Introduction to the Special Issue “Public Reason and Rawlsian Citizens: Of Truth, Virtues, and Vices in the Digital Age”

The four articles in this special issue originated as contributions to a conference jointly organized by the Chair of Political Philosophy, Theory, and the History of Ideas (Prof. Dr. Odzuck, Dr. Strömel) and the Chair of the History of Philosophy (Prof. Dr. Eggers) at the University of Regensburg in March 2024. The conference took the problems of the digital age as a reason to (re)examine and fl esh out the foundations and prerequisites of liberal democracies. Liberal democracies today seem polarized, radicalized, and, at the same time, petri fi ed. The decrease in civility and the increase in hate speech, astrotur fi ng, silencing processes, and Twitter wars in the digital age give us strong reasons to rethink the foundations and presuppositions of liberal, deliberative democracies to better understand and meet contemporary challenges. If we accept the diagnosis of radicalization and polarization of the debate climate, of culture wars, an aggressive tone, and gestures of enmity, we can detect a certain coincidence of developments in the political culture