Can Liberalism Lose the Enlightenment?

John Rawls's Political Liberalism asserts that liberal politics can and should be conducted without engaging debates about the truth of its theoretical foundations. This paper argues that political liberalism is in fact far more concerned with questions of truth than Rawls was willing to admit. Once political liberalism's relation to truth claims is understood more clearly, it becomes evident that political liberalism is closer to its Enlightenment predecessor than Rawls claimed, and that affinity with the Enlightenment enables a reevaluation of political liberalism's position on the place of religious argument in political debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]