Newey and Rawls in Dialogue: The Limits of Justification and The Conditions of Toleration

Anno LIV, n. 225-226, maggio-dicembre 2019

In this essay I analyse Glen Newey’s reading of John Rawls liberal theory of justice. Newey specifically focuses on strategic differences between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, and he acutely highlights some tensions that are intrinsic to Rawls’s justificatory framework. I share many of Newey’s concerns, primarily regarding the necessity to take into account the motivational constraints when outlining a theory of liberal justice. Against Newey, however, in the second section of the paper I clarify some aspect of Rawls’s (hidden) epistemology, in order to make sense of the role that the virtue of toleration plays within his paradigm.