Original scientific paper

Having a Reason and Distributive Justice in The Order of Public Reason

Elvio Baccarini ; University of Rijeka

Abstract

In the fi rst part of the paper, Gaus’ ground for the ideal of persons as free and equal is described. Doubts are raised about the appropriateness of the use of his account of this ideal as endogenous to our moral practice. The worries are related to the use of the concept of having a reason that Gaus makes in his book, as well as to the aptness of his account of our moral practice from the viewpoint of our moral phenomenology. Some doubts are raised in relation to the pertinence of Gaus’s concept of having a reason from the perspective of the motivation of the public reason project. In the second part of the paper, a summary is offered of Gaus’s model of public justification and some of its consequences are discussed. The primary intention here is to show that, contrary to Gaus’s view, egalitarian liberalism, and not classical liberalism, is the most appropriate result of such a model of justification.

Keywords

Gaus; having a reason; justifi cation; liberalism; public reason

Hrčak ID:

117659

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/117659

Publication date:

7.3.2014.

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