Submitted by Josh, May 14, 2007 13:22

"What Rawls calls "political liberalism" is his attempt to establish criteria of public discourse that are internal to reason alone and therefore exclude controversial theological or philosophical worldviews. The result of this procedure is to create an entirely secularized vision of society in which a purified doctrine of public reason is deemed the only legitimate arbiter of political debate."

I'm not sure this is correct. First, in "Public Reason Revisited" Rawls includes a proviso to his conception of public reason in which individual's worldviews can be included into public reason, so long as they are accompanied by statements that adhere to the rules of public reason. So, he doesn't exclude them all entirely. Secondly, I think the claim that Rawls was out to create "entirely secularized vision of society" is false; public reason is held up as the legitimate form of debate concerning constitutional issues [and, it should be noted, public reason is only necessary for those matters] because the world is not secular, because there are a variety of comprehensive value systems at play in any liberal democratic order [a situation that could only be corrected through an illegitimate use of force on the part of the state]. Public reason is merely a tool for stability, not an ideal that should be approached in every realm of one's life.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.