Abstract
John Rawls’ political liberalism holds that an overlapping consensus on a liberal political conception of justice is possible, in spite of deep and intractable moral disagreement. This, he argues, is partly because reasonable people recognise that moral disagreement sometimes stems from the ‘burdens of judgement’ rather than moral or epistemic failure on the part of others, and so accept that imposing one’s own conception of the good on another on the political level is unjustified. However, Rawls does not provide an account of the burdens of judgement which will persuade all those he counts as reasonable, and thus a stronger case for them must be made if they are to serve their place in his overall argument. I draw on empirical evidence to support an affect-based account of moral psychology, whereby much moral disagreement stems from differences in affective dispositions between individuals. This account helps vindicate the burdens of judgement, and thereby improves Rawls’ case for the possibility of political liberalism.