Political Liberalism is an update to John Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971) in which he attempts to show that his theory of justice is not a "comprehensive conception of the good", but is instead compatible with a liberal conception of the role of justice: namely, that government should be neutral between competing conceptions of the good. Rawls tries to show that his two principles of justice, properly understood, form a "theory of the right" (as opposed to a theory of the good) which would be supported by all reasonable individuals, even under conditions of reasonable pluralism. The mechanism by which he demonstrates this is called "overlapping consensus". Here he also develops his idea of public reason.
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or liberalism:
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
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