Abstract

My aim in this article is to investigate the epistemic dimension of reasonableness. In the last decades, the concept of reasonableness has been deeply analysed, and yet, I maintain that a strictly epistemic analysis of reasonableness is still lacking. The goal of this article is to clarify which epistemic features characterize reasonableness as one of the fundamental virtues in the political domain. In order to justify political liberalism through a public justification that averts the risk of falling into a dilemma, it is important to establish in advance which are the epistemic constraints that should be respected. My proposal is that a moderate approach in moral epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us – as moral agents constrained by the limit of our rationality – for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices