Rawls's Wide View of Public Reason: Not Wide Enough

Abstract

What sorts of reasons are i) required and ii) morally acceptable when citizens in a pluralist liberal democracy undertake to resolve pressing political issues? This paper presents and then critically examines John Rawls's answer to this question: his so called wide-view of public reason. Rawls's view requires that the content of liberal public reason prove rich enough to yield a reasoned and determinate resolution for most if not all fundamental political issues. I argue that the content of liberal public reason will prove inadequate in this regard far more often than Rawls suspects.