Razao revisitad

PUBLIC REASON REVISITED

JOHN RAWLS
SUMMER 1997

Copyright (c) 1997 University of Chicago
University of Chicago Law Review

Summer, 1997

64 U. Chi. L. Rev. 765

LENGTH: 23159 words

ARTICLE: The Idea of Public Reason Revisited

John Rawls *

* Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. This essay is a revision of a lecture given at The University of Chicago Law School in November 1993. I should like to thank Joshua Cohen, Erin Kelly, Percy Lehning, Michael Perry, Margaret Rawls, and T.M. Scanlon for their great help and advice in writing this paper. Throughout they have given me numerous suggestions, which I have gladly accepted. Above all, to Burton Dreben I am especially indebted: as so often before, he has been generous beyond measure in his efforts; in every section he has helped me reorganize and reshape the text, giving it a clarity and simplicity it would not otherwise have had. Without their constant advice and encouragement, and that of others mentioned below, I never could have completed the revisions of my original lecture.

SUMMARY: ... The idea of public reason, as I understand it, belongs to a conception of a well ordered constitutional democratic society. ... This ideal is realized, or satisfied, whenever judges, legislators, chief executives, and other government officials, as well as candidates for public office, act from and follow the idea of public reason and explain to other citizens their reasons for supporting fundamental political positions in terms of the political conception of justice they regard as the most reasonable. ... Since the idea of public reason specifies at the deepest level the basic political values and specifies how the political relation is to be understood, those who believe that fundamental political questions should be decided by what they regard as the best reasons according to their own idea of the whole truth - including their religious or secular comprehensive doctrine - and