John Rawls Political Liberalism Analysis

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At the turn of the 20th century liberal democratic systems became a popular stronghold in the western world. Principally it was believed that such a system would fail, however a century later and liberal democracies arguably continue to grow. Professor and author John Rawls postulated in his book, Political Liberalism, a way to establish a set of foundations for social unity in such a democracy. He created and established various steps and thought processes that, in theory, would allow for an impartial liberal democratic system. Rawls defines and implements the idea of an overlapping consensus in conjunction with public reason to provide this impartial political domain. This system, if effectively used, can create a neutral liberal democratic …show more content…
The Proviso consists of public argumentation for a policy based solely on their comprehensive doctrine. That is to say that the comprehensive doctrine is allowed to be introduced during an argument but only if “we give public reasons to support the principles and policies our comprehensive doctrine is said to support” (Rawls 452), where a public logic and understanding upheld by everyone can be understood from the argument one is trying to make. A popular example of the Proviso in effect is Martin Luther King Jr., who often quoted the bible and religious figures to demostrate his point during the Civil Rights Movement. He appealed to people’s moral values and applied his religious views to demostrate that segregation is not only wrong according to his own comprehensive doctrine but to those of others as well. Particularly those that held their own comprehensive doctrine in the same bible and the U.S. Constitution itself. The proviso could be viewed as being biased towards a comprehensive doctrine because someone would be using their own comprehensive doctrine to appeal to the rest, however, this is not the case. If someone uses the proviso and thus their own comprehensive doctrine for an argument then the arguments comprehensive doctrine must be based in basic public values and principles, such as liberty and equality, that the general public agree on. The application of using one’s own …show more content…
He uses the overlapping consensus and public reason to identify and establish a set of norms and practices that allows for the growth of a democracy. The use of overlapping consensus is neutral toward different comprehensive doctrines because of the way it is set up, where the reasons behind an agreement of a principle are inconsequential and only the principle itself matters. This leads to public reason where a forum is created among reasonable citizens to discuss and debate varying policies and laws to be applied to the democracy. Public reason calls for its practitioners to argue using facts and general knowledge instead of their comprehensive doctrines. This eliminates biases by making people use arguments based on logic instead of religious or emotional points of views, thus allowing for impartiality when deciding on a policy or law. Even Rawls’ Proviso, which allows for comprehensive doctrines to be used in an argument, are neutral because it appeals to generally acknowledged public values. These theories, if used properly, allow for the establishment and continuation of

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