John Rawls' Doctrine of Public Reason

Hi again!

So soon? Yeah! I wanted to post some pictures of my bike (see the very bottom of the page) and share with you what I learned today about Rawls' Doctrine of Public Reason. The following text is a short summary of the doctrine. I wrote it from the Rawls section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is quickly becoming my favorite online resource for philosophy stuffs.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Rawls’ doctrine of public reason can be summarized as follows:

Citizens engaged in certain political activities have a duty of civility to be able to justify their decisions on fundamental political issues by reference only to public values and public standards (Wenar, 2008).

What does this mean? The terms “certain political activities”, “duty of civility”, “fundamental political issues” and “public values/public standards” are the terms that need to be clarified in order to understand what Rawls’ doctrine asks of society.

Certain political activities

These include voting and serving in any elected or appointed office in government. Wenar, 2008)

Duty of civility

“Citizens have a moral duty of mutual respect and civic friendship not to justify political decisions on fundamental issues with partisan values or controversial standards of reasoning that could not be publicly redeemed” (Wenar, 2008). “Publicly redeemed” means justified with reasoning that stems not from religious, partisan or other beliefs, but only by means of “publicly acceptable standards are those that rely on common sense, on facts generally known, and on the conclusions of science that are well established and not controversial” (Wenar, 2008).

Fundamental political issues

These are restricted to questions of justice that affect all citizens. Rawls calls these “constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice”. For example, the question of who should be granted suffrage is a fundamental political issue (Wenar, 2008).

Public values

In order for Rawls’ doctrine to hold any sway, the public must come from a basic central common ground, or agreed-upon public values. These can be understood as a “political conception of justice...related to the freedom and equality of citizens and the fairness of ongoing social cooperation” (Wenar, 2008).

Public standards

“Public standards are principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that all citizens could reasonably endorse” (Wenar, 2008).

Source:

Wenar, Leif, "John Rawls", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/rawls/.