Modesty and excess in the philosophical critique of the idea of public justification

Abstract

This essay is the outcome of personal reflection on procedural rationality in politics. Finding a rational and universal principle behind a liberal doctrine has been the ambition of many philosophers who have believed in the Enlightenment project. The main attempts have been made by theorists in the utilitarian tradition and the social contract tradition. The natural rights tradition also claimed rational and universalizable grounds for its view of liberal government. Kant has been the most ambitious political philosopher in the natural rights and social contract traditions. It is Kant's legacy that animates contemporary justificatory projects of such liberals as Rawls and Habermas. [From Prologue]