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)

Political philosophers have long disagreed on the issue of whether churches should exercise restraint in the appeal to religious reasons in public discussion and political mobilization. Exclusivists defend the restraint, whereas inclusivists reject it. Both sides, however, assume the existence of a democratic government. In this essay, I discuss whether churches should exercise restraint in a non-democratic, authoritarian society. I defend inclusivism and believe that churches should not restrain themselves, especially when doing so can promote democracy and prevent severe injustices. (...) First, I argue that two exclusivist arguments which justify the restraint cannot be applied in an authoritarian society. Second, I defend inclusivism because religious reasons are effective in cultivating active citizens that strengthen the democratic movement. Finally, I use the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong as an example to show how inclusivism can enhance democratic movements under authoritarianism. (shrink)

This paper provides a new analysis and critique of Rawlsian public reason’s handling of the abortion question. It is often claimed that public reason is indeterminate on abortion, because it cannot say enough about prenatal moral status, or give content to the (allegedly) political value which Rawls calls ‘respect for human life’. I argue that public reason requires much greater argumentative restraint from citizens debating abortion than critics have acknowledged. Beyond the preliminary observation that fetuses do not meet the criteria (...) of political personhood, I contend, public reasoners may say nothing about prenatal moral status. Indeed, respect for human life (as distinct from respect for persons) is not, I show, a genuine political value, whose interpretation lies within public reason’s remit. This fact does not, however, prevent deliberators from drawing determinate conclusions regarding the law of abortion. Instead, I show, public reason has radically permissive implications for the legal regulation of feticide, inclining heavily towards the view that abortion should be allowed with little or no qualification, right until birth. I end by giving grounds for thinking that, even if the argumentative restraint which public reason enjoins over prenatal moral status does not generate indeterminacy, it is nonetheless objectionable. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

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.

In recent years, leading public reason liberals have argued that publicly justifying coercive laws and policies requires that citizens offer both adequate secular justificatory reasons and adequate secular motivating reasons for these laws and policies. In this paper, I provide a critical assessment of these two requirements and argue for two main claims concerning such requirements. First, only some qualified versions of the requirement that citizens offer adequate secular justificatory reasons for coercive laws and policies may be justifiably regarded as (...) plausible liberal principles of public justification. And second, the requirement that citizens offer adequate secular motivating reasons for coercive laws and policies is untenable on multiple grounds. Public reason liberals should focus on assessing the justificatory reasons offered for and against coercive laws and policies rather than requiring citizens to offer adequate secular motivating reasons for such laws and policies. (shrink)

It is often assumed that people of faith should not endorse a law for religious reasons, since such an endorsement is considered to be disrespectful. Such a position is increasingly opposed by scholars who argue that such demands unjustifiably force people of faith to compromise their religious ideals. In order to defend their opposition to such demands, some scholars have invoked thought experiments as reductio arguments against the claim that endorsing laws dependent on religious reasons is necessarily disrespectful. I argue (...) that these attempts have failed, and present an alternative thought experiment that demonstrates that such a law is not necessarily disrespectful. Because I conclude that previously proposed principles cannot defend this conclusion, I defend an alternative way of accommodating this intuition; a post-secular deliberative approach based on the principle of double effect. (shrink)

According to the Public Justification Principle, legitimate laws must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Proponents of this principle assume that its satisfaction requires speakers to offer justifications that are representable as arguments that feature premises which reasonable listeners would accept. I develop the concept of dark knowledge to show that this assumption is false. Laws are often justified on the basis of premises that many reasonable listeners know, even though they would reject these premises on the basis of the (...) further considerations that speakers implicitly rely on for their support. Accommodating the fact of dark knowledge requires us to consider the civic virtue of speakers to be more important for public justification than the acceptability of their arguments to reasonable citizens. I sketch an alternative conception of public justification that incorporates these results and argue that it provides a rationale for ignoring the otherwise sound contributions of some participants in political deliberation. (shrink)

Andrew Lister’s Public Reason and Political Community is an important new contribution to the debate over political liberalism. In this article, I critically evaluate some of the central arguments of the book in order to assess the current state of public reason liberalism. I pursue two main objections to Lister’s work. First, Lister’s justification for public reason, which appeals to the value of civic friendship, fails to show why public reason liberalism should be preferred to an alternative democratic theory that (...) does not include public reason restrictions. Second, there are several important ambiguities and tensions within Lister’s view that he does not adequately resolve. His approach to them often takes public reason liberalism in directions that many of its advocates will reject. More work thus remains to be done by public reason liberals both to show why public reason restrictions are necessary and to resolve these tensions in a more satisfactory way. (shrink)

A standard view in legal and political theory is that, to a first approximation, (1) we should aim to bring about the most legitimate institutions possible to solve the problems that should be solved at the level of politics, and (2) individual people are required to follow the directives of legitimate institutions, at least insofar as those institutions have the authority to issue those directives, and insofar as other considerations are nearly equal.1 On this standard view, the philosophical analysis of (...) institutional legitimacy can appear to be of the utmost importance because it can seem to answer the most important questions about what we should actually do in the realm of law and politics, and because it may also seem to serve as the crucial bridge between ideal and nonideal theory, at least if institutional legitimacy is analyzed as it often is as a matter of doing well enough along dimensions that are familiar from ideal APA NEWSLETTER | PHILOSOPHY AND LAW theory (e.g., ideal justice, universal consent, respecting basic rights, social welfare maximization, and so on). In what follows I identify a number of possible counterexamples to this standard view, which suggest that there may be no straightforward connection between institutional legitimacy and facts about what reasons, rights, and duties we actually have, and what institutions we should actually try to bring about, contrary to what the standard view assumes. (shrink)

Helen Frowe has recently offered what she calls a “practical” account of self-defense. Her account is supposed to be practical by being subjectivist about permissibility and objectivist about liability. I shall argue here that Frowe first makes up a problem that does not exist and then fails to solve it. To wit, her claim that objectivist accounts of permissibility cannot be action-guiding is wrong; and her own account of permissibility actually retains an objectivist (in the relevant sense) element. In addition, (...) her attempt to restrict subjectivism primarily to “urgent” situations like self-defense contradicts her own point of departure and is either incoherent or futile. Finally, the only actual whole-heartedly objectivist account she criticizes is an easy target; while those objectivist accounts one finds in certain Western European jurisdictions are immune to her criticisms. Those accounts are also clearly superior to hers in terms of action-guidingness. (shrink)