政治爭議與公共理性自由主義的方案

Political Disagreements and a Proposal of Public Reason Liberalism

本文提出一個公共理性自由主義的觀念，是基於羅爾斯的政治自由主義所提出的一些修改，包括公共理性的內容、其理論地位以及方法論面的一些想法：一、公共理性所規範的政治議題是廣的；二、公共理性是一般政治道德原則，不只是政治價值或理想，是實質的，不只是程序規範；三、公共理性的內容包括公共善以及政治終極目的；四、公共理性的觀念與適用假設了社會有一定的自由民主的政治文化：五、公共理性自由主義在方法論上放棄羅爾斯抽離的原初處境，公共理性的方法是脈絡化、植根在一個自由民主社會中的政治文化及公共認同的傳統文化中的信念。

This paper proposes an idea of public reason liberalism, based on some revisions of Rawls’s political liberalism, which will include the following: 1) the scope of public reason is broader than Rawls’s; 2) the idea of public reason is to function as a general principle of liberal political morality, not just as a political value or a political ideal, not just providing procedural regulations but also being substantive; 3) the content of public reason includes public goods and the political final end; and 4) the idea of public reason applies only for a society with a liberal democratic culture; 5) regarding the methodology of theorizing, public reason liberalism rejects Rawls’s idea of original position, and instead adopts as its method the principle of public reason, which is contextualized and embedded in the political culture and publicly accepted traditional heritages of a liberal democracy.