The rhetorical and teleological turns evidenced in the later work of John Rawls set the agenda for contemporary liberal political philosophy. This reorientation of liberal thought is required for the postmodern reconstruction of liberal democratic civic culture. The task is to invent new cultural resources capable of producing in as many citizens as possible the insight and the motivation required for the attainment of full cultural citizenship. What I have called the rhetorical turn in postmodernist liberal thought addresses primarily the issue of the intelligibility of liberal political morality in a post-Enlightenment cultural context. What I have called the teleological turn in postmodernist liberal thought addresses primarily the issue of motivation, the issue of whether means of persuasion can be found sufficient to motivate citizens to develop and exercise the capacities proper to citizenship, once we have come to terms with the historical contingency and cultural particularism of liberal moral ideals. In this chapter, I want to take up the first issue, the issue of intelligibility, and to work out more fully the implications of the rhetorical turn in postmodern liberalism. In the following chapter, I will explore the second issue, the issue of motivation, and will there focus on the implications of the teleological turn, on the question of whether a conception of citizenship can be invented that possesses the persuasive power and normative authority necessary to support an effective postmodern civic culture.

First, let us make sure that we understand the connection between what I have called the rhetorical turn in liberal political philosophy and the issue of the intelligibility of the standpoint and norms proper to liberal democratic citizenship. As I observed in Chapter One, liberal democracies make extraordinary cultural demands on their citizens. They require that citizens develop and cultivate attitudes, dispositions, identities, and moral capacities that do not just spontaneously occur among human beings. These qualities must be produced in citizens by a special sort of countervailing culture — what I have called a civic culture. A civic culture is composed of discourses, narratives, and representations of various sorts that are designed to promote among citizens the development and cultivation of civic capacities. Any civic culture has two functions in particular that it must successfully carry out: (1) it must provide cultural resources for rendering the normative standpoint of citizenship intelligible to citizens, and (2) it must provide cultural resources for motivating citizens to develop and exercise the capacities proper to citizenship. Among the cultural resources available to modern forms of liberal democratic civic culture is the sort of discourse known as political philosophy. What I have called the rhetorical turn is a development affecting that particular discursive resource of liberal democratic civic culture.

I have called this development a rhetorical turn in order to characterize the sort of shift that has occurred. Other terms could be used. Rawls, as we have seen, characterizes this reorientation of liberal political philosophy as a shift from a metaphysical liberalism to a political liberalism. At this point, no characterization can be final, since the process of reorientation is still in its infancy. In my view, the description of this reorientation in political philosophy as a rhetorical turn is advantageous at this point to the extent that it establishes a contrast between old and new, suggestive of new directions for inquiry. Modernist metaphysical liberalism, in both literary form and content, defined itself in opposition to rhetorical conceptions of reason and knowledge. Rhetorical conceptions of reason and knowledge, on the other hand, are characterized by an affirmation of the audience-directedness of all discourse and the audience-dependence of all subject matter. Modernist metaphysical liberalism embraced the anti-rhetorical rhetoric of pure theory. In its literary form, it presented itself as a purely theoretical discourse, a discourse seeking to articulate the audience-independent truth about an audience-independent subject matter. Characterizing the contemporary reorientation of political philosophy as a rhetorical turn, then, helps to keep in focus not only the crucial issues raised by this reorientation, but also where it is leading us.

In any case, whatever terms we use for it, it should be clear how a shift of this magnitude affecting an important component of civic culture could produce problems. We should not exaggerate the importance of metaphysical liberalism as a cultural support for liberal democracy. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, Protestant Christianity probably played a more crucial role in the effective civic culture of the United States than modernist liberalism did. But, in the course of the twentieth century, as the cultural diversity of American society increased, the influence of Protestant Christianity diminished, and civic culture in America became ever more dependent upon the universalist and essentialist ideas of modernist liberal political philosophy as its primary resource for rendering intelligible to citizens the nature of liberal democratic citizenship. The influence of modernist liberal ideas has been particularly evident during the last thirty years in discussions of universal human and civil rights and in conceptions of the cultural neutrality of the liberal democratic state. This means that, to the extent that American civic culture has been effective in actually producing citizens in the full cultural sense, citizenship will be understood by such citizens, today at least, in large measure through the use of a vocabulary shaped by the universalist and essentialist world view of modernist liberalism. The shift from modernist metaphysical liberalism to political or rhetorical liberalism, therefore, entails significant changes in the vocabulary that citizens must use to understand and reproduce in others the civic capacities they have achieved. This is what I have referred to as the intelligibility crisis in contemporary civic culture. The old vocabulary of citizenship is now defunct; the new one has yet to be coined.

The project of inventing a postmodern civic culture is the project of inventing this new vocabulary. The difficulties and dangers involved in this project are difficult to underestimate. To the extent that modernist liberal political theory has, indeed, been influential in forming culturally effective conceptions of citizenship, our understanding of what it means to be a citizen is bound up with the totalizing and universalist vocabulary of modernist European culture in general. The vocabulary of a political or rhetorical liberalism will be radically different. The perspectives underlying that vocabulary will be even more alien. Universalist and essentialist conceptions of liberal moral ideas will disappear. The new vocabulary of citizenship will be shaped by conceptions of liberal moral ideals that emphasize their cultural particularism and their partial character. To some, the reorientation within liberal political thought will seem, as a result, like a rejection of liberal moral ideals altogether. The shift from modernist metaphysical liberalism to political or rhetorical liberalism thus amounts to a cultural transformation, not merely of generational but even of epochal proportions.

For Rawls, then, the postmodern reorientation of liberal political philosophy should be read as a shift from a conception of liberalism as a universalist and comprehensive doctrine to a conception of liberalism as a particularistic and partial doctrine. When we speak of liberalism as a doctrine in this way, however, we should remind ourselves that we are not talking about mere "theories" of liberalism. If we understand liberal political philosophy as a component of civic culture, then we must see it as addressed to an audience, i.e., citizens, and, to the extent it is effective, as shaping that audience’s experience of the subject matter — its experience of citizenship and liberal democratic political life in general. This means that the postmodern reorientation of liberal political philosophy entails much more than a mere doctrinal shift. It entails a reorientation and reconstruction of citizenship and of the liberal democratic political sphere as such. To the extent that this reconstruction actually occurs, then, the normative standpoint of citizenship will come to be lived differently. It will come to be lived as a standpoint that is culturally constructed (i.e., contingent and culturally particularistic) and that pertains to only a part and not the whole of life.

It is above all at this point — i.e., when the postmodern reorientation in liberal political philosophy is viewed concretely at the level of its impact on everyday life — that specific problems of intelligibility arise. If the role of philosophical reflection as a component of civic culture is in part to provide resources for rendering intelligible to citizens the normative standpoint of citizenship, then postmodern liberal political philosophy must make clear to citizens precisely what it means, precisely what difference it makes, to experience citizenship as culturally constructed and as pertaining only to a limited part of life. It is the partiality or — for lack of a better term — the non-totalistic character of citizenship, that is particularly problematic. As we have seen, modernist metaphysical liberalism represented citizenship as a comprehensive or totalizing standpoint. The totalizing character of metaphysical liberalism was shaped by the totalizing character of modernist Enlightenment culture in general. Modernist Enlightenment culture generated that totalizing perspective we have come to call the "scientific world view." Modernist liberal political theory, as a component of Enlightenment culture, became an agent of the scientific world view. Its self-appointed task of "legitimating" liberal democracy really amounted to a reading of liberal democratic moral ideals in terms of the assumptions proper to a totalizing scientific naturalism. For this reason, in the characteristically modernist conflict between the opposing totalizing world views of science and religion, liberalism has generally been seen not only as friendly to the claims of scientific rationalism, but even as its political expression and embodiment. As represented by modernist metaphysical liberalism, liberal moral ideals, thus, have often seemed to be part and parcel of a totalizing world view that was not only in competition with other totalizing cultural world views, but also actively hostile to religious world views in particular.

If this is true, then we know roughly what it means to say that, under the regime of modernist civic culture, citizenship and the liberal democratic political sphere in general were experienced as elements of a comprehensive or totalizing world view. Liberal moral values often seemed to promote, if not require, a process of cultural secularization — a process in which religious communities, in order to remain civicly respectable, are pressured to "liberalize" their beliefs by making them logically compatible with the scientific world view. If this sort of conflict is entailed in a comprehensive or totalizing interpretation of citizenship and liberal moral ideals, then the impact of — once again, for lack of a better term — a de-totalizing interpretation of those ideals would be to eliminate the possibility of any such conflict. To say that liberalism is not a comprehensive doctrine, but a doctrine pertaining only to part of life, is to say that citizenship, liberal moral ideals and the liberal democratic political sphere, in general, do not and should not entail, promote, or require any particular totalizing world view at all. If we are, indeed, to be affected by the postmodern reorientation of liberal political philosophy and, thereby, experience the reconstruction of our own understanding and practice of citizenship, then we must learn to draw new lines that distinguish very clearly between the partial civic identities and perspectives proper to the liberal democratic public sphere and the comprehensive communitarian identities and totalizing cultural perspectives proper to nonpolitical life..

I want to focus in this chapter on this question of how and where those new lines must be drawn — on the question, that is to say, of what a non-totalistic and de-totalizing liberalism, civic identity, and public sphere might look like. I will divide the question as follows. Assuming a political or rhetorical conception of liberal political philosophy — i.e., viewing it as a discursive component of civic culture, addressed to citizens for the purpose of rendering intelligible and motivating development of civic capacities and attitudes — then we may examine and describe its character as discourse with respect to any of the relational standpoints proper to the structure of the rhetorical situation, e.g., the address itself, its general definition of the subject matter, its addressors, its addressees, its general occasion or proper context, its intended effect, and so on. In this chapter, I want to focus on two of these standpoints in particular. In the following Section I will ask about the address itself — that is, I will ask about the self-understanding and rhetorical self-definition proper to a de-totalized/de-totalizing conception of liberal political philosophy. Then, in the last Section I will ask about the subject matter — that is, I will ask about the way in which the boundaries of a the liberal democratic public sphere might be redrawn by such a de-totalizing liberalism.

When Rawls defines political or rhetorical liberalism in terms of a distinction between comprehensive and partial doctrines, he often seems to suggest that political liberalism represents a retreat from comprehensive or totalizing forms of liberalism. For Rawls, comprehensive and political doctrines differ only in scope. Political doctrines are those that apply to a limited range of life issues. Comprehensive doctrines, at the limit, apply to all life issues. But comprehensive conceptions of liberal doctrine, like those of Kant and Mill, tend to generate conflicts with other comprehensive doctrines or totalizing world views. Rawls’s view seems to be that, for the sake of political stability, it is necessary to limit the scope of liberal doctrine in order to avoid the risk of such destabilizing conflict. Political liberalism, then, would be a form of liberal doctrine that has cut back on its claims, lowered its sights as part of a survival strategy. To the extent that this is Rawls’s view, his turn to political liberalism is, indeed, a retreat. Rawls implies that, if it were possible, a comprehensive liberalism, a totalizing liberal world view adhered to by all citizens, would be preferable to him. But, to secure political stability, we must settle for what is possible. To think of liberal doctrine as partial in this way would, thus, be to point out a defect. Partial here, means fragmentary or incomplete. It refers only to the scope of a doctrine or the range of issues it addresses. It points to no quality in political or rhetorical liberalism that might be considered positive or valuable in itself.

This is the view I want to oppose here. I think that Rawls, too, in his better moments, would also oppose it, although he himself does not offer much conceptually that would explain why. To distinguish political or rhetorical liberalism from totalizing or comprehensive doctrines primarily in terms of its range of application is misleading. While its range of application is, indeed, limited, that fact does not constitute the truly distinguishing mark of political or rhetorical liberalism. A political or rhetorical liberalism is not a stripped-down version of liberalism, put forward as a compromise in the name of social stability. Rather, it is a liberalism that has properly understood itself as but one component of a liberal democratic civic culture. Because the word "partial" suggests something fragmentary or incomplete, it is better to characterize political or rhetorical liberalism in different terms, in a way that brings into view the positive significance and impact of this partiality. That is why I prefer to describe political or rhetorical liberalism as a de-totalized and de-totalizing doctrine. As a component of civic culture, liberal political doctrine positively carries out its assigned function only insofar as it is presented as a de-totalized discourse aimed at achieving a certain kind of de-totalizing effect.

As I noted earlier, a civic culture must be a countervailing culture. It addresses human beings for whom the normative standpoint of citizenship is neither a spontaneous endowment of nature nor something whose possession is particularly longed for in its absence. Human beings are shaped in their identities and aspirations from earliest childhood by cultural perspectives that provide meaning and direction to life as a whole. The logic that drives such cultural perspectives is a totalistic and totalizing logic. In their development, such cultural perspectives move in the direction of global and exclusive competence. As interpretive and evaluative frameworks capable of indefinite extension and elaboration, they reach completion only when they can satisfactorily assign specific meaning and define a specific response to all the fundamental issues of human life — sex, friendship, work, suffering, sin, death, and salvation. Persons whose identity and values are shaped exclusively by any such totalizing cultural world view may be laudable in many ways, but they are not, morally and culturally speaking, citizens. Citizens in the full cultural sense are those who have developed the capacity to treat themselves and one another, when appropriate, as free and equal individuals. As we have seen, to do this requires a capacity to unplug or put out of play the ranking systems and totalizing interpretive frameworks that normally determine judgment and action in everyday life. For nominal citizens to become citizens in the full cultural sense, they generally need the support of a civic culture that provides a perspective capable of counteracting the effects of those totalizing interpretive frameworks. Thus, a liberal democratic civic culture, as a countervailing culture, must provide perspectives governed by a logic that is de-totalizing in its impact.

To characterize liberalism, then, as a moral doctrine that is partial rather than comprehensive is to call our attention to a feature of liberalism that involves much more than the question of its range of application. The moral doctrines generated by particularistic cultural world views are comprehensive doctrines in that their cultural function is to provide meaning and direction to the whole of life. Their role is to offer a comprehensive vision of the world, an interpretive and evaluative framework that can be extended and elaborated indefinitely and that, at the limit, can provide a reading of and a strategy for dealing with the entire range of human life issues. In short, the fact that they are totalizing in their logic and scope is to be taken neither as an accident nor as a defect. There is a problem with such totalizing world views, however. This problem is not intrinsic to them, but rather exists only when their adherents also happen to be citizens of a liberal democracy.

The problem is that these totalizing world views, at the limit of their development, can generate a certain politically troublesome linguistic illusion. Particularistic cultural world views, as global interpretive and evaluative frameworks, provide vocabularies for defining and successfully addressing the basic issues of human life. These vocabularies embody the ranking systems, concepts of virtue, and standards of excellence proper to a particular cultural community. As such, they take root in and inhabit the deepest strata of identity and desire. Like all human vocabularies, these particularistic moral vocabularies are produced through processes of metaphorical transmutation. Properly spoken and heard, the descriptions of things and persons licensed by these particularistic moral vocabularies carry what I have called the soft metaphorical "is", rather than the hard metaphysical "is." A description of the world spoken and heard as carrying a soft metaphorical "is" is one that is heard and spoken as a redescription. The metaphorical "is" works, i.e., achieves its effect on thought and feeling, by virtue of an act of linguistic aggression by which an identity is asserted of two unlike things — e.g., "My love is a rose." For a metaphor to work, its audience must retain a lively sense of the unlikeness of the things identified. In the terminology of classical rhetoric, metaphor achieves its effect by eliciting a play of difference between like and unlike, between res and verbum. A description of the world spoken and heard as carrying a hard metaphysical "is," however, imposes on things an identity devoid of difference. Res and verbum collapse into a lifeless unity. The world "is" precisely what it is described as being and nothing else.

This is the sort of linguistic illusion that can be generated by totalizing cultural world views and particularly by those that are most powerful and successful. It consists in a certain forgetfulness about the metaphorical origins of all human vocabularies. Such forgetfulness may or may not have a negative impact on the development of the particular cultural traditions suffering it, but it definitely poses a danger for any liberal democracy. As we have seen, for a such a regime to survive, let alone flourish, large numbers of its citizens must develop the capacity to use a second moral vocabulary in addition to their first. This second moral vocabulary is that proper to the public sphere of a liberal democracy. It licenses descriptions of things and persons that are compatible with a recognition of the free and equal individuality of every citizen. As such, it embodies and defines the normative standpoint of liberal democratic citizenship. This secondary vocabulary is parasitic upon the first. Just as civic identity exists only as a modification of communitarian identity, so also this secondary moral vocabulary gets its meaning only through its difference from primary moral vocabularies. It licenses descriptions of things and persons that gain their impact only through their relationship of metaphorical tension to the descriptions licensed by primary moral vocabularies — i.e., only by being spoken and heard as redescriptions.

It is at this point that the linguistic illusion generated by successful cultural world views can come into conflict with the cultural requirements of liberal democracy. Primary moral vocabularies quite properly embody the ranking systems, virtue concepts and standards of excellence proper to a particularistic cultural community. Primary moral vocabularies warrant descriptions of things and persons as defined and ranked by particularistic interpretive and evaluative frameworks. It is by warranting such descriptions that particularistic moral traditions effectively give meaning and direction to human desire. On the other hand, the secondary moral vocabulary of citizenship licenses very different descriptions of things and persons, descriptions consistent with the recognition of all persons, regardless of their rank as measured by particularistic standards of excellence or achievement, as free and equal individuals. Competence in this secondary moral language of citizenship, thus, really consists in a special kind of competence in speaking a primary moral language. Speakers of a particular primary moral language must learn to apply the descriptions mandated by that language in such a way as to leave room for the very different descriptions mandated by the moral language of citizenship. Citizens must gain the ability to speak and hear interpretive and evaluative descriptions in a way that reflects a lively sense of the difference between the evaluative principles of the two moral languages.

It may be possible, then, to speak a primary moral language simply and directly, with no sense at all that the descriptions of things and persons licensed by that language are not perfect fits. But it is not possible to speak the moral language of citizenship in that simple and direct way. The very aim of the secondary moral language mandated by citizenship is to loosen the fit between things and persons and the descriptions of them licensed by primary moral languages. Thus, a working-class, Italian-American Catholic, for example, in everyday life contexts, describes self and others in terms that reflect ranking systems proper to certain ethnic and religious cultural milieus — in terms that, say, show a certain kind of respect for family connection and religious identification. A working-class Italian-American Catholic who is also a citizen, i.e., who has attained competence in the language game of citizenship, applies the same evaluative descriptions to the world, but speaks and hears those descriptions, as it were, synecdochically, so that they take on a figurative significance. The description of a particular police officer as "the law" carries its full figurative weight and significative value only as long as its audience holds the distinction between the two — i.e., the individual police office and the coercive legal order in general — clearly in view. In the same way, the moral language of citizenship requires its speakers and hearers to introduce into every evaluative description a note of difference, to hold apart the res of free and equal individuality from the verbum of evaluative categorization.

Thus, persons who have attained the competence to speak their primary moral language "civilly," i.e., with this awareness of difference, are those capable of keeping more or less continuously in view the metaphorical nature of the moral descriptions they apply to others. The "is" of attribution through which they apply those descriptions is far more likely to be spoken by such persons as a soft metaphorical "is" rather than as a hard metaphysical "is." Citizens in the full cultural sense are those who have gained this capacity to use their primary moral vocabulary with a certain ironic distance. The exercise of this capacity by many citizens accounts for the peculiar ambiguity, complexity, and power of moral discourse in a liberal democracy. However, not every cultural tradition is strong and capacious enough to acknowledge the metaphorical character of its own moral vocabulary. Ideally, when a primary moral language is spoken and heard in and through the play of metaphorical difference, it gains in power and creativity. But some cultural communities can survive only by closing the divide separating res and verbum and by insisting that their members take the descriptions they apply to the world as simply the world itself. In a liberal democracy, such communities are likely to become alienated from and even to mobilize against liberal democratic moral ideals. Such reactions are ultimately to be accounted for by the totalizing character of particularistic cultural world views. Under the most fortunate circumstances, the logic of cultural totalization and the logic of cultural difference can be complementary, but more often they remain antagonisitic. In a liberal democracy, this tension can never be finally overcome. The best that can be achieved is a balance of forces between the drive toward totalization operative in particularistic cultural communities and the de-totalizing resources of a civic culture.

A de-totalized and de-totalizing form of liberal political philosophy should be one of those resources. A de-totalized version of liberal political philosophy would be one that, in its self-definition and presentation, could not be mistaken for any sort of totalizing conception of the world. The rhetorical turn, the conception of liberal doctrine as a component of civic culture, constitutes the first step in this direction. Rhetorical modes of analysis, by themselves, have a de-totalizing impact on doctrinal claims of all types. The rhetorical conception of knowledge as pistis or belief (as opposed to episteme or demonstrably certain cognition) introduces an element of difference or otherness into every doctrinal truth claim. Pistis is the state of being persuaded. The cognitive state of being persuaded is very different from the cognitive state consisting in certainty or the possession of demonstrable truth. A proof is final. But what I am persuaded of today I may not be persuaded of tomorrow. When I reflectively label what I take to be the actual properties of things and persons as matters of persuasion, i.e., as descriptions that I am now convinced really apply to those things and persons, I implicitly recognize a distinction between my descriptions and the things and persons they describe. A rhetorical conception of knowledge in this way incorporates permanent recognition of the divide separating res and verbum. Thus, the rhetorical turn itself, strictly carried through, is something like an immunization against a totalizing inclination toward the metaphysical "is" — i.e., toward any sort of easy identification of description and world.

In general, then, a form of liberal political philosophy that is comfortable with rhetorical modes of analysis, that understands and represents itself as an effort to persuade a particular audience at a particular time with a certain intention, is likely to offer a version of liberal doctrine that won’t be mistaken for a global metaphysical vision of the nature of things — which is to say, it will be likely to offer a de-totalized version of liberalism. This tells us something about the general form or style of a postmodern version of liberal doctrine. It tells us that a de-totalized post-metaphysical version of liberal doctrine will not present itself as a demonstration of eternal truth. But this does not answer the more specific question of what sort of tasks or types of inquiry in particular should be taken on by a de-totalized version of liberal doctrine. We might get some idea about how to answer this question by looking briefly at two paradigmatic styles of classical political philosophy, both of which understood themselves as belonging strictly to the cognitive realm of pistis as opposed to episteme.

Can classical political philosophy provide models for post-metaphysical de-totalized versions of liberalism? I would say yes, provided we observe all the necessary caveats. Without any question, classical political philosophy of all styles was grounded in a non-liberal conception of republican political association. As we have observed, liberal democracy as a form of political association is distinguished by its presumption that citizens do and perhaps should disagree on the question of the ultimate meaning and purpose of life. Liberal democracy assumes that citizens are members of diverse ethnic, class, and religious communities and that each such community is defined by its adherence to a conception of the good life different from and often in conflict with those of other communities. This is the assumption that is missing in classical forms of political philosophy. Classical Greek philosophy, in general, was part of a cultural project that aimed at the ethnic consolidation and political unification of Greek-speaking peoples. It sought to articulate a perspective that could provide a cultural common ground for all Hellenes, one strong enough to overcome the divisive particularism of local religions and tribal loyalties. As such, classical Greek philosophy in general embodied and expressed a totalizing cultural standpoint, a particularistic cultural world view. However fragmented the Greek world may have been, Greek philosophy addressed audiences that could be expected to speak a common primary moral language.

Thus, to the extent that classical political philosophy, in all its various styles, presupposed in its audience a shared world view and a common set of values, it was governed by an agenda and addressed issues quite unlike those proper to liberal political philosophy. To that extent, classical political philosophy does not have much to offer the project of reconstructing liberal doctrine. But that is not the whole story. Greek philosophy, in drawing the cognitive map through which it defined itself and distinguished itself from its main political and educational rival, Greek rhetoric, also made some use of rhetorical categories and modes of analysis. If it is true that rhetorical categories and modes of analysis embody in themselves a de-totalizing understanding of political discourse, then, to the extent that Greek political philosophy made use of them, we may find after all some styles of Greek political philosophy useful as models for a de-totalized form of liberalism. Rhetorical conceptions of discourse and knowledge influenced the cognitive map drawn by Greek philosophy, wherever Greek philosophers made a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical cognitive realms.

Aristotle is canonical in this respect. Aristotle distinguished practical from theoretical philosophy in terms of both subject matter and method. Invariability and necessary existence identify the subject matter of theoretical knowledge. Knowledge of what exists invariably and necessarily is gained by demonstration. On the other hand, variability, particularity, and contingency identify the subject matter of practical knowledge. Knowledge of such subject matter is gained not by demonstration, but by experience combined with good judgment. Ethics and politics are fields of practical philosophy. A person who possesses knowledge in these fields is not someone who can construct proofs, but rather someone who deliberates well about particular cases — i.e., someone whose deliberation leads to happy results. What can philosophy contribute to a development of the capacity to deliberate well? While philosophy is master in the cognitive realm of pure theory, philosophy has a lesser contribution to make in the fields of ethics and politics. In these fields, experience and skills in deliberation are paramount. Philosophy can provide a vocabulary and a moral grammar that can make deliberation more effective. But knowledge in these fields is ultimately of the particular case and, of the particular case, there can be no certain, final, or complete knowledge. The field of practical knowledge is a field in which pistis or true belief, as opposed to episteme, constitutes the maximum goal. At the conclusion of deliberation, i.e., at the moment of ethical and political decision, it is impossible to know with certainty whether the particular case has been judged rightly. Only time can tell that and never with finality. The final state reached in deliberation is, thus, a state of being persuaded. Ethical and political deliberation, thus, calls into play the cognitive categories proper to rhetoric.

Thus, to the extent that classical Greek political philosophy was determined in its content by the totalizing world view of a particularistic ethnic culture, it serves poorly as a model for a de-totalized version of liberalism. On the other hand, to the extent that, in its form, classical Greek political philosophy understood itself in terms of rhetorical cognitive categories — i.e., to the extent that it defined itself as belonging to the sphere of practical as opposed to theoretical knowledge, then it may, indeed, offer some guidance for the project of inventing a de-totalized version of liberal political doctrine. Just as it is useful, for present purposes, to categorize modernist liberal political theory into two general types — i.e., the Lockean and Kantian varieties, it is useful to categorize classical political philosophy into three general types. I will call these three types (in honor of their most notable practitioners) the Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian varieties. Of these three, the Platonic style of classical political philosophy has the least to offer our contemporary project. Plato, at least the Plato of The Republic, seemed bent upon obliterating the distinction between the cognitive domains of theory and practice. However, this is not true of Socratic and Aristotelian versions of Greek political philosophy. These two types of classical political philosophy might offer models for a de-totalized version of liberal doctrine.

Consider first what we might characterize as the Aristotelian version of classical political philosophy. The role of the Aristotelian political philosopher was to provide a vocabulary and a moral grammar for the language game of political decision-making. As we have noted, in the sphere of practical knowledge, the "knower" is the person who has the capacity to deliberate rightly about particular cases. In the case of Greek republican politics, the paradigm of the decision-maker was the statesman, the citizen-ruler. Aristotelian political philosophy therefore adopted the standpoint of the citizen-ruler and sought to provide the moral perspectives and the linguistic resources that could generate prudential insight and sharpen skills required for political deliberation. Its characteristic task was the classification and evaluation of constitutions. The standard applied in the evaluation of constitutions and laws was the standard that a wise citizen-ruler would naturally adopt — i.e., the best possible constitution for a particular people, living under specific conditions, with a particular history, culture, population mix, temperament, and so on. It was the task of the insightful citizen-ruler to assess these traits in any specific case and to construct the constitution dictated by that assessment. If the citizen-ruler (or assembly of citizen-rulers) judged rightly in assessing these traits and selected the appropriate laws, then the people subject to those laws would prosper in the long run (as measured by Greek ethnic standards of prosperity and happiness ideals). The political philosopher, as philosopher, could not take credit for the prudential insight exercised by wise citizen-rulers. The role of the political philosopher was to provide a scheme of constitutional categories, to clarify the criteria to be applied in the process of assessing particular cases and, perhaps, to examine particular cases of political decision-making considered by most to have been successful.

Thus, while Aristotelian political philosophy, in its vocabulary and moral grammar, did, indeed, reflect the particularistic global life ideals proper to the totalizing ethnic world view of the Greeks, it did not define its cognitive task as the formulation of a totalizing theory demonstrating that those life ideals are mandated by the universal nature of human political association. While Aristotelian political philosophy was definitely a component of a totalizing cultural world view, it defined its own function in practical political terms. Its task was not to provide a body of truths that would perhaps render the prudential insight and deliberative skills of the citizen-ruler superfluous, but rather to offer resources for sharpening that insight and making those skills more effective. Thus, Aristotelian political philosophy, in identifying itself strictly as a form of practical reflection, as opposed to theoretical cognition, i.e., as belonging to the cognitive domain of pistis as opposed to episteme, viewed itself more or less self-consciously as a component of what I would call Greek republican civic culture. The doctrine identified with Aristotelian political philosophy was a doctrine shaped by a clear definition of the rhetorical situation it addressed, the rhetorical standpoint it assumed, and the rhetorical effects it sought to achieve. Understood in this way, the Aristotelian political philosophy might serve as one model for a de-totalized and de-totalizing conception of liberal doctrine.

The Socratic style of classical Greek political philosophy might offer a second model. The Aristotelian model of political philosophy took as its defining task the working out of a vocabulary for the classification and evaluation of constitutions. In performing this function, it adopted the standpoint of the citizen-ruler and regarded the field of political decision-making, as it were, from above — i.e., it presupposed in its audience a capacity to adopt the standpoint of the citizen-ruler, a capacity to adopt the normative standpoint of republican citizenship. The Socratic style of classical political philosophy regarded the field of political decision-making, the republican public sphere, from a different point of view. It offered, so to speak, a view from below. It began with the assumption that its audience was still in the process of developing the linguistic and moral capacities proper to republican citizenship. The Socratic style of political philosophy took as its defining task the design and practice of a set of educational procedures that could promote the development of civic capacities. The Socratic style of political philosophy, in short, characteristically sought to provide resources for a certain form of civic education.

Socrates himself, it seems, simply pursued the practice of civic education and left it to others to reflect on it and codify its procedures. His practice was to model for his students a certain kind of dialectical self-examination. That practice consisted in the public interrogation of his fellow citizens regarding the standards that they actually applied in making moral and political judgments. The assumption underlying this practice was that citizens typically are inadequately reflective and self-critical about the criteria they bring to bear in political decision-making. Without examination, those criteria may well often turn out to be derived from ranking systems and virtue concepts inappropriate to the public sphere. Even in a relatively homogeneous cultural environment such as fifth century Athens, the most basic and immediate loyalties of citizens were determined by membership in particularistic tribal, village and religious communities. These communities provided Athenians with their primary moral vocabularies. Athenian citizens, given their linguistic and cultural homogeneity, used the same set of evaluational terms, the same words of moral attribution, in both private and public life. It was to be expected, therefore, that most citizens, when they entered the public sphere, brought with them their usual criteria for applying those evaluational terms — criteria shaped by family and village contexts and so criteria inappropriate to the field of political decision-making.

The Socratic versions of Greek political philosophy addressed the issues raised by this linguistic or terminological importation into the public sphere of moral criteria drawn from particularistic cultural contexts. The Socratic antidote to this misapplication of moral criteria was to teach citizens to distinguish clearly between evaluational words they used in making moral judgments and the actual standards they were applying in using those words. His procedure of civic education was to ask citizens to define the words they used in the attribution of virtue and vice and in the expression of praise and blame. A primary moral vocabulary in family and village contexts is typically used as a means of generating local solidarity and shaping the behavior of others. In those contexts, the use of moral terms is taught by example, by reference to standard behaviors and model actions that embody local ranking systems. Accordingly, a citizen’s usual response to a Socratic request for a definition of concepts such as justice, courage, or piety was to give an example of a just, courageous or pious action. The examples offered usually reflected the specialized concerns and characteristic perspectives of one or another particular tribal or occupational group.

Thus, in Book I of the Republic, the businessman, Cephalus, defines justice in terms of honest dealings and paying one’s debts. Cephalus, of course, was not wrong in believing that it is just to deal honestly and to pay one’s debts. He was wrong only in defining the general term "justice" in terms of a standard drawn from commerce. The educational practice of Socrates was to refute all definitions that merely pointed to particular examples of moral conduct or that reflected the restricted moral vocabularies of particular cultural communities. In the public sphere, when moral terms are understood and applied in accordance with criteria reflective of particularistic cultural ranking systems, they are misapplied. Moral judgment then becomes a means for imposing the particularistic interests and perspectives of one group or factions on the civic community as a whole. In civic discourse, a more capacious moral language is required, one that allows for the application of moral criteria consistent with a recognition of the equality of fellow citizens who have otherwise conflicting family, tribal, and religious affiliations. The intended effect of Socratic refutation was to move citizens toward an awareness of the distinction between the moral criteria appropriate for public life and the particularistic moral criteria applied in family and tribal contexts. In learning to make this distinction, citizens learned to use their primary moral vocabularies with a certain ironic or critical distance. Socrates, as teacher, dialogically embodied this ironic distance. His rhetorical posture in the interrogation was that of a person who knew only that he did not know the answer to the questions he posed to others — i.e., that he did not possess a set of moral criteria perfectly untainted by particularistic cultural content. As we noted earlier, a capacity to speak the secondary moral language of citizenship actually consists in the capacity to apply the descriptions licensed by a primary moral language with a certain tropological detachment. Socratic refutation, as a form of civic education, was a procedure designed to produce that capacity.

As in the case of Aristotelian political philosophy, we must keep in mind that Socratic political philosophy, too, reflected the totalizing cultural project of Greek philosophy in general. That project aimed at the cultural consolidation and the political unification of all Hellenic peoples. It required the criticism of all the cultural sources of political conflict and division — above all, the local religious cults that intensified divisive tribal and territorial allegiances. Greek philosophy, like its main rival, rhetorical education, sought to provide a cultural common ground supportive of pan-Hellenic ethnic identity. Socratic political philosophy, as one expression of this general cultural project, worked with a conception of republican citizenship that conceived of citizenship as an element of a comprehensive ethnic way of life. The Socratic practice of civic education reflected this global conception of citizenship. The Socratic procedure of asking for universal definitions of moral terms could serve the ends of civic education only as long as Greek audiences found it plausible to believe that a right answer was possible — i.e., that ethnic Greek culture was sufficiently homogeneous to allow achievement of a consensus regarding the definition of basic moral terms. Rhetorical education tended to generate a skepticism about the possibility of giving right answers to the sort of questions posed by Socrates and his followers, a skepticism that undermined completely the effectiveness of Socratic refutation as a form of civic education.

While it may be true that Socratic political philosophy, like Greek philosophy in general, reflected in this way a totalizing cultural world view, it is, nevertheless, also true that Socratic political philosophy defined its own cognitive tasks independently of that world view. The Socratic practice of refutation as a form of civic education may, indeed, have gotten its credibility from the larger project of Greek philosophy and presupposed in its audience the belief that through inquiry all Greeks could indeed arrive at agreement about the definitions of basic moral terms. But Socrates himself offered no answers to the questions he asked others. In practice, Socratic refutation was a form of civic therapy. He embodied in his own rhetorical stance the standpoint he wanted his audience to reach — the civic standpoint of tropological detachment from all particularistic moral vocabularies and a sensitivity to the restricted scope of those vocabularies when used in civic discourse. The goal of Socratic political philosophy was not to arrive at a theoretical knowledge of the nature of civic justice, but rather to produce in citizens the moral insight necessary to act justly. In this respect, Socrates had more in common with Protagoras than he did with Plato. The specifically cognitive task of Socratic political philosophy fit comfortably within the cognitive domain of Aristotelian practical reflection and within the de-totalized perspectives of rhetoric. To the extent this is true, Socratic political philosophy might provide a second model for a de-totalized and de-totalizing conception of liberal doctrine.

What sort of use could be made of Aristotelian and Socratic models of political philosophy in the postmodern reconstruction of liberal political philosophy? As we have seen, this reconstruction involves a shift from a metaphysical to a political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine. A rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine defines liberal doctrine explicitly as a component of liberal democratic civic culture. As a component of civic culture, liberal doctrine must define its cognitive task in rhetorical categories. Civic culture is always a countervailing culture. It is addressed to citizens who are adherents of comprehensive doctrines or totalizing cultural world views. The doctrinal, narrative, and representational resources of any civic culture serve to render intelligible to citizens the norms proper to liberal democratic citizenship and to motivate them to internalize those norms. As a component of civic culture, liberal doctrine must define its cognitive tasks in terms of this basic rhetorical situation. Our initial question was how specifically these cognitive tasks of a political or rhetorical liberalism might be defined. It is in answer to this question that I briefly considered what I have called the Aristotelian and Socratic models of classical political philosophy. To the extent that both of these forms of political philosophy identified as their cognitive domains the realm of practice as opposed to theory, pistis as opposed to episteme, both can usefully be represented as components of Greek republican civic culture. Aristotelian and Socratic forms of political philosophy performed different tasks within that civic culture. Aristotelian political philosophy addressed citizen-rulers and provided concepts and vocabulary for the evaluation of constitutions and laws. Socratic political philosophy offered vocabulary and procedures for civic education. It is in the definitions of their respective cognitive tasks that these two forms of classical political philosophy might serve as models in the postmodern reconstruction of liberalism.

Our need for models is great. As we have seen, modernist liberal political theory departed radically from Aristotelian and Socratic political philosophy in the definition of its cognitive tasks. In the first place, modernist liberalism abandoned the very idea that the domain of moral and political practice in the Aristotelian sense could be a cognitive domain at all. In order to be regarded as a seriously cognitive discourse, political philosophy had to meet the strict standards of "objective" and theoretical truth laid down by foundationalist epistemology. Following classical conceptions of theoretical knowledge, modernist liberal political theory assigned itself the task of deducing from indubitable first principles universal truths about the essence of human political association. The subject matter of Aristotelian practical reflection was, thereby, reconstituted as a field of theoretical inquiry — a new cognitive territory covered by a new political science.

The specifically Aristotelian enterprise of providing a vocabulary for the classification and evaluation of constitutions was transformed accordingly. Aristotelian political philosophy addressed and adopted the standpoint of the citizen-ruler engaged in actual political decision-making. Modernist liberalism, in accordance with the imperatives of the rhetoric of pure theory, adopted the rhetorical posture of an absolutely detached spectator regarding a field of audience-independent "political" facts. Where the cognitive task of the Aristotelian political philosopher was to provide resources for the evaluation of constitutions with respect to a specific set of circumstances, the cognitive task assumed by modernist liberal political theory was the legitimation or justification of political institutions by a quasi-metaphysical deduction proving their conformity with first principles — i.e., the natural human condition, the autonomous faculty of reason, etc. A theoretically legitimated set of political arrangements were presumed to be universally valid and normative — the set of political arrangements that all nations should or eventually will adopt. Only this sort of modernist conception of the cognitive task of political philosophy could have produced the bizarre intellectual phenomena of the Cold War — a struggle between two totalizing social and political systems, systems whose claims to legitimacy rested on conflicting philosophical demonstrations of the conformity of those systems with the objective nature of things.

Thus, the abandonment by modernist liberalism of classical conceptions of practical knowledge forced liberal doctrine to assume the form of a logically compelling philosophical justification of liberal political institutions. This remains to this day the form that serious presentations of liberal doctrine are required to take. This requirement even haunts Rawls’s Political Liberalism, where it is assumed that a quasi-demonstrative procedure of conceptual construction is needed to generate the conception of justice as fairness. What has always been particularly bizarre about this definition of the cognitive task of liberal political philosophy is the very belief that a theoretical justification of liberal political institutions actually had some kind of intrinsic value. What possible value could a theoretical justification of liberal democracy have in the absence of an effective civic culture? Where a liberal democracy lacks the cultural resources to make citizenship intelligible to citizens and to motivate them to achieve liberal moral ideals, there will be no citizens and, eventually, no liberal democracy — even if political philosophers finally come up with a knock-down proof that liberal ideals of civic freedom and equality are written into the foundation of the world. By forcing liberal doctrine into the mold of a metaphysical deduction, modernist liberal political theory, thus, cast into oblivion the entire Aristotelian cognitive domain of practical knowledge, which is also the sphere of civic culture — in short, that cognitive domain where the only real foundations of liberal democracy are laid.

If it is true that modernist liberal theory defined its cognitive tasks in ways that promoted neglect of civic culture, it had also potentially an even more damaging effect. It promoted universalist and essentialist misconceptions of liberal moral ideals that today actually have the effect of positively weakening civic culture. Modernist liberal political philosophy presented liberal doctrine as an integral element of a totalizing cultural perspective — the "scientific" or naturalist world view. As we have noted, Greek political philosophy was also a component of a totalizing world view. The conception of republican citizenship found in Greek political philosophy was shaped by the pan-Hellenic ethnic project sponsored by Greek philosophy in general. However, the classical distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge gave the sphere of moral and political practice a relative independence from the universalist and essentialist cognitive claims made by Greek metaphysics. This relative independence allowed for the development of de-totalizing forms of practical reflection that could support development of civic attitudes and values. Both Aristotelian and Socratic modes of political philosophy operated in this cognitive domain of moral and political practice, the cognitive domain of civic culture. But the abandonment of this cognitive domain by modernist liberal political theory eliminated this buffer zone that separated politics from metaphysics in Greek philosophy. Modernist liberal conceptions of citizenship, thus, became swallowed up by totalizing metaphysical theories about the nature of things. Liberal moral ideals became identified with a cultural perspective that claimed to embrace all humanity.

The most visible and perhaps significant consequence of this modernist identification of the political with the metaphysical is that modernist liberal political theory failed to generate forms of civic education that could be clearly labeled as such. As I observed earlier, Socratic political philosophy was in practice a form of civic education, a procedure for developing in citizens the capacity to adopt a standpoint of reflective distance from the descriptions of the world licensed by their primary moral vocabularies. Socrates invented a form of civic education that allowed him to embody dramatically the normative standpoint of republican citizenship. In his rhetorical posture of an inquirer whose only knowledge was his ignorance of the answers to the questions he asked, Socrates was able to express both love and complete loyalty to a particularistic community — family, friends, city — while at the same time acknowledging that the particularistic moral vocabulary employed by that community do not define criteria for moral judgment that can claim absolutely universal scope. In other words, Socrates embodied awareness of the distinction between competence in applying particularistic communitarian standards of justice and a knowledge of justice in itself. Socratic political philosophy defined its cognitive task as reflection on the issues raised and procedures employed by the form of civic education Socrates invented.

Modernist liberal political theory, on the other hand, invented nothing corresponding to this form of Socratic civic education. As I noted in Chapter One, modernist liberal political theory constructed its conception of the normative standpoint of citizenship by drawing an analogy between the reflective distance from particularistic moral languages required for citizenship and the absolutely objective standpoint of the pure theoretical knower of foundationalist epistemology. The conception of citizenship based on this analogy produced a new conception of the secondary moral vocabulary proper to civic discourse and a new conception of the way in which citizens develop the capacity to use that secondary moral vocabulary. Because modernist liberalism identified the normative standpoint of citizenship with the standpoint of autonomous reason, the secondary moral vocabulary proper to civic discourse was equated with the radically objective or culture-neutral vocabulary of science. The function of civic education in a liberal democracy is to help citizens develop the capacity to use the secondary moral vocabulary proper to civic discourse. To the extent that this secondary moral vocabulary was equated with the culture- or value-neutral vocabulary of science, so-called scientific education (i.e., what was conceived as scientific education in accordance with foundationalist epistemological theories) became a de facto form of civic education. The move from the exclusive use of a primary moral language shaped by particularistic cultural values to the more capacious secondary moral language of citizenship was, thereby, conceived of by modernist liberalism as a move from a language where subjective value judgments predominate to a language that permits only objective cognitive judgments.

Thus, modernist liberal political theory produced no form of civic education that could be clearly labeled as such. The role of civic education was played by "scientific" education — or, more accurately, by a form of education governed by a curriculum that presented all subject matter in terms of a dogmatically asserted and radical distinction between fact and value, between objective, value-neutral scientific knowledge of reality and subjective value-laden cultural and personal perspectives. By now we have learned that, whatever the merits or demerits of this so-called "scientific" education as a form of technical education, as a form of civic education it is a disaster. The goal of civic education is to teach citizens to use their primary moral vocabulary in a different way, with an internalized sense of its restricted scope or with a certain ironic distance. To speak a primary moral language in this way introduces a certain tension and ambiguity into its use. The secondary moral language proper to civic discourse is just such a primary moral language spoken in this way. But the "scientific" education licensed by modernist liberalism as a form of civic education does not and cannot have this effect.

To the extent that this "scientific" education was viewed as a surrogate for civic education, the secondary moral language of citizenship was tacitly conceived of as analogous to the supposedly value-neutral cognitive language of science. But the supposedly value-neutral language of science is not a moral language at all. The radical distinction between fact and value on which "scientific" education was based, in effect, banished all moral language to the realm of the culturally arbitrary and the ontologically irrelevant. However, if all moral language is culturally arbitrary and ontologically irrelevant, then each particularistic primary moral vocabulary shares that status with every other. All are equal in their cognitive deficiencies and, therefore, any choice between conflicting primary moral vocabularies is a purely arbitrary one. But this view, that all primary moral vocabularies are equal in their arbitrary status, effectively absolutizes each one, making it immune to any sort of critical reflection. Critical reflection on one’s primary moral vocabulary, however, is the heart and soul of civic education. Modernist "scientific" education, therefore, to the extent that it eliminated any motive for the critical examination of primary moral vocabularies, eliminated the necessary condition for the development of a capacity to speak a primary moral language with critical detachment — which is the very capacity for civic discourse itself. It is modernist "scientific" education, functioning as a surrogate for civic education, that during the last 100 years in America has brought forth that peculiar educational product, what we could call "the closed open mind." This phenomenon occurs when students effectively internalize the message of the "scientific" curriculum and become "open-minded," i.e., learn to see the arbitrary nature and merely relative validity of all particularistic moral values. As a result, they conclude that, because all primary moral vocabularies are equal in their arbitrariness and cognitive deficiency, there is no real point in seriously investigating other cultural world views or in critically examining their own.

Thus, the cognitive tasks identified with both Aristotelian and Socratic varieties of classical political philosophy were abandoned by modernist liberal political theory and replaced with a very different set of cognitive tasks. Aristotelian practical reflection on the norms proper to political decision-making was replaced by the theoretical legitimation or justification of regimes. Socratic civic education was replaced by a form of education aimed at promoting adherence to the totalizing world view of modernist science. The common intellectual ground shared by both of these developments was the abandonment of the classical distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge. Modernist liberal political theorists took up the anti-rhetorical rhetoric of pure theory invented by foundationalist epistemologists, and, following them, collapsed the three different cognitive domains of classical philosophy (those of theoretical, practical and technical knowledge) into one: the cognitive domain of pure theory.

We are, today, paying the price of this modernist redrawing of the cognitive map. Notice, for example, the difficulty we have in classifying the subject matter of a book like Rawls’s Political Liberalism. Is the book a contribution to political theory, i.e., to the enterprise of discovering the objective truth about the essence of political morality or the invariable laws governing human political association? Emphatically not. The book presents a conception of liberalism as a political doctrine, a type of political morality restricted in scope both with respect to those who practice it, i.e., citizens of modern constitutional democracies, and with respect to the range of human issues it addresses. Is the book then to be understood as an application of theory (the modernist sense of "practical")? Is it a book on social or political policy? Or does Rawls make an argument for his conception of justice as fairness that is designed to win adherents for a particular political program? Hardly. The book’s argument is far too abstract for that. It presents itself as a philosophical reflection about the basis and limits of liberal democratic political morality, as a conception of the norms proper to a particular form of political association. But what do we call this sort of exercise? Is it speaking of anything that we, applying modernist standards, would call a conception of morality at all? It comes with no metaphysical pedigree. It finds its only foundations in a particular contingent way of life. Seen with modernist eyes, an arbitrary and groundless morality such as this would be devoid of universally binding normative force.

Even Rawls seems to be uncertain about how to classify in general terms the subject matter and goals of Political Liberalism. He presents his conception of liberal morality as validated by a constructionist procedure almost, but not quite, like a Kantian one. It seems that his careful observance of all the rhetorical conventions of modernist liberal political theory functions almost as a strategy for avoiding the question. But this question cannot be avoided. Nothing can hide the fact that Political Liberalism stands on what is, for us at least, new cognitive ground. It is the cognitive ground of Aristotelian practical philosophy. It remains to be seen how far classical conceptions of practical knowledge can advance our project of inventing a postmodern political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine. It seems to me, however, that we will make no sense at all of this project until we have succeeded in recovering the basic perspectives underlying Aristotelian practical philosophy and Socratic civic education.

The rhetorical turn in the reconstruction of liberal political philosophy addresses the issue of the intelligibility of liberal doctrine and of liberal democratic citizenship itself. Thus far in this exploration of some of the implications of the shift from a metaphysical to a political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine, we have been trying to get some idea of what a thoroughly non-metaphysical or de-totalized form of liberal doctrine would look like or how a postmodern version of liberal political philosophy would define its cognitive tasks. Now I want to take a look at the scene from a different angle — turning away from the question of doctrinal form or cognitive status and focusing on the question of doctrinal content or subject matter.

The particular question of doctrinal content or subject matter I want to consider deals with a certain reversal in our understanding of the relationship between the public sphere and the private sphere that a political or rhetorical version of liberal doctrine must accomplish. A political or rhetorical version of liberal doctrine presents liberalism as a doctrine that is partial rather than comprehensive in scope. This is what Rawls tells us. But, as I indicated earlier, I think we must take this conception of the partial character of liberal doctrine one step further. To conceive of liberalism now as a doctrine pertaining only to the part rather than to the whole of life is to do more than merely introduce into our view of liberalism the idea of its limitation in scope. Rather, and far more, it is to assign to liberal doctrine, within the context of a postmodern civic culture, a new rhetorical function. To the extent that modernist liberal political theory represented liberalism as a comprehensive or totalizing doctrine, a political conception of liberal doctrine must actively undo this totalization. It must reverse the effects of the modernist representation of liberal moral and political ideals as elements of a totalizing world view.

It is this reversal that must not only be observed, but also pursued actively as one piece of the postmodern reconstruction of liberalism. This reversal concerns the relative dependence and independence of the cultural perspectives proper to the public and private spheres. The reversal is due to the demise of modernist liberal conceptions of liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine. When conceived as a comprehensive doctrine or totalizing world view, liberalism seemed capable of providing the basis of social unity and stability. For modernist liberalism, the totalizing cultural standpoint proper to the liberal democratic public sphere was capable by itself of providing norms and justifying political arrangements, independently of the diverse cultural world views proper to particular ethnic, class, and religious communities. But now, with the abandonment of totalizing modernist conceptions of liberal doctrine, the tables must be turned. The relationship of dependence must be reversed. Liberalism, as a doctrine pertaining only to the part and not to the whole of life, can no longer, using its own resources alone, provide a cultural basis for social stability and unity. That cultural basis must be supplied by a consensus among members of the diverse cultural communities that make up any particular liberal democracy. It is this reversal that I have in mind when I speak of the de-totalization of the public sphere.

What I want to do here is to explore briefly a few of the implications of this reversal. But first, let us make sure that we clearly understand the nature of the reversal itself. What I have called the de-totalization of the public sphere is a project that is part of a general reorientation of liberal political philosophy. This project aims at replacing the modernist conception of liberal doctrine as one sufficient by itself to provide the cultural basis of the unity and stability of society with a political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine, one that views the stability and unity of society as dependent upon the development of an overlapping cultural consensus, supportive of liberal moral ideals and political arrangements. Liberal moral ideals and political arrangements define the public sphere of a liberal democracy. The public sphere is the realm of speech and action in which the issues pertaining to the basic institutional structure of society are addressed and in which citizens address and behave toward one another explicitly as citizens, i.e., as free and equal individuals. Modernist liberal political theory conceived of the public sphere in a way that represented it as culturally self-sufficient, as sufficient to provide a cultural basis for the unity and stability of society. It interpreted those ideas and ideals as components of a comprehensive or totalizing world view, a world view capable of addressing satisfactorily all the basic issues of human life.

Let us recall, briefly, how this cultural totalization of the public sphere was represented by modernist liberal civic culture. As we noted earlier, modernist liberal political theory identified the normative standpoint of citizenship — the standpoint of free and equal individuality — as the universal and essential standpoint of humanity, as such. If the public sphere of a liberal democracy is the field of activity wherein citizens assume the standpoint of free and equal individuality, and if the standpoint of free and equal individuality is identified as the universal and essential standpoint of humanity as such, then, in this interpretation, the liberal democratic public sphere assumes a profound moral and metaphysical significance. It becomes the primary locus or encompassing setting within which the metaphysical drama of human life is played out. It is in the liberal democratic public sphere that the metaphysically defining traits of human beings — the basis for conceptions of universal human rights — are either given their full weight or denied.

Interpreted in this way, the public sphere could not be viewed simply as one contingent field of activity and aspiration among others. The properties attributed to human beings as members of particularistic cultural communities are not metaphysically indelible. As persons alter their ethnic, class, and religious identifications and affiliations, old descriptions are replaced by new. But, through all such changes, a person’s underlying, metaphysically permanent identity — that of a free and equal individual — remains. This way of representing the relationship between civic identity and communitarian identity was the basis for the modernist liberal interpretation of the public sphere as the culturally basic and all-encompassing field of activity and aspiration. Thus interpreted, the public sphere could easily be represented as culturally self-sufficient — i.e., as containing within itself all the cultural resources necessary to provide a cultural basis for the unity and stability of society.

We must keep in mind, of course, that we are now speaking only of the way in which the public sphere was represented by the form of civic culture shaped in its content specifically by the ideas of modernist liberal political theory. Further, we must keep in mind that this attribution of metaphysical significance and priority to the public sphere affected only the beliefs of those citizens actually influenced by modernist civic culture — i.e., the citizens most politically active and self-consciously liberal. Needless to say, large numbers of nominal citizens in every liberal democracy develop the moral and linguistic capacities of citizenship, either only partially or not at all. Such nominal citizens either marginalize themselves to some degree politically and culturally — at the extreme, for example, think of the Amish in Pennsylvania or the Lubavitcher sect in Brooklyn — or participate in reactionary cultural and political movements actively hostile to the values of the liberal democratic public sphere. Among such nominal citizens, the totalizing culture of the public sphere generally had little positive impact. But, where modernist liberal civic culture did take hold and create citizens, the totalizing culture of the public sphere did influence beliefs. From the standpoint of this totalizing culture, there was no question as to the proper rank and cultural significance to be assigned to the public sphere. The cultural worlds inhabited by particularistic ethnic, class, and religious communities were seen as having a clearly secondary and subordinate status. In the norms proper to those cultural worlds, the metaphysically defining traits of humanity at large are not at issue. At issue in those particularistic cultural worlds are merely the arbitrary projects fostered by the accidental historical conditions of local community life. Thus, among citizens actually influenced by the totalizing culture of the modernist liberal public sphere, the consequence of affirming the cultural self-sufficiency of the public sphere was a certain diminution of the cognitive and moral authority of particularistic cultural beliefs and life ideals.

Since it was, above all, the particularistic cultural beliefs and life ideals of religious communities that were diminished in moral authority by the modernist liberal totalization of the public sphere, let us refer to this general consequence as the process of secularization. Modernist liberal political theory represented the liberal democratic public sphere as containing within itself the cultural resources necessary to provide a cultural basis for the unity and stability of society. The unity and stability of society was an interest common to all citizens. A good citizen is one whose beliefs, as well as actions, are consistent with the goal of maintaining a united and stable society. When the public sphere is represented as containing within itself the cultural resources necessary for social unity and stability, the natural presumption is that the cultural resources offered by the public sphere are alone consistent with good citizenship. To the extent that this sort of presumption made itself felt, the cognitive and moral requirements of good citizenship seemed to be in direct conflict with the cognitive and moral requirements imposed by adherence to particularistic cultural world views, especially religious world views. The totalizing culture of the liberal public sphere offered moral ideals that were incompatible with those identified with particular ethnic, class, and religious communities. Two of these liberal moral ideals, what I have called the civic ethics of authenticity and the civic ethics of autonomy, were particularly hostile to religious values and beliefs. Yet, from the standpoint of modernist liberal civic culture, it seemed that the unity and stability of society could be guaranteed only by widespread, if not exclusive, adherence to these liberal moral ideals.

Thus, the totalization of the public sphere by modernist liberalism seemed to impose on society as a whole a process of cultural secularization — i.e., a process mandating, in the name of good citizenship and the unity and stability of society, acceptance of a totalizing cultural world view that diminished the authority of beliefs and values held by particular ethnic, class, and religious communities. The totalization of the public sphere in modernist liberal civic culture produced in this way something like an informally established, state-sponsored secular "religion" — i.e., a totalizing cultural world view whose acceptance was tacitly required as a condition for full cultural citizenship. Fundamentalist Christian critics of liberalism, critics whose entire point of view has been largely determined by their reaction against this secular "religion," have given it the name of "secular humanism." If nothing else, their campaign against what they call secular humanism demonstrates their acute awareness of the cultural forces arrayed against them (and against all other religious persons inclined toward orthodoxy) in modernist civic culture. It also points to a problem that any political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine must address. Metaphysical liberalism asserted the cultural independence and self-sufficiency of the public realm in a way that set it in opposition to the moral ideals and world views of particularistic cultural communities. The totalizing culture of the modernist liberal public sphere defined the public sphere in a way that was in principle and always potentially totalitarian — joining the liberal democratic public sphere with a cultural world view claiming inclusive and exclusive dominion.

Rawls’s conception of an overlapping cultural consensus addresses this problem. With the demise of Enlightenment conceptions of reason and knowledge, the world view that provided the cultural resources supporting the cultural independence of the public sphere has collapsed. This fact alone renders obsolete the modernist liberal representation of the political sphere as culturally self-sufficient. A post-Enlightenment political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine is one that acknowledges and embraces its restricted cognitive and moral scope. For such a conception of liberal doctrine, the public sphere cannot supply the cultural resources necessary to provide a cultural basis for the unity and stability of society. This cultural basis must be supplied by an overlapping consensus among the particularistic cultural communities that make up any given liberal democracy. This does not mean that the public sphere, by itself, cannot offer some cultural perspectives supportive of social unity and stability. The resources that it can provide I will describe in Chapter Four. What it means is that the liberal moral ideals and political arrangements defining the public sphere must be supported primarily by cultural resources drawn from particularistic ethnic, class, and religious world views. It also means that, in order to secure this support, liberal doctrine must not be formulated or understood in such a way as to conflict gratuitously with beliefs and moral ideals sponsored by particularistic cultural communities — it must be conceived explicitly as a doctrine pertaining only to a part and not to the whole of life, one that leaves plenty of room for orthodoxies of all kinds.

This is the nature of that reversal in our understanding of the relationship between the public and private spheres that is announced in Rawls’s conception of an overlapping cultural consensus. The philosophical project of carrying through this reversal systematically I have called the de-totalization of the public sphere. Once the nature and goals of this project have been roughly defined, the next step is to begin the process of rethinking liberalism in a way that no longer represents the liberal democratic public sphere as culturally self-sufficient. One of the primary tasks of a political or rhetorical conception of liberalism is to establish clearly the cultural limits of the public sphere. If liberalism is a moral doctrine pertaining only to the part and not to the whole of life, the next task must be to define that part. If liberal moral ideals and political arrangements apply to only a limited range of life issues, then just what is their specific range of application?

Treating this question itself effectively has its difficulties. For there is a definite sense in which liberal moral ideals and political arrangements are encompassing in scope. According to Rawls, liberalism as a political doctrine takes as its subject the basic institutional structure of society. A particular conception of civic justice defines a specific way of ordering that basic structure. Needless to say, the way in which this question is answered by citizens of any particular liberal democracy has an impact on every aspect of their lives. The basic institutional structure of a liberal democracy shapes an entire way of life. It defines rights, liberties, and protections. It assigns duties and responsibilities. From the basic structure of society are derived rules that govern the relationships between employer and employee, husband and wife, parent and child, merchant and customer. To determine the basic institutional structure of a society is to structure these relationships. Because questions about the basic structure of society involve every aspect of life and affect every citizen, the perspective that must be adopted in answering those questions, i.e., the perspective proper to the liberal democratic public sphere, is a perspective on the whole society. The legislator, the elected official, the civil administrator, the judge — these roles above all require that the individuals assuming them adopt this perspective on the whole.

This perspective on the whole, however, encompasses the whole of society only with respect to one issue — the issue of civic justice. The basic structure of society structures the relationships between employer and employee, husband and wife, parent and child, merchant and customer, but only with respect to the question of whether the definition and the functioning of these relationships are just, i.e., are in accordance with the fundamental conception of civic justice embodied in the basic political arrangements of society. On the other hand, each one of these relationships has its primary setting within a more encompassing context of life issues — the general life issues of sex, friendship, work, suffering, sin, death, and salvation — a context in which civic justice is but one issue among others. Thus, while it is true that the cultural and political perspective proper to the public sphere is a perspective on the whole of society — i.e., encompasses all citizens and affects all their relationships and activities — it nevertheless encompasses the whole only with respect to one issue in the universe of human concerns. A political or rhetorical conception of liberal doctrine addresses only this one issue. Comprehensive doctrines or totalizing world views, on the other hand, speak to them all.

Liberal democracy is distinguished from other forms of political association by the way it makes questions of civic justice answerable independently of the global answers given to other life issues. The citizens of a liberal democracy, in a continuous process of public deliberation, decide how they will organize their cooperation. Whatever decisions they may make in any particular case, the point of agreement from which they begin their deliberation is the principle that political or civic justice is not to be determined by the criteria established by one or another global response to the entire context of human life issues. This relative independence of the issue of civic justice finds its expression in the liberal doctrine of the priority of the right over the good. Within the entire context of human life issues, only civic justice, as conceived by liberal doctrine, can be given this kind of independence.

In decisions involving judgments about sex, friendship, work, suffering, sin, death, and salvation, human beings apply criteria drawn from one or another comprehensive conception of the good life. Decisions about these questions normally require reference to ultimate purposes and goals — some conception of what life is finally all about, some conception of what is of lasting importance, some more or less clear specification of priorities. Particular decisions by individuals about these questions determine and reflect their membership in particularistic cultural communities. The criteria applied in such decisions are normally drawn from and guided by shared traditions of coherent and comprehensive belief — traditions that attempt to provide a coherent set of responses to the full range of human life issues, so that responses to the issue of sex or reproduction cohere with responses to the issue of friendship or companionship and responses to the issue of work, and so on. In questions of political or civic justice, however, liberalism requires citizens to apply criteria drawn from a source that lies external to any particularistic cultural tradition or community. They must measure the justice of their relationships and their actions not by reference to criteria drawn from one or another shared conception of the good, but rather by reference to criteria drawn from a set of agreed-upon principles of civic justice that govern their cooperation.

Liberal doctrine pertains to the part rather than the whole of life, then, in this sense that it concerns only that sphere defined by the principles of civic justice. It is important to note that, more strictly, liberal doctrine pertains not just to a part of life, but to a part of a part. The issue of civic justice is only one aspect of the general life issue of justice. The general life issue of justice arises from the human need for a socially confirmed sense of dignity or self-respect. The rule of justice is "equals to equals." This means that persons who are considered equal (in some respect and in accordance with some measure) should be treated equally. To be socially confirmed in one’s self-respect, i.e., to be treated justly, one must be treated in ways that are perceived to be equal to the treatment of other persons who are considered to be of the same status and rank. In defining status and rank, criteria must be applied. Some criteria that define differentials of status and rank are drawn from intrinsic features of particular life activities or life issues. Thus, with respect to the life issue of sex or reproduction, rank and relative worth are determined by beauty, strength, fertility, and so on. With respect to the life issue of friendship or companionship, rank and relative worth are determined by family relationship, common interests, and personal compatibility. With respect to the life issue of work, rank and relative worth are determined by talent, economic resources, and industry.

In addition to these criteria of rank and status drawn from intrinsic features of particular life activities and life issues, other criteria are drawn from the ranking systems defined by different conceptions of the good or cultural traditions. In different cultural traditions, the various life issues are assigned different degrees of importance for the overall meaning and purpose of life. In some cultural traditions, sin and salvation are accorded supreme importance, while sex and reproduction are ranked lower. In other cultural traditions, work and friendship are given primacy over both sex and salvation. These cultural differences determine the culturally-defined status and rank of any particular individual with respect to any particular life issue and life activity. General features of human life — such as age, health, gender and race or birth — will affect an individual’s rank or status differently depending on membership in different cultural communities. Accordingly, if the general life issue of justice, i.e., the issue raised by the need for a socially confirmed sense of self-respect, is a matter of securing equal treatment for persons of equal rank or status, then this issue will be decided in most cases by resort to local, culturally-determined ranking systems, for it is such local ranking systems that define with respect to most life issues what constitutes equal status and rank in any given case.

Let us call issues of justice that are resolved by resort to such local, culturally sensitive ranking systems issues of communitarian justice. In matters of communitarian justice, the reverse of the liberal principle holds — i.e., the good has priority over and defines the right. In matters of communitarian justice, the rule of justice, "equals to equals," is given its concrete application and content by reference to one or another local conception of the good. However, with the establishment of liberal political institutions, the issue of justice is defined in a new way. Of course, even in a liberal democracy, most questions of justice remain questions of communitarian justice. But liberal political institutions introduce a new set of criteria for determining rank and relative worth. We have called issues of justice that are resolved by resort to these new criteria issues of civic justice. Liberal doctrine pertains only to that sphere of life defined by the proper application of the criteria of civic justice. Liberal doctrine, thus, pertains not only to a part of life, to one life issue among many, but, more exactly, to a part of that part, to the life issue of justice as civic justice. Issues of civic justice are resolved not by resort to ranking systems belonging to one or another particularistic cultural community, but rather by resort to a set of agreed upon principles underlying the institutional structure of a liberal democracy. These principles constitute the criteria of civic justice, the criteria according to which the rule of justice is applied to define the equal status and determine the equal treatment of citizens.

Of course, the specific principles that determine the specific criteria of civic justice will differ from one liberal democracy to another. Those specific principles are always a matter for decision by citizens. They are subject to revision. As we noted earlier, there can be no "theory" of civic justice that could claim to define the principles of civic justice for any particular liberal democracy in advance of the political process through which those principles are actually found acceptable. However, while the principles of civic justice cannot be defined in advance of that political process, if they are to qualify as principles of liberal or civic justice, they must be consistent with the conception of equality inherent in the notion of citizenship itself.

A citizen is a human being whose rank or status is determined by reference to the basic structure of a modern constitutional democracy. As citizens, in their relationship to the state and to the basic structure of society, human beings are not distinguished by reference to their membership in particular ethnic, class, or religious communities. They are not distinguished by reference to their race, age or gender. Thus, in their relationship to the basic structure of a liberal democratic society, human beings are taken simply as individuals. Further, the differentials of status, rank and relative worth that come into play for various purposes when human beings are viewed as members of ethnic, class, and religious communities have no relevance when they are viewed simply as citizens. Thus, in their relationship to the basic structure of liberal democratic society, human beings are viewed as possessing equal status or rank, whatever may be their rank or status in other contexts. Further, as we have seen, the personal goals and commitments assumed by human beings as members of particularistic ethnic, class, or religious communities define their identities as members of those communities. But, when viewed in relationship to the basic structure of a liberal democratic society, the identities of human beings are defined only by rights and duties, liberties and constraints applying to all citizens equally, as specified by law. In that relationship, human beings are understood as being free, i.e., free to alter their purely personal goals, commitments and identities at will.

In their relationship to the basic structure of a liberal democratic society, then, human beings are viewed as free and equal individuals. When addressing and acting toward one another explicitly in this way, i.e., as free and equal individuals, human beings explicitly assume the attributes and standpoint proper to citizenship. In addressing one another as citizens, human beings adopt standards of relevance that render differences of race, age, gender, ethnicity, social class and religious belief irrelevant. The specific principles of civic justice adopted at any given time by any particular liberal democracy may vary widely in their content. But, to qualify as principles of liberal or civic justice, they must be consistent with this normative conception of free and equal individuality inherent in the very notion of liberal democratic citizenship.

In any case, it is clear that liberal doctrine, understood in this way as pertaining only to matters of civic justice, pertains only to the part rather than to the whole of life. In the same way, the liberal democratic public sphere, as the sphere defined by a common interest in civic justice, must also be represented as encompassing issues relevant only to a restricted set of concerns. Conceived of in this way, the public sphere cannot be represented as a sphere providing on its own resources sufficient to provide a cultural basis for social stability and unity. The interest in civic justice, however intense, is simply too abstract, too culturally "thin" to generate the deep commitment to civic values and the strong feelings of civic friendship required for social stability and unity. The cultural resources required for the generation of such commitment and feeling must be drawn from the resources of the various cultural communities that make up any particular liberal democracy. But if, conceived in this way, the liberal democratic public sphere cannot be represented as culturally self-sufficient, neither can it be represented as mandating as a condition for full cultural citizenship, acceptance of a totalizing cultural world view that is competitive with or hostile to the cultural world views and life ideals of particularistic cultural communities. Conceived of in this way, the cultural perspectives proper to the public sphere cannot present an obstacle to the formation of the overlapping cultural consensus necessary for the survival of any postmodern liberal democracy.

The de-totalization of the cultural perspectives proper to the public sphere, thus, can make an important contribution to the intelligibility of postmodern liberal democratic citizenship. Rawls’s conception of the overlapping cultural consensus that must provide the cultural basis for social unity and stability effectively reverses the relationship of dependence between the public and private spheres. Speech and action within the public sphere must be modified accordingly. If the cultural perspectives proper to the public sphere encompass only matters relevant to the issue of civic justice, then the public sphere can no longer be understood as a secularized and secularizing setting within which the drama of human life as a whole is played out, a totalizing cultural domain demanding acceptance of its moral and cognitive ideals in the name of social stability and unity. Rather, the liberal democratic public sphere must find its cultural foundations beyond itself, by appeal to beliefs and values that have their home outside the domain of political life. Liberal doctrine, in the future, must be understood and formulated in such a way as to make that appeal successful.

This is not to say, however, that, with the de-totalization of the public sphere and of liberal doctrine in general, all tension is removed between civic and communitarian moral ideals. But the tensions that remain have more to do with questions of motivation than with questions of intelligibility. Civic and communitarian moral ideals, after all, serve very different life functions. The ideal of civic justice, for example, will always, in some measure, conflict with ideals of communitarian justice. The criteria proper to communitarian justice are specified by the totalizing world views of particularistic cultural communities. These cultural communities are communities of shared aspiration and interest. Such communities are ultimately rooted in the soil of biological life. They develop distinctive styles of reproduction, nourishment, labor, speech, and mutual care that are, at the same time, styles and modalities of human desire. These totalizing world views or conceptions of the good have as their function the nurturing, direction, and support of that desire. Wherever human desire and aspiration must be nurtured, there, also, must hierarchy and rank exist. Characteristic of communities of aspiration and common interest are relations of command and submission, dependence and domination. In such communities, various forms of servitude, hierarchical social organization, and segregation based on age and gender are typical. The moral ideals sponsored by such communities are designed to give form and direction to the lives of individuals by shaping desire in specific ways. Those ideals define hierarchies of excellence and achievement that determine the rank order of the individuals subject to them. Nothing could be more foreign to such communities than the civic moral ideals of freedom and equality.

Here the issue of motivation arises. Properly understood, civic culture is always a partial and a countervailing culture. Civic culture is the culture proper to the public sphere. It is a "thin" culture, addressed to only one general life issue, i.e., the issue of civic justice. Civic culture differs radically in purpose from communitarian cultures. It does not provide an interpretative framework for life as a whole. It does not define a standard reproductive style, an ideal of family life, or a set of answers to life’s deepest questions. It does not provide hierarchies of excellence and achievement designed to nurture and direct human desire and aspiration. Rather, civic culture has but one function. It must provide the cultural resources sufficient to render intelligible the liberal democratic moral ideals of individual freedom and equality and to motivate citizens to pursue those ideals. When a civic culture successfully carries out this function, it does not create a new particularistic community of aspiration and common interest that stands opposed to other particularistic cultural communities. It does not create a new totalizing communitarian culture that provides a global conception of a complete and flourishing human life. Rather, when civic culture functions effectively it provides citizens with the linguistic and moral capacities to meet the requirements of civic justice — i.e., to treat one another as free and equal individuals in accordance with a set of agreed-upon principles or rules. These civic capacities do not exist apart from the capacities required for the successful pursuit of goals defined by communitarian culture. They exist only as a modification of those capacities.

Civic culture, then, as a partial and countervailing culture, presupposes and remains dependent upon communitarian culture. It cannot stand by itself. The modernist liberal project of constructing a civic culture that could be misunderstood as something like a communitarian culture resembles a project of making the tail wag the dog. This is what Rawls’s doctrine of the overlapping cultural consensus tells us. It tells us that the relationship of dependence between civic and communitarian culture established by modernist liberal political theory must be reversed. A civic culture, to carry out its function successfully, must draw upon the traditions and moral ideals of the particularistic cultural communities it addresses. What the notion of an overlapping cultural consensus does not do is tell us how this can be done. The civic moral ideals of individual freedom and equality are not only partial and "thin" as moral ideals. They also can be unsettling to adherents of communitarian cultures; civic moral ideals can be dangerous. Citizens in the full cultural sense are those who have developed the capacity to put aside the ranking systems and hierarchies proper to their communitarian cultures and to address other citizens within the public sphere as free and equal individuals. But, to put aside communitarian ranking systems and hierarchies is at least to place limits on their otherwise all-encompassing claims to authority. Liberal civic culture can often appear to adherents of communitarian cultures as a culture that requires the abandonment of all ranking systems and the overturning of all hierarchies.

Whereas the specific conflict between civic and communitarian cultures produced by modernist liberalism can be overcome by the de-totalization of the public sphere, this other conflict — the conflict between civic and communitarian ideals of justice — is intrinsic to the relationship between civic and communitarian cultures. Civic culture is a countervailing culture. It seeks to modify the speech, action and very identities of the adherents of particularistic communitarian cultures in ways that can be unsettling. If civic culture is to be effective in producing these modifications, it must be persuasive. But what means of persuasion are available to it? If civic culture seems to threaten the abandonment of all ranking systems and the overturning of all hierarchies — ranking systems and hierarchies required for the nurturing and direction of human desire — how can adherents of particularistic communitarian cultures be convinced that it is worthwhile to undertake the considerable moral and intellectual task of becoming citizens in the full cultural sense? Once we have understood the partial and dependent nature of civic culture, we must turn to this next issue — the issue of motivation. Let us now address one aspect of that issue.