This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and moral--coexist within the (...) framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics (...) not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading. (shrink)

After the Maastricht and Amsterdam Conferences the European Union can no longer be conceived as an intergovernmental arrangement: It is a polity founded on an “overlapping consensus.” Consequently, to reconstruct the relations between national and Community law, legal monism does not work, neither in its statist, nor in its international version: Legal pluralism is needed, not in a sociological‐descriptive sense, but as a normative criterion by which a judge (and a citizen) must refer to many and various sources of law (...) to settle a dispute. Legal pluralism, however, can operate only under a rule of recognition: a common normative framework within which a reasonable number of sources can be handled. What Europe needs, therefore, is an interactionist constitution, which should emerge through an “open‐ended”discursive process. (shrink)

Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was much impressed by the essay, says, " He [Paine] told me the essay to which I alluded was the first thing he had ever published in ...