This essay makes six claims about the practice of scriptural reasoning. Scriptural reasoning does not try to ground its own possibility. It approaches metaphysics as an account of what is taken to be true, not as a means to demonstrate necessary truths. It relies on luck. It models a practice of learning traditions' languages. It promotes friendship above consensus and agreement. It is a practice of making deep reasonings public. In summary, scriptural reasoning is reparative reasoning which addresses the (...) acute needs of today's society while seeming to refuse certain imperatives that often accompany the academy's approach to those needs. (shrink)

The “public charge” rule is a long-standing immigration policy that seeks to determine the likelihood that a prospective immigrant will become dependent on the government for subsistence. When the Trump administration sought to expand the criteria that would count against an applicant for permanent residency to include public benefits historically excluded from the calculation, thousands of commenters wrote to oppose or support the proposed changes. This paper explores the moral and practical reasons commenters provided for their position on (...) the public charge rule and considers the value of the public comment process for immigration, health, and social policy. (shrink)

The Kantian categorical imperative process of rational reflection and reasoned social discourse is theoretically capable of forming the moral environmental maxims applicable to business. This article argues that rational environmental discourse demands that business has an imperfect duty to develop relevant unbiased information, and perhaps to disseminate this information through participation in business-public coalitions. For the environmental problem, this “rationality” particularly concerns our obligations toward future generations and distant people while recognizing that they cannot participate in current discourse, and (...) the rules for gathering and assessing the evidence that should govern our environmental preservations and enhancements. Both these concerns demand certain scientific information requirements, as well as logical decision criteria that are perceived as stable across both overlapping generations, and affected peoples. The criteria for Rawls’ “considered moral judgments” are shown to apply to resolutions of these business-related ethical conundrums. In a way similar to Kant’s anthropological examinations of humanity’s antisocial behaviors, this article also examines various biases that inhibit this social reasoning. (shrink)

The First World War was supposed to end all wars, though soon followed WWII. Since 1945 wars continued to abound; now we confront a real prospect of a third world war. Many armed struggles and wars arise in attempts to end repressive government; still more are fomented by repressive governments, few of which acknowledge their repressive character. It is historically and culturally naive to suppose that peace is normal, and war an aberration; war, preparations for war and threats of war (...) belong to ‘normal’ human life. Our tolerance, acceptance or fostering of such repeated injustices and atrocities indicate pervasive failures to understand fundamentals of justice, and what we owe morally to ourselves and to all others, together with our responsibilities to preserve the biosphere, not merely our own store(s) of reserves. As matters both of justice and prudence we must re-orient ourselves, individually and collectively, to promote justice, peace and ecological responsibilities by identifying and instituting just forms of social cooperation, domestically and internationally. All of these are our problems, whether we recognize them or continue our pervasive negligence. We urgently require cogent understanding of the social dimensions of human judgment, rational assessment, right action, and public reason. This requires understanding (inter alia) how Kant’s explication of rational judgment and justification is fundamentally social, how these features of rational judgment and justification are constitutive of Kant’s account of individual autonomy, and how they are central to Kant’s account of proper public use of reason. Reasoning publically remains precarious, not because – as often alleged – the ‘Enlightenment project’ has failed. It has not failed, it has been thwarted, and in our public responsibilities we have too often failed it. (shrink)

This book explores and elaborates three theories of public reason, drawn from Rawlsian political liberalism, natural law theory, and Confucianism. Drawing together academics from these separate approaches, the volume explores how the three theories critique each other, as well as how each one brings its theoretical arsenal to bear on the urgent contemporary debate of medical assistance in dying. The volume is structured in two parts: an exploration of the three traditions, followed by an in-depth overview of the conceptual (...) and historical background. In Part I, the three comprehensive opening chapters are supplemented by six dynamic chapters in dialogue with each other, each author responding to the other two traditions, and subsequently reflecting on the possible deficiencies of their own theories. The chapters in Part II cover a broad range of subjects, from an overview of the history of bioethics to the nature of autonomy and its status as a moral and political value. In its entirety, the volume provides a vibrant and exemplary collaborative resource to scholars interested in the role of public reason and its relevance in bioethical debate. (shrink)

There is a constant dissent between exclusivist public reason liberals and their inclusivist religious critics concerning the question whether religious arguments can figure into the public justification of state action. Firstly, I claim that the stability of this dissent is best explained as a conflict between an exclusivist third-personal account of public justification which demands restraint, and an inclusivist first-personal account which rejects restraint. Secondly, I argue that both conceptions are deficient because they cannot accommodate the valid (...) intuitions of their opponents. They either imply a violation of the integrity of religious citizens or they give room for cases where a religious majority can impose a political norm on a minority without having given this minority a reason to comply with the norm. Finally, I defend an inclusivist model of public reason liberalism which relies on a second-personal conception of public justification. I claim that this model breaks the impasse in favor of inclusivism because religious arguments can play a role in public justification, but they can never justify state action on their own in a plural society. Thus, the problematic cases that motivate exclusivism are excluded without having introduced a principle of restraint which violates the religious integrity of citizens. (shrink)

Sometimes healthcare professionals conscientiously refuse to treat patients despite the patient requesting legal, medically indicated treatments within the professionals’ remit. Recently, there has been a proliferation of views using the concept of public reason to specify which conscientious refusals of treatment should be accommodated. Four such views are critically assessed, namely, those of Robert Card, Massimo Reichlin, David Scott, and Doug McConnell. This paper argues that McConnell’s view has advantages over the other approaches because it combines the requirement that (...) healthcare professionals publicly justify the grounds of their conscientious refusals of treatment with the requirement that those grounds align with minimally decent healthcare. This relatively restrictive approach accommodates conscientious refusals from minimally decent healthcare professionals while still protecting good healthcare, the independence of the healthcare professions, and the fiduciary relationships. (shrink)

This book advances a novel justification for the idea of "public reason": citizens within diverse societies can realize the ideal of shared political autonomy, despite their adherence to different religious and philosophical views, by deciding fundamental political questions with "public reasons." Public reasons draw upon or are derived from ecumenical political ideas, such as toleration and equal citizenship, and mutually acceptable forms of reasoning, like those of the sciences. This book explains that if citizens share equal political (...) autonomy—and thereby constitute "a civic people"—they will not suffer from alienation or domination and can enjoy relations of civic friendship. Moreover, it contends that the ideal of shared political autonomy cannot be realized by alternative accounts of public justification that eschew any necessary role for public reasons. In addition to explaining how the ideal of political autonomy justifies the idea of public reason, this book presents a new analysis of the relation between public reason and "ideal theory": by engaging in "public reasoning," citizens help create a just society that can secure the free compliance of all. It also explores the distinctive policy implications of the ideal of political autonomy for gender equality, families, children, and education. (shrink)

The idea of public reason involves a standard of legitimacy that requires that laws and institutions be acceptable to all reasonable people, regardless of their conceptions of the good. Many philosophers have argued that public reason should be understood as an answer to the question of how to justify state coercion. However, some authors have criticized this traditional account because it overlooks noncoercive state actions that seem appropriate topics of public reason. More recently, some philosophers have defended (...) the traditional account against that objection. In this paper, I argue that these approaches cannot effectively deal with that objection and offer a different version of the traditional account that can do so. This version rests on the ideas of overlapping consensus and stability. According to this version, the point of public reason is preserving an overlapping consensus on a coercive system of laws and institutions and achieving a stable society. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the use of public reason requirements in bioethical discourse and discusses when such requirements are warranted. By a “public reason requirement,” I mean a requirement that those involved in a particular discourse or debate only use reasons that can properly be described as public reasons. The first part of the paper outlines the concept of public reasons as developed by John Rawls and others and discusses some of the general criticisms of the concept (...) and its importance. The second part then distinguishes between two types of public reason requirements in bioethics. One type is what I will call the orthodox public reason requirement since it hews closely to the original Rawlsian conception. The second is what I will call the expansive public reason requirement, which departs quite radically from the Rawlsian conception and applies the requirement not to policy discourse or policymaking, but to the actions of individuals. Both types of requirements will be analyzed, and some problems in applying public reason requirements in bioethics will be identified. It will be argued that the expansive public reason requirement is misguided. The concluding part argues that requirements of civic civility and what Rawls terms an “inclusive view” of public reason should be important in bioethical discourse. (shrink)

Public reason liberals expect individuals to have justificatory reasons for their views of certain political issues. This paper considers how groups can, and whether they should, give collective public reasons for their political decisions. A problem is that aggregating individuals’ consistent judgments on reasons and a decision can produce inconsistent collective judgments. The group will then fail to give a reason for its decision. The paper considers various solutions to this problem and defends a deliberative procedure by showing (...) how it incentivizes information sharing and leads to outcomes most acceptable to the group members. (shrink)

Introduction -- On the genius and discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton -- On the character and origin of the ancient mythologies -- On the question : are the planets inhabited? -- A plea for freedom -- The right use of leisure -- On education -- The claims of science -- The social aspect of intellectual culture.

Public reason as a political ideal aims to reconcile reasonable disagreement; however, is public reason itself the object of reasonable disagreement? Jonathan Quong, David Estlund, Andrew Lister, and some other philosophers maintain that public reason is beyond reasonable disagreement. I argue this view is untenable. In addition, I consider briefly whether or not two main versions of the public reason principle, namely, the consensus version and the convergence version, need to satisfy their own requirements. My discussion (...) has several important implications for the debate on public reason. (shrink)

Public reason liberals typically defend an accessibility requirement for reasons offered in public political dialog. The accessibility requirement holds that public reasons must be amenable to criticism, evaluable by reasonable persons, and the like. Public reason liberals are therefore hostile to the public use of reasons that appear inaccessible, especially religious reasons. This hostility has provoked strong reactions from public reason liberalism's religion-friendly critics. But public reason liberals and their religion-friendly critics need not (...) be at odds because the accessibility requirement is implausible. In fact, the accessibility requirement is ambiguous between two interpretations, one of which is too stringent and the other too loose. Depending upon the interpretation, accessibility either restricts the use of too many secular reasons or permits appeal to a wide range of religious reasons. The accessibility requirement should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

In Public Reason Confucianism, Sungmoon Kim presents an important Confucian political theory that seeks to combine a specific conception of Confucianism and the ideal of public reason. My article examines this theory and identifies some of the theoretical complications with Rawlsian public reason.

This chapter sets forth an interpretation of public reason that appeals to our central capabilities as human beings. I argue that appealing to central human capabilities and to the related idea of respect for threshold capabilities is the best way to understand public reason. My defense of this position advances stepwise: first, I consider a central alternative to a capability account, which regards public reason as a matter of contracting; next, I describe central concerns with contract views (...) and show how a capability view can avoid them; lastly, I consider extending public reason beyond national borders and test the two views in this context. (shrink)

In ‘Public Reason and Prenatal Moral Status’ (2015), Jeremy Williams argues that the ideal of Rawlsian public reason commits its devotees to the radically permissive view that abortion ought to be available with little or no qualification throughout pregnancy. This is because the only (allegedly) political value that favours protection of the foetus for its own sake—the value of ‘respect for human life’—turns out not to be a political value at all, and so its invocation in support of (...) considerations bearing upon the permissibility of abortion is beyond public reason’s remit. Thus, it will scarcely if ever be legitimate to restrict women’s equality and bodily autonomy for the sake of the foetus, even at full term. In this paper, I argue that Williams fails to establish that Rawlsian reasonable citizens must endorse the radically permissive stance vis-à-vis abortion. Citizens can, I claim, reasonably accord the value of respect for human life weight, and indeed converge on the claim that it outweighs other salient political values, during later stages of gestation. Nevertheless, Williams’s argument gets something right in that it reveals why the value of respect for human life is inadmissible at the bar of public reason in early stages of pregnancy. But then, far from throwing Rawlsian public reason into disrepute, Williams’s argument actually (albeit inadvertently) provides arguably more compelling grounds than any hitherto rallied for endorsing Rawls’s much maligned claim that opposition to the duly qualified right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy is ‘unreasonable’. (shrink)

Public reason liberals from John Rawls to Gerald Gaus uphold a principle of public justification as a core commitment of their theories. Critics of public reason liberalism have sometimes conceded that there is something compelling about the idea of public justification. But so far there have not been many attempts to elaborate and defend a ‘comprehensive’ liberalism that incorporates a principle of public justification. This article spells out how public justifiability could be integrated into (...) a comprehensive liberalism and defends the claim that what is worthwhile about public justification can be extracted from public reason liberalism. (shrink)

Much of contemporary political philosophy revolves around debates over perfectionism, which is the view that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. Collis Tahzib has recently proposed a unique theory of perfectionism. I examine two central aspects of his theory: the amalgamation of public reason and perfectionism, and the employment of the Rawlsian lexical priority. I argue that Tahzib’s idea of perfectionist public reason has certain (...) serious problems. Additionally, Tahzib, like many other perfectionists, has neglected that many excellences are at once personal and civic. I sketch a perfectionist account of civic virtue, with the hope of opening up space for defending and justifying perfectionism. (shrink)

Public reason in practice and theory -- False starts: unsuccessful justifications of public reason -- Respect for persons as a constraint on coercion -- Higher-order unanimity escape clause -- Civic friendship as a constraint on reasons for decision -- Public reason and (same-sex) marriage.

Incest taboos are universal, but it is questionable whether consensual incest should continue to be illegal. The most common argument in favor of the illegalization of consensual incest appeals to genetic risks and the harm to potential offspring. In this article, we examine whether public health concern is a sufficient reason to illegalize consensual incest. We posit that indeed, incest represents a risk, but this is not reason enough to illegalize incest. For, other circumstances of sexual intercourse may lead (...) to similar risks, and yet, such practices are not illegal. While those practices may represent an added risk to public health, to forbid them as a way to improve the genetic pool would be akin to eugenic program, and that is morally objectionable. This does not imply that consensual incest ought to be legal, for there may be other good reasons to illegalize it. But they do not relate to public health and genetic risks, and consequently, medical practitioners and public health officials ought to avoid using their medical authority as a platform to make moral pronouncements. (shrink)

Public reasoning is widely thought to be essential to democracy, but there is much disagreement about whether such deliberation should be constrained by a principle of public reason, which may seem to conflict with important democratic values. This paper denies that there is such a conflict, and argues that the distinctive contribution of public reason is to constitute a relationship of civic friendship in a diverse society. Acceptance of public reason would not work against mutual understanding, (...) learning, or compromise, nor does the principle involve any violation of political equality. The real threat to democracy is not public reason, but the framing of public reason by a presumption against state action. (shrink)

Current mainstream approaches to conscientious objection either uphold the standards of public health care by preventing objections or protect the consciences of health‐care professionals by accommodating objections. Public justification approaches are a compromise position that accommodate conscientious objections only when objectors can publicly justify the grounds of their objections. Public justification approaches require objectors and assessors to speak a common normative language and to this end it has been suggested that objectors should be required to cast their (...) objection in terms of public reason. We provide critical support for such a public reason condition and argue that it would be neither too demanding nor too permissive. We also respond to objections that it unfairly favours secular over religious objectors and that public reasons cannot be held with the kind of sincerity thought to characterize conscientious objections. (shrink)

Can Rawlsian public reason sufficiently justify public policies that regulate or restrain controversial medical and technological interventions in bioethics (and the broader social world), such as abortion, physician aid-in-dying, CRISPER-cas9 gene editing of embryos, surrogate mothers, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of eight-cell embryos, and so on? The first part of this essay briefly explicates the central concepts that define Rawlsian political liberalism. The latter half of this essay then demonstrates how a commitment to Rawlsian public reason can ameliorate (...) (not completely resolve) many of the policy disagreements related to bioethically controversial medical interventions today. The goal of public reason is to reduce the size of the disagreement by eliminating features of the disagreement that violate the norms of public reason. The norms of public reason are those norms that are politically necessary to preserve the liberal, pluralistic, democratic character of this society. What remains is reasonable disagreement to be addressed through normal democratic deliberative processes. Specific issues addressed from a public reason perspective include personal responsibility for excessive health costs, the utility of a metaphysical definition of death for organ transplantation, and the moral status of excess embryos generated through IVF and/or their use in medical research. (shrink)

Steven Wall has two compelling arguments for what I shall call public reason liberalism's reflexivity requirement. The political concerns to reconcile persons who hold diverse moral views, and to avoid authoritarianism in politics not only require the public justification of coercion but the public justification of the standard used to determine when coercion is publicly justified. The reflexivity requirement is said to entail that public reason is self-defeating. Once RR is correctly formulated, however, cases of self-defeat (...) will be rare, as citizens seldom employ public justification requirements as reasons. When they do, such requirements are rarely their sole reason for supporting political coercion. A properly formulated reflexivity requirement, therefore, does not imply self-defeat. It also allows for a more ecumenical understanding that establish the processes of public justification. (shrink)

Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's writings on social and political issues have attracted wide audiences. Section 2 introduces his contributions on: how people reason as agents within society; social determinants of people's (lack of) access to goods and of the effective freedoms and agency they enjoy or lack; and associated advocacy of self-specification of identity and high expectations for ‘voice’ and reasoning democracy. Section 3 considers his relation to social theory, his tools for theorizing action in society, and his limited degree of (...) attention to work by sociologists and to capitalism and power structures. Section 4 characterizes a style marked by conceptual refinement, emphases on complexity and individuality, including personal individuality, and reformist optimism. Section 5 shows the features from Sections 3 and 4 at work in his conception of personhood that advocates freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. Similarly, Section 6 addresses his conception of public reasoning and neglect of the sociology of democracy. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features in many countries. Sen's programmes for critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics play, nevertheless, a normic role, while his analytical formats help investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice, and democratic participation. (shrink)

In Liberalism without Perfection, Jonathan Quong develops what is perhaps the most comprehensive defense of the consensus model of public reason – a model which incorporates both a public-reasons-only requirement and an accessibility requirement framed in terms of shared evaluative standards. While the consensus model arguably predominates amongst public reason liberals, it is criticized by convergence theorists who reject both the public-reasons-only requirement and the accessibility requirement. In this paper, I argue that while we have good (...) reason to reject Quong’s call for a public-reasons-only requirement, all public reason liberals should endorse at least some shared evaluative standards and, hence, an accessibility requirement. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is defined by the idea that laws and policies should be justifiable to each person who is subject to them. But what does it mean for reasons to be public or, in other words, suitable for this process of justification? In response to this question, Kevin Vallier has recently developed the traditional distinction between consensus and convergence public reason into a classification distinguishing three main approaches: shareability, accessibility and intelligibility. The goal of this paper (...) is to defend the accessibility approach by demonstrating its ability to strike an appealing middle course in terms of inclusivity between shareability and intelligibility. We first argue against Vallier that accessibility can exclude religious reasons from public justification. Second, we use scientific reasons as a case study to show that accessibility excludes considerably fewer reasons than shareability. Throughout the paper, we connect our discussion of accessibility to John Rawls’s model of public reason, so as to give substance to the accessibility approach and to further our understanding of Rawls’s influential model. (shrink)

Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. In this book Fred D'Agostino shows that the concept is composed of various values, interests, and notions of the good, and that no ranking of (...) these is possible. The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino undermines many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then offers an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention. (shrink)

“Reasonable hostility” is a norm of communicative conduct initially developed by studying public exchanges in education governance meetings in local U.S. communities. In this paper I consider the norm’s usefulness for and applicability to a U.S. state-level public hearing about a bill to legalize civil unions. Following an explication of reasonable hostility and grounded practical theory, the approach to inquiry that guides my work, I de-scribe Hawaii’s 2009, 18-hour pub-lic hearing and analyze selected segments of it. I show (...) that this par-ticular public hearing raised de-mands for testifiers on the anti-civil union side of the argument that rea-sonable hostility does not do a good job of addressing. Development of a norm of communication conduct for this practice, as well as others, must engage with the culture and time-specific beliefs that a society holds, beliefs that will shape not only how to argue but what may be argued and what must be assumed about particular categories of persons. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine global public reason as a method of justifying a global state. Ultimately, I conclude that global public reason fails to justify a global state. This is the case, because global public reason faces an unwinnable dilemma. The global public reason theorist must endorse either a hypothetical theory of consent or an actual theory of consent; if she endorses a theory of hypothetical consent, then she fails to justify her principles; and if (...) she endorses a theory of actual consent, her theory will lead to a highly unstable political system. On either side of the dilemma, global public reason faces untenable implications. Although similar criticisms have been advanced against domestic public reason, my argument is not repeating points made before me. My argument is new, in that it raises these objections specifically against global public reason, and in that it shows how, due to increased diversity of belief in the global arena, these problems are more pressing for global public reason than they are for domestic public reason. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether the duties associated with public reason are conditional on reciprocity. Public reason is not a norm intended to stabilize commitment to justice, but a moral principle, albeit one that is conditional on reciprocity because grounded in the idea of mutual respect despite ongoing moral disagreement. We can build reciprocity into the principle by stipulating that unanimous acceptability is required only with respect to points of view accepting the principle. If compliance with (...) law is assured, then the duties of public reason associated with authorship of law should be considered conditional on reciprocity only in this ‘internal’ sense, which is not proportional but bi-lateral. (shrink)

Hobbesian accounts of public reason are forced to face a tension that is presented for any theorist that toes the Hobbesian line. This tension has been referred to as the “Hobbesian Dilemma.” On one horn, we are afraid that we might create a monster with our authorization of an absolute sovereign. On the other horn, we are afraid that if we do not hand over unlimited power to the sovereign we will not be freed from the conflict that is (...) endemic to our reliance upon private pluralistic standards. These Hobbesians, stressing the first horn, are afraid of authorizing a supreme political entity, so they provide modifications that serve to restrict such an entity. Such modifications, however, necessarily reintroduce pluralism back into the commonwealth. But if we take Hobbes seriously and accept that pluralism generates a state of war, the reintroduction of pluralism must be viewed as disastrous. (shrink)

With An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784) and What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1786), Kant presents the concept of public use of reason and defines its requirements, scope, and function. In outline, the public use of reason consists in sharing one’s thoughts with “the entire public of the world of readers” (8:37). As for its requirements, to the extent that someone communicates in their own person, i.e. not in the exercise (...) of their function as a public official, and bases their reasoning on universalizable grounds, their use of reason qualifies as public and shall be free from state censorship. Therefore, Kant’s concept of public use reason aims to establish a public debate that is free and includes in its scope, both as subjects and recipients, potentially all adult men. The ultimate function of the public use of reason is to foster moral progress and, with it, the reform of the political community according to the republican ideal. However, it is commonly held that Kant, with his 1798 essay The Conflict of the Faculties, deprives his notion of public use of reason of its progressive core and adjusts it to the absolutist conception of speech and civil service. Characterizations of state officials as “not free to make public use of their learning” (7:18) and “bound to uphold whatever […] the crown sanctions for them to expound publicly” (7:8), as well as the depiction of laypeople as “incompetent” (7:18) and “resigned to understanding nothing about [the sciences]” (7:34), have led influential interpreters to read Kant as redefining his notion of public use of reason by restricting its subjects to university professors and its recipients to government members (e.g. John Christian Laursen 1986, rpt. 1992 and 1996; Kevin Davis 1992; Steven Lestition 1993; Jay Franzel 2013). On my reading, with The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant does indeed redefine the concept of public use of reason making concessions to the absolutist notion of speech and civil service. However, a close reading of the text reveals that the public use of reason ends up being reaffirmed in its progressive core and extended in its scope. To substantiate my interpretation, I will systematically analyse and classify each of the 68 occurrences of the adjective ‘public’ in The Conflict of the Faculties and show how Kant employs the absolutist vocabulary to convey the progressive project of his previous writings. Accordingly, I argue that Kant holds on to the free public use of reason as a means to reform politics according to the republican ideal and that the employment of the absolutist vocabulary is motivated by a pragmatic attitude and a provocative stance. (shrink)

How should we understand the familiar demand that journalists ‘be objective’? One possibility is that journalists are under an obligation to report only the facts of the matter. However, facts need to be interpreted, selected, and communicated. How can this be done objectively? This paper aims to explain the concept of journalistic objectivity in methodological terms. Specifically, I will argue that the ideal of journalistic objectivity should be recast as a commitment to John Rawls’s conception of public reason. Journalism (...) plays a vital role in the operation of all modern liberal democracies, functioning as the public watchdog, the fourth estate, or the conduit through which vital information flows to the citizenry. Journalism is, therefore, an institution that is best understood as part of the basic structure of society. In Political Liberalism, Rawls explicitly excludes media of any kind from the demands of public reason because he doesn’t think that they play a political role that is important enough to bring them under the official auspices of public reason. I will argue that overlooking the political significance of journalism is a mistake, but one that can be corrected while keeping within the spirit and most important elements of his theory. This revision will widen the scope for what counts as journalism beyond traditional outlets and forms of media but will impose the demands of public reason on anyone who intends to participate in the institution. (shrink)

A central idea of public reason liberalism is that the exercise of political power is legitimate when supported only by reasons which all citizens accept. Public reason serves as a necessary standard for evaluating the legitimacy of political decisions. In this paper, I examine the directive to employ public reason from the citizens’ perspective. I suggest that employing public reason potentially involves them engaging in different types of compromise. I consider how acknowledging these compromises sheds light (...) on public reason liberalism. Public reason may not offer a necessary standard for evaluating the legitimacy of decisions, and the evaluation it offers may not have great weight relative to other moral and political considerations. (shrink)

Mainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others by the coercive (...) power of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all. (shrink)

Chad Flanders has argued that retributivism is inconsistent with John Rawls’s core notion of public reason, which sets out those considerations on which legitimate exercises of state power can be based. Flanders asserts that retributivism is grounded in claims about which people can reasonably disagree and are thus not suitable grounds for public policy. This essay contends that Rawls’s notion of public reason does not provide a basis for rejecting retributivist justifications of punishment. I argue that Flanders’s (...) interpretation of public reason is too exclusionary: on it, public reason would rule out any prominent rationale for punishment. On what I contend is a better interpretation of public reason, whether retributivism would be ruled out as a rationale for punishment depends on whether a retributivist account can be constructed from shared political commitments in a liberal democracy. Some prominent versions of retributivism meet this requirement and so are consistent with public reason. (shrink)

Political liberals usually assume the coercion account, which argues that state actions should be publicly justified because they coerce citizens. Recently some critics object this account for it overlooks that some policies are non-coercive but still require public justification. My article argues that, instead of understanding coercion as particular laws or policies, it should be understood as the exercise of collective political power that shapes the basic structure. This revised coercion account explains why those ostensibly non-coercive policies are in (...) fact coercive. Moreover, I argue that the alternative accounts suggested by critics fail, unless they assume the revised coercion account. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to build a Confucian conception of public reason for Confucian-influenced East Asian societies to adopt and tackle political and bioethical issues. The chapter first indicates that public reason is present at various levels of human collectives, namely, communitarian, national, and international. It concentrates on constructing a proper Confucian notion of public reason at the national level given that only the sovereign states are able to make effective public policy and laws to govern their (...) people, although such a Confucian notion can be shared by the peoples across East Asian countries and regions, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Then I lay out Rawls’ liberal conception of public reason and explicate why it is not suitable for an East Asian country like China to accept. This is followed by two sections addressing the two Confucian conceptions of public reason that have been proposed, respectively, by Joseph Chan and Sungmoon Kim. I indicate how each of them faces a dilemma that cannot be adequately resolved. In Sect. 4, I outline a new Confucian conception of public reason based on the view developed in my book Reconstructionist Confucianism, including a Confucian account of basic liberty, equality, and individual rights consistent with the central requirements of the Confucian virtues that are still vibrant in East Asian societies. The values of political justice under this Confucian conception integrate both Confucian virtues and basic rights. Finally, the chapter appeals to this conception to review the bioethical issue of medically assisted suicide and argues why it should not be legalized in East Asia according to this conception of public reason. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Public reason liberalism holds that laws and policies must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Recently, David Enoch has offered an impressive and influential argument against the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism on the grounds that they are ‘highly controversial’. After setting out this argument (Sections I and II), I show how its central claim is ambiguous between two senses of ‘controversial’. This gives rise to a dilemma: either Enoch's claim is that the relevant epistemological commitments are (...) controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst actual people, in which case this is true but not troubling for public reason theorists; or the claim is that the relevant commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst reasonable people, in which case this simply begs the question against public reason theorists (Section III). I then defend each horn of the dilemma against objections (Sections IV and V). I conclude by generalizing this dilemma, showing how it defuses not just Enoch's argument but also a number of other arguments frequently made in the literature on public reason liberalism (Section VI). (shrink)

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence (...) public reasoning involves 'local ideal theorizing': the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to 'full ideal theorizing', wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s 'basic structure'. This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States. (shrink)

Chad Flanders has argued that retributivism is inconsistent with John Rawls’s core notion of public reason, which sets out those considerations on which legitimate exercises of state power can be based. Flanders asserts that retributivism is grounded in claims about which people can reasonably disagree and are thus not suitable grounds for public policy. This essay contends that Rawls’s notion of public reason does not provide a basis for rejecting retributivist justifications of punishment. I argue that Flanders’s (...) interpretation of public reason is too exclusionary: on it, public reason would rule out any prominent rationale for punishment. On what I contend is a better interpretation of public reason, whether retributivism would be ruled out as a rationale for punishment depends on whether a retributivist account can be constructed from shared political commitments in a liberal democracy. Some prominent versions of retributivism meet this requirement and so are consistent with public reason. (shrink)

Public reason demands that policies are justified to all reasonable citizens. Public health aims at protecting or improving aggregated health outcomes. Since health is not an uncontroversial value, an insurmountable chasm between public reason and public health seems to preclude any viable synthesis between the two outlooks. For any given public health policy, some reasonable citizen seems to have a reason to support ‘no policy’ over ‘some policy’, meaning that the policy cannot be justified to (...) all. The paper first spells out what exactly this conflict is about. Then, using smoking as a case, the paper outlines a model of reconciliation between public reason and public health that should give us some optimism if we want to have public health policies that are compatible with treating citizens as free and equal in the public reason sense. (shrink)

I present a persistent religious moral theory, known as divine command theory, which conflicts with liberal political thought. John Rawls's notion of public reason offers a framework for thinking about this conflict, but it has been criticized for demanding great restrictions on religious considerations in public deliberation. I argue that although Paul Kurtz is critical of organized religion, his epistemological suggestions and ethical theory offer a feasible way to build common moral ground between atheists, secularists, and theists, so (...) long as each maintains the important democratic value of toleration in the form of either fallibilism or skepticism. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} In this essay I intend to explore the relationship between the enlightenment and communication in Kant and those ideas through which he construes the enlightenment not as a process focused on the rationalization of the individual but as a collective one that require communication. In this context I will show (...) the role that Kant gives to the idea of change in religion both as organization and doctrine. The basis of this approach is to reconsider the core of Kant’s distinction between public use of reason and private use of reason and link it thus clarified, to questions raised by religious change. (shrink)

In recent years liberals have had much to say about the kinds of reasons that citizens should offer one another when they engage in public political debates about existing or proposed laws. One of the more notable claims that has been made by a number of prominent liberals is that citizens should not rely on religious reasons alone when persuading one another to support or oppose a given law or policy. Unsurprisingly, this claim is rejected by many religious citizens, (...) including those who are also committed to liberalism. In this paper I revisit that debate and ask whether liberal citizens have a moral obligation not to explain their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons alone. I suggest that for most (ordinary) citizens no such obligation exists and that individuals are entitled to explain their support for a specific law and to persuade others of the merits of that law on the basis of religious reasons alone (though there may be sound prudential reasons for not doing so). My argument is grounded in the claim that in most instances advocating laws on the basis of religious reasons alone is consistent with treating citizens with equal respect. However, I acknowledge an exception to that claim is to be found when using religious reasons to justify a law also implies that the state endorses those reasons. For this reason I argue that there is a moral obligation for some (publicly influential) citizens, and especially those who hold public office, to refrain from explaining their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons. I conclude by suggesting that this understanding of the role of religion in public political discourse and the obligations of liberal citizens is a better reflection of our experience of liberal citizenship than that given in some well-known accounts of liberalism. (shrink)

The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work (...) of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise ‘neutral’ democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus’s own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies. (shrink)