ABSTRACT
According to the Rawlsian idea of public reason, government officials and even ordinary citizens should decide fundamental matters of law and policy on the basis of reasons that are in principle acceptable to others in light of some reasonable political conception of justice along with other publicly accessible standards of evaluation. One requirement of public reason is restraint, that is, the willingness to refrain from supporting such laws and policies solely on the basis of nonpublic reason. This chapter begins by revisiting Rawls’s remarks on respect and self-respect, mutually reinforcing moral attitudes essential to a well-ordered society. The author argues, first, that the restraint requirement is based primarily on an underlying duty of mutual respect. Second, an ideal of civic friendship plays a complementary but secondary role in grounding the main requirements of public reason. This is because we are civic friends not just as fellow citizens but also through our participation in the smaller groups, associations, and affiliations of civil society, which are part of the social bases of self-respect.
