Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Political Liberalism
How a free society can be just under the permanent fact of reasonable disagreement about comprehensive doctrines — public reason, overlapping consensus, and the political conception of justice
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Political Liberalism (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Immediate |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Constructed |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Political Liberalism
Real political time. The stability problem is real and unfolds across generations of democratic citizens with permanently diverse comprehensive doctrines.
Space
Political Liberalism
Standard background.
Matter
Political Liberalism
Real social-material conditions of citizen cooperation.
Observer
Political Liberalism
The Rawlsian observer of Political Liberalism is the democratic citizen reasoning under conditions of reasonable pluralism. Embodied, plural, active in public reason. Moral authority is constructed through the political conception.
Energy
Political Liberalism
Not engaged.
Information
Political Liberalism
Political-relational information is shared across comprehensive-doctrinal differences. Personal information not philosophically privileged.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The "public reason" requirement has been the most-contested feature. Critics (Wolterstorff, Stout, Habermas later) argue it unfairly restricts religious and substantive comprehensive contributions to political debate. Rawls's "wide view" in the late "Idea of Public Reason Revisited" (1997) softened the requirement but did not resolve the dispute. The relation between Political Liberalism and the earlier A Theory of Justice has been the central interpretive question — whether the shift is a refinement or a substantive change in position.