Abstract:
Differences in religious, cultural and moral beliefs and practices have been regarded since the Reformation as threats to political unity. To avoid conflict between the sources of such differences, which are rival conceptions of the good, political theory and practice since the Enlightenment has been dominated by a stream of liberalism known as ‘procedural liberalism’. The best known version of procedural liberalism is that of John Rawls, which seeks to protect democratic unity from the supposed divisive effect of differences by advocating citizens ‘bracket’ those differences in debating public policy.We can cling to them in private but we must restrict the terms of public debate to those that can be accepted by all, terms that he Rawls sees as implicit in the institutions of American democratic culture, for example, free elections and an independent judiciary.
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