Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

In Rawls’s political liberalism, legitimate exercises of political power must be publicly justifiable to reasonable citizens on grounds each can coherently accept, where citizens count as “reasonable” only if they can accept certain values of public culture. Other citizens have no say in public justification, or no equal say. For Rawls, then, legitimate political power must accord with a subset of cultural values, and can be legitimate even if it is not (equally) justifiable to people who cannot accept them. Does (...) this mean that Rawls permits that such people be dominated? What kind of domination, if any, would this involve, and would it involve “cultural” domination? This chapter takes its lead from these questions. It offers a reading of the role of public justification in political liberalism that foregrounds differences in the discursive standing of reasonable and unreasonable people, and interpret these differences in domination-theoretic terms. I suggest that there is reason to believe that Rawls’s view would subject the unreasonable–a mixed group that also includes respectable people–to forms of discursive and political domination, and this in a manner that attracts the worry that cultural domination is involved. (shrink)

În acest capitol prezint neutralismul liberal urmând, în esență, patru pași. Încep cu definirea neutralismului și cu unele precizări și explicații importante pentru înțelegerea adecvată a susținerii lui fundamentale. Al doilea pas este dedicat evidențierii și explicării celor mai importante argumente neutraliste. Mă concentrez apoi asupra caracterizării principalelor versiuni ale acestei teorii politice și a reliefării argumentelor pe baza cărora se legitimează ele. În sfârșit, într-un ultim pas, expun obiecțiile sau argumentele anti-neutraliste și – totodată – replicile neutraliștilor liberali la (...) ele. Și de această dată este vorba, trebuie să precizez, doar despre obiecțiile cele mai importante (și mai „rezonabile”), nu despre toate obiecțiile, mai mult sau mai puțin plauzibile, care au fost aduse neutralismului de criticii săi. (shrink)

Nu cu foarte mult timp în urmă, grupul de teorie socială şi politică din cadrul proiectului POSDRU 89/1.5/S/56815 „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere-cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”, a publicat, tot la editura Institutul European, lucrarea Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Volumul de faţă reprezintă un nou pas al grupului nostru de lucru în realizarea proiectului inaugurat prin publicarea acelei lucrări. Este vorba, reamintesc, despre proiectul elaborării unor volume care să-i ajute pe cei interesaţi în iniţierea (lor sau a altora) în teoria (şi în special (...) filosofia) politică, mai ales în dezvoltările sale conceptuale, argumentative şi problematologice recente. Desigur, nu am intenţionat în mod expres ca aceste volume să fie utile doar în această direcţie. Speranţa noastră a fost, dimpotrivă, ca ele să fie interesante şi pentru cercetătorii cu experienţă în investigarea şi dezbaterea temelor abordate în cadrul lor, mai ales pentru că unele capitole prezintă idei, argumente sau perspective originale, care, credem noi, merită atenţia critică a comunităţii cercetătorilor români. Menirea lor fundamentală rămâne totuşi, în intenţia noastră, cea introductivă. Aşa cum recunoşteam în cuvântul său înainte, Concepte şi teorii socialpolitice nu este deloc un volum exhaustiv. Teorii şi ideologii politice reprezintă, în bună măsură, şi o încercare de a compensa cumva acest „defect” al volumului în cauză. Desigur, nici publicarea lui nu ne permite să susţinem că am atins obiectivul oferirii unei introduceri cât mai complete în teoria/filosofia politică actuală. Deşi Teorii şi ideologii politice prezintă câteva dintre cele mai importante teorii sau ideologii politice contemporane, există multe altele care nu sunt prezentate (sau cel puţin nu sunt prezentate atât de detaliat pe cât ar fi meritat) între paginile sale. Mă refer aici, spre exemplu, la libertarianism, comunitarianism, cosmopolitism sau capabilism (ca teorie a dezvoltării umane). Ne consolăm însă în baza a trei argumente. Unul este acela că, aşa cum se poate observa cu uşurinţă din cuprinsul său, cartea de faţă prezintă totuşi un număr important dintre principalele teorii şi ideologii politice recente (unele dintre ele pentru prima dată în literatura românească de specialitate). Al doilea este acela că unele dintre teoriile sau ideologiile politice care nu sunt abordate aici au beneficiat deja de prezentări competente şi atente la noi (unele dintre ele chiar în Concepte şi teorii social-politice). În sfârşit, al treilea argument este acela că sperăm cu toţii că prezentul volum nu reprezintă ultimul nostru pas în realizarea obiectivului menţionat în debutul acestei intervenţii. Sperăm, altfel spus, să putem prezenta acele teorii sau ideologii politice care nu şi-au găsit locul între paginile lui sau ale celui precedent cu o altă ocazie. Ţin să precizez însă că volumul pe care îl introduc prin această intervenţie nu este întrutotul o continuare a celui precedent, deşi între ele există, desigur, destule afinităţi, relaţii şi continuităţi tematice. Mai exact, el nu ar putea fi descris totalmente neproblematic ca reprezentând „al doilea tom” al volumului Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Titlul său este menit să indice acest lucru. Dacă lucrarea anterioară era centrată pe prezentarea unora dintre principalele concepte ale teoriei/filosofiei social-politice contemporane, cartea de faţă prezintă câteva dintre principalele teorii sau ideologii dezvoltate şi apărate de politologii, filosofii, economiştii sau „ideologii” politici contemporani. Nici de această dată nu voi încerca să rezum principalele idei expuse sau metodologii utilizate de către autori în prezentarea teoriilor sau ideologiilor politice care se regăsesc între paginile ce urmează. Temeiul meu este acelaşi: acolo unde au considerat că este cazul, autorii capitolelor şi-au rezumat ei înşişi ideile prezentate sau/şi metodologiile utilizate. În plus, cititorul interesat să-şi facă o idee prealabilă despre conţinutul ideatic şi problematologic al cărţii dispune de un rezumat al ei (în limbile engleză şi franceză) în finalul său. În consecinţă, mă voi mulţumi să închei doar prin a exprima încă o dată speranţa noastră că această carte se va dovedi utilă celor cărora li se adresează cu preponderenţă. Sperăm, în alte cuvinte, ca ea să le fie de ajutor în înţelegerea şi evaluarea adecvată a teoriilor şi ideologiilor pe care le prezintă. Şi mai important, sperăm că ea îi va stimula să caute să aprofundeze cercetarea acestor teorii şi ideologii şi – mai ales – să iniţieze propriile investigaţii sistematice şi riguroase în această privinţă. Dezvoltarea politologiei şi a filosofiei politice în spaţiul românesc, ca să nu mai vorbim despre clarificarea şi fundamentarea cât mai completă şi adecvată a opţiunilor ideologice ale partidelor politice din România, au nevoie de acest lucru. (shrink)

For liberal political philosophers the notion of ?reasonableness? has provided a moral and legal standard for judging the acceptability and, by extension, legitimacy of government behaviour. In order for a government directive to constitute a legitimate obligation on citizens, it must be compatible with the dictates of reason and treat all citizens in a reasonable manner. Arguably, such an approach achieves its most powerful presentation (to date, at least) in the theories of ?political? liberals, who typically assert that reasonableness must (...) be the ?final court of appeal? in relation to decisions concerning matters of public import ? i.e., those that place demands upon all citizens of the polity. According to political liberals, only by adopting and maintaining a governance framework that assigns primacy to reasonableness is it possible to obtain and preserve the desired protection against the abuse of political power. The purpose of this essay is to offer a brief review of the ?reasonableness? paradigm promoted by political liberals (in particular), and in the course of doing so, identify and assess a number of difficulties that would seem to undermine its ability to achieve its stated goal. (shrink)

Political liberals assume an accessibility requirement, which means that, for ensuring civic respect and non-manipulation, public officials should offer accessible reasons during political advocacy. Recently, critics have offered two arguments to show that the accessibility requirement is unnecessary. The first is the pluralism argument: Given the pluralism in evaluative standards, when officials offer non-accessible reasons, they are not disrespectful because they may merely try to reveal their strongest reason. The second is the honesty argument: As long as officials honestly confess (...) their beliefs after offering non-accessible reasons, disrespect and non-manipulation do not occur. This paper defends the accessibility requirement and asserts that these two arguments overlook a unique feature of the political domain. While all citizens collectively own political power as a corporate body, an official does not privately own her political power. Instead, she is a trustee who has a duty to act on behalf of the corporate body, that is, she has to make decisions on grounds that are accessible to others. This duty explains why, despite pluralism, the accessibility requirement is necessary. Moreover, given that political decisions are profoundly influential to each person, requiring people to be honest is ineffective in discouraging disrespectful and manipulative acts. (shrink)

For the past two decades, philosophers of religion have paid close attention to the debates on public reason taking place within the context of political philosophy. Some thinkers claim that religious arguments should play a very limited role in political discourse, as this would amount to a politically sanctioned imposition of religious beliefs on people with different religious or non-religious worldviews. Others claim that excluding religious reasons would lead to an unfair exclusion of religious citizens from democratic processes. Underlying these (...) positions is a highly problematic idea of what it means to be a religious citizen. On the one hand, religious citizens are conceptualized as highly self-reflective theologians. Others instead imagine religious citizens to be wholly incapable of such self-reflection and of distinguishing between public and non-public spheres. In my article I attempt to criticize these underlying assumptions and point towards a more nuanced conception of the religious citizen. (shrink)

Cet article discute l’idée d’une moralité plus ou moins minimale, qui puisse s’adapter à une approche libérale de la pensée et de l’action politique. Sur la base de certaines platitudes concernant la moralité on isole un ensemble de concepts et de principes à la fois déontologiques et conséquentialistes. On insiste sur les conceptions de la justice, de l’autonomie et des devoirs négatfis. On se focalise sur la force et la portée de ces principes et sur leur rôle dans les raisons (...) morales et leur capacité à être prégnantes, dominantes et exigeantes. (shrink)

Political liberalism holds that political decisions should be made on the basis of public considerations, and not on the basis of comprehensive religious, moral, or philosophical views. An important objection to this view is that it presupposes doubt, hesitation, or skepticism about the truth of comprehensive doctrines on the side of reasonable citizens. Proponents of political liberalism, such as John Rawls and Jonathan Quong, successfully defend political liberalism against several objections of this kind. In this paper, I argue that recent (...) developments in the epistemology of disagreement require us to revisit these skeptical concerns. I will argue that the correct understanding of political liberalism’s epistemic commitments, in combination with a conciliatory view about peer disagreement, lead to a new skeptical problem for political liberalism. All reasonable citizens who also hold a set of religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, I will argue, suffer from a breakdown of epistemic rationality. I will show that existing answers to skeptical objections fail to resolve this problem. (shrink)

I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a (...) consequence of the argument, citizens have a pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have a reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony. (shrink)

One of political liberalism’s central commitments is to a principle of public reason. Political liberals frequently justify this principle by appeal to considerations of respect. In this article, I argue that political liberalism cannot be grounded in a moral principle of respect for persons. Instead, I argue that a particular interpretation of the principle of public reason can be justified as a key component of a political conception of mutual civic respect.

This essay explores and criticizes Matteo Bonotti’s argument that parties and partisans in a publicly justified polity should appeal primarily, if not exclusively, to accessible justificatory reasons to fulfill their political duties. I argue that political parties should only support coercive policies if they rationally believe that the coercive law or policy in question can be publicly justified to those subject to the law or policy in terms of their own private—specifically intelligible—reasons. I then explore four practical differences between our (...) two approaches. In contrast to Bonotti’s accessible reasons approach, the intelligibility approach facilitates the provision of assurance between citizens and political officials, requires that parties and partisans support fewer coercive policies, allows more exemptions from generally applicable laws, and facilitates logrolling and alliance formation. (shrink)

RESUMEN En la ética y la filosofía política contemporáneas es común apelar a alguna forma de consenso hipotético para justificar contenidos normativos. En el presente artículo llamo a esta posición "contractualismo" y defiendo tres tesis al respecto. Primera, es correcta la objeción común al contractualismo de que la estipulación de un consenso hipotético en una situación ideal de deliberación no añade nada a la justificación del contenido normativo en cuestión. Segunda, esta objeción da pie a lo que llamo "el dilema (...) contractualista": cuando hay una situación de desacuerdo entre dos agentes sobre si un contenido normativo x es correcto, apelar a un acuerdo hipotético en condiciones ideales de deliberación como medio para justificar x, equivale a caer en petición de principio o a establecer una trivialidad. Tercera, a la luz del "dilema contractualista", el contractualismo no debe ser entendido como un método de justificación normativa. ABSTRACT It is common practice in contemporary ethics and political philosophy to appeal to some sort of hypothetical consensus to justify normative contents. In this article, I call that position "contractualism" and argue for three thesis in that respect. First, the common objection to contractualism is correct, namely, that stipulating a hypothetical consensus in an ideal situation of deliberation adds nothing to the justification of the normative content at stake. Secondly, this objection gives rise to what I have called "the contractualist dilemma": in a situation of disagreement between two agents over whether a normative content x is correct, resorting to a hypothetical agreement in ideal deliberation conditions as a means to justify x amounts to falling into petitio principii or to establishing a triviality. Third, in view of "the contractualist dilemma", contractualism should not be understood as a method of normative justification. (shrink)

En la ética y la filosofía política contemporáneas es común apelar a alguna for-ma de consenso hipotético para justificar contenidos normativos. En el presente artículo llamo a esta posición “contractualismo” y defiendo tres tesis al respecto. Primera, es correcta la objeción común al contractualismo de que la estipulación de un consenso hipotético en una situación ideal de deliberación no añade nada a la justificación del contenido normativo en cuestión. Segunda, esta objeción da pie a lo que llamo “el dilema contractualista”: (...) cuando hay una situación de des-acuerdo entre dos agentes sobre si un contenido normativo x es correcto, apelar a un acuerdo hipotético en condiciones ideales de deliberación como medio para justificar x, equivale a caer en petición de principio o a establecer una trivialidad. Tercera, a la luz del “dilema contractualista”, el contractualismo no debe ser en-tendido como un método de justificación normativa. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 2, Page 144-178, Spring 2019.

According to public reason liberalism, the laws and institutions of society must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. But why care about justifiability to reasonable citizens? R...

According to public reason liberalism, the laws and institutions of society must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. But why care about justifiability to reasonable citizens? Recently, Gerald Gaus has developed a novel and sophisticated defence of public justification. Gaus argues that our everyday reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation presuppose public justification and that these reactive attitudes are essential to social life. In this article, I challenge the first premise by considering cases in which agents are (...) liable to the reactive attitudes for violating moral rules that they had no sufficient reason to endorse, and I challenge the second premise by drawing on recent work on moral responsibility that suggests that social life would still be possible, and perhaps even improved, in the absence of the reactive attitudes. Finally, I question whether the reactive attitudes are even the kind of thing that could justify public reason. (shrink)

Political liberalism, or public reason liberalism, has taken a decisive turn towards the Convergence Conception of public justification and away from the orthodox Consensus Conception. Convergence theorists argue that public justification should be understood as all reasonable people having some conclusive reason to endorse coercively enforced moral rules that are issue and context specific. They argue for this on the basis that, given the nature of deep moral and political disagreement, only the Convergence Conception can show reasonable people how to (...) achieve a stable political order. I argue however that the Convergence Conception faces the Verbal Agreement Objection which puts pressure on its claims to show people how to maintain a political order. This is because at its core it involves a tension between its account of the nature of the agreements that constitute public justification and the objects of those agreements that make it highly sensitive to context changes. (shrink)

This paper defends a particular view of explaining reasonable disagreement: the Conceptual View. The Conceptual View is the idea that reasonable disagreements are caused by differences in the way reasonable people use concepts in a cognitive process to make moral and political judgements. But, that type of explanation is caught between either an explanatory weakness or an unparsimonious and potentially self-undermining theory of concepts. When faced with deep disagreements, theories on the Conceptual View either do not have the resources to (...) explain them, or can only explain them by committing to a completely new theory of concepts where all moral and political concepts are a unique type of concept. This paper shows how the Conceptual View can avoid this dilemma by adopting what I dub the ‘Metalinguistic Strategy’ for explaining reasonable disagreement. The Metalinguistic Strategy uses recent innovations in the philosophy of language on metalinguistic negotiation to explain reasonable disagreements whether they be ordinary or deep disagreements as genuine disagreements whilst maintaining our ordinary ideas about concepts. (shrink)

This article explores the problems and possibilities of offering a compelling Peircian epistemic justification of liberal institutions, primarily via critical engagement with the work of Cheryl Misak, and uses this to make some wider points about the criteria for a successful justification of liberalism in conditions of pluralism. Though the article argues that Misak’s argument fails to take seriously enough the problem that pluralism poses for the justification of liberal politics in modern democratic societies, and that in this sense a (...) version of political liberalism is superior, it nevertheless ends by tentatively suggesting an alternative account of a Peircian epistemological justification that has some potentially promising and attractive features. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present Bioethics, particularly its educational aspect, as a way to promote moral and democratic competencies, thus improving a personal capacity to face not only bioethical issues but also broader ethical, moral and even political problems. We believe that we should invest educative efforts on the affective and cognitive aspects of moral behavior if we want to promote the capacity to make moral judgments and act according to them. In pluralistic democratic societies, it is (...) necessary to also promote the capacity to speak up and listen to arguments as a means to deal with moral problems. Any Bioethics which does not also include an educational action is prone to lose most of its significance. We propose that Bioethics should be led to an educational turn, focusing on the construction of an educative toolbox composed of interventional and evaluative instruments. (shrink)

As Next Generation Sequencing technologies are increasingly implemented in biomedical research and care, the number of study participants and patients who ask for release of their genomic raw data is set to increase. This raises the question whether research participants and patients have a legal and moral right to receive their genomic raw data and, if so, how this right should be implemented into practice. In a first step we clarify some central concepts such as “raw data”; in a second (...) step we sketch the international legal framework. The third step provides an extensive ethical analysis which comprehends two parts: an evaluation of whether there is a prima facie moral right to receive one’s raw data, and a contextualization and discussion of the right in light of potentially conflicting interests and rights of the data subject herself and third parties; in a last fourth step we emphasize the main practical consequences of the ethical analyses and propose recommendations for the release of raw data. In several legislations like the new European General Data Protection Regulation, patients do in principle have the right to receive their raw data. However, the procedural implementation of this right and whether it involves genetic counselling is at the discretion of the Member States. Even more questions remain with respect to the research context. The ethical analysis suggests that patients and research subjects have a moral right to receive their genomic raw data and addresses aspects which are also of relevance for the legal discussion such as the costs of release of raw data and its impact on academic freedom. Taking into account the specific nature and implications of genomic raw data and the contexts of research and health care, several concerns and potentially conflicting interests of the data subjects themselves and involved researchers, physicians, biomedical institutions and relatives arise. Instead of using them to argue in favor of restrictions of the data subjects’ legal and moral right to genomic raw data, the concerns should be addressed through provision of information and other measures. To this end, we propose relevant recommendations. (shrink)

An analysis of the epistemological structure of democratic deliberation as a procedure in which legal norms are constructed reveals that deliberation combines procedural and substantive aspects in a unique and inextricable manner. The co-original recognition of the private and public autonomy of all citizens provides the substantive critical standard against which the justice of norms is measured. At the same time, such recognition requires that the particular needs and values of all people concerned be taken into account. Given the privileged (...) epistemic access people have to their own particular perspective, this requirement implies the ineliminability of actual deliberative procedures. The open-ended nature of these constructive procedures is partly due to the fact that the rules of the procedure are counterfactual and themselves subject to interpretation. More importantly, it also reflects the historical nature of our human world and the freedom of moral persons to shape and reshape their preferences. (shrink)

Kai Nielsen is one of Canada’s most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and controversies of our time but throughout has remained a unique voice on the political left. _ Pessimism of the Intellect _presents a thoughtful collection of Nielsen’s essays (...) complemented by an extended reflective interview with Nielsen. This collection allows the reader to grasp the systematic scope of his thought and methodology. (shrink)

Since contemporary societies are deeply multicultural and plural, the partisan ideological politics obviously animate conflict of opinions and hard bargains that brings coercion into play. Thus political power is exercised to establish legitimacy and stability in the polity. The use of public reason as a tool of public inquiry is considered as most effective in deciding upon the outcomes of laws and policies. The idea of public reason is one of the contemporary innovations of liberal thinking in democracy and has (...) gained a wider currency among the political theorists after John Rawls adoption of it into his political thinking. On this background, my concern is to see the feasibility of public reason alone into democratic outcomes through coercive use of power provided that this is widely accepted among the epistemic peers in a democracy. I propose that the exclusiveness of public reason is inadequate to arbitrate on fundamental questions of politics in situations where disagreement becomes acute because of the adversary positions held by citizens. And hence love and truth add to the rigorousness of reason as strong ideals to combat an insurgency of deadly disagreements. It is an attempt to engage love and truth to public reason to make public deliberations more productive in the arena of law making and policy outputs. The strengthening of this democratic process is pioneering effort of M. K. Gandhi. (shrink)

In Democracy and Moral Conflict, Robert Talisse defends a folk epistemological justification of democracy. This is a universalist and non-moral justification that he deems necessary to accommodate moral pluralism. In contrast, I argue that this attempt fails to justify democracy, on three grounds. First, democracy cannot accommodate moral pluralism, as Talisse understands it. Second, Talisse's own conception of democracy is inconsistent with moral pluralism. And third, democracy requires moral justification and motivation, both of which can be made consistent from within (...) an experimental moral pluralism. (shrink)

John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing on an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrained proceduralist’ (...) account of democratic self-government, or the ‘convergence’ account of public justification formulated recently by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier. (shrink)

Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that a society in which most persons act (...) in accordance with ‘gender equal’ ethos justice is morally superior to one in which most persons do not. A shared commitment to a particular conception of ethos justice, however, cannot be required by a conception of legitimacy justice. A political liberal feminist is committed to promoting gender equality with respect to both legitimacy justice and ethos justice, but recognizes that different means are necessary to do so. (shrink)

In "epistocratic" forms of government, political power is wielded by those who possess the knowledge relevant to good policymaking. Some democrats--notably, David Estlund--concede that epistocracy might produce better political outcomes than democracy but argue that epistocracy cannot be justified under public reason. These objections to epistocracy are unsound because they violate a viability constraint: they are also fatal to democracy and all other plausible political arrangements. Moreover, there is a problem with the public reason framework itself--a problem that can only (...) be solved by providing a better definition for what makes an objection to a political arrangement a "reasonable" one. (shrink)

According to instrumental proceduralism, political power is justified when it is the output of a reliable procedure. In this paper, I examine how procedures are supposed to confer normative properties. Based on this assessment, I conclude that many proceduralists set the reliability bar too low. Next, I motivate two additional requirements for instrumental procedures. I introduce the notion of “predictable” procedural failure and argue that in order for a procedure to confer legitimacy or other normative properties on its output, it (...) must not have failed predictably. Finally, I argue that even when procedures are highly reliable, it must not be the case that their failures fall disproportionately on certain people. The goal is to develop an instrumental proceduralism that is more sensitive to the failures of real institutions. (shrink)

Résumé J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèse A selon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèse B voulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En (...) réponse à A, je préconise un point de vue contextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas que A est fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirme B, l’interaction avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnisme modéré, c’est-à-dire l’idée selon laquelle un être a des pensées si et seulement si ces pensées sont interprétables par un interprète pleinement informé.I examine Donald Davidson’s thesis that a creature cannot have thoughts unless it has had a linguistic communication with another creature. This thesis, which I call “Radical Interpretationism”, derives from the claim that it is necessary to have the concepts of belief and objective truth in order to have beliefs and the claim that linguistic communication is required to acquire the concept of objective truth. In response to, I put forward a contextualist viewpoint, according to which the norms of belief attribution are context-dependent. Contextualism entails not that is false, but that it must be relativised to a context. I then show that contrary to what says, interaction with others is not necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth. I conclude that Davidson’s arguments at best support moderate interpretationism, that is, the view that a creature has thoughts if and only if these thoughts are interpretable by a fully-informed interpreter. (shrink)

One of the most influential views in privacy scholarship is that privacy protects individual autonomy. On the early liberal view, the exercise of autonomy requires detachment from social and political life and privacy facilitates it. This view of privacy still informs current legal and political practice. As this view of privacy presupposes a tension between privacy and society, it is responsible for the underrating of privacy in legal and political practice. Over the last decades, liberal reflection on autonomy has shifted (...) from the early liberal understanding of autonomy as calling for detachment from social life to the idea of autonomy as socially embedded. This development has brought about a corresponding adjustment in the liberal concept of privacy: privacy has come to be seen as a social rather than merely an individual interest. The social turn in thinking about privacy has gone a long way to change the problematic image of privacy in legal and political practice. It has not gone far enough, however, to draw conclusions regarding the political relevance of privacy. I argue that we should understand autonomy as politically embedded. Revised along these lines, privacy has a political value: when we claim privacy, we do not make a claim to withdraw from political life, but rather make a claim to protect certain forms of political engagement. (shrink)

The idea that the exercise of state power should be limited so as to permit free choice in matters of personal conduct has been central to liberalism ever since John Stuart Mill defended the harm principle. However, this surface agreement conceals deeper disagreements. One disputed matter relates to the nature of the tolerant state: is it a state that refrains from improving our moral character by coercive means is it a state that takes no interest whatsoever in the moral character (...) of our lives? A second matter relates to the philosophical justification of tolerance. Should it be justified by relying on distinctively liberal values, such as personal autonomy and self-determination? Or is a less controversial justification available — one that can be endorsed by non-liberals as well as liberals? This article explores these issues. It examines the views of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls and Joseph Raz, arguing that Rawls?s version of liberalism provides both the best conception and the best justification of the liberal ideal of tolerance. (shrink)

The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of political communities tends to generate exclusions. The combination of these two claims lends specific force to the third argument (...) according to which equal consideration perpetually requires the non-egalitarian project of understanding (excluded) individuals on their own terms. Hence, taking off from a recent debate between Christoph Menke and Jürgen Habermas, I argue that the former is right to diagnose an aporetic self-reflection in egalitarian universalism, while agreeing with the latter about the indispensability of deliberative democratic frameworks for the defence of both egalitarian and non-egalitarian norms. (shrink)

In this article I address two objections to Rawls’ account of international toleration. The first claims that the idea of a decent people does not cohere with Rawls’ understanding of reasonable pluralism and sanctions the oppressive use of state power. The second argues that liberal peoples would agree to a more expansive set of principles in the first original position of Law of Peoples. Contra the first I argue that it does not properly distinguish between the use of state power (...) aimed at curtailing difference and the oppressive use of state power. Contra the second I argue that transposing a liberal egalitarian set of principles in Law of Peoples would entail the unnecessary duplication of entitlements within different levels of governance and affect liberal peoples’ self-determination. The article also highlights how these criticisms are premised on the assumption that all societies should be liberal and that the correct view of global justice is a cosmopolitan one. (shrink)

The pragmatic political liberal in my conception approaches the political realm as an arena within which the boundaries of reasonableness, and thus of legitimate state action, are worked out through public inquiry over time. I therefore hold that the political liberal claim that public policies must be publicly justified does not mean that the policies in question must be shown to be immune to reasonable disagreement, but rather that they be shown to be reasonable candidates for public inquiry. While I (...) have doubts about the attractiveness and viability of ‘Deweyan’ democracy as a political program, I think that it is a reasonable candidate for public action in this sense. (shrink)

For decades, the greater part of efforts to improve regulatory frameworks for research ethics has focused on informed consent procedures; their design, codification and regulation. Why is informed consent thought to be so important? Since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1979, the standard response has been that obtaining informed consent is a way of treating individuals as autonomous agents. Despite its political success, the philosophical validity of this Belmont view cannot be taken for granted. If the Belmont view (...) is to be based on a conception of autonomy that generates moral justification, it will either have to be reinterpreted along Kantian lines or coupled with a something like Mill’s conception of individuality. The Kantian interpretation would be a radical reinterpretation of the Belmont view, while the Millian justification is incompatible with the liberal requirement that justification for public policy should be neutral between controversial conceptions of the good. This consequence might be avoided by replacing Mill’s conception of individuality with a procedural conception of autonomy, but I argue that the resulting view would in fact fail to support a non-Kantian, autonomy-based justification of informed consent. These difficulties suggest that insofar as informed consent is justified by respect for persons and considerations of autonomy, as the Belmont report maintained, the justification should be along the lines of Kantian autonomy and not individual autonomy. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘discourse ethics’ has been an important source of inspiration for theories of deliberative democracy and is typically contrasted with agonistic conceptions of democracy represented by theorists such as Chantal Mouffe. In this article I show that this contrast is overstated. By focusing on the different philosophical traditions that underpin Mouffe’s and Habermas’s respective approaches, commentators have generally overlooked the political similarities between these thinkers. I examine Habermas’s and Mouffe’s respective conceptions of democratic politics and argue that (...) they cannot be so neatly distinguished from each other. I show that much of Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas’s theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny, and discourse ethics shares important points of similarity with her own democratic theory. By using critical republican theory to show the similarities in their work, I push beyond the agonistic versus deliberative debate, and show that at the heart of both of these approaches is a critical republican emphasis on the need for civic solidarity, on the constructive role of conflict in democratic politics and on the vital importance of self-government. These are crucial ingredients for the regeneration of democracy in contemporary pluralistic societies. (shrink)