Book contents
- Public Reason and Diversity
- Public Reason and Diversity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- A Note on the Essays
- Introduction
- Part I Liberalism
- Chapter 1 Reasonable Pluralism and the Domain of the Political
- Chapter 2 On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns
- Chapter 3 Recognized Rights as Devices of Public Reason
- Chapter 4 The Moral Foundations of Liberal Neutrality
- Chapter 5 Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State
- Part II Diverse Public Reason
- Index
Chapter 3 - Recognized Rights as Devices of Public Reason
from Part I - Liberalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2022
- Public Reason and Diversity
- Public Reason and Diversity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- A Note on the Essays
- Introduction
- Part I Liberalism
- Chapter 1 Reasonable Pluralism and the Domain of the Political
- Chapter 2 On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns
- Chapter 3 Recognized Rights as Devices of Public Reason
- Chapter 4 The Moral Foundations of Liberal Neutrality
- Chapter 5 Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State
- Part II Diverse Public Reason
- Index
Summary
My concern in this essay is a family of liberal theories that I shall call “public reason liberalism.” Fundamental to public reason liberalism is the commitment to the moral equality of all persons. Because we are equal moral persons, morality must be justified to all. Public reason liberalism is not to be equated with political liberalism. The latter is a specific version of public reason liberalism that seeks to restrict the set to be justified to a small number of principles of political right that are largely independent of moral principles. Rawls’s earlier work – certainly his 1951 essay “Outline of a Decision Procedure in Ethics” and the famous essay on “Justice and Fairness” – understood the subject of justification more expansively, focusing on what we might call “social ethics,” i.e., the moral resolution of competing claims of individuals. On this view liberalism is not simply a theory of the justice of the basic structure of society, but a public moral framework by which individuals can adjudicate their conflicting claims and demands on one another. Some may call this is a “comprehensive” liberalism, but we should be wary of such a simple description. Much of what we call “ethics” – including visions of the good life and conceptions of virtue and vice – lies outside social morality. As J.S. Mill saw it, the subject of “Civil” or “Social Liberty” – which is plausibly the subject of liberalism – involves the nature and limits of the moral authority of society over individuals to insist that they refrain from speaking, acting, and living as they wish. It is this broader understanding of liberalism that is my focus. Public reason liberalism, as I conceive it, claims that the principles of social or public morality that allow one individual to make demands on others to act or desist from acting must be justifiable to each and every reasonable moral person within that community.
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- Information
- Public Reason and DiversityReinterpretations of Liberalism, pp. 77 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022