Conflict or consensus: The discussion around Public Reason and its limits

Abstract

This text aims to be an essay from a theoretical perspective on John Rawls' concept of Public Reason in Political Liberalism. It is proposed that this limits the very capacities of democracy, previously establishing certain considerations of reasonableness, disregarding the conflictual component inherent to the political. Based on the agonistic and conflictual hypotheses of contemporary political theory, we propose a revision through Rawls' thought to stress it from the latter in order to elaborate possible paths that allow us to understand the constant updating of the notion of the good in society, while observing the difficulties of enabling a good representation in previously delimited frames of reasonableness. We conclude that an agonist vision of conflict, which has already been highlighted by representatives of this thought, can bring back the necessary reflection, rescuing the contributions of Rawlsian theory, while at the same time taking into account its limits.