scholarly journals Does Convergence Liberalism Risk Anarchy?

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Schultz-Bergin
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Arrangement ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
Social Arrangements ◽  
David Enoch

Public reason liberals argue that coercive social arrangements must be publicly justified in order to be legitimate. According to one model of public reason liberalism, known as convergence liberalism, this means that every moderately idealized member of the public must have sufficient reason, of her own, to accept the arrangement. A corollary of this Principle of Public Justification is that a coercive social arrangement fails to be legitimate so long as even one member of the public fails to have sufficient reason to endorse the arrangement. This high bar for justification has led many critics, most notably David Enoch, to argue that convergence models are incapable of vindicating liberalism. They argue that in a sufficiently diverse society, there will always be someone for whom an arrangement is not justified, and therefore convergence liberalism leads to anarchy – the view that no law or coercive social arrangement is legitimate. Other critics accept that convergence liberalism could vindicate core liberal institutions but nothing more, and thus argue that the view makes libertarians effective “dictators”. In either case, critics hold that this objection is sufficient to reject convergence liberalism, either in favor of alternative public reason views or as a means of rejecting all public reason views. In this paper I argue that convergence liberalism can overcome this anarchy objection. I show that the objection largely rests on misinterpretations of convergence liberalism, and thus clarify aspects of the theory. However, I also show that internal debate over the scope of public justification – what stands in need of justification – must be resolved in favor of a wide scope, encompassing both State-based and non-State-based coercion, in order to overcome the anarchy objection. Therefore, my response to the anarchy objection has implications for how convergence liberalism should be developed going forward.

Public justification versus public deliberation: the case for divorce

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Substantial Impact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
Citizen Deliberation ◽  
The Ideal

I drive a wedge between public deliberation and public justification, concepts tightly associated in public reason liberalism. Properly understood, the ideal of public justification imposes no restraint on citizen deliberation but requires that those who have a substantial impact on the use of coercive power, political officials, advance proposals each person has sufficient reason to accept. I formulate this idea as the Principle of Convergent Restraint and apply it to legislators to illustrate the general reorientation I propose for the public reason project.

scholarly journals Religious Reasoning in the Liberal Public from the Second-Personal Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Zoll
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
The Stability

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

Does Public Reason Liberalism Rest on a Mistake? Democracy’s Doxastic and Epistemic Problems

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Jason Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes ◽  
Voter Knowledge

Public reason liberalism is a normative theory meant to adjudicate citizens’ conflicting beliefs about the right and the good. However, it rests upon controversial and likely mistaken empirical claims about voter psychology and voter knowledge. In political science, there are two major paradigms—populism and realism—about the relationship between voters’ beliefs and political outcomes. Realism holds that most citizens lack the kinds of beliefs and attitudes which public reason liberals believe are normatively significant. If so, then most citizens lack the kinds of ideological disputes which public reason liberalism is supposed to adjudicate. Worse, most citizens lack the kinds of normatively significantly beliefs upon which public justification must rest.

Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW F. MARCH
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Moral Questions

This article intervenes in the debate on the place of religious arguments in public reason. I advance the debate not by asking whether something called “religious reasons” ought to be invoked in the justification of coercive laws, but by creating a typology of (a) different kinds and forms of religious arguments and, more importantly, (b) different areas of political and social life which coercive laws regulate or about which human political communities deliberate. Religious arguments are of many different kinds, are offered to others in a variety of ways, and the spheres of life about which communities deliberate pose distinct moral questions. Turning back to the public reason debate, I argue then that political liberals ought to be concerned primarily about the invocation of a certain subset of religious reasons in a certain subset of areas of human activity, but also that inclusivist arguments on behalf of religious contributions to public deliberation fail to justify the use of religious arguments in all areas of public deliberation.

Religious Establishment and Public Justification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Religious Establishment

This chapter develops a principle that determines when governmental activity constitutes an objectionable form of establishment, either religious or secular. Situated within the theory of public reason liberalism, the principle holds that non-coercive forms of establishment, such as the use of religious symbols in government, are governed by a publicly justified purpose requirement. To be permissible, the relevant governmental act must have a purpose that can be publicly justified to multiple qualified points of view. Given that few acts of establishment, religious or secular, have that purpose, this chapter concludes that public reason liberalism is generally unfriendly to non-coercive establishment.

Rescuing Public Justification from Public Reason Liberalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Wendt
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Theoretical Level ◽  
Public Reason Liberalism ◽  
Gerald Gaus ◽  
The Right

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 chapter spells out how a principle of public justification could be integrated into a comprehensive liberalism, and it rebuts three objections: That the idea of public reason could not be sustained in a comprehensive liberalism, that public justification would lose its point (be it to provide stability, express respect, or form a community), and that the principle of public justification could not work on the right theoretical level. The chapter concludes that everything worthwhile about public justification can be extracted from public reason liberalism.

Integrity and the Case for Restraint

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Moral Ideal ◽  
Democratic Societies

This chapter discusses the concern that exclusive accounts of public reason threaten or undermine the integrity of some religiously oriented citizens in democratic societies. It discusses various notions of integrity that might be claimed to ground such a concern. It is argued that purely formal accounts of integrity that do not distinguish between the integrity of reasonable and unreasonable persons, as specified within political liberalism, cannot underwrite integrity challenges that should concern political liberals. It is further argued that if the inquiry is limited to conceptions of integrity that distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable persons, the supposed burdens persons of faith face are not burdens different from those that all citizens face equally. It is claimed the concern is best understood as a challenge to the account of public justification and the account of public reason as a moral ideal.

Exclusive Public Reason

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines

This chapter develops the idea of public reason based on the shared reasons account of public justification. It is argued that the moral foundation for political liberalism delimits a narrow scope for the idea of public reason, such that public reasons are required only for matters of constitutional essentials and basic justice. It is also argued that where public reason applies, persons as citizens have a moral duty to never appeal to their comprehensive doctrines when engaging in public reasoning. Hence, an exclusive account of public reason is vindicated. Finally, we respond to various potential objections to our view, such as the claim that the shared reasons view requires identical reasoning and the claim that public reason is interderminate or inconclusive.

Divine Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
The Public Sphere

The ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere and the emergence of postsecular societies have propelled the discourse of political theology into the centre of contemporary democratic theory. This situation calls forth the question addressed in this book: Is a democratic political theology possible? Carl Schmitt first developed the idea of the Christian theological foundations of modern legal and political concepts in order to criticize the secular basis of liberal democracy. He employed political theology to argue for the continued legitimacy of the absolute sovereignty of the state against the claims raised by pluralist and globalized civil society. This book shows how, after Schmitt, some of the main political theorists of the 20th century, from Jacques Maritain to Jürgen Habermas, sought to establish an affirmative connection between Christian political theology, popular sovereignty, and the legitimacy of democratic government. In so doing, the political representation of God in the world was no longer placed in the hands of hierarchical and sovereign lieutenants (Church, Empire, Nation), but in a series of democratic institutions, practices and conceptions like direct representation, constitutionalism, universal human rights, and public reason that reject the primacy of sovereignty.

Realising immigration as a human right: public justification and cosmopolitan solidarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098713
Author(s):  
David Martínez ◽  
Alexander Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Human Right ◽  
National State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The Right ◽  
Normative Justification

According to David Miller, immigration is not a human right. Conversely, Kieran Oberman makes a case for immigration as a human right. We agree with the latter view, but we show that its starting point is mistaken. Indeed, both Miller and Oberman discuss the right to immigration within the liberal paradigm: it is a right or not depending on the correct balance between the interests of the citizens of a given national state and the interests of the immigrants. Instead, we claim that public justification can underpin immigration as a human right. That said, the public justification of the right to immigration has several counterarguments to rebut. Before we deal with that issue, relying on Jürgen Habermas’s social theory, we examine the legal structures that could support the right to immigration in practice. To be sure, this does not provide the normative justification needed, instead it shows the framework that allows the institutional realization of this right. Then, through a combination of civic and cosmopolitan forms of solidarity, the article discusses the formation of a public sphere, which could provide the justification of the right to immigration.

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