Political Liberalism
The freestanding conception of the
political and the overlapping
The problem of political liberalism
“How is it possible for there to exist over time a
just and stable society of free and equal citizens,
who remain profoundly divided by religious,
Why is pluralism not historically contingent?
The reasonable disagreement in ethics and politics is continuing and not just contingent, different from what happens in the field of scientific research. These are the reasons:(A) evidence is difficult to find;
(B) even when there is agreement on relevant considerations, you can be in disagreement on the weight to assign to each of them; (C) our concepts in this field are often vague;
(D) the way in which we reason morally and politically depends to a considerable extent upon the experiences that each of us has had; (E) often cases are controversial because normative considerations of similar weight hold on both sides;
(F) in a social limited space, it is sometimes impossible to give priority to different values.
The free-standing political conception
Free People ”attribute to themselves, and to each other,
the moral power of conceiving the good" and see
themselves as ”autonomous sources of valid claims."
Rawls restricts the scope and nature of the
disagreement. There exists a shared political culture
within liberal democracy that provides the content to the
free-standing political conception.
The fundamental idea in the political conception is that
of a society as fair system of cooperation and reciprocity.
Reasonableness
Reasonable people are willing to regulate their
conduct based upon principles that take other
persons into consideration.
People that are only rational, lack the sensitivity
to engage in fair cooperation. The reasonable and
rational are distinct, but complementary.
The idea of the reasonable is a presupposition of
liberal tolerance, that gives rise to the pluralism of
reasonable comprehensive doctrines.
Reasonable comprehensive doctrines
Reasonable people endorse only 'reasonable comprehensive doctrines'. The latter have three characteristics:
(1) they cover the fundamental religious, philosophical and moral aspects of human life in a comprehensible manner.
(2) they are different form each other insofar as each makes different values fundamental and gives priority to them;
(3) they ususally belong to more or less unique traditions of thought.
Reasonable people accept this pluralism of reasonable
comprehensive doctrine, and are favorable with regard to freedom of thought and conscience. Reasonableness is not an epistemic
Political constructivism
According to political constructivism, the principles that regulate a well-ordered society do not track a truth, but depend on a procedure of
construction. The latter is not based on theoretical reason, but on practical reason.
The procedure starts from the ideal conceptions of the person and
society and applies the idea of reasonable. Political constructivism does not give rise to a comprehensive doctrine, does not depend on a
foundational conception of autonomy and does not presuppose
conceptions of the person and society that originate in transcendental idealism.
Instead political constructivism seeks to provide ways in which citizens mutually justify their claims with regard to fundamental questions of justice. This way objectivity will be obtained.
Public reason
The concept of public reason does not apply to a defined
object, but rather lines out the limits of public debate.
Reason is public in three ways:
(1) as the reason of citizens;
(2) its object concerns the public good, which means
essential elements of the constitution and of
fundamental justice;
(3) In its nature and its contents, insofar as they are
provided by the political conception.
The structure of the argument
(1) In a liberal-democratic regime coexist different reasonable comprehensive doctrines;
(2) citizens can not be asked to renounce tp their comprehensive doctrines in the name of another comprehensive doctrines;
(3) in order to avoid (2), we have to find a liberal principle of
legitimacy that can be potentially obtained by all reasonable citizens; (4) given (2) and (3), there does not exist a liberal legitimacy that relies on a single doctrine;
(5) but the political conception is able to get the agreement of all the reasonable doctrines;
(6) because of this, the agreement on the political conception allows to not violate the principle of liberal legitimacy.
Problems of reasonableness
The problem is that the political conception claims to be
independent of any reasonable comprehensive doctrine. On
the one hand, the political conception could not be
independent. On the other hand, it could only be the result
of a compromise.
Reasonableness could lead to cases in which you are unable
to choose among different alternatives. In these cases or we
decide on the basis of a comprehensive doctrine or we are
unable to decide in that matter.
People who do not adhere to the political conception must
be considered unreasonable.
Overlapping consenus
The idea of the overlapping consensus reconciles pluralism with
stability. The consensus upon a political conception ”has its origin in our own comprehensive view", taking advantage of ”the religious, philosophical and moral motivations that it provides."
Every citizen, Muslim or Catholic, Buddhist or secular, should accept political liberalism finding the reasons from within his or her own doctrine. The consensus that emerges is of moral nature, and not simply prudential ( 'modus vivendi'). It does not depend on the balance of powers of the moment.
The basic idea is to split into two parts the morality of individuals: the comprehensive morality and the more limited institutional morality.
