Abstract

A strategy of identifying "common good" with the common denominator of actually espoused individual preferences is chimerical, and should be substituted by a strategy of identifying it with an outcome of pursuit of publicly admissible reasons, where "public" derived from justification based on "public reason". But how to defend the idea of public reasons itself? It is argued that it expresses the fundamental value of respect for persons. The article defends an idea of "respect", in an active and thin, recognition-based sense; of "freedom", understood through a presumptive evil of coercion; and of "political equality", in an outcome-oriented agency sense.