%0 Journal Article
%T Sideways at the entrance of the cave: A pluralist footnote to Plato
%A Alessandro Ferrara
%J Philosophy & Social Criticism
%@ 1461-734X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0191453719838009
%X The idea of a ¡®true¡¯ account of pluralism is ultimately contradictory. Liberal political philosophers often fell prey to a special version of this fallacy by presupposing that there might be only one correct argument for justifying the acceptance of pluralism as the core of a liberal democratic polity. Avoiding this trap, Rawls¡¯s ¡®political liberalism¡¯ has offered a more sophisticated view of reasonable pluralism as linked with the ¡®burdens of judgement¡¯. His philosophical agenda, however, left some questions underexplored: What is the relation of pluralism to relativism? How can a conception of pluralism (epistemic, moral and political) avoid being either one view among others with no special claim to truth, or a foundationalist claim? If pluralism is a fact, in what sense can it bind us? These questions ¨C crucial for grasping the distinctiveness of ¡®political¡¯ liberalism ¨C are addressed by revisiting Plato¡¯s simile of the cave, in order to make it accommodate the groundbreaking Rawlsian notion of the ¡®reasonable¡¯
%K exemplarity
%K Plato
%K pluralism
%K political liberalism
%K public reason
%K Rawls
%K reasonability
%K simile of the cave
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0191453719838009