Public political debate and the reason restraint: A comparative analysis of John Rawls's overlapping consensus and Chantal Mouffe's conflictual consensus

A number of critical perspectives are currently available on liberalism and its liberal democracy, which are based on the ideals of individual liberty, separation of private and public spheres, limited state, state neutrality, and rational consensus. These criticisms cluster around the claim that the ideals of rational consensus and state neutrality on which liberalism, liberal democracy and its typical decision-making form, representative democracy, are based lead to a crisis of representation and legitimacy in late modern societies characterised by multiculturalism, pluralism, and respect for differences. Within this framework, a number of debates have been carried out, especially in the theoretical and normative dimension, on the extent to which it is possible to realise the ideal liberal of state neutrality in practice. These debates have formed the basis for alternative democracy models based on the improvement or rejection of liberal democracy. The following two critical views are noteworthy: John Rawls' political liberalism as a critical approach from within liberalism and Chantal Mouffe's agonistic democracy as a critical approach from outside liberalism. Within this context, against liberalism's understanding of rational consensus based on secular reason, Rawls claims to offer a more inclusive democratic decision-making and public political debate mechanism with his concept of overlapping consensus and Mouffe with her conflictual consensus. The aim of this study is to make a comparative critical examination of the inclusiveness claims of Rawls' overlapping consensus and Mouffe's conflictual consensus by focusing on rational and non- secular reasonable arguments that liberal democracy excludes from public political debate due to the reason restraint and the principle of neutrality. The main argument of the study is that Rawls' overlapping consensus is more inclusive than liberalism's rational consensus, while Mouffe's conflictual consensus is even more inclusive than Rawls' perspective. However, both perspectives have some flaws in maximising individual liberty. Methodologically, this study is a qualitative and descriptive study in theoretical and analytical political philosophy.