롤즈의 정치적 정의관에 있어서 중첩적 합의와 공적 이성

Abstract

This article aims at critical examination of status and roll of an overlapping consensus and public reason in Rawls's political conception of justice. The point is as following: 1. Rawls belives that his political conception of justice can serve as the focus of an overlapping consensus and thus enhance stability. Thus, I critically surveyed the grounds of this belief in this article; and his belief rests on the central concepts of the primacy of the right, the political conception of the person, political constructivism, distinction between public identity and moral identity, and principle of tolerance. 2. Rawls argues that justice as fairness can form the basis of an overlapping consensus and public reason; and the overlapping consensus yields political and democratic legitimacy as well as stability. On the contrary, Habermas asserts that the overlapping consensus is merely an index of the utility, and no longer a confirmation of the correctness of the political conception of justice. So Habermas declares that the overlapping consensus would lose an epistemic meaning essential to the theory of justice itself. On my view, the generation of genuine overlapping consensus is an probable index of rightness or validity of the political conception of justice, untill the concepton shows it to be false. But because the step of overlapping consensus would lack various and dynamic discourse in true democratic forum, I can`t agree with his claim that the overlapping consensus yields democratic legitimacy. 3. And in his view, the content of public reason is given by this political conception of justice. Only in certain situation, reasons given explicitely in terms of comprehensive doctrines are to be introduced into public reason. This is just wide conception of public reason. But this view might result in the denial of the characteristics of political liberalism. Rawls places the stringent restrictions on discourse in the public forum. Thus, the political conception is invoked to remove certain questions from the political agenda once and for all. Therefore, the political conception does not include various and dynamic nature of democratic politics. On this score, I endorse Habermas`s participant-centered conception of public justification.