Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 228-234
Author(s):  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
Political Deliberation

This chapter addresses a worry about the version of political liberalism that the book defends as consistent with gender egalitarianism: the worry that this political liberalism appears to give up a lot of what political liberals have taken themselves to be after. The conclusion defends my gloss on political liberalism, arguing that it preserves what political liberals should be most committed to preserving: the possibility of justificatory community as a way of expressing mutual civic respect in a profoundly, but reasonably, ideologically divided society. I conclude, finally, by confessing my own most persistent reservation about the argument I defend: that although the argument for gender egalitarian interventions that I give is consistent with the criterion or reciprocity, it might be too complicated to actually be offered in public political deliberation.

The Problem with Disagreement on Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 259-279
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Edenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
Political Cooperation ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
The Common ◽  
Different Sources

Intractable political disagreements threaten to fracture the common ground upon which we can build a political community. The deepening divisions in society are partly fueled by the ways social media has shaped political engagement. Social media allows us to sort ourselves into increasingly likeminded groups, consume information from different sources, and end up in polarized and insular echo chambers. To solve this, many argue for various ways of cultivating more responsible epistemic agency. This chapter argues that this epistemic lens does not reveal the complete picture and therefore misses a form of moral respect required to reestablish cooperation across disagreements in a divided society. The breakdown of discourse online provides renewed reasons to draw out not an epistemic but a moral basis for political cooperation among diverse citizens—one inspired by Rawlsian political liberalism. We need ways to cultivate mutual respect for our fellow citizens in order to reestablish common moral ground for political debate.

Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Gendered Division Of Labor ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Political Intervention

The trend toward gender equalization in domestic and paid labor allocations has stalled, and a growing number of scholars argue that, absent political intervention, further eroding of the gendered division of labor will not be forthcoming anytime soon. Certain political interventions could jumpstart the stalled gender revolution, but beyond their prospects for effectiveness, such interventions stand in need of another kind of justification. In a diverse, liberal state, reasonable citizens will disagree about what makes for a good life and a good society. Because a fundamental commitment of liberalism is to limit political intrusion into the lives of citizens and allow considerable space for those citizens to act on their own conceptions of the good, questions of legitimacy arise. Legitimacy concerns the constraints we must abide by as we seek collective political solutions to our shared social problems, given that we will disagree, reasonably, both about what constitutes a problem and about what costs we should be willing to incur to fix it. The interventions in question would subsidize gender-egalitarian lifestyles at a cost to those who prefer to maintain a traditional gendered division of labor. In a pluralistic, liberal society where many citizens reasonably resist the feminist agenda, can scarce public resources be used to finance political interventions to subsidize gender egalitarianism? This book argues that they can, and moreover, that they can even by the lights of political liberalism, a particularly demanding theory of liberal legitimacy.

Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Static View ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

The Priority of Public Reasons and Religious Forms of Life in Constitutional Democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mutual Accountability

In this essay I address the difficult question of how citizens with conflicting religious and secular views can fulfill the democratic obligation of justifying the imposition of coercive policies to others with reasons that they can also accept. After discussing the difficulties of proposals that either exclude religious beliefs from public deliberation or include them without any restrictions, I argue instead for a policy of mutual accountability that imposes the same deliberative rights and obligations on all democratic citizens. The main advantage of this proposal is that it recognizes the right of all democratic citizens to adopt their own cognitive stance (whether religious or secular) in political deliberation in the public sphere without giving up on the democratic obligation to provide reasons acceptable to everyone to justify coercive policies with which all citizens must comply.

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