John Rawls: anti-foundationalism, deliberative democracy, and cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This paper aims at illustrating how from the works of John Rawls we can see emerging a viable anti-foundationalist cosmopolitan and deliberative democratic approach to liberalism. I shall argue that, despite what some of his critics believe, Rawls’s liberal theory of justice (1) is not concerned with foundational preoccupations (e.g. Michael Sandel); (2) does not ignore concrete processes of collective deliberation over matters of public interests (e.g. Amy Guttman, Dennis Thomson, Brian Barry); (3) nor does it endorse rigid limits to the scope of democratic deliberation (e.g. Jeremy Waldron, John Gray, Richard Bellamy). Yet I shall claim, following Andrew Kuper, that (4) there is a real risk of infringing individuals’ primary moral significance in trying to stretch too much the limits of liberal toleration in order to accommodate political liberalism with multiculturalism in the international sphere.