Self-respect and public reason

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (6):677-696 (2017)
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Abstract

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics, I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement.

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Citations of this work

Real self-respect and its social bases.Christian Schemmel - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (5):628-651.

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References found in this work

Justice as fairness: a restatement.John Rawls (ed.) - 2001 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
Political Liberalism.J. Rawls - 1995 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 57 (3):596-598.
Liberalism Without Perfection.Jonathan Quong - 2010 - Oxford University Press.

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