Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that the idea of public reason arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concerning the recognition of intractable disagreement, and the idea of a sovereign that expresses the will of all. It provides selections from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant that emphasize their contributions to the history of public reason in political philosophy and show its centrality to their political thought. Hobbes is the pivotal figure in the history of public reason, for he was the first to analyze the crux of the modern political problem in terms of the sustained disagreement that results when individuals apply their reasoning and judgment to the problems of social life. The state forms a public will, with a public reason, that articulates the reason and will of all, qua members of a political community.