public reason. (shrink)

An important objection to political liberalism is that it provides no means by which to decide conflicts between public and non-public reasons. This article develops John Rawls' idea of `reasoning from conjecture' as one way to argue for a commitment to public reason. Reasoning from conjecture is a form of non-public justification that allows political liberals to reason from within the comprehensive views of at least some unreasonable citizens. After laying out the (...) basic features of this form of non-public justification, this article responds to three objections based on concerns about insincerity, cultural imperialism, and the epistemic authority of those who reason from conjecture. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of John Rawls’s great work, Political Liberalism, from a non-Rawlsian liberal standpoint. It argues that Rawlsian political liberalism is influenced as much by a comprehensive view I call “radical-democracy” as by comprehensive liberal views. This can be seen in Rawls’s account of some of political liberalism’s fundamental ideas—notably the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, the “liberal” principle of legitimacy, and the idea of public reason. I further (...) argue that Rawls’s impressive attempt to unify liberal and democratic traditions philosophically obscures the prudent liberal attitude to democracy, which remains sound. (shrink)

This paper focuses on recent debates over the nature ofliberalism and its central feature of reason, both inside and outside ofeducational philosophy. Central ideas from Jonathan and Hirst contributeas do those from Rawls, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Taylor, and Ackermantoward a less traditional contextualized and contingent view.