Resumen de Moral authority and the deliberative model
Gerald Gaus�s The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World is refreshingly ambitious. It seems to me that our field today is a little too eager to �[stay] on the surface, philosophically speaking� (Rawls 1999, p. 395; cf. 2005, p. 10). However, the scope of Gaus�s ambition complicates the critic�s task. When a philosophical work aims to present something as grand as a �theory of freedom and morality,� it seems plausible to think that the appropriate unit of analysis is the whole rather than any of its elements. This is especially so in the case of a book like Gaus�s, where the author�s philosophical acumen is well-matched to its objectives. Despite Gaus�s claims to be a fox (xiv), Numbers in parentheses without further citation information refer to Gaus�s The Order of Public Reason.
The Order of Public Reason is a hedgehoggy work.
A full-on assessment of Gaus�s book hence lies well beyond the scope of a single essay. My aims are consequently
