Which clearly highlights that one's comprehensive doctrine is, in the political arena, always to be outweighed by public reason, if such a doctrine, or its components, in some way contradict or inhibit public reason, and more specifically, the public idea of justice.

This is the sort of view that states, in effect, what one does on one's "own time" is fine, just so long as no one gets hurt.

My point is not to argue for or against the merits of legalized abortion. Rather, it is to note that in Rawls' conception there is a sort of corrosive effect of pluralism's thin tradition. If pluralist justice is that justice which can be articulated in terms which are conducive to public reason, which is to say, in terms to which everyone can agree, then such a justice is a thin one in that it only entails one's public or legal life and does not address the larger sphere in which one lives.

In fact, Rawls cannot limit comprehensive doctrines to what he calls background culture, given that his description ensures background culture supports and promotes public reason. Essentially, comprehensive doctrines are even further removed from the public arena insofar as they contradict or in some way are opposed to public reason.

Rawls' concept of comprehensive doctrines are analogous to MacIntyre's concept of traditions. Both are pervasive views of reality. Both have concepts of reason and justice which their adherents bring to public debate and action. Both may have points of contact at which they meet and may dialogue with other traditions or comprehensive doctrines. Both also have points of incommensurability.

It is at this point of incommensurability that MacIntyre provides a helpful counterpoint to Rawls. For as to the limits to which a comprehensive doctrine or tradition may legitimately bring its understanding to bear within the public arena, MacIntyre's views are rather different. First, like comprehensive doctrines, traditions have an all-encompassing purview. But this totalizing framework is not impervious. Rather, it may be critiqued both from without and from within. As MacIntyre writes:

But to be able to point to something external to one's own framework one must be able to find points of contact. If they cannot, then the challenge becomes one of the relativism of all traditions or its corollary of perspectivalism. That is to say, all traditions are equal, and truth claims only have validity within one's tradition, which makes the resolution of crisis within a tradition much more difficult, if not at times impossible. Or valid criticism of an external tradition is impossible "locked" as one is within one's own tradition.

In other words, Rawls constructs a sort of tradition-less tradition, which is, at least according to MacIntyre, highly improbable. Even if this criticism is overstating the case, this at least is clear: Rawls would replace all other traditions, at least in the arena of public reason, with the tradition of a liberal pluralist democracy.

However, if this scenario is the case, even if Rawls allows for citizens to freely choose what it means for an argument to be publicly reasonable, even if they choose certain structures for the benefit of the entire community, insofar as they are to set aside their own comprehensive doctrines they are called on to alienate themselves from those doctrines. Indeed, Rawls' conception of the veil of ignorance under which all citizens select the most just structures and institutions of a society is problematic in that it is impossible. None of us is without a tradition, without a comprehensive doctrine, ill-formed or inconsistently lived though it may be. Even if one were to conceive of oneself as outside of all traditions, one lacks important resources for determining just what is rational and what is just. For the term "rationality" is bounded by one's tradition. As MacIntyre writes:

It is just this sort of scenario of want that I envision for Rawl's "realistic utopia."

It seems clear that Rawls does not view the U. S. as a model for his conception of a fully just society, though perhaps one with the sort of structures and institutions that allow for the development of a more just society. But in any case, it is also clear that the fundamental terms of rationality and justice arising from a pluralist liberal democracy, lead to what I take to be the current crisis in the U. S. democracy.

This crisis has far too many factors to enumerate here. Some may point to the pervasive presence of media and its influence in the public arena. Indeed, Rawls exempts media from certain limitations in his understanding of his public reason. Others will delineate other causes. But one need only highlight a few examples to indicate what sort of state obtains in present U. S. society. There are the Los Angeles race riots of a decade ago, followed by the Cincinnati riots with the last couple of years. One important example, strongly etched on many minds, is the riotous debacle of our last presidential election, with the Florida State Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court both attempting to apply legislation in ways that would unambiguously and effectively rewrite such legislation and alter the course of the election. One may also cite the issues of gay rights and the heated debates over same-sex unions, and adoption by gay parents.

These are examples and illustrative only of certain aspects of the crisis within the U. S. They reveal, I believe, the weaknesses of a public reason that effectively prohibits alternative traditions of rationality. Justice is ever more reduced to legal remediation to those who can afford it or whom legal counsel believes may serve ideological or remunerative ends as can be witnessed in the ever-growing recourse to the law courts both to seek redress and to change legislation outside the structure of established institutions.

I have attempted to show the problems which I take to be inherent in Rawls' understanding of comprehensive doctrines and their role in the social understanding of and enactment of rationality and justice. MacIntyre's views of the relative incommensurability of traditions I have taken to be the correct one. That is to say, even a relatively thin tradition that one finds in a pluralist democracy is incommensurable with other traditions. Further, I have also come to believe that the pluralist U. S. democracy is in crisis. Pluralism has in the absence of a strong public sense of justice degenerated into what might be called tribalist politics, where various protean groups vie for and wield political power in their own interests, power and interests which are defined and promulgated by the pluralist liberal democracy in which they live..

Though I have analyzed the current U. S. situation as one of crisis, I am not sure I can also articulate the way through to a resolution. One would hope that the end result would be a stronger (or thick) justice which is realized in the daily lives of the least empowered of U. S. citizens. But which tradition, or traditions, can provide those points of recognition through which the thin tradition of pluralist democracy might find its way out of its current crisis? The Buddhist ascetic tradition of the eightfold path is one example, but not one without difficulties. Certainly an asceticism of this type may well serve to rein in the overconsumption of goods and resources to which so many of us U. S. citizens are prone. On the other hand, such an asceticism cannot be imposed hierarchically. Rather, it must grow out of shared narratives within traditions. Another example might be the traditional Christian ethic of koinonia, or community, in which the "least of these", widows, orphans, the poor, were provided for out of the accumulated gifts and resources of the Christian community. Similarly, however, to the degree that such a tradition has become institutionalized, it appears to lose its dynamic force. Even within the various Christian churches in the U. S., such a traditional ethic has itself been largely marginalized in default of a more consumerist ethic. Too, such a traditional ethic as koinonia can only be effective insofar as it arises out of the rich grounding in a narrative tradition.

But the overarching difficulty of these or other suggestions is what I describe as the corrosive effect that a pluralist constitutional democracy has on strong traditions. By marginalizing them in terms of public polity, it effectively eviscerates them of overt social force. They become speech acts of theory as opposed to practical acts of justice; what one would do if one held such beliefs. It is not clear, then, to me whether nor how our pluralistic democracy may resolve its own crisis, on its own terms. In fact, what seems clear is that these "eviscerated and sidelined" traditions are the only agents by which pluralist liberal democracy might find resolution of its crises.

That it will be resolved seems clear from MacIntyre's historical analysis. But even MacIntyre fully admits that one cannot go back and restore a tradition from yesteryear.

In the end, I believe that any resources for change will only come from that amalgam of comprehensive doctrines, or traditions, which obtain today, whether those be religious or nonreligious. That is to say, those comprehensive doctrines and traditions which Rawls would sideline from the public debate, appear to be the only resources, insofar as they may make points of linguistic contact with this pluralist liberal democracy, by which the pluralist liberal democracy may mature. Rather than bar traditions from the debate of public reason, I believe that one should allow their "incommensurable" and "untranslatable" conceptions of rationality and justice into the dialogue. In a Rortian way, one should keep the dialogue going, as this dialogue will allow for the sharing of terms, even if in part, with other traditions. But contra Rorty, the dialogue is not the end, for there is a telos to the discussion, as it is through this exchange that revision of traditions and comprehensive doctrines may take place.