Abstract

A common objection to Rawls’ political liberalism is to say that in the conception of justice as fairness a set of fundamental individual rights have an a priori primacy on the rights of communication and participation expressed in the democratic process of political legitimation. Consequently, there would be an priority of private autonomy over public autonomy, so that the basic liberal rights would limit ex ante the democratic self-legislation expressed in the ideal of popular sovereignty, so that the political liberties would play a merely instrumental role in the preservation of others liberties, as if there were a sphere of a pre-political liberty inaccessible to democratic self-legislation. The aim of this paper is to show that this objection is not valid if we consider the complex conception of liberty and autonomy developed by Rawls in his discussion of the notion of basic liberties, their priority and their incorporation into the basic structure of society. It shows the intertwining of public justification of the principles of justice and the democratic process of political legitimation.

Keywords: Rawls, basic liberties, democracy, public justification, political legitimation.