John Rawls Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• Any comprehensive doctrine, religious or secular, can be introduced into any political argument at any time, but I argue that people who do this should also present what they believe are public reasons for their argument. So their opinion is no longer just that of one particular party, but an opinion that all members of a society might reasonably agree to, not necessarily that they would agree to. What's important is that people give the kinds of reasons that can be understood and appraised apart from their particular comprehensive doctrines.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Party, Believe

• There are two kinds of comprehensive doctrines, religious and secular. Those of religious faith will say I give a veiled argument for secularism, and the latter will say I give a veiled argument for religion. I deny both. Each side presumes the basic ideas of constitutional democracy, so my suggestion is that we can make our political arguments in terms of public reason. Then we stand on common ground. That's how we can understand each other and cooperate.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Ideas, Two

• Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.

  John Rawls

  Giving, Political, Doctrine

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• What's important is that people give the kinds of reasons that can be understood and appraised apart from their particular comprehensive doctrines: for example, that they argue against physician-assisted suicide not just by speculating about God's wrath or the afterlife, but by talking about what they see as assisted suicide's potential injustices.

  John Rawls

  Suicide, Talking, Afterlife

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• People can make arguments from the Bible if they want to. But I want them to see that they should also give arguments that all reasonable citizens might agree to.

  John Rawls

  People, Giving, Citizens

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.620, Harvard University Press

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