PAPM 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter Reading: Public Reason, Fundamental Justice, Liberal Democracy

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Public Affairs and Policy Management
• Course: PAPM 1000
• Professor: Marc Andre Gagnon

Document Summary

The idea of public reason john rawls. Not all reasons are public reasons as there are the nonpublic reasons of churches and universities and of many other associations in civil society. Public reason is characteristic of a democratic people: it is the reason of its citizens, of those sharing the status of equal citizenship. The subject of their reason is the good of the public: what the political conception of justice requires of society"s basic structure of institutions, and of the purposes and ends they are to serve. In a democratic society public reason is the reason of equal citizens who, as a collective body, exercise final political and coercive power over one another in enacting laws and in amending their constitution. The first point is that the limits imposed by public reason do not apply to all political questions but only to those involving what we may call constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice.