From neutralization to overlap - John Rawls and the challenge of pluralistic democracy

From neutralization to overlap: this is the intellectual itinerary proposed in this article. The idea of neutrality is in danger of covering up the no rmative intuition defended by Rawls in his Political Liberalism. This work moves away from an approach in terms of neutrality in a twofold respect. Fi rst, it abandons the liberal idea of a totally neutral justification of pub lic principles. Rawls does not hesitate to defend the idea that a political conception might modify and shape the conceptions of the good held by indi viduals. Political Liberalism is original in that it uses a reconstruction of the history of modern societies to show how the democratic tradition end ows citizens with the motivations and competence needed for them to accept these limitations. This hypothetical reconstruction of the social acquisiti on of overlap is the object of the first part of this article. Second, by e nsuring a back-and-forth movements between "comprehensive" convictions and the public conception, the overlapping argumentative potential of people's visions of the world. This solution contrasts with the universalization pro cedure suggested by Habermas, and its viability is tested in part two of th e article.