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How the Weaknesses of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism Can Be Overcome by a Justificatory Liberalism
from Part I - Liberalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2022
John Rawls’s political liberalismis best understood as a response to the fact that the free exercise of human reason in modern democratic societies leads us to embrace a ‘diversity of reasonable comprehensive doctrines’. Because of this, Rawls insists, any (successful) attempt to unite society on a shared comprehensive doctrine requires the oppressive use of state power to suppress competing, reasonable, comprehensive doctrines. If we are to achieve unity without oppression we must ‘all affirm’ a public political conception (PL: 38) that is supported by, or at least does not conflict with, the diverse reasonable comprehensive doctrines that characterize our democratic societies. This political conception is a ‘module’ that fits into our many reasonable, irreconcilable, comprehensive views. And because this political conception can be affirmed by all reasonable comprehensive doctrines, oppressive state power is not required to uphold it.
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