Title
Reconstructing Public Reason / Eric A. MacGilvray.
ISBN
9780674274938
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2004]
Copyright
©2004
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (266 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/9780674274938 doi
Call Number
JC574 .M27 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification
320.51/3
Summary
Can a liberal polity act on pressing matters of public concern in a way that respects the variety of beliefs and commitments that its citizens hold? Recent efforts to answer this question typically begin by seeking an uncontroversial starting point from which legitimate public ends can be said to follow. This reluctance to admit controversial beliefs as legitimate grounds for public action threatens to prevent us from responding effectively to many of the leading social and political challenges that we face. Eric MacGilvray argues that we should shift our attention away from the problem of identifying uncontroversial public ends in the present and toward the problem of evaluating potentially controversial public ends through collective inquiry over time. Rather than ask ourselves which public ends are justified, we must instead decide which public ends we should seek to justify. Reconstructing Public Reason offers a fundamental rethinking of the nature and aims of liberal toleration, and of the political implications of pragmatic philosophy. It also provides fresh interpretations of founding pragmatic thinkers such as John Dewey and William James, and of leading contemporary figures such as John Rawls and Richard Rorty.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 01. Dez 2022)
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Task before Us
I. TOWARD A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION
1 The Tyranny of Minimalism
2 Prospectivism and "The Will to Believe"
3 Narrative and Moral Reasoning
II PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY
4 Against a Second Pragmatic Acquiescence
5 Against Deweyan Democracy
III POLI TICAL LIBERALISM
6 Political Liberalism and the Limits of the Political
7 Public Reason and Public Institutions
8 The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism
Conclusion: Liberalism after Minimalism
Index