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)

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)

This article explores the historical and philosophical backgrounds that inform the appropriation of the term “public reason” in liberal theory. Particularly, it studies the differing nuances attached to public reason by Kant and Rawls. The article suggests that, while Kant viewed the public use of reason as a conditio sine qua non for Enlightenment to take place within the Prussian society, Rawls’s notion of public reason in Political Liberalism serves a different purpose (...) in our contemporary world. Rawls sees public reason as a tool, which would enable citizens of the pluralistic liberal state to unearth tolerable bases for coexistence, despite their trenchant and often conflicting ideological, cultural and religious differences. Moreover, Rawls’s notion of public reason aims at liberal legitimacy: the normative and political justification of the legal power of the state in liberal democracy. (shrink)

This paper tackles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central (...) feature of liberal epistemology, namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition. Keywords: public reason and religion - pragmatism - liberalism - communitarianism - normative practices. (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)

Many public health dilemmas involve a tension between the promotion of health and the rights of individuals. This article suggests that we should resolve the tension using our familiar liberal principles of government. The article considers the common objections that liberalism is incompatible with standard public health interventions such as anti-smoking measures or intervention in food markets; there are special reasons for hard paternalism in public health; and liberalism is incompatible with proper protection of the community good. (...) The article argues that we should examine these critiques in a larger methodological framework by first acknowledging that the right theory of public health ethics is the one we arrive at in reflective equilibrium. Once we examine the arguments for and against liberalism in that light, we can see the weaknesses in the objections and the strength of the case for liberalism in public health. (shrink)

This article challenges the widespread and influential claim – made by many liberals and non‐liberals – that cultural membership is a prerequisite of individual autonomy. It argues that liberals like Joseph Raz and Will Kymlicka, who ground autonomy in culture, underestimate the complex and internally diverse nature of the self, and the extent to which individual agents will often be shaped by many different attachments and memberships at once. In ‘selectively elevating’ one of these memberships (culture) as the most important (...) to one’s autonomy or identity, culturalist liberals present a skewed and simplistic account of individual autonomy and, hence, of liberalism. Instead, autonomy should be seen as arising not out of any particular membership or attachment, but out of the interaction between those different memberships which shape the individual’s understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. This alternative account holds important implications for liberal theory, particularly the tensions between ‘political’ and ‘comprehensive’ liberals about the scope of liberal principles and the nature of public reasoning about justice. (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)

I attempt to show that toleranceis part of the idea of American law: for any legalsystem must incorporate the capacity toaccommodate differences in order to meet theminimal standards necessary to apply a rule. There are multiple forms of tolerance, however, some ofwhich are inconsistent with liberal principles.By examining several lines of jurisprudencerelating to speech and privacy, I show thatAmerican law reflects elements of bothliberalism and conservative communitarianism. I attempt to reconcile these by suggesting they actuallyreflect a perfectionist foundation of liberalautonomy. (...) That is to say, American law doesnot value moral autonomy and reasoned discoursebecause they protect neutrality betweendifferent ideas of the good life: rather, thelaw reflects an idea of the good life that seesmoral autonomy as advancing well being.This perfectionist liberal foundation oftolerance reflects the evolution of Americanlaw. Through slavery, sexism and the controlof erotic speech we see how it expanded theideas of who is capable of rationaldiscourse and what activities incorporatethe exercise of reasoned moral autonomy;and how the law imposes this autonomouscapacity on individuals as the price ofcitizenship, even if they belong to groups whodeny the value of reason or autonomy. (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)

This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, I explain the foundational differences between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, despite the fact that Rawls maintains the Two Principles of Justice in both works. Moreover, I expound why, in view of the fact that reasonable people would subscribe to different comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, Rawls needs a new foundation for social stability in a constitutional liberal democracy. I explain the connection between Rawls’ ideas of (...) overlapping consensus, political conception, and public reason. Moreover, I explain Rawls’ idea of “duty of civility” and the condition under which a controversial issue can be legitimately resolved by way of voting. Further, instead of pursuing Rawls’ idea that bioethical issues could be resolved by way of “reasonable balancing” of “political values,” I turn to T. M. Scanlon’s contractualist approach, which is congenial to Rawlsian political liberalism and can resolve moral, political, and bioethical issues. In the second part of this chapter, I try to resolve the problem of medical assistance in dying by using Thomson’s/Scanlon’s idea that permissibility is not affected by intention. I deal with the Slippery Slope Arguments, the argument from abuse, and the argument from pressure on elderly patients who might feel obligated to die. Finally, I argue that Scanlonian contractualism is preferable to utilitarianism, and that contractualism can defuse the problem from pressure which has plagued utilitarianism. (shrink)

In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the “Deliberative Equality Argument”, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the authors contend. (...) The second, which I call the “Equal Liberties Argument”, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself. (shrink)

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)

This book is a defense of political liberalism as a feminist liberalism. A novel and restrictive account of public reason is defended. Then it is argued that political liberalism's core commitments restrict reasonable conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine, substantive equality for women and other marginalized groups.

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes them illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification according to what caused (...) people’s beliefs. I offer a conception of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (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)

Liberalism Without Perfection elaborates a generally Rawlsian conception of public justification in order to defend antiperfectionist liberalism. This critical response raises questions about the link between the two parts of the project. On the hand, it is possible to reject that demand that reasons for political decisions pass a qualified acceptability requirement even if one is strictly opposed to paternalism. On the other hand, the commitment to public justifiability does not rule out all perfectionism, if there are some (...) claims about the good that are not reasonably rejectable. (shrink)

An exploration of the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism today. What does it mean to be a liberal in neoliberal times? This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a highly illiberal age. Liberalism in the broader sense revolves around tolerance, progress, humanitarianism, objectivity, reason, democracy, and human rights. Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights opened a theoretical pathway to neoliberalism, through private (...) property, a classically minimal liberal state, and the efficiency of “free markets.” In practice, neoliberalism is associated less with the economic deregulation championed by its advocates than the re-regulation of the economy to protect financial capital. Liberalism in Neoliberal Times engages with the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism, viewing it in relation to four central areas of public life: human rights, ethnicity and gender, education, and the media. The contributors explore the transformations in as well as the transformative aspects of liberalism and highlight both its liberating and limiting capacities. The book contends that liberalism—in all its forms—continues to underpin specific institutions such as the university, the free press, the courts, and, of course, parliamentary democracy. Liberal ideas are regularly mobilized in areas such as counterterrorism, minority rights, privacy, and the pursuit of knowledge. This book contends that while we may not agree on much, we can certainly agree that an understanding of liberalism and its emancipatory capacity is simply too important to be left to the liberals Contributors Alejandro Abraham-Hamanoiel, Patrick Ainley, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Michael Bailey, Haim Bresheeth, Başak Çalı, David Chandler, William Davies, Costas Douzinas, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Roberto Gargarella, Priyamvada Gopal, Jonathan Hardy, John Holmwood, Ratna Kapur, Gholam Khiabany, Ray Kiely, Monika Krause, Deepa Kumar, Arun Kundnani, Colin Leys, Howard Littler, Kathleen Lynch, Robert W. McChesney, Nivedita Menon, Toby Miller, Kate Nash, Joan Pedro-Carañana, Julian Petley, Anne Phillips, Jonathan Rosenhead, Annabelle Sreberny, John Steel, Michael Wayne, Milly Williamson. (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)

This article, forthcoming in the international legal philosophy journal Ratio Juris, responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith arguing that the consistent application of liberal principles requires that same-sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith’s article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same-sex partners. In correcting these flaws (...) I tentatively propose a ‘Voltarian argument’ in favour of same-sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same-sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. (shrink)

In a Society of Peoples as Rawls conceives it, human rights function as “criteria for toleration.” This paper defends the conception of human rights that appears in Rawls’ The Law of Peoples as normatively and theoretically adequate. I claim that human rights function as criteria for determining whether or not a given society or legal system can be tolerated. As such, “human rights” are not themselves basic facts or judgments or ascriptions, but rather the means by which we collectively attempt (...) to secure public criteria for evaluating what can and cannot be tolerated. Human rights are one expression of the fundamental value commitments of Political Liberalism to reasonableness and tolerance. If correct, this account provides good reasons for concluding that Political Liberalism has a normatively adequate conception of global justice. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He developed a pioneering defence of the liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle diversity and disagreement, and he presses the liberal tradition towards a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. This book brings together Gaus's most seminal and creative essays in a single volume for the first time. It also covers a broad span of his career, including essays published shortly (...) before his death, and topics including reasonable pluralism, moral rights, public reason, and the redistributive state. The volume makes accessible the work of one of the most important recent liberal theorists. Many readers will find it of value, especially those in political philosophy, political science, and economics. (shrink)

"Contexts of Justice is a study that covers and definitely exhausts the whole range of ten years of one of the most important recent philosophical discussions, that between liberals and communitarians."--Jurgen Habermas, author of Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere "Forst addresses with great insight and acuity the debates over justice between liberals and communitarians that animated the late '80s and '90s...He uses no jargon, he reasons well, his arguments are strong, clear, and accesssible, and he avoids political correctness (...) as well as its opposite."--Andrew Arato, author of Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy. (shrink)

Gerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He developed a pioneering defence of the liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle diversity and disagreement, and he presses the liberal tradition towards a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. This book brings together Gaus's most seminal and creative essays in a single volume for the first time. It also covers a broad span of his career, including essays published shortly (...) before his death, and topics including reasonable pluralism, moral rights, public reason, and the redistributive state. The volume makes accessible the work of one of the most important recent liberal theorists. Many readers will find it of value, especially those in political philosophy, political science, and economics. (shrink)

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes those rules illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules to be unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification, according (...) to what caused people’s beliefs. I offer a conception of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (shrink)

moral foundation of liberalism can be defended in one of three ways: (1) as a conception one accepts as a result of one’s affirmation of political liberalism, (2) as a conception one must affirm as a presupposition for political liberalism, or (3) as a philosophical truth about practical reason and persons. The first option makes it impossible to distinguish a moral consensus from a modus vivendi . The second renders the moral foundation of liberalism dogmatic because it affirms a (...) moral foundation for which no justification is provided. Since there are good reasons for rejecting (1) and (2), that leaves option (3). I argue that (3) should be the preferred option for liberals who advance liberalism as a political doctrine with a moral foundation. (shrink)

This article responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith that argued that the consistent application of generic liberal principles requires that same-sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith's article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same-sex partners. In correcting these flaws I tentatively propose a Voltairean argument in (...) favour of same-sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same-sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. (shrink)

This paper examines and criticizes the defence of toleration due to John Rawls in Political Liberalism, and similar strategies mobilized in defence of toleration. It argues that the notion of the burdens of judgement, used by Rawls to defend his doctrine of reasonable pluralism, faces incoherence: schematically, either disagreement succumbs to reason, or vice versa. On similar grounds, reasonable disagreement defences of neutrality fail because of a double-mindedness about the relation between private judgements and public reason. This (...) problem arises, it is argued, from an attempt to make private judgements determinative in the formation of political and legal outcomes, even while subjecting the latter’s justification to norms of public reason. Deference to private judgements in political justification tends to countenance sedition, and this applies also to modern liberal attempts such as Rawls’s to ground toleration in private judgements. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of philosophical essays on freedom and tolerance in the Netherlands. It explores liberal freedom and its limits in areas such as freedom of speech, public reason, sexual morality, euthanasia, drugs policy, and minority rights. The book takes Dutch practices as exemplary test cases for the principled discussions on these subjects from the perspective of political liberalism. Indeed, the Netherlands may be viewed as a social laboratory in human tolerance. During the Cultural Revolution of (...) the 1960s, Holland took the lead in a global emancipation process towards a society based on equal freedom. It was the first country to legalize euthanasia, soft drugs and gay marriage. In the final sections, the book examines the question of whether the political murders on the politician Pim Fortuyn and the film director Theo van Gogh, the reactions to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film Submission, as well as the success of the populist politician Geert Wilders are signs of the end of Dutch tolerance. Although it recognizes that the political climate has taken a conservative turn, the book shows that the Netherlands still shows remarkable tolerance. (shrink)

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)

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials (...) and non-essentials, and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective. (shrink)

In Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies I examine political parties and partisanship within the context of John Rawls’s theory of political liberalism. I argue that parties and partisanship are vital to Rawls’s political liberalism, since they offer a distinctive and crucial contribution to the process of public justification that is central to it, which combines the articulation of public reasons with the channelling into the public political realm of the particular values and conceptions of the (...) good emerging from parties’ specific constituencies. Furthermore, I argue, partisanship generates a special kind of political obligations, and this further contributes to state legitimacy under conditions of reasonable pluralism. In this paper, I respond to three commentators who have raised important criticisms against my argument. More specifically, Section 1 provides a response to Lea Ypi’s argument that my normative account of partisanship wrongly presupposes that existing liberal societies are reasonably just. Section 2 answers Daniel Weinstock’s concerns regarding the plausibility and internal consistency of my account of partisan political obligations. Finally, Section 3 addresses Kevin Vallier’s criticisms, which challenge my account of public reason and propose an alternative one. (shrink)

Contemporary liberal political justification is often accused of preaching to the converted: liberal principles are acceptable only to people already committed to liberal values. Catriona McKinnon addresses this important criticism by arguing that self-respect and its social conditions should be placed at the heart of the liberal approach to justification. A commitment to self-respect delivers a commitment to the liberal values of toleration and public reason, but self-respect itself is not an exclusively liberal value.

Rawls hoped to meet these critics on their own ground by accepting that a comprehensive liberal position cannot be vindicated and by showing how a less ambitious, merely political, version of liberalism could be vindicated. His conception of political liberalism was less ambitious in two ways. In the first place its substantive normative claims were confined to the domain of politics: all he aspired to was a liberal theory of justice. Secondly, he argued that liberalism could dispense with metaphysical and (...) moral foundations: liberal justice could be vindicated as “political not metaphysical.” Since the publication of Political Liberalism, the term ‘political liberalism’ has increasingly been used to indicate this quite specific version of liberalism, whose normative claims are merely political, and which purports not to draw on “comprehensive moral doctrines,” or on unsustainable metaphysical claims. (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 liberalism has been challenged by religious critics who make the “Integrity Objection.” That is, they argue that public reason’s stringent limits on the kinds of reasons which can serve as justificatory prevent them from living lives of integrity wherein their political activity and personal commitments are in sync. Convergence forms of public reason liberalism adopt this critique and respond to it by rejecting the dominant model of public reason, consensus justification, (...) replacing the Rawlsian standard of shared reasons with merely intelligible ones. In this paper I look at two formulations of the integrity objection and make brief rebuttals of both, ultimately arguing that convergence liberalism cannot claim to provide a more compelling response to religious critics than consensus liberalism. (shrink)

The article argues for a conception of the justification of punishment that is compatible with a modern, politically liberal regime. Section I deals with what some have thought are the obvious soci...

This article discusses the growth of the populist radical right as a concrete example of the scenario where liberal democratic ideas are losing support in broadly liberal democratic societies. Our goal is to enrich John Rawls’ influential theory of political liberalism. We argue that even in that underexplored scenario, Rawlsian political liberalism can offer an appealing account of how to promote the legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic institutions provided it places partisanship centre stage. Specifically, we propose a brand-new moral (...) duty binding ‘reasonable’ partisans committed to pluralism. This duty establishes conditions where partisans must strategically transform society’s public reason (i.e. transform the visions for society their parties campaign on) in ways that promise to attract back support from illiberal and antidemocratic competitors. While this strategic behaviour might seem impermissible, we show that Rawls’ distinctive account of sincerity in democratic deliberation is uniquely placed to justify it as perfectly ethical. (shrink)

In public reason liberalism, equal respect requires that conceptions of justice be publicly justifiable to relevant people in a manner that allocates to each an equal say. But all liberal public justification also excludes: e.g., it accords no say, or a lesser say, to people it deems unreasonable. Can liberal public justification be aligned with the equal respect that allegedly grounds it, if the latter calls for discursive equality? The chapter explores this challenge with a focus (...) on Rawls-type political liberalism. I suggest that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect can cohere with the standing of the unreasonable in public justification if that standing is not impermissibly unequal in discursive purchase. I then consider one candidate view of the permissibility of purchase inequality. On this broadly sufficientarian view, purchase inequality is permissible provided relevant people have standing of enough purchase to be able to avoid relevant bads. A plausible variant of this view suggests that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect does not cohere with the discursive standing of the unreasonable. It emerges that where liberal public justification accords actual people discursive respect but relevantly idealizes at least around its fringes, the permissibility of purchase inequality must be a central concern. (shrink)

The left's reluctance to embrace political liberalism is based, in part, on the persistent misunderstandings of justice as fairness. In What's Left of Liberalism? Jon Mandle provides a systematic overview of the theory, discussing its basic structure and describing the models of society and the person, as well as the idea of public reason, that it supports. Mandle also considers the challenges posed to political liberalism by communitarianism and postmodernism, offering critiques of theorists such as Edmund Burke, Michael (...) Oakeshott, and Roger Scruton; and Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault. Scholars will find Mandle's arguments thought-provoking, while students will find his clarification of Rawls a useful supplement to the original texts. (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 this innovative and important work, Gerald Gaus advances a revised and more realistic account of public reason liberalism, showing how, in the midst of fundamental disagreement about values and moral beliefs, we can achieve a moral and political order that treats all as free and equal moral persons. The first part of this work analyzes social morality as a system of authoritative moral rules. Drawing on an earlier generation of moral philosophers such as Kurt Baier and Peter (...) Strawson as well as current work in the social sciences, Gaus argues that our social morality is an evolved social fact, which is the necessary foundation of a mutually beneficial social order. The second part considers how this system of social moral authority can be justified to all moral persons. Drawing on the tools of game theory, social choice theory, experimental psychology and evolutionary theory, Gaus shows how a free society can secure a moral equilibrium that is endorsed by all, and how a just state respects, and develops, such an equilibrium. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess John Rawls' repeated claim that the duty of civility is only a moral duty and should not be enforced by law. In the first part of the paper, I examine and reject the view that Rawls' position may be due to the practical difficulties that the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might entail. I thus claim that Rawls' position must be driven by deeper normative reasons grounded in a conception of free speech. (...) In the second part of the paper, I therefore examine various arguments for free speech and critically assess whether they are consistent with Rawls' political liberalism. I first focus on the arguments from truth and self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I argue, rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I claim, can be justified instead on the basis of Rawls' political conception of the person and of the two moral powers. However, Rawls' wide view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls' opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition, I claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of unconstrained freedom of speech grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy. Yet, I conclude, while public reason and the duty of civility are essential to political liberalism, unconstrained freedom of speech is not. Rawls and political liberals could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech, and endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, while remaining faithful to political liberalism. (shrink)