The limits of John Rawls’s pluralism

Chantal Mouffe
Additional contact information
Chantal Mouffe: University of Westminster, UK, mouffec@wmin.ac.uk

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2005, vol. 4, issue 2, 221-231

Abstract: This article brings to the fore the shortcomings of the type of pluralism advocated by John Rawls both in Political Liberalism and in The Law of Peoples . It is argued that by postulating that the discrimination between what is and what is not legitimate is dictated by rationality and morality, Rawls’s approach forecloses recognition of the properly political moment. Exclusions are presented as being justified by reason and the antagonistic dimension of politics is not acknowledged. This article also takes issue with Rawls’s ‘realistic utopia’, asserting that despite the reference to ‘decent’ hierarchical societies, it amounts to a universalization of the western liberal model.

Keywords: simple pluralism; reasonable pluralism; negation of the political; antagonism; agonism; public reason (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X05052539 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:4:y:2005:i:2:p:221-231

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X05052539

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics, Philosophy & Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().