Keywords:

PHILOSOPHY, DOCTRINE, VIEW, Political Liberalism, JUSTICE, HABERMA, COMPREHENSIVE,

LIBERAL, political philosophy, political conceptions of right and justice

Digest:
...Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas Author(s): John Rawls Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol....
...I. TWO MAINDIFFERENCES Of the two main differences between Habermas's position
and mine, the first is that his is comprehensive while mine is an account of the
political and it is limited to that....
...I think of political liberalism' as a doctrine that falls under the category of
the political....
...The more familiar view of politi-cal philosophy is that its concepts, principles
and ideals, and other elements are presented as consequences of comprehensive doc-
trines, religious, metaphysical, and moral....
...By contrast, political phi-losophy, as understood in political liberalism,
consists largely of different political conceptions of right and justice viewed
asfteestand-ing....
...So while political liberalism is of course liberal, some political conceptions
of right and justice belonging to political philosophy in this sense may be
conservative or radical; conceptions of the divine right of kings, or even of
dictatorship, may also belong to it....
...Thus, of the various freestanding political conceptions of justice within
political philosophy, some are liberal and some are not....
...I think of justice as fairness as working out a liberal political concep-tion of
justice for a democratic regime, and one that might be en- dorsed, so it is
hoped,by all reasonable comprehensivedoctrinesI do not know of any liberal writers
of an earlier generation who have clearly put forward the doctrine of political
liberalism....
...It is a great puzzle to me why political liberalism was not worked out much
earlier: it seems such a natural way to present the idea of liberalism, given the
fact of reasonable pluralism in political life....
...Other liberal political conceptions have somewhat different principles and
elements; but I assume that in each case their principles specify cer-tain rights,
liberties, and opportunities, assign them a certain priority with respect to other
claims, and make provisions for all citizens to make essential and effective use of
their freedoms.3 The central idea is that political liberalism moves within the
cate-gory of the political and leaves philosophy as it is....
...Political philosophy proceeds apart from all such doctrines, and pre-sents
itself in its own terms as freestanding....
...Political liberalism abstains from as-sertions about the domain of comprehensive
views except as neces-sary when these views are unreasonable and reject all
variations of the basic essentials of a democratic regime....
...In line with these aims, political liberalism characterizes a political
conception ofjustice by three features: It applies in the first instance to the
basic structureof society (as-sumed in the case of justice as fairnessto be a
democraticsociety)....
...S. Mill. Their views clearly go well beyond the political, relying on ideas of
autonomy and individuality as moral values belonging to a comprehensive doc-
trine....