Reconstructing Public Reason

Extract

Reconstructing Public Reason. By Eric MacGilvray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 266p. $45.00.

Eric MacGilvray imaginatively puts philosophical pragmatism to work on the problems of “political justification”—that is, questions about “how we decide, or ought to decide, which ends to pursue as a political community” (p. 2). Above all, he seeks to make pragmatism a part of the engagement of contemporary political theorists with a familiar, vexing question posed in its most well known form by John Rawls: “How is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?” (Political Liberalism 1993, p. 4).