Sentientist Political Liberalism

Abstract

This paper introduces sentientist political liberalism. Elaborating on the fundamental ideas in John Rawls's political liberalism, we propose that the scheme of fair social cooperation among persons should be understood as embedded within a broader system of social coexistence between persons and other sentient beings. This prompts a revision of the original position: We add a second phase in which participants, acting as trustees for animals, deliberate on principles of fair coexistence. We also extend the idea of public justification to include a duty of diligent trusteeship and the permissibility to appeal to comprehensive doctrines to reform anthropocentric political cultures.