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Public Reason and the Exclusion of Oppressed Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2017

BEN CROSS
BEN CROSS*
Affiliation:
Wuhan University
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

The ‘consensus’ model of public reason, associated with John Rawls’s political liberalism, has been criticised for excluding certain reasons from receiving consideration where the justification of the constitutional essentials is concerned. One limitation of these criticisms is that they typically focus on the exclusion of reasons political liberals are committed to excluding, notably reasons based on religious and comprehensive views. I argue that public reason excludes some reasons, central to the interests of many oppressed groups, that public reason advocates will agree should not be excluded.

L’idée de raison publique comme «consensus», associée au libéralisme politique de John Rawls, a été attaquée du fait de sa supposée incapacité à permettre la prise en compte de certaines raisons dans les cas où la substance même de la constitution est en question. Une limitation de ces critiques est qu’elles se concentrent habituellement sur l’exclusion de ces raisons que les libéraux eux-mêmes s’efforcent d’exclure, en particulier des raisons fondées sur des vues globales ou religieuses. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la raison publique exclut de fait certaines raisons, essentielles aux intérêts de nombreux groupes opprimés, que les tenants de la raison publique eux-mêmes considèreraient ne pas devoir être exclues.

Keywords

public reasonJohn Rawlspolitical liberalismpublicityprovisoconjectureideal theory
Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 241 - 265
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Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2017 

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