Public Political Reason

Abstract

Abstract This essay revisits the claim that public political reason as Rawls understood it is incomplete with respect to at least some constitutional essentials or matters of basic justice. It proffers new examples of incompleteness and argues that to reach determinate judgments in these cases democratic citizens will need to draw from a wider pool of reasons than those belonging to their public political reason. It then suggests that and how, without offending the values served by public political reason or political liberalism more generally, democratic citizens might reason publicly with one another to resolve such issues. This involves their reasoning together not as reasonable citizens committed to and drawing reasons from their diverse but reasonable political conceptions of justice, but rather as reasonable persons committed to and drawing reasons from their diverse but reasonable comprehensive doctrines. By so reasoning publicly together free and equal persons properly complete the public political reason they share as free and equal citizens.