The Fault Of The Utilitarian

I Live In A Country Where 90 Or 95 Percent Of The People Profess To Be Religious, And Maybe They Are Religious, Though My Experience Of Religion Suggests That Very Few People Are Actually Religious In More Than A Conventional Sense.

The Idea Of Public Reason Isn't About The Right Answers To All These Questions, But About The Kinds Of Reasons That They Ought To Be Answered By.

Now The Good Of Political Life Is A Great Political Good. It Is Not A Secular Good Specified By A Comprehensive Doctrine Like Those Of Kant Or Mill. You Could Characterize This Political Good As The Good Of Free And Equal Citizens Recognizing The Duty Of Civility To One Another: The Duty To Give Citizens Public Reasons For One's Political Actions.

First Of All, Principles Should Be General. That Is, It Must Be Possible To Formulate Them Without Use Of What Would Be Intuitively Recognized As Proper Names, Or Rigged Definite Descriptions.

An Intuitionist Conception Of Justice Is, One Might Say, But Half A Conception.