| This dissertation asks whether a so-called "political liberalism" is in fact a good solution to the problem of moral diversity. Beginning in the mid 1980s, Rawls started proposing increasingly far-reaching amendments to his earlier Theory of Justice. The reason, Rawls argued, was that he had failed to explain how a "reasonable non-liberal" could affirm the moral basis and justification of a liberal political order. Developing a good answer to that problem led him to recast some of the most fundamental ideas in the liberal canon, from our self-understanding as citizens to the language we employ in politics.;My dissertation asks three questions: First, what was it about earlier liberal accounts that made a political liberalism seem necessary? Second, given the tremendous variety in beliefs, values, and ways of life characteristic of modern liberal states, what kind of liberals should we be, and what kind of political institutions should we defend? Third, how might contemporary political liberalisms be amended or improved?;In each case, the answers are not what we expect. The liberalisms of Locke, Kant, and Mill are much more "political," I argue, than is commonly recognized. The liberalism of Rawls and Larmore, for all of its innovations, remains much too committed to a single, homogenizing set of political institutions. And the liberalism of Isaiah Berlin, finally, is neither so antithetical nor hostile to Rawls' project as most critics have assumed. On the contrary, Berlin's value pluralism sheds new light on the ways a political liberalism might be institutionalized in practice. |
