ABSTRACT
Liberalism is a political philosophy committed to the equal protection and expression of the freedom of persons. That leads it to be agnostic as to whose normative beliefs are correct, and to encourage in its citizens an open-minded tolerance that leans toward the idea that moral truth is relative to context (culture, era, subject position, and so on). A more sophisticated argument, begun by John Rawls (the “public reason” debate), asks what reasons people holding different normative beliefs could offer in public debate that they could reasonably expect to convince and motivate other citizens. Rawls suggest that, in effect, citizens would have to hold their beliefs in abeyance when arguing for policies or evaluating laws. This results in the odd situation of citizens with strong beliefs acting like relativists in public, and is the closest, I argue, that liberalism comes to moral relativism. The tension between attempting to promote the equal freedom of persons and the fact that not everyone shares those values is inescapable for liberalism. If it has not yet embraced relativism openly, that comes at the price of being unable to coherently explain how it can pursue its values without preventing non-liberal citizens from doing the same.
