Political Liberalism, Public Justification, and Truth

According to J. Rawls, in response to the fact of reasonable pluralism, the criterion of correction in conceptions of justice should not be the concept of truth, but the idea of the reasonable. Rawls has also stated that political liberalism does without the concept of truth. J. Cohen has recently sustained against Rawls that political liberalism cannot and should not leave out the concept of truth: in fact, it must be part and parcel of public reason in any democracy. The aim of the present paper is to prove that the concept of truth, in particular in view of its connection with the concept of justification, can be used as a basis to challenge some of the fundamental goals of political liberalism. The final part of the paper posits a defence of political liberalism through a reinterpretation of some of its fundamental concepts that makes the Rawlsian attempt to avoid the use of the concept of truth feasible and desirable, against Cohen's stance.