Le pluralisme au delà de la raison et du pouvoir

Is it possible, starting from Rawls but refraining from a wholesale acceptance of his theory, to construct a philosophy of authentic liberal pluralism? This would be a pluralism both grounded within the reasonable political reason inherited from the Enlightenment and "immune" to the twofold weakness of reason: its alleged inability to oppose abusive powers, and its alleged incapacity to provide itself with a foundation. In the search for such a philosophy, the A. suggests that we explore the anchoring of liberal reason in what he calls the "trans-reasonable" domain, which is both internal to reason and other than it. He attempts to circumscribe this domain using postmodern approaches to subjectivity and ontology - and mainly those of Levinas and Vattimo. This makes it possible to develop a philosophy of pluralism in which reason, while remaining crucial, is nevertheless conscious of the need to appeal to something beyond itself. This beyond is "charity", a recurrent theme in postmodern attempts to offer a non-foundationalist metaphysics. This theme of charity appears not as a merely poetic choice, but as the historical destiny of ontology: therefore, the trans-reasonable grounding of reason makes it possible to think of pluralism both beyond reason and beyond power.