Liberalism Beyond Justice

by Tomasi, John

• ISBN13: 9780691049687
• ISBN10: 0691049688
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Liberal regimes shape the ethical outlooks of their citizens, relentlessly influencing their most personal commitments over time. On such issues as abortion, homosexuality, and women's rights, many religious Americans feel pulled between their personal beliefs and their need, as good citizens, to support individual rights. These circumstances, argues John Tomasi, raise new and pressing questions: Is liberalism as successful as it hopes in avoiding the imposition of a single ethical doctrine on all of society? If liberals cannot prevent the spillover of public values into nonpublic domains, how accommodating of diversity can a liberal regime actually be? To what degree can a liberal society be a home even to the people whose viewpoints it was formally designed to include?To meet these questions, Tomasi argues, the boundaries of political liberal theorizing must be redrawn. Political liberalism involves more than an account of justified state coercion and the norms of democratic deliberation. Political liberalism also implies a distinctive account of nonpublic social life, one in which successful human lives must be built across the interface of personal and public values. Tomasi proposes a theory of liberal nonpublic life. To live up to their own deepest commitments to toleration and mutual respect, liberals, he insists, must now rethink their conceptions of social justice, civic education, and citizenship itself. The result is a fresh look at liberal theory and what it means for a liberal society to function well.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xiii
Political Liberalism	3	(14)
Motivational Foundations	3	(7)
Neutrality of Effect	10	(2)
The Ethical Culture of Political Liberalism	12	(5)
The Boundaries of Political Theory	17	(23)
Alphabet People	17	(3)
Two Kinds of Cultural Defeaters	20	(6)
Free Erosion	26	(7)
Liberal Theory and the Doctrine of Double Effect	33	(7)
Liberal Nonpublic Reason	40	(17)
The Limits of Justice	40	(2)
The Personal Uses of Public Reason	42	(3)
The Machinery of Nonpublic Virture	45	(10)
Answering the Uneasy Citizens	55	(2)
Citizenship: Justice or Well-Being?	57	(16)
The Derivative Ideal	57	(4)
From Civic Humanism to Political Liberalism	61	(6)
A Different Approach	67	(6)
The Formative Project	73	(35)
The Substantive Ideal	73	(6)
Moral Development and Liberal Individuation	79	(6)
Rethinking Civic Education	85	(6)
Back to Tennessee	91	(9)
The Tax-Flattening Principle	100	(5)
Mind the Gap	105	(3)
High Liberalism	108	(18)
The Intuitive Argument	108	(2)
Feudalism or Medievalism?	110	(4)
The Idea of Society	114	(2)
The Original Position and Cost-Free Guarantees	116	(8)
Liberalism beyond Justice	124	(2)
Conclusion	126	(3)
Notes	129	(22)
Bibliography	151	(10)
Index	161