Democracia y deliberación pública desde la perspectiva rawlsiana

Abstract

In this paper we shall center in one of the questions that takes up the first plan of the nowadays theoretical reflexion: the problem of democracy as the political form of the public use of reason. We shall take it from the paradigm that presents J. Rawls in his last works with a view specially to the function and limits that Rawls asigns to «public Reason» and «public Deliberation». The analysis of these concepts seems to me hugely illuminating for the contemporary democratic theory. In the first place I have analysed the relation between democracy and political conception of justice, and afterwards between public reason and the limits of public deliberation. I conclude that the displayed conception of public reason mainly aspires to mark the boundaries of a space that cannot be subjected to interests, either strategical or even deliberative, because it is secured by a political conception of justice which is acepted by everyone. A conception that tries to overcome the conflict between different forms of life through the ideal of justice and human rights.