Public Reason and Precluded Reasons

Abstract

Public reason seems an odd idea. Re-fraining from telling the whole truth—deliberately ignoring reasons that are relevant to reaching a well-grounded decision—seems more like a vice than a virtue. It is like swearing to tell the partial truth, and nothing but the partial truth. Yet for Rawls, something like this oath is a duty of all citizens—a “moral ... duty of civility.”