Public Reason in Circumstances of Pluralism

Abstract

Recently, several theorists have argued that John Rawls’s political liberalism, with its notion of public reason, is based on presuppositions so idealistic and moralistic, that it cannot provide a relevant standard of argumentation in real political circumstances, where disagreements concerning matters of justice may run deep. The question raised in this contribution is: which notion of reasonableness, if any, could be used as a standard with which to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable political positions in such circumstances of radical pluralism? I examine here whether contemporary realists may find helpful Jurgen Habermas’s notion of public opinion or Aristotle’s idea of reputable things or ta endoxa. It is argued here that realists may find the latter particularly useful in developing a realist notion of public reason.