A Society Regulated By A Public Sense

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.

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

Intuitionism Is Not Constructive, Perfectionism Is Unacceptable.

Any Comprehensive Doctrine, Religious Or Secular, Can Be Introduced Into Any Political Argument At Any Time, But I Argue That People Who Do This Should Also Present What They Believe Are Public Reasons For Their Argument. So Their Opinion Is No Longer Just That Of One Particular Party, But An Opinion That All Members Of A Society Might Reasonably Agree To, Not Necessarily That They Would Agree To. What's Important Is That People Give The Kinds Of Reasons That Can Be Understood And Appraised Apart From Their Particular Comprehensive Doctrines.

A Comprehensive Doctrine, Either Religious Or Secular, Aspires To Cover All Of Life. I Mean, If It's A Religious Doctrine, It Talks About Our Relation To God And The Universe; It Has An Ordering Of All The Virtues, Not Only Political Virtues But Moral Virtues As Well, Including The Virtues Of Private Life, And The Rest. Now We May Feel Philosophically That It Doesn't Really Cover Everything, But It Aims To Cover Everything, And A Secular Doctrine Does Also.