Beyond Coherence: Rawls’ Conception of Public Reason

Abstract

By exploring and analysing certain concepts which underpin Rawls’ international theory I wish to begin identifying the means of offering a robust theory of international relations underpinned by an account of the authority of public reason and, crucially, the ability of public reason to ground normative principles appropriate for international relations. Such a theory must, I will argue, be able to accommodate Kratochwil’s holistic understanding of the link between epistemology and ontology (as well as his sophisticated consideration of practical reason, which I will consider in detail below) and contain the tools needed to transcend the inside/outside dichotomy identified by Walker. The latter is crucial to the argument in this and subsequent chapters. I wish to take seriously Walker’s contention that

the term ‘international’ permits an understanding of modern politics as nothing more than a collection of those states enabling properly political (and sometimes democratic) communities of self-determination and citizenship to thrive or as an expression of that humanity that is expressed as the collective condition within which mere states and their communities of citizenship can thrive.¹