The Normative and the Transformative in Ferrara's Exemplary Politics

In The Democratic Horizon and other works, Alessandro Ferrara offers an original theory of political judgment, exemplarity and political liberalism. This article examines two distinctive features of this theory, his accounts of the normativity of a Rawlsian form of political liberalism and of democratic openness or transformative politics. It is suggested that there are some tensions between his commitment to a judgment-centred epistemology and political liberalism.