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On the Limits of Rights and Representation
Author(s) -
Johnson Terrence L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of religious ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.306
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1467-9795
pISSN - 0384-9694
DOI - 10.1111/jore.12118
Subject(s) - politics , public reason , deliberation , pluralism (philosophy) , value pluralism , classical liberalism , sociology , liberalism , political science , normative , law and economics , environmental ethics , epistemology , law , democracy , philosophy
This essay explores the degree to which public reason can sustain political liberalism's commitment to justice and pluralism without attending to the role of what J effrey S tout calls “cultural inheritance” in shaping and justifying political commitments. At issue is whether public reason is the best resource for guiding conversations on political matters that are enmeshed in religious commitments and moral beliefs. Unless public reason can account for cultural inheritance, and foster a deliberative context in which political actors might grapple with the relationship between overlapping political claims and comprehensive doctrines, public reason will remain narrow and inadequate in a contemporary world where epistemic diversity is increasingly at odds with political liberalism's normative model of social cooperation and public deliberation.