Catriona McKinnon seeks to defend a constructivist model of political justification for liberal political principles. One of her principal purposes is to lay to rest the charge that liberal justification “only successfully addresses people who are already committed to liberal political principles” (p. ix). Although she thinks that these “well-worn” criticisms typically rest on “sloppy or wilful misreadings,” and are “crass and boring,” even “hysterical,” she allows that they “can be seen as an overstated response to a more subtle concern about the nature of contemporary liberal justification”: This is that “the assumptions about persons required for liberal principles to be justified to these persons undermine a commitment to the permanence of pluralism” (p. x). While it is best to pass over the initially dismissive (“hysterical”?) tone, as it is rapidly abandoned for one that is altogether more measured, it is hard to resist observing that for someone who rejects the charge that liberals are largely talking to each other, this seems an odd way to begin.

McKinnon aims to reformulate an important element in John Rawls's political constructivism. She accepts the structure and purpose of his constructivism, but departs from him over the adequacy of his argument from the “burdens of judgement.” Both that argument, and Brian Barry's alternative of moderate skepticism, are rejected as being unnecessarily demanding in the attitude they require people to have about their own beliefs. They are demanding because they require people to accept a single explanation for the fact of permanent pluralism; and such demandingness is unnecessary because McKinnon's own, “many flowers” view allows that while people must still accept the fact of permanent pluralism, they need not do so for the same reasons. The problem then becomes one of “why people divided on the question of why pluralism is a permanent fact are all nevertheless committed to toleration and public reason” (p. 55). McKinnon's answer is because they share a conception of self-respect and its social bases. “Self-respect,” she contends, “requires congruence between [a person's] self-conception and her self-expression; it depends upon her meeting standards with which she in some way identifies” (p. 57). However, because a person can identify with standards that imply subservience, this account needs to be supplemented by a nonsubservience condition specifying that a person must “judge as legitimate any expectation of hers that others should offer her justifying reasons why she should perform actions she is expected by them to perform” (p. 85). McKinnon further argues that people who are committed to their own self-respect, and who accept that other people are similarly committed, must endorse a conception of public reason for deliberating about questions of justice that requires them to give reasons to others that they cannot reasonably reject. The crucial connection between self-respect and public reason is effected through conceiving persons as, in Charles Taylor's sense, “strong evaluators.” The final chapter then makes some tentative suggestions about what kind of social provisions and political principles will best support the social bases of self-respect conceived as “opportunities for the development of a non-subservient self-conception and the achievement of congruence according to individual criteria of excellence” (p. 125).

McKinnon is, I believe, right in arguing that liberals are better served by focusing on how beliefs and practices matter to people and minimizing any appeal to controversial epistemic claims. Moreover, many of her detailed discussions—for instance, her careful presentation of the problems with Rawls's “burden of judgements” argument—are both illuminating and convincing. However, there are also some difficulties. For example, in her discussion of nonsubservient self-respect, it is very unclear how far her arguments are empirical, and how far and on what basis they are already normatively structured. There is also much reference to what “we” think or say, which is not intrinsically objectionable or entirely avoidable, but without adequate appreciation that many people think and speak differently. But perhaps these are not the “ideal” people with whom she is concerned (although I wonder whether, in McKinnon's view, Roman Catholics who accept the doctrine of papal infallibility necessarily lack a sense of nonsubservient self-respect). In fairness, McKinnon is often explicit about some of the large assumptions she makes: For instance, she concedes that she simply stipulates that political justificatory reasons must take priority over other reasons, and that if they do not, “political justification as I conceive it is impossible” (p. 5). But critics who believe that modern liberal theory largely preaches to the converted often reject this very demanding assumption. Further, while the author does not claim to answer the questions in her final chapter, only “to set an agenda for research for liberal Constructivists” (and are they the only people qualified to decide the principles of social organization?), it is far from clear that public reason will not be radically indeterminate on a great many fundamental issues, unless a host of liberal prejudices are insinuated into the discussion.

In many respects Liberalism and the Defence of Political Constructivism is a fine example of analytical liberal theorizing at its best—lucid, careful, patient, and serious in working through the arguments. But it also exhibits some of that genre's typical limitations, most conspicuously in a deeper unreflectiveness about the viability of the liberal project understood in this way; and, pace McKinnon, one does not need to have misunderstood it to have legitimate doubts about the liberal project. If one already believes that Rawls is the best place to start thinking about questions of political justification, then grappling with McKinnon's arguments should prove both challenging and enlightening. If, however, you are skeptical about the Rawlsian project, it is unlikely that McKinnon will persuade you otherwise, which is not of course to deny that even those who do take this view would benefit from reading her book.