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)

Many accounts of political liberalism contend that reasonable citizens ought to refrain from invoking their disputed comprehensive beliefs in public deliberation about constitutional essentials. Critics maintain that this ‘refraining condition’ puts pressure on citizens to entertain skepticism about their own basic beliefs, and that accounts of political liberalism committed to it are resultantly committed to a position – skepticism about conceptions of the good – that is itself subject to reasonable disagreement. Discussions in the epistemology of (...) disagreement have tended to reinforce this critique, which has come to be known as political liberalism’s skeptical problem. This paper responds to the skeptical problem by providing a novel rationale to the refraining condition, which I call the burden of total experience. Such a burden emphasizes that full communication of the basis of individual belief is not always possible, even between epistemic peers. Accepting the burden of total experience allows individuals to recognize the reasonableness of the refraining condition in a way that stops the slide to skepticism, all while avoiding, or so I argue, relying on a problematically controversial explainer for disagreement. (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)

Rawls hoped to meet these critics on their own ground by accepting that a comprehensive liberal position cannot be vindicated and by showing how a less ambitious, merely political, version of liberalism could be vindicated. His conception of political liberalism was less ambitious in two ways. In the first place its substantive normative claims were confined to the domain of politics: all he aspired to was a liberal theory of justice. Secondly, he argued that liberalism (...) could dispense with metaphysical and moral foundations: liberal justice could be vindicated as “political not metaphysical.” Since the publication of Political Liberalism, the term ‘political liberalism’ has increasingly been used to indicate this quite specific version of liberalism, whose normative claims are merely political, and which purports not to draw on “comprehensive moral doctrines,” or on unsustainable metaphysical claims. (shrink)

This book contributes to both the internal debate in liberalism and the application of political liberalism to the process of democratization in East Asia. Beyond John Rawls’ original intention to limit the scope of political liberalism to only existing and well-ordered liberal democracies, political liberalism has the potential to inspire and contribute to democratic establishment and maintenance in East Asia. Specifically, the book has two main objectives. First, it will demonstrate that political (...) liberalism offers the most promising vision for liberal democracy, and it can be defended against contemporary perfectionist objections. Second, it will show that perfectionist approaches to political Confucianism suffer from practical and theoretical difficulties. Instead, an alternative model of democracy inspired by political liberalism will be explored in order to achieve a multivariate structure for citizens to come to terms with democracy in their own ways, to support a neutral state that ensures the establishment and stability of democracy, and to maintain an active public role for Confucianism to prevent it from being banished to the private sphere. This model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia. (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 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 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)

One of political liberalism’s central commitments is to a principle of public reason. Political liberals frequently justify this principle by appeal to considerations of respect. In this article, I argue that political liberalism cannot be grounded in a moral principle of respect for persons. Instead, I argue that a particular interpretation of the principle of public reason can be justified as a key component of a political conception of mutual civic respect.

Drieu Godefridi’s “Critique de l’utopie libertarienne”1 is not only an attempt to refute Rothbardian anarcholibertarian theory but also an attempt to resurrect the idea of the formal Rechtsstaat.2 I shall say a few words about the first topic and then present some arguments for resisting the introduction of that idea into classical liberal discourse. Contrary to Godefridi’s suggestion, there is no logical or historical ground for considering the Rechtsstaat a necessary or even useful condition of freedom. I do not dispute (...) that the Rechtsstaat was a central concept of the political liberalism that for a while held sway in Continental Europe in the nineteenth century, or that in some quarters there is considerable nostalgia for it. What I want to stress is that both in its logical definition and in its historical implementations it failed to support the classical liberal commitment to freedom, property and law. Indeed, it may.. (shrink)

Michelman's Constitutional Essentials raises important questions about the idea of political liberalism and related idea of public reason. This essay offers a sympathetic commentary while also exploring the importance of the idea of reciprocity for both Rawls and Michelman.

What is the theoretical and applied responsibility of practical legal policies against environmental degradation? Which political-philosophical attitude is implicit in the International and European environmental legislation for reducing and preventing the environmental degradation? The concepts and means, developed to compare us with the environmental issue, are adequate to capture the reality of these emergencies? The basic thesis, I intend to discuss and defend, argues that there is a “question incompatibility” between political liberalism and environmental protection.

Rawlsian political liberalism is often rejected by feminist philosophers on the grounds that it reinstates a problematic public/private divide and includes sexist comprehensive doctrines as reasonable. My dissertation reclaims a revised version of Rawlsian political liberalism for feminist objectives. Using children who are raised in accordance with sexist comprehensive doctrines as a test case, I investigate the permissible limitations for reasonable pluralism. In the first half of my dissertation, I investigate challenges posed to Rawlsian stability and (...) civic education. I argue that Rawlss aim of making reasonableness broadly inclusive for political purposes is in tension with his goal of using reasonableness to delineate the scope of liberal legitimacy. To resolve this tension, I suggest that we separate liberal legitimacy from reasonableness. I then broaden the analysis by exploring the implications of the bifurcation of reasonableness for both feminism and political liberalism. I argue that the resulting theory is a defensible version of political liberalism that serves some crucially important feminist aims without becoming a comprehensive feminist theory. (shrink)

According to the “internal” conception (Quong), political liberalism aims to be publicly justifiable only to people who are reasonable in a special sense specified and advocated by political liberalism itself. One advantage of the internal conception allegedly is that it enables liberalism to avoid perfectionism. The paper takes issue with this view. It argues that once the internal conception is duly pitched at its fundamental, metatheoretical level and placed in its proper discursive context, it emerges (...) that it comes at the cost of public dogma. The paper examines this problem and argues that a plausible response to this problem is to go beyond the internal conception and adopt a more inclusive, dynamic conception. But this calls for a form of perfectionism. Thus, the internal conception of political liberalism, far from showing how liberalism can be had without perfectionism, effectively calls for perfectionism as a remedy for its problems. (shrink)

In this work, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous and compelling interpretation of John Rawls' reasons for taking his so-called 'political turn'.

We provide a justification for political liberalism’s Reciprocity Principle, which states that political decisions must be justified exclusively on the basis of considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. The standard argument for the Reciprocity Principle grounds it in a requirement of respect for persons. We argue for a different, but compatible, justification: the Reciprocity Principle is justified because it makes possible a desirable kind of political community. The general endorsement of the (...) Reciprocity Principle, we will argue, helps realize joint political rule and relationships of civic friendship. The main obstacle to the realization of these values is the presence of reasonable disagreement about religious, moral, and philosophical issues characteristic of liberal societies. We show the Reciprocity Principle helps to overcome this obstacle. (shrink)

Within the author’s long-term project of updating John Rawls’s paradigm of “political liberalism” to a historical context different from the original one, this paper focuses on how political liberalism can help us understand populism and help liberal democracy survive the populist upsurge. In the first section, political liberalism is argued to be of help in directing our attention to three constitutive aspects of all sorts of populism: the conflation of “the people” with the electorate (...) and the electorate with the nation, the attribution of constituent power to the electorate, and a penchant for so-called “justified intolerance.” In the second section, enfeebled democracies and postliberal democracies are discussed as two distinctly dangerous outcomes of populist contagion. Finally, in the third section the containment of populism is argued to require targeting the socioeconomic factors undergirding the populist upsurge and the jettisoni... (shrink)

Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that a society in which (...) most persons act in accordance with ‘gender equal’ ethos justice is morally superior to one in which most persons do not. A shared commitment to a particular conception of ethos justice, however, cannot be required by a conception of legitimacy justice. A political liberal feminist is committed to promoting gender equality with respect to both legitimacy justice and ethos justice, but recognizes that different means are necessary to do so. (shrink)

Timothy Michael Fowler has argued that, as a consequence of their commitment to neutrality in regard to comprehensive doctrines, political liberals face a dilemma. In essence, the dilemma for political liberals is that either they have to give up their commitment to neutrality (which is an indispensible part of their view), or they have to allow harm to children. Fowler’s case for this dilemma depends on ascribing to political liberals a view which grants parents a great degree (...) of freedom in deciding on the education of their children. I show that ascribing this view to political liberals rests upon a misinterpretation of political liberalism. Since political liberals have access to reasons based upon the interests of children, they need not yield to parent’s wishes about the education of their children. A correct understanding of political liberalism thus shows that political liberals do not face the dilemma envisaged by Fowler. (shrink)

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be (...) indispensable for political philosophers and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance for citizenship education. Political liberals such as (...) Stephen Macedo and Victoria Costa maintain that political liberalism requires a form of citizenship education that is far more demanding than that suggested by Rawls. Gordon Davis and Blain Neufeld, in contrast, defend Rawls's position. These different views have implications for the content of mandatory citizenship education, understanding of the ‘common school ideal,’ and the scope for educational choice within the framework of political liberalism. However, the differences between Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa, on the one hand, and Davis and Neufeld, on the other, might be attributable, at least in part, to their different foci. Gutmann, Macedo, and Costa focus on non-ideal theory, specifically the contemporary American context, whereas Davis and Neufeld begin, as does Rawls, within ideal theory, and consider non-ideal circumstances from that perspective. (shrink)

Some religiously devout individuals believe divine command can override an obligation to obey the law where the two are in conflict. At the extreme, some individuals believe that acts of violence that seek to change or punish a political community, or to prevent others from violating what they take to be God’s law, are morally justified. In the face of this apparent clash between religious and political commitments it might seem that modern versions of political morality—such as (...) John Rawls’s political liberalism—that refuse to take a stance on controversial religious matters, or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, are beset by a particularly acute version of this problem of religious disobedience. Whilst political liberalism follows this path so as to generate wide and stable support, it raises the question of how political liberals should respond to religiously motivated non-compliance with the norms of that liberal conception of justice. This article evaluates what resources are available to political liberalism to respond to this challenge. It examines whether anti-perfectionism can be sustained in the face of those whose religious beliefs are in conflict with the law. We argue that, under certain circumstances, political liberalism requires direct engagement with the religious views of the unreasonable, including offering religious arguments to show that their particular interpretation of their faith is mistaken. This view takes political liberalism away from its usual ambitions, but it is a position that is both anticipated by Rawls and consistent with his view. It does, however, require that political liberals give up the claim that the view is a wholly non-sectarian, purely political view, and accept that, under certain circumstances it is a partially comprehensive version of liberal theory. (shrink)

The utilitarian economist and Nobel Laureate John Harsanyi and the liberal egalitarian philosopher John Rawls were two of the most eminent scholars writing on problems of social justice in the last century. This volume pays tribute to Harsanyi and Rawls by investigating themes that figure prominently in their work. In some cases, the contributors explore issues considered by Harsanyi and Rawls in more depth and from novel perspectives. In others, the contributors use the work of Harsanyi and Rawls as points (...) of departure for pursuing the construction of theories for the evaluation of social justice. The introductory essay by the editors provides background information on the relevant economics, game theory, philosophy, and social choice theory, as well as readers' guides to the individual contributions, to make this volume widely accessible to scholars in a wide range of disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what some critics suggest, political liberalism is not exclusionary with regards to the rights and interests of individuals with cognitive disabilities. I begin by defending four publicly justifiable reasons that are collectively sufficient for the inclusion of members of this group. Briefly, these are the epistemic uncertainty that inevitably exists about individuals’ actual capacities, the political liberal duty to treat parents fairly, the social framework that is required for the (...) fulfilment of parental duties, and the necessity of cultivating certain emotions that are strongly associated with reasonableness. These reasons show why a more inclusive reading of political liberalism is plausible, and how this can be achieved without abandoning or revising the theory’s commitment to public reason, the political conception of the person, and the role of social cooperation. I then turn to the question of what a more inclusive political liberalism would look like. More specifically, I argue that, although it would not require the participation of individuals with cognitive disabilities in the practice of legitimation, it would require their full inclusion in the realm of justice as equal rights-bearers. (shrink)

Alessandro Ferrara’s argument in Sovereignty Across Generations takes shape within a broadly Rawlsian ‘political liberal’ framework of thought about moral underpinnings for a constitutional-democratic practice of politics. Where, exactly (I ask here), is the place within that thought for concern about occurrences in a country’s past of popular constituent power? If the country’s currently established constitutional regime is fully democratic (and is otherwise morally in order) by whatever operational measures you and I might think to apply, why should we (...) or anyone care about how or by whose authority the regime got set up and running in the first place? By Ferrara’s Rawls-inspired teaching in Sovereignty Across Generations, the answer to that question will come from a certain conception of political legitimacy. But then a potent objection comes from those who press the question of how to reconcile a democratic conception of legitimacy with a subjection of current (say) deliberative-majoritarian rule to antecedently imposed terms of constraint. Under Rawlsian and Ferrarian stimulus, I look into the possible relevance here of H.L.A. Hart’s proposition of a complementarity or fusion, in our concept of law, of an ‘internal’ with an ‘external’ perspective that those involved may adopt toward the coercive social practice in question. Underlying the Rawlsian constitutional proposition on legitimacy, I end by suggesting, is the thought that, in order for a person to live in freedom under law, that person will have to sustain simultaneously an internal attitude of bonding to their society’s own ongoing project of legality and an external attitude of critical judgemental of that project as reasonably and rationally acceptable to free and equal citizens in conditions of reasonable pluralism. (shrink)

Taking its distance from classical liberalism, political liberalism seeks to avoid controversial metaphysical assumptions by starting from institutional features of modern polities. Political liberalism also extends the limits of liberal toleration by envisioning societies that it considers nonliberal but decent. This article is concerned with the relationship between these two dimensions of political liberalism, specifically as they are instantiated in the work of John Rawls. I show that these two dimensions are in tension (...) with each other. Put simply, if political liberalism is institutional, then decent societies are impossible. Decent societies are only conceivable within the ahistorical realm of values—a realm that Rawls sometimes slips into, even though its avoidance is central to political liberalism’s claim of distinctiveness. Rawls’s appeal to hypotheticals to defend his account of decent societies only serves to mask this tension and to foreclose important avenues of inquiry about the non-Western world. I also deploy throughout the article archival material that evinces Rawls’ concern with ethnocentrism but also the difficulties he faced in coming up with an adequate account of non-Western societies. On the argument I offer here, this intractability is to be expected, since Rawls did not recognize that the problems with his account were not purely philosophical, but in fact, sociological, political, and historical. (shrink)

This article argues political liberalism can and should be revised to improve its relevance to the private law. This approach is not a rejection of political liberalism, but instead a restatement consistent with the fundamental tenets of Rawls’s theory of justice. The first part begins with a brief summary of Rawls’s political liberalism. The second part discusses the strategies used to demonstrate the relevance of Rawls’s theory to the private law. The third part examines (...) how Rawls’s theory can and should be revised by incorporating capabilities. I argue this revision can be undertaken in a way that best develops the relevance of political liberalism. (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 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)

This article evaluates the conception of citizenship embodied in political liberalism as the core ingredient of a national syllabus designed to provide an uncontroversial yet substantial education in moral and political values in a liberal democratic state system. I argue (pace recent work by Stephen Macedo) that Rawls's paradigmatic version of political liberalism fails to avoid begging the political question against those who do not share liberal values. I contend in particular that Rawls's defence (...) of the distinction between comprehensive and political values and his assignment of priority to the latter, invokes an idea of what is politically reasonable that involves a comprehensive and therefore controversial liberal conception of the person. (shrink)

This article suggests a Kantian reading of Rawls’s Political Liberalism. As much as Rawls distanced himself from a presentation of his theory in terms of a comprehensive Kantian moral doctrine, we ought to read it as a noncomprehensive Kantian moral-political theory. According to the latter approach, the liberal conception of justice is compatible with a plurality of comprehensive doctrines as long as they share the independently defined and grounded essentials of that conception of justice—that is, as long (...) as they are “reasonable,” to use the term that does most of the Kantian work. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of 4 important lacunae in political liberalism and identifies, in a preliminary fashion, some trends in the literature that can come in for support in filling these blind spots, which prevent political liberalism from a correct assessment of the diverse nature of religious claims. Political liberalism operates with implicit assumptions about religious actors being either ‘liberal’ or ‘fundamentalist’ and ignores a third, in-between group, namely traditionalist religious actors and their (...) claims. After having explained what makes traditionalist religious actors different from liberal and fundamentalist religious actors, the author develops 4 areas in which political liberalism should be pushed further theoretically in order to correctly theorize the challenge which traditional religious actors pose to liberal democracy. These 4 areas are: the context of translation; the politics of exemptions; the multivocality of theology; and the transnational nature of norm-contestation. (shrink)

One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of critics (...) have claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies is symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against this view, I argue that the principle of toleration should not be understood as political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This is revealed through a consideration of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the ‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’, which I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens, shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I explain that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle as that of equal civic respect for citizens helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and international domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about fundamental political issues. Key Words: civic respect • international relations • justice • political liberalism • Rawls • toleration. (shrink)

In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the “Deliberative Equality Argument”, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the (...) authors contend. The second, which I call the “Equal Liberties Argument”, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself. (shrink)

Political liberalism famously requires that fundamental political matters should not be decided by reference to any controversial moral, religious or philosophical doctrines over which reasonable people disagree. This means we, as citizens, must abstain from relying on what we believe to be the whole truth when debating or voting on fundamental political matters. Many critics of political liberalism contend that this requirement to abstain from relying on our views about the good life commits (...) class='Hi'>political liberalism to a kind of scepticism: we should abstain from relying on our views about the good life because we should be uncertain about the truth of those views. But this kind of scepticism is itself a controversial epistemic position which many reasonable people reject, thus apparently making political liberalism internally incoherent. This is the sceptical critique of political liberalism. This paper shows the sceptical critique to be false. The paper argues that the epistemic restraint required of citizens in political liberalism does not assume or imply any version of scepticism about our ability to know the good life. Liberal neutrality is motivated not by scepticism about our own views, but rather by a desire to justify fundamental political principles to others. (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)

Religion is a trap and a snare for states in the modern world. People fervently believe in religious doctrines, which they take to be central for the guidance of their own lives and pivotal for determining morally appropriate and just laws and public policies. The religious beliefs of members of modern societies tend to be wildly diverse. They conflict with each other in ways that resist sensible compromise. Jesus is either the Son of God, the Savior whose teachings will lead (...) us to eternal salvation, or he is not. (shrink)

In Sovereignty across Generations, Ferrara attempts a dual feat. He demonstrates that political liberalism needs a nuanced doctrine of constituent power to be brought in line with traditional democratic concerns. At the same time, he argues that political liberalism is capable of making constituent power safe for democracy, in reining in its unruly and unbound character. By distinguishing between ‘the people’ and the electorate, Ferrara develops a transtemporal conception of the constituent subject, allowing moderate transformation but (...) in effect binding all future time-slices of the people. In my comment, I address two issues with this. First, I ask how such accounts deal with the fact of immigration. It is not clear whether a historically indexed constituent subject has the normative power to bind new citizens arriving with quite distinct historical baggage. A second question is whether Ferrara’s Rawlsian-Michelmanian take is different from, and superior to, the Habermasian account of constituent power, especially to Habermas’s constructive views on supranational constitution-making. Both questions address whether Ferrara’s historically indexed account is sufficiently open to future developments. (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 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)

On the standard version of political liberalism, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all reasonable persons. Correspondingly, reasonable disagreement about the moral doctrines underlying a law makes that law not justifiable to all reasonable persons. In this paper, I argue that political liberals are committed to understanding reasonable disagreement as being rational, rather than praiseworthy disagreement between morally reasonable person because other conceptions of reasonableness commit them to an incoherent (...) triad of claims. (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)

Women continue to be in charge of most childrearing; men continue to be responsible for most breadwinning. There is no consensus on whether this state of affairs, and the informal norms that encourage it, are matters of justice to be tackled by state action. Feminists have criticized political liberalism for its alleged inability to embrace a full feminist agenda, inability explained by political liberals’ commitment to the ideal of state neutrality. The debate continues on whether neutral states (...) can accommodate two feminist demands: to enact policies aimed at dismantling the feminization of caregiving, especially childrearing, and to compensate women for some of the disadvantages they incur by being primary care-givers. I contribute to this debate with three arguments in support of policies meant to de-gender care-giving and compensate care-givers. The first appeals to equality of opportunity to positions of advantage and justifies policies that prevent or mitigate statistical discrimination and implicit biases. The second draws attention to a possible causal relationship between the specialization of women in early childcare and misogyny; since the latter is incompatible with political liberal justice, it yields the conclusion that political liberals ought to further investigate the causal hypothesis with the aim of establishing or refuting it. The third argument concludes that legitimate childrearing prohibits adults from socializing children or, at least girls, into gender norms; it justifies duties of justice on the side of parents, educators, and economic agents, and state policies meant to offset foreseeable breaches of some of these duties. (shrink)

This book reveals the rich and complex nature of the dialogue among proponents of political liberalism and its important nuances, and in so doing offers a ...