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.