Overlapping Consensus, Public Reason, and the Possibility of Exclusion

John Rawls's idea of an overlapping consensus, and his corresponding ideal of public reason, lay the ground work for the modern debate on political identity and stability in democratic states.Many authors over the years have critiqued Rawls for being exclusionary in some sense.I argue that Rawls is capable of responding to many of these critiques, but ultimately, his ideal of public reason as a rigid method for creating lasting social unity is too problematic to be effective.Rawls's idea of an overlapping consensus must be divorced from his account of public reason.Using the work of Charles Taylor and Jocelyn Maclure on secularism, I contend that the best way to achieve a lasting overlapping consensus is through the fostering of a public moral psychology that strives to find political identity within the existing pluralism rather than in spite of it.