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The Fact of Unreasonable Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2019

AARON ANCELL Open the ORCID record for AARON ANCELL [Opens in a new window]
AARON ANCELL*
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HARVARD UNIVERSITYaaron.ancell@gmail.com
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Abstract

Proponents of political liberalism standardly assume that the citizens of an ideal liberal society would be overwhelmingly reasonable. I argue that this assumption violates political liberalism's own constraints of realism—constraints that are necessary to frame the central problem that political liberalism aims to solve, that is, the problem of reasonable pluralism. To be consistent with these constraints, political liberalism must recognize that, as with reasonable pluralism, widespread support for unreasonable moral and political views is an inevitable feature of any liberal society. I call this the fact of unreasonable pluralism. This fact threatens Rawlsian political liberalism's account of stability because an overlapping consensus cannot stably order a society pervaded by unreasonable views. My argument also raises questions about the coherence of Rawls's conception of ideal theory.

Keywords

ideal theorypolitical liberalismJohn Rawlsreasonable pluralismstabilityunreasonableness
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , Winter 2019 , pp. 410 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019

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Footnotes

For helpful comments, criticisms, and discussions I thank Mike Ashfield, Allen Buchanan, Samuel Bagg, Ewan Kingston, David McCabe, Wayne Norman, Philip Shadd, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Heather Wallace, and David Wong. I also thank audiences at conferences hosted by the North Carolina Philosophical Society, the Canadian Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association Central Division for several incisive questions. Finally, I thank two anonymous referees for this journal for their many constructive comments and criticisms, and the editorial staff for all their work in bringing this article to print.

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