ABSTRACT
Liberalism requires that political arrangements be justifiable to those who are subject to them. Some critics argue that any view committed to this Justifiability Condition is caught in a dilemma, which arises when we ask whether the condition applies to itself. Paul Weithman focuses on Stephen Wall’s version of the argument, which depends upon what the latter takes the aim of public justification to be: to provide a particular justificatory constituency with a justification acceptable to them under virtually full information about their moral beliefs. The author contends that Rawls’s political liberalism has a different purpose and that its purpose refers to a different justificatory constituency than the one Wall identifies. Seeing the purpose and the constituency, we can see that Rawlsian political liberalism avoids the dilemma that self-application is thought to imply. The aim of Rawlsian political liberalism is to identify principles citizens have to honor to relate to one another as free equals. When precisely stated, its aim seems to be rather rarified. Its rarefication raises the question of why the aim is worth pursuing. Weithman’s answer shows that Rawlsian political liberalism is the most defensible form of liberalism because of its commitment to a form of reciprocity that is needed for our politics.
