Alternative Approaches to Public Reason in Pluralistic Societies
Alternative Approaches to Public Reason in Pluralistic Societies

Summary/Abstract: John Rawls asserts that the form of public reason appropriate to modern pluralist contexts is one that seeks to avoid divisive issues of ethics and the good by removing them from the political public sphere, and by grounding public discourse instead in citizens’ reasonableness expressed in a consensus on a conception of liberal justice. One objection to this account has focussed on its apparent over-dependence on the assumption that all “reasonable” citizens of a liberal polity “share” a political identity that can ground a consensus on justice and public reason. I examine this objection and conclude that the objection to Rawls’ account of reasonableness is valid; however, it must be directed not at the overlapping consensus but at the foundational level of justification, i.e. his understanding of practical reason. I also point to Onora O’Neill’s alternative interpretation of Kantian practical reasoning, which shares insights with discourse ethics, as a more promising approach to public reason in pluralist contexts.

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