In Chapter 3, I confront views offered by anti-cosmopolitan theorists. According to the first anti-cosmopolitan view, our obligations to guarantee the substance of the right to subsistence is owed primarily to our compatriots. These obligations outweigh our obligations to those beyond our borders. According to the second anti-cosmopolitan view, we don’t have any obligations beyond our own borders. On these views, our obligations to others are delimited by the particularities of our reciprocal relationship with our compatriots. In response, I draw from John Rawls to articulate an institutional conception of rights. On such a conception, our obligations toward others arise in particular contexts where we interact with and coerce one another vis-à-vis our participation in an institutional scheme. Because we are implicated in trans- and supranational economic, political, and social institutions, we interact institutionally with severely poor people. Employing such an argument serves as a defense against anti-cosmopolitan theorists.

Rawls assesses conceptions of justice in terms of how stable a society governed by them would be. I describe how Rawls presents this view of stability differently in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. I then argue that G.A. Cohen’s objections to this view largely fail insofar as we grant Rawls the claim that the task of principles of justice is to provide fair terms of cooperation. But I then develop an objection to this claim by drawing on Cohen’s critique of Rawls’s treatment of the circumstances of justice. These circumstances are more capacious than Rawls allows. Nonetheless, contra Cohen, we can retain one of the key insights of Rawls’s project, which is that justice is fundamentally about realizing a certain kind of relationship rather than realizing a particular distribution of goods. I sketch a Kantian conception of the relevant relationship and consider the role stability plays in it.

Suggesting the term of a “method of insulation,” this paper analyzes a development that characterizes Rawls’s thought after the publication of Theory. He sought to strengthen his theory of justice by seemingly weakening it, that is, by reducing its philosophical – and especially metaphysical – core commitments to what is absolutely essential for the theoretical enterprise to be successful, aiming at “doctrinal autonomy” and a “free-standing” conception of justice. In reconstructing the main “declarations of philosophical independence” until Political Liberalism, the major achievements but also the problems of this view are discussed. For there came a point at which the method of insulation endangered rather than strengthened the autonomous normative standing of Rawls’s “political” conception of justice.

This essay shows the continued value of Rawls’s public reason project. Its internal tendency is to generate new ideas. To do so, I review seven models of public reason, beginning with A Theory of Justice. Following Political Liberalism, I focus on Rawls’s unaddressed problem of justice pluralism. Rawls did not contain reasonable disagreement abou tjustice. Failing to stop it requires developing a fourth model of public reason. If Rawlsians accept justice pluralism, they must explore Gerald Gaus’s public reason project, so I introduce three models of public reason in Gaus’s work. The final model has only begun to bear fruit, generating a research program Gaus called the New Diversity Theory. Rawls and Gaus show that the public reason project remains a fertile research program

The success of a democratic society depends, Rawls thought, on members having a shared sense of justice, a common basis for reasoning about what is right. Otherwise, disagreements born from conflicts of interest and identity – and associated “distrust and resentment” – will have corrosive effects on social cooperation. But can we reasonably hope for a broadly shared sense of justice? Religious and philosophical pluralism arguably leave hope for an overlapping consensus on a conception of justice sufficient to cabin those corrosive effects. But what about the pluralism of conceptions of justice themselves? I argue that, even on favorable assumptions about people and social cooperation, we should expect serious disagreement about conceptions of justice and the forms of democracy they recommend, as well as conflicts between and among the interests and identities of citizens who endorse those competing conceptions. Even on these favorable assumptions, then, we have reason to worry – as I think Rawls always did – about the fragility of democracy.

John Rawls has been sharply criticized, most notably by Charles Mills, for not sufficiently addressing questions of racial justice. Specifically, Mills has argued that it is a deep flaw in Rawls’s framework (and in much liberal theory that has followed Rawls’s example) that it cannot account for the legitimacy of reparations claims for past racial injustices. In response to this influential charge, the present chapter argues that reparations for racial injustice can be understood and defended within the framework of justice as fairness. It discusses the political morality of reparations and its relation to racial justice. It also explores the often-misunderstood relationship between reparative justice and distributive justice.

Some commentators have expressed puzzlement about the influence a short paper of mine may have had on the development of John Rawls’s thought after the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971. The issue arises because Rawls said in the Introduction to Political Liberalism that my paper had played a role in the evolution of his views, yet readers have found it difficult to understand how or why it did so. By examining some of Rawls’s published and unpublished lectures from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and drawing on correspondence I had with him during those years, I try to provide some context for his remarks about my paper and to refresh people’s memory of the issues that were on Rawls’s mind during that period. This may help to illuminate the position he eventually arrived at in Political Liberalism and some of the motivations for it.

Waseem Yaqoob examines how four prominent German political philosophers responded to the ‘crisis of historicism’ by re-thinking the relation between ethics, politics and history. The trigger for the crisis was Germany’s defeat in World War I, when the presumed convergence of the monarchical nation state with ethical fulfilment and historical destiny dissolved in defeat and political upheaval. Among the first to respond was Friedrich Meinecke, whose earlier confidence in that convergence was replaced by an awareness of historical contingency, and of the difficulty of aligning ethics with reason of state. Notoriously harder line was Carl Schmitt, for whom an appreciation of contingency in a ‘world of enemies’ entailed the assertion of sovereignty at the expense of ethics. With the collapse of Nazism and advent of the Cold War, Reinhart Koselleck renewed Schmitt’s critique of moralising historical philosophy (identified with the Enlightenment), before turning to ‘conceptual history’ to suggest that the state would best adapt to the accelerating temporality of modernity by avoiding all normative choices. By contrast, Hannah Arendt would seek in the contingency of history the space to make such choices, and the opportunity to revive the ancient ideal of active citizenship. In conclusion, Yaqoob sets German post-Historicist thinking off against the anti-historical tendency of Anglo-American political philosophy associated with John Rawls, suggesting that the former may offer a more sophisticated historical ‘realism’ than that current among Rawls’ critics.

The fact of religious pluralism is one of the most challenging questions for contemporary liberal democracies. Political theorists variously argue that religious belief and practice can be a support for prosocial morality, can cause social division, may prevent citizens from adopting important civic norms, or should simply be an area of civic competence. All of these positions carry significant consequences for democratic education. This chapter surveys a range of positions present in political theory and democratic education literature, drawing on historical and contemporary examples from Western democracies, particularly the American context. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibility that modern liberal democratic regimes are properly considered religious themselves, and by considering the implications of this notion for debates regarding democratic education.

Within liberal societies, citizens endorse a range of religious, moral, and philosophical views (e.g., Buddhism and utilitarianism). Despite this doctrinal diversity, John Rawls’ account of political liberalism holds that there is a form of democratic equality that is realizable by all citizens. Citizens can be equally politically autonomous if they enjoy equal political power and justify the exercise of that power with public reasons. A political liberal education for democratic citizenship would teach students how to participate in political decision-making, and how to use public reasons when helping to decide fundamental political questions. Political liberalism also can accommodate diverse educational options for families, but this accommodation is limited by political liberalism’s concern for the future political autonomy of students. This concern distinguishes the political liberal account from the “convergence” account of public justification. Unlike political liberalism, the convergence account fails to respect adequately the future political autonomy of students.

The problem of polarization – our growing inability to talk to each other across lines of disagreement – is the most fundamental challenge facing modern societies. The only viable response to this challenge is to identify a moral vocabulary that has more than one dimension, but whose dimensions are broad and coherent enough to provide a common point of orientation. This is what a liberal theory of freedom provides. Liberal freedom, like liberal society itself, has two distinct and complementary dimensions, which give rise to two distinct and complementary moral projects; on the one hand to create the social conditions under which we are fit to be held responsible for what we do, and on the other hand to carve out a domain of conduct within which we are not responsible to anyone else for what we do except by choice. Contractarianism, with its focus on identifying principles of justice that all reasonable people should accept, tends to exacerbate the problem of polarization that liberalism is best suited to solve.

Peirce’s concept of science entails that normative judgment in science, about which types of theory or explanation or evidence, etc., are good, must depend on the evidence provided by the experience of inquiring (Chapter 2), a thesis supported by the history of science (Chapter 3). This implies a method, at once empirical and normative, which Peirce’s late sketch of a trio of ’normative sciences’ (aesthetics, ethics, logic) generalizes and rationalizes. Its generalization is supported by Peirce’s expansion of empiricism (Chapter 7), and its rationalization depends on the rediscovery of final causation (Chapter 6). Although sketchy, Peirce’s idea of normative sciences is important; for its plausibility undermines that most pernicious of dichotomies, of fact and value. This chapter explicates Peirce’s idea of normative science, traces its method from Schiller’s aesthetics through Kant’s ethics, and suggests that the rediscovery of final causation corrects what is most problematic in Kant’s metaphysics of morals, viz., its anti-naturalism.

Chapter 2 critiques two prominent approaches to the question of difference and disagreement. Engaging with John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas’s accounts of “deliberative democracy,” the chapter first argues that discursive approaches to democracy “aim too high.” They overestimate the degree to which a basic “liberal public culture” is secure, and do not provide convincing accounts of how citizens can become (and continue to be) steadfast liberal democrats who will do what it takes to sustain liberal democracy. The chapter then probes “realist” approaches to democracy. Focusing on William Connolly and Chantal Mouffe’s accounts of “democratic agonism,” the chapter argues that realist approaches “aim too low.” They overestimate the ability of sound institutions to channel difference and disagreement, and do not adequately acknowledge the need for a sense of unity to prevent difference and disagreement from spiralling out of control. This chapter concludes that liberal democracy must be supported by a sense of unity that is oriented toward the preservation of liberal democracy and that does not unduly suppress difference and disagreement.

This chapter explores what apocalyptic thought shares with ideal theory, with a focus on our grounds for believing any proposed account of the ideal society. As John Rawls understands it, ideal theory is based on plausible reasons that others should accept, whereas religious belief is unsuitable to collectively guide society. Some, though, have questioned Rawls’s confidence in ideal theory, and this chapter draws on social science research to place these criticisms on firmer ground. It outlines an argument for why future uncertainty makes it impossible to offer a plausible defense of ideal theory. As a result, ideal theory, like religious belief, ultimately must rest on faith. Though ideal theory must abandon aspirations of outlining an ideal to collectively guide society, there is still a potential role for it as a source of utopian hope.

This chapter introduces the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin. It outlines the various components of his liberal individualistic theory and how this conceptualises group phenomena including religion. It notes how English law is largely based on this model, highlights its deficiencies as regards the regulation of religion, and traces its declining influence from 2016. It argues that liberal individualism is a suboptimal model on which to base the law of religion because it takes insufficient account of groups and civil society.