Political Liberalism

A set of lectures, published in 1993, in which Rawls reworks the theory of A Theory of Justice to face a problem he thought the earlier book had missed: free societies will always contain many reasonable but incompatible religious, moral and philosophical doctrines. Rawls calls this the fact of reasonable pluralism and explains it through the burdens of judgement. He therefore recasts justice as fairness as a political conception, one that does not depend on any comprehensive doctrine and can be the object of an overlapping consensus among them. The book develops political constructivism, the distinction between the reasonable and the rational, the priority of right over ideas of the good, and the liberal principle of legitimacy. A central lecture sets out the idea of public reason: on basic matters, citizens and officials should justify coercive laws in terms others can reasonably accept. Later lectures treat the basic structure and the priority of the basic liberties. Critics ask whether such political neutrality is achievable or quietly assumes a liberal doctrine.

It is the main statement of how a liberal state can claim legitimacy among citizens who disagree deeply about religion and morality, and its idea of public reason still frames debates on faith in politics.