Political Liberalism and Civic Education: The Liberal State and its Future Citizens

This article evaluates the conception of citizenship embodied in political liberalism as the core ingredient of a national syllabus designed to provide an uncontroversial yet substantial education in moral and political values in a liberal democratic state system. I argue ( pace recent work by Stephen Macedo) that Rawls's paradigmatic version of political liberalism fails to avoid begging the political question against those who do not share liberal values. I contend in particular that Rawls's defence of the distinction between comprehensive and political values and his assignment of priority to the latter, invokes an idea of what is politically reasonable that involves a comprehensive and therefore controversial liberal conception of the person.