ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the relation between the ideas of public reason and ideal theory. When citizens give public reason justifications for their political proposals, then, they necessarily are committed to the acceptability of those justifications for other reasonable citizens—indeed, this simply is what satisfying the criterion of reciprocity involves. In aiming at citizens’ acceptance and thereby compliance, public reason justifications for proposals must take into account what the basic structure of citizens’ society would look like should it be revised to include those proposals, including with those citizens’ acceptance and compliance. Envisioning how one’s society might become a “property-owning democracy” that satisfies the principles of justice as fairness, for instance, would be an exercise in full ideal theorizing. The chapter suggests that the standard account can rebut a criticism of the idea of public reason advanced by David Enoch, namely that it too severely separates the aims of political philosophy from those of political activism.