Deontological Liberalism Back to Life (Much Earlier Than Thought)

Abstract

In his article “Moral legalism and tolerance: Chronicle of a Death Foretold” published in this volume of Discusiones, René Gonzalez de la Vega argues that deontological liberalism is philosophically inconsistent with the political virtue of tolerance. In this comments I try to show that René is wrong. My argument will be that an archetypal version of deontological liberalism as the political liberalism of John Rawls is not only compatible with tolerance but that also it recognizes the latter a privileged role. Finally, I will suggest that, contrary to what René holds, more comprehensive versions of liberalism can only give tolerance a secondary importance.