| Summary: | In his reply to criticism raised against his reading of Rawls’s constructivist method in light of Rorty’s pragmatism, Kai Nielsen defends his position on the basis that it provides the tools for an external defence of liberalism. An external defence seeks to justify a liberal conception of justice in a way that will be acceptable not only to those who have already accepted the core substantive principles of liberal theory, but to those who reject these core principles. This paper assesses Nielsen’s proposal and shows that Rortian pragmatism is a limited way of achieving an external defence of liberal political and legal institutions. I propose to develop instead the idea of Kantian constructivism to this end. This discussion also brings to light broader questions about the idea of practical philosophy, and thus pays tribute to the works of John Rawls, Richard Rorty, and Kai Nielsen.
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