ONLINE FIRST
published on July 6, 2017
Gerald Gaus
https://doi.org/10.5840/socphiltoday20177545
Is Public Reason a Normalization Project? Deep Diversity and the Open Society
At one point Rawls thought that ¡°a normalization of interests attributed to the parties¡± is ¡°common to social contract doctrines.¡± Normalization has a great appeal: once we specify the normalized perspective, we can generate strong and definite principles of justice. Public reasoning is restricted to those who reason from the eligible, normalized, perspective; those who fall outside the ¡°normal¡± are to be dismissed as unreasonable, unjust, or illiberal. As Rawls¡¯s political liberalism project developed he increasingly relaxed his normalization assumptions, allowing room for not only different conceptions of the good, but of justice. This paper explores the post-Rawlsian movement in public reason to maximally relax, or even abandon, normalizing assumptions, drawing on a maximal diversity of normative perspectives in public justification. The public reason project is at critical juncture. Are we to look back, defending Rawls¡¯s substantive conclusions by devising new defenses of normalization, circling the wagons around the cherished two principles? Or are we to seek to fulfill the promise of public reason as providing a common public and moral world in the midst of diversity?