How “political” is Quong’s political liberalism?
In this short paper I ask to what extent the sharp contrast between the 
 political and the comprehensive, on which political liberals such as Rawls 
 and Quong place primary emphasis, caters to a truly “political” conception of 
 liberalism. I argue that Quong’s own take on this point is more distinctively 
 “political” than Rawls’s, in that it assigns far less weight to citizens’ 
 comprehensive doctrines. Indeed, I suggest that Quong’s exclusion of 
 comprehensive doctrines (exemplified by his worries about an “overlapping 
 consensus”) has more radical implications than Quong himself seems to think. 
 In doing so, I offer a streamlined version of Quong’s critique, which 
 encompasses two more or less direct criticisms of Rawls’s doctrine of the 
 overlapping consensus. I will call them the “sincerity objection” and the 
 “liberal objection”.
Liberalism Without Perfection: Replies to Lister, Kulenović, Zoffoli, Zelić, and Baccarini
I would like to begin by thanking all the contributors to this symposium, 
 especially Elvio Baccarini, who hosted the conference at the University of 
 Rijeka where several of the papers in this symposium were initially 
 presented. I’ve learned a great deal from these essays, and I’m very 
 fortunate for my work to be the subject of such careful and perceptive 
 philosophical attention. Below I offer some replies to each contributor, 
 though I do not address all the important points raised in each paper.
John Rawls and the Search for Stability
The original impetus for this essay was provided by reviewers of my book Theories of Justice.1 There I had at a number of points discussed the ideas of John Rawls, but had confined myself to A Theory ofJustice.2 Almost without exception, I was taken to task for not having discussed Rawls's later views. In some cases, it seemed to be implied that Rawls's change of mind somehow invalidated his earlier ideas. The subsequent reaction to Political Liberalism has confirmed my suspicion that Rawls is widely assumed to have got one thing right at least: that there was something wrong with A Theory ofJustice that needed fixing.3 However unconvinced they may be by the positive doctrine, Rawls's commentators have tended to accept uncritically his own disparagement of A Theory of Justice. It is my contention that Rawls's account of what was wrong with A Theory of Justice will not withstand scrutiny. If I am right about this (and I argue the case in the next section), an intriguing question opens up. We have to ask, What does account for Rawls's shift to the