What constitution could all citizens reasonably be expected to endorse? Reasonable citizens want to live in a society in which they can cooperate with their fellow citizens on terms that are acceptable to all.
They are willing to propose and abide by mutually acceptable rules, given the assurance that others will also do so. They will also honor these rules, even when this means sacrificing their own particular interests. Reasonable citizens want, in short, to belong to a society where political power is legitimately used.
Each reasonable citizen has her own view about God and life, right and wrong, good and bad. Each has, that is, what Rawls calls her own comprehensive doctrine. Yet because reasonable citizens are reasonable, they are unwilling to impose their own comprehensive doctrines on others who are also willing to search for mutually agreeable rules.
Though each citizen may believe that she knows the truth about the best way to live, none is willing to force other reasonable citizens to live according to her beliefs, even if she belongs to a majority that has the power to enforce those beliefs on everyone.
After all, Rawls says mentioning the Inquisition, oppressive use of state power will be necessary to unite a society around any comprehensive doctrine, including the comprehensive liberalism of Kant or Mill PL , One reason that reasonable citizens are so tolerant, Rawls says, is that they accept a certain explanation for the diversity of worldviews in their society.
Reasonable citizens accept the burdens of judgment. The deepest questions of religion, philosophy, and morality are very difficult to think through. Even conscientious people will answer these questions in different ways, because of their particular life experiences their upbringing, class, occupation, and so on. Reasonable citizens understand that these deep issues are ones on which people of good will can disagree, and so will be unwilling to impose their own worldviews on those who have reached conclusions different than their own.
Humans have at least the capacity for genuine toleration and mutual respect. This human capacity raises the hope that the diversity of worldviews in a democratic society may represent not merely pluralism, but reasonable pluralism. Rawls hopes, that is, that the religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines that citizens accept will themselves endorse toleration and accept the essentials of a democratic regime.
In the religious sphere, for example, a reasonable pluralism might contain a reasonable Catholicism, a reasonable interpretation of Islam, a reasonable atheism, and so on. Being reasonable, none of these doctrines will advocate the use of coercive political power to impose religious conformity on citizens with different beliefs. The possibility of reasonable pluralism softens but does not solve the challenge of legitimacy: how one law can legitimately be imposed on diverse citizens.
For even in a society of reasonable pluralism, it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to endorse, say, a reasonable Catholicism as the basis for a constitutional settlement. Reasonable Muslims or atheists cannot be expected to endorse Catholicism as setting the basic terms for social life.
Nor, of course, can Catholics be expected to accept Islam or atheism as the fundamental basis of law. No comprehensive doctrine can be accepted by all reasonable citizens, and so no comprehensive doctrine can serve as the basis for the legitimate use of coercive political power. For Rawls, there is only one source of fundamental ideas that can serve as a focal point for all reasonable citizens of a liberal society.
These fundamental ideas from the public political culture can be crafted into a shared political conception of justice. A political conception is not derived from any particular comprehensive doctrine, nor is it a compromise among the worldviews that happen to exist in society at the moment.
Rather, a political conception is freestanding: its content is set out independently of the comprehensive doctrines that citizens affirm. Reasonable citizens, who want to cooperate with one another on mutually acceptable terms, will see that a freestanding political conception generated from ideas in the public political culture is the only basis for cooperation that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse.
The use of coercive political power guided by the principles of a political conception of justice will therefore be legitimate. The three most fundamental ideas that Rawls finds in the public political culture of a democratic society are that citizens are free and equal , and that society should be a fair system of cooperation.
All liberal political conceptions of justice will therefore be centered on interpretations of these three fundamental ideas. Since all the members of this family interpret the same three fundamental ideas, however, all liberal political conceptions of justice will share certain basic features:.
These abstract features must, Rawls says, be realized in certain kinds of institutions. He mentions several demands that all liberal conceptions of justice will make on institutions: a decent distribution of income and wealth; fair opportunities for all citizens, especially in education and training; government as the employer of last resort; basic health care for all citizens; and public financing of elections.
The use of political power in a liberal society will be legitimate if it is employed in accordance with the principles of any liberal conception of justice. Libertarianism does not assure all citizens sufficient means to make use of their basic liberties, and it permits excessive inequalities of wealth and power. Political power is used legitimately in a liberal society when it is used in accordance with a political conception of justice.
Yet the challenge of stability remains. Legitimacy means that the law may be enforced, but Rawls still needs to explain why citizens are willing to abide by it. If citizens do not believe that they have reasons to abide by the law from within their own perspectives, social order may disintegrate.
Rawls places his hopes for social stability on an overlapping consensus. In an overlapping consensus, citizens all endorse a core set of laws for different reasons.
In Rawlsian terms, each citizen supports a political conception of justice for reasons internal to her own comprehensive doctrine. Recall that the content of a political conception is freestanding: it is specified without reference to any comprehensive doctrine.
Here is an example. The quotation below from the second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church shows how a particular comprehensive doctrine Catholicism affirms one component of a liberal political conception a familiar individual liberty for its own reasons:. Catholic doctrine here supports the liberal right to religious freedom for reasons internal to Catholicism. A reasonable Islamic doctrine, and a reasonable atheistic doctrine, might also affirm this same right to religious freedom—not, of course, for the same reasons as Catholic doctrine, but each for its own reasons.
In an overlapping consensus, all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will support the right to religious freedom, each for its own reasons. Indeed, in an overlapping consensus, all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will endorse all of a political conception of justice, each from within its own point of view. Some citizens may see liberalism as derived directly from their deepest beliefs, as in the quotation from Vatican II above. Others may accept a liberal conception as attractive in itself, but mostly separate from their other concerns.
What is crucial is that all citizens view the values of a political conception of justice as very great values, which normally outweigh their other values should these conflict on some particular issue. Rawls sees an overlapping consensus as the most desirable form of stability in a free society.
Stability in an overlapping consensus is better than a mere balance of power a modus vivendi among citizens who hold contending worldviews.
After all, power often shifts, and when it does the stability of a modus vivendi may be lost. In an overlapping consensus, citizens affirm a political conception wholeheartedly from within their own perspectives, and so will continue to do so even if their group gains or loses political power.
Rawls says that an overlapping consensus is stable for the right reasons : each citizen affirms a moral doctrine a liberal conception of justice for moral reasons as given by their comprehensive doctrine. Rawls does not assert that an overlapping consensus is achievable in every liberal society. Nor does he say that, once established, an overlapping consensus must forever endure. Citizens in some societies may have too little in common to converge on a liberal political conception of justice.
In other societies, unreasonable doctrines may spread until they overwhelm liberal institutions. Rawls does hold that history shows both convergence in beliefs and deepening trust among citizens in many liberal societies. This gives hope that an overlapping consensus is at least possible.
Where an overlapping consensus is possible, Rawls believes, it is the best support for social stability that a free society can achieve. Having seen how Rawls answers the challenges of legitimacy and stability, we can return to legitimacy and its criterion of reciprocity: citizens must reasonably believe that all citizens can reasonably accept the enforcement of a particular set of basic laws.
It is unreasonable for citizens to attempt to impose what they see as the whole truth on others—political power must be used in ways that all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse. With his doctrine of public reason , Rawls extends this requirement of reciprocity to apply directly to how citizens explain their political decisions to one another.
In essence, public reason requires citizens to be able to justify their political decisions to one another using publicly available values and standards. This is because not all members of society can reasonably be expected to accept Leviticus as stating an authoritative set of political values, nor can a religious premonition be a common standard for evaluating public policy.
These values and standards are not public. The public values that citizens must be able to appeal to are the values of a political conception of justice: those related to the freedom and equality of citizens, and society as a fair system of cooperation over time.
Among such public values are the freedom of religious practice, the political equality of women and of racial minorities, the efficiency of the economy, the preservation of a healthy environment, and the stability of the family which helps the orderly reproduction of society from one generation to the next. Nonpublic values include values internal to associations like churches e. Similarly, citizens should be able to justify their political decisions by public standards of inquiry.
Public standards are principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that all citizens can reasonably endorse. So citizens should not justify their political decisions by appeal to divination, or to complex and disputed economic or psychological theories. Rather, publicly acceptable standards are those that rely on common sense, on facts generally known, and on the conclusions of science that are well established and not controversial.
The duty to abide by public reason applies when the most fundamental political issues are at stake: issues such as who has the right to vote, which religions are to be tolerated, who will be eligible to own property, and what are suspect classifications for discrimination in hiring decisions.
These are what Rawls calls constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Public reason applies more weakly, if at all, to less momentous political questions, for example to most laws that set rates of taxation, or that put aside public money to maintain national parks.
Citizens have a duty to constrain their decisions by public reason only when they engage in certain political activities , usually when exercising powers of public office. So judges are bound by public reason when they issue their rulings, legislators should abide by public reason when speaking and voting in the legislature, and the executive and candidates for high office should respect public reason in their public pronouncements. Significantly, Rawls says that voters should also heed public reason when they vote.
All of these activities are or support exercises of political power, so by the liberal principle of legitimacy all must be justifiable in terms that all citizens might reasonably endorse. However, citizens are not bound by any duties of public reason when they engage in other activities, for example when they worship in church, perform on stage, pursue scientific research, send letters to the editor, or talk politics around the dinner table.
All citizens always have their full legal rights to free expression, and overstepping the bounds of public reason is never in itself a crime. Rather, citizens have a moral duty of mutual respect and civic friendship not to justify their political decisions on fundamental issues by appeal to partisan values or controversial standards of reasoning that cannot be publicly redeemed.
In an important proviso, Rawls adds that citizens may speak the language of their controversial comprehensive doctrines—even as public officials, and even on the most fundamental issues—so long as it can be shown that these assertions appeal to public values. So President Lincoln, for instance, could legitimately use Biblical imagery to condemn the evil of slavery, since his condemnations appealed to the public values of freedom and equality. As a member of the family of liberal political conceptions of justice it provides a framework for the legitimate use of political power.
Yet legitimacy is only the minimal standard of moral acceptability; a political order can be legitimate without being just. Justice sets the maximal standard: the arrangement of social institutions that is morally best. Rawls constructs justice as fairness around specific interpretations of the ideas that citizens are free and equal, and that society should be fair. He sees it as resolving the tensions between the ideas of freedom and equality, which have been highlighted both by the socialist critique of liberal democracy and by the conservative critique of the modern welfare state.
Rawls also argues that justice as fairness is superior to the dominant tradition in modern political thought: utilitarianism.
Significant political and economic inequalities are often associated with inequalities of social status that encourage those of lower status to be viewed both by themselves and by others as inferior.
This may arouse widespread attitudes of deference and servility, on one side, and a will to dominate and arrogance on the other. These effects of social and economic inequalities can be serious evils and the attitudes they engender great vices Fixed status ascribed by birth, or by gender or race, is particularly odious JF , Justice as fairness aims to describe a just arrangement of the major political and social institutions of a liberal society: the political constitution, the legal system, the economy, the family, and so on.
The basic structure is the location of justice because these institutions distribute the main benefits and burdens of social life: who will receive social recognition, who will have which basic rights, who will have opportunities to get what kind of work, what the distribution of income and wealth will be, and so on.
And since the rules of any basic structure will be coercively enforced, often with serious penalties, the demand to justify the imposition of any particular set of rules intensifies further. Rawls makes the simplifying assumption that the society is self-sufficient and closed, so that citizens enter it only by birth and leave it only at death.
He also confines his attention mainly to ideal theory, putting aside non-ideal theory such as on criminal justice. Social cooperation in some form is necessary for citizens to be able to lead decent lives. Yet citizens are not indifferent to how the benefits and burdens of cooperation will be divided amongst them. The distinctive interpretation that Rawls gives to these concepts can be seen as combining a negative and a positive thesis.
Since these features of persons are morally arbitrary in this sense, citizens are not entitled to more of the benefits of social cooperation simply because of them. For example, the fact that a citizen was born rich, white, and male provides no reason in itself for this citizen to be favored by social institutions. This negative thesis does not say how social goods should be distributed; it merely clears the decks.
The guiding idea is that since citizens are fundamentally equal, reasoning about justice should begin from a presumption that cooperatively-produced goods should be equally divided. Justice then requires that any inequalities must benefit all citizens, and particularly must benefit those who will have the least. These guiding ideas of justice as fairness are given institutional form by its two principles of justice:.
First Principle : Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all;. Second Principle : Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:.
The first principle of equal basic liberties is to be embodied in the political constitution, while the second principle applies primarily to laws governing economic institutions. Fulfillment of the first principle takes priority over fulfillment of the second principle, and within the second principle fair equality of opportunity takes priority over the difference principle.
The first principle affirms that all citizens should have the familiar basic rights and liberties: liberty of conscience and freedom of association, freedom of speech and liberty of the person, the rights to vote, to hold public office, to be treated in accordance with the rule of law, and so on. The first principle accords these rights and liberties to all citizens equally.
Unequal rights would not benefit those who would get a lesser share of the rights, so justice requires equal rights for all, in all normal circumstances. Two further features make this principle distinctive. First is its priority: the basic rights and liberties must not be traded off against other social goods. Now is it Rome indeed and room enough, When there is in it but one only man. What you have said I will consider; what you have to say I will with patience hear, and find a time Both meet to hear and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this: Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us. But I fear him not: Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. CASCA Why, there was a crown offered him: and being offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.
Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.
If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man.
CASCA Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut. An I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I might go to hell among the rogues.
And so he fell. When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said any thing amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it. Farewell, both. He was quick mettle when he went to school. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, Which gives men stomach to digest his words With better appetite. For this time I will leave you: To-morrow, if you please to speak with me, I will come home to you; or, if you will, Come home to me, and I will wait for you.
Thunder and lightning. Why are you breathless? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds: But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit Even at noon-day upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking. Come Caesar to the Capitol to-morrow? Cassius, what night is this! It is the part of men to fear and tremble, When the most mighty gods by tokens send Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.
You look pale and gaze And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, To see the strange impatience of the heavens: But if you would consider the true cause Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts, Why birds and beasts from quality and kind, Why old men fool and children calculate, Why all these things change from their ordinance Their natures and preformed faculties To monstrous quality,—why, you shall find That heaven hath infused them with these spirits, To make them instruments of fear and warning Unto some monstrous state.
Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man Most like this dreadful night, That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars As doth the lion in the Capitol, A man no mightier than thyself or me In personal action, yet prodigious grown And fearful, as these strange eruptions are. CASSIUS I know where I will wear this dagger then; Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius: Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong; Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat: Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
If I know this, know all the world besides, That part of tyranny that I do bear I can shake off at pleasure. Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome, What rubbish and what offal, when it serves For the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as Caesar! But, O grief, Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this Before a willing bondman; then I know My answer must be made. Hold, my hand: Be factious for redress of all these griefs, And I will set this foot of mine as far As who goes farthest.
Metellus Cimber? What a fearful night is this! Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there? Well, I will hie, And so bestow these papers as you bade me. Let us go, For it is after midnight; and ere day We will awake him and be sure of him.
I cannot, by the progress of the stars, Give guess how near to day. Lucius, I say! I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly. When, Lucius, when? It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking. Crown him? He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Caesar may. Then, lest he may, prevent. Is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of March? Speak, strike, redress! What, Rome?
O Rome, I make thee promise: If the redress will follow, thou receivest Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus! Go to the gate; somebody knocks. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
O conspiracy, Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability: For if thou path, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention. Know I these men that come along with you?
This is Trebonius. What watchful cares do interpose themselves Betwixt your eyes and night? Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises, Which is a great way growing on the south, Weighing the youthful season of the year.
Some two months hence up higher toward the north He first presents his fire; and the high east Stands, as the Capitol, directly here. But if these, As I am sure they do, bear fire enough To kindle cowards and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen, What need we any spur but our own cause, To prick us to redress?
I think he will stand very strong with us. But, alas, Caesar must bleed for it! And, friends, disperse yourselves; but all remember What you have said, and show yourselves true Romans.
BRUTUS Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily; Let not our looks put on our purposes, But bear it as our Roman actors do, With untired spirits and formal constancy: And so good morrow to you every one.
Fast asleep? It is not for your health thus to commit Your weak condition to the raw cold morning. Dear my lord, Make me acquainted with your cause of grief. Good Portia, go to bed. What, is Brutus sick, And will he steal out of his wholesome bed, To dare the vile contagion of the night And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air To add unto his sickness?
No, my Brutus; You have some sick offence within your mind, Which, by the right and virtue of my place, I ought to know of: and, upon my knees, I charm you, by my once-commended beauty, By all your vows of love and that great vow Which did incorporate and make us one, That you unfold to me, yourself, your half, Why you are heavy, and what men to-night Have had to resort to you: for here have been Some six or seven, who did hide their faces Even from darkness.
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus, Is it excepted I should know no secrets That appertain to you? Am I yourself But, as it were, in sort or limitation, To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed, And talk to you sometimes?
Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure? Knocking within Hark, hark! All my engagements I will construe to thee, All the charactery of my sad brows: Leave me with haste. Boy, stand aside. Caius Ligarius! Would you were not sick! Soul of Rome! Brave son, derived from honourable loins! Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up My mortified spirit.
Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impossible; Yea, get the better of them. What it is, my Caius, I shall unfold to thee, as we are going To whom it must be done. Enter a Servant Servant My lord? Servant I will, my lord. You shall not stir out of your house to-day. There is one within, Besides the things that we have heard and seen, Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
O Caesar! Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions Are to the world in general as to Caesar. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. Re-enter Servant What say the augurers? Servant They would not have you to stir forth to-day. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, They could not find a heart within the beast. Do not go forth to-day: call it my fear That keeps you in the house, and not your own.
Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come. If you shall send them word you will not come, Their minds may change. Pardon me, Caesar; for my dear dear love To our proceeding bids me tell you this; And reason to my love is liable. I am ashamed I did yield to them. Give me my robe, for I will go. Good morrow, Casca. Good morrow, Antony. Now, Cinna: now, Metellus: what, Trebonius!
There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee! My heart laments that virtue cannot live Out of the teeth of emulation.
If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live; If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive. How hard it is for women to keep counsel! Art thou here yet? Run to the Capitol, and nothing else? And so return to you, and nothing else? Hark, boy! Soothsayer At mine own house, good lady. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. In a footnote, Hawthorne explains that Mr.
This will be one of the key questions of the story. Active Themes. Sin and Guilt. On a bright Sunday in the town of Milford, everyone is walking to church as usual: happy children, flirtatious young men and women and married couples. As the townspeople take their seats, the town sexton notices the Reverend Mr. Hooper walking to church, and cries out, surprised, that he has something on his face. Milford is a small, close-knit community dominated by religion.
Puritanism and Piety. The townspeople turn and look at Hooper as he approaches the church. Many cannot recognize him, but the sexton insists that it is Hooper. Another parson was meant to preach that Sunday, but he had to attend to a funeral in his own town. Hooper is a young, unmarried preacher, though he dresses so neatly that it looks as if he has a wife to help him. Yet now he is wearing a veil that hides his entire face, except for his mouth and chin.
He walks among the townspeople and nods at them kindly, but they are too shocked to respond. Although Hooper dresses very properly and perfectly normally, his veiled appearance shocks the townspeople. The veil distances him from his congregation, and this distancing goes both ways: the townspeople cannot see his face, and he can see theirs with less clarity. Appearance, Perception, and Interpretation. Related Quotes with Explanations.
Hooper delivers his sermon, wearing his veil the entire time, almost as if he is trying to hide from God. Several women are so shocked and uncomfortable that they leave. People immediately assume that he is trying to hide from God, that the veil is a signal of a sin he has committed.
Hooper is a good preacher, though ordinarily his sermons are mild, not passionate. Today, his sermon, about how humans hide their sins from one another, forgetting that God can see everything, seems unusually dark and powerful. The congregation senses that Hooper knows all of their sins. Appearances are so important in Milford that Hooper seems to have changed completely. Chapter 11 Quotes. Related Characters: W. Du Bois speaker , Burghardt Du Bois. Related Themes: Slavery vs. Page Number and Citation : Cite this Quote.
Explanation and Analysis:. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. The Forethought. Further chapters cover the black peasantry, religion, and song Chapter 1: Of Our Spiritual Strivings.
Chapter 4: Of the Meaning of Progress. Chapter 5: Of the Wings of Atlanta. Chapter 6: Of the Training of Black Men. The third mode of thought is that of black people themselves, who yearn for freedom Chapter Of the Faith of the Fathers.
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