Abstract
John Rawls’s theory is blamed by political realism for adopting the position of political moralism, i.e. for subordinating politics to morality and understanding political phi-losophy as applied ethics. This article addresses these charges. It addresses a number of issues: How does Rawls understand politics? Does he understand it at all? Does the theory of liberalism realistically describe democracies? What is its normative character? In what sense is it a ‘realist utopia’? By posing these questions this paper analyzes the self‑limiting, restrained character of political liberalism, which is a result of the realistic recognition of the fact of pluralism of reasonable doctrines in modern liberal societies. It is pointed out, however, that liberalism is not conceived as a self‑limiting political liberalism of Rawls, but as a ‘comprehensive doctrine’ that constitutes a unified ideological foundation for modern ‘liberal democracy’. The self‑limitation of liberalism cannot be sustained in this way, however, as is evidenced by the fact that Rawls’s theory attempting to separate the political sphere from the ‘background culture’ has clearly failed.
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