ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that further justification is required before empirical claims of this kind can be shown to have the kinds of educational implications that the writers featured there seem to assume. It examines two such strategies, the experiential approach and the non-realist approach and demonstrates that neither could be regarded as suitable even from the liberal political perspective that inspired them. The book demonstrates that the justificatory mechanisms of John Rawls’ political liberalism are in fact incapable of sustaining the kind of commitment to a common civic education that he and other liberals regard as one of its primary educational implications. It offers detailed arguments to the effect that the kind of educational commitment to the development of autonomy favoured by Joseph Raz appears to require a prior commitment to values other than that of autonomy itself.
