Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- 153 Paternalism
- 154 Peoples
- 155 Perfectionism
- 156 Plan of life
- 157 Pogge, Thomas
- 158 Political conception of justice
- 159 Political liberalism, justice as fairness as
- 160 Political liberalisms, family of
- 161 Political obligation
- 162 Political virtues
- 163 Practical reason
- 164 Precepts of justice
- 165 Primary goods, social
- 166 The priority of the right over the good
- 167 Procedural justice
- 168 Promising
- 169 Property-owning democracy
- 170 Public choice theory
- 171 Public political culture
- 172 Public reason
- 173 Publicity
- R
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
171 - Public political culture
from P
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- 153 Paternalism
- 154 Peoples
- 155 Perfectionism
- 156 Plan of life
- 157 Pogge, Thomas
- 158 Political conception of justice
- 159 Political liberalism, justice as fairness as
- 160 Political liberalisms, family of
- 161 Political obligation
- 162 Political virtues
- 163 Practical reason
- 164 Precepts of justice
- 165 Primary goods, social
- 166 The priority of the right over the good
- 167 Procedural justice
- 168 Promising
- 169 Property-owning democracy
- 170 Public choice theory
- 171 Public political culture
- 172 Public reason
- 173 Publicity
- R
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In political liberalism Rawls aims to show that it is possible for citizens with otherwise diverse beliefs and commitments to nevertheless converge on a conception of justice that can be used as a public regulative ideal. Given the fact of reasonable pluralism, a conception of justice can be broadly acceptable in this way only if it disavows reliance on comprehensive doctrines and is, instead, rooted in the ideas and principles of a democratic community’s public sphere. These ideas and principles constitute the public political culture.
As Rawls explains, we start “by looking to the public culture itself as the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles” (PL 8). The hope is to connect these ideas and principles together in a way that allows citizens to reach reflective equilibrium. Principles constructed in this way would be ones that “all citizens, whatever their religious view, can endorse” (PL 10). So, it is by rooting the conception of justice in ideas from the public political culture that an overlapping consensus is made possible. The public political culture includes:
The political institutions of a constitutional regime and the public traditions of their interpretation (including those of the judiciary), as well as historic texts and documents that are common knowledge … In a democratic society there is a tradition of democratic thought … seen as a fund of implicitly shared ideas and principles. (PL 14)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 664 - 665Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014