ABSTRACT

Aurélia Bardon questions the idea that political liberalism is, or can be, entirely freestanding. Political liberalism, she argues, has an epistemological foundation, which is bound to be controversial. Indeed, political liberalism, with its notions of reasonableness, relies on a distinction between the domain of the controversial—i.e., issues that can be the object of reasonable disagreement—and the domain of the non-controversial—i.e., issues that cannot be the object of reasonable disagreement. The chapter argues that although this distinction itself is controversial, this does not mean that there is no difference between political liberalism on the one hand and comprehensive liberalism on the other; there is a third way between absence of foundation and comprehensive liberalism. It is in order to explain this third alternative that Bardon appeals to the notion of compromise. The public epistemology of liberalism is too controversial for consensus, but it can be the object of a compromise, she argues. The advantage of public epistemology is exactly that it can be an object of compromise and that “it allows for a gap between public epistemology and the actual beliefs of citizens.”