Abstract

Gerald Gaus has written a stimulating and thoroughly argued book. His main aim is to show that the kind of liberalism that is underwritten by the ideal of public reasoning and justification is compatible with the extensive facts of disagreement that we see in contemporary societies regarding justice and politics. Gaus argues that the liberalisms of Rawls and Larmore suffer from the fact that they rely on something quite close to actual consensus on political principles in society. They either end up publicly justifying nothing at all or they end up justifying illiberal conclusions. This is a common complaint and the attempt to show that public justification liberalism can be given an account that avoids these problems is a worthy one.