RAWLS' PUBLIC REASON AS RHETORICAL REASON

The aim of this text is to show that legitimation by procedure and by public justification appears today as a truly widely accepted topos (common place) that makes us pay attention to rhetorical-argumentative aspects of public discourse related to the very implementation of a capable well-ordered democratic society able to accept what Rawls called the reasonable pluralism that characterizes it. For this, the American thinker presupposes a public reason which establishes the impossibility of having a single comprehensive doctrine and the entire truth guaranteed. As a result of this approach, it was found, through the method of rhetorical rereading, that the form and content of this public rationality are close to a rhetorical rationality, as long as it is now delineated as an argumentative deliberation in a public context in that one has the most reasonable conception of justice, and sometimes as an intersubjectively weighted specification of the basic political values of a cooperative association founded on reciprocity and sharing common principles of justice. It thus contributes to the conception that sees this public political forum, composed of free and equal citizens, capable of public reasoning, such as judges, administrators and congressman and candidates for public office, as good examples of rhetorically adapted speeches to socially idealized audiences.