scholarly journals Epistemic Permissivism and Reasonable Pluralism

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland ◽  
Robert Mark Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Reasonable Pluralism

Ethical Autonomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Swaine
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Moral Structure ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Good Lives

This book examines the importance of personal autonomy for democratic citizenship and for good lives. It charts the evolution of autonomy and analyzes the proliferation of autonomy in free societies. The book pinpoints serious deficiencies in received ideals of autonomy for individual persons. It delivers an extended critique of personal autonomy, noting the excessive openness and lack of moral structure that personal autonomy provides. It elaborates an argument in favor of ethical autonomy, an alternative kind of autonomy that integrates individual self-rule with moral character. Ethical autonomy includes important restraints on an autonomous individual’s imagination, deliberation, and will. It supports central liberal commitments, it fits with reasonable pluralism, it enhances active and astute forms of democratic citizenship, and it is grounded in fundamental principles of liberty of conscience. This novel understanding enriches the values of freedom, toleration, respect, individual rights, limited government, and the rightful rule of law.

scholarly journals Animal Ethics and Politics Beyond the Social Contract

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-222
Author(s):  
Alan Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Political Actions

This paper is divided into three sections. First, I describe the wide plurality of views on issues of animal ethics, showing that our disagreements here are deep and profound. This fact of reasonable pluralism about animal ethics presents a political problem. According to the dominant liberal tradition of political philosophy, it is impermissible for one faction of people to impose its values upon another faction of people who reasonably reject those values. Instead, we are obligated to justify our political actions to each other using reasons that everyone can accept. Thus, in the second section I suggest that our condition of reasonable pluralism inspires us to turn toward some form of contractarianism. The social contract tradition emerged precisely as an attempt to think about how a society characterized by deep moral disagreement could nonetheless agree about the basic principles of justice. I will show, in this section, that although the social contract tradition would seem to contain the best tools for thinking about how to deal with moral disagreement, it fails to help us think through the important issues of animal ethics. In the concluding section, I suggest some ways in which political philosophy might move beyond contractarianism when thinking about this issue, including embracing an agonistic style of politics.

Social Epistemology and the Politics of Omission

Episteme ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Robert B. Talisse
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Political Decisions

ABSTRACTContemporary liberal democracy employs a conception of legitimacy according to which political decisions and institutions must be at least in principle justifiable to all citizens. This conception of legitimacy is difficult to satisfy when citizens are deeply divided at the level of fundamental moral, religious, and philosophical commitments. Many have followed the later Rawls in holding that where a reasonable pluralism of such commitments persists, political justification must eschew appeal to any controversial moral, religious, or philosophical premises. In this way, the Rawlsian account of public political justification involves a politics of omission, where citizens are expected to bracket off their most fundamental commitments and seek justifications that draw only from uncontroversial premises. This politics of omission is necessary, Rawls argues, for political stability. But there is good social epistemic evidence for the view that the politics of omission encourages insularity among like-minded groups, and that this insularity in turn generates extremism. So omission is likely to lead to instability, not stability.

scholarly journals Reviewing Public Reason: A Critique of Rawls’ Political Liberalism and the Idea of Public Reason

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 715-729
Author(s):  
Rachael Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Neutrality ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism

This article provides a critical review of Rawls’ effort in Political Liberalism to construct a political theory of justice compatible with the fact of reasonable pluralism. Particular attention is given to the ‘idea of public reason’ and political liberalism’s liberal neutrality. It is argued that because of its liberal neutrality, political liberalism would preclude people from endorsing at least some reasonable comprehensive views and, therefore, as a theory it lacks the necessary stability required to be as successful as Rawls claims.

scholarly journals Embracing Pedagogical Pluralism:An Educator's Case for (at Least Public) School Choice

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
David J. Ferrero
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Professional Standards ◽  
Conceptual Basis ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
Standards Of Practice ◽  
Public School Choice ◽  
Common School ◽  
The Common

Pedagogical and curricular beliefs and commitments are expressions of deeper philosophical and ideological worldviews that empirical research can sometimes modify but not ultimately eliminate. The pluralism these views produce is reasonable in that they all represent plausible interpretations of liberal-republican values and professional standards of practice; they should be granted some room to flourish under a system of carefully regulated autonomy and choice. Three objections to a conception of school choice grounded in a notion of reasonable pluralism among educational doctrines are addressed: 1) that it would undermine educators' efforts to secure status for themselves as professionals by admitting that “best practices” in education offer rough guidance at best; 2) that it would leave parents and students vulnerable to quackery; 3) that it abandons the common school tradition and its aspirations. I conclude with an examination of why the conceptual basis on which a society designs a system of choice makes a difference.

The Fact of Diversity and Reasonable Pluralism

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sterling Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Organizing Principles

AbstractContemporary society involves a number of different persons, groups, and ways of life that are deeply divided and very often opposed on fundamental matters of deep concern. Today, many contemporary philosophers regard this 'fact of diversity' as a problem that needs to be addressed when assessing the principles employed to organize society. In this paper, I discuss the fact of diversity, as it is understood by the notion of reasonable pluralism, and explain why it is thought by some to challenge the stability of a society's political morality. I examine the leading attempt to offer an account of the stability of a political morality and I argue that John Rawls's attempt to account for the stability of Justice as Fairness fails for reasons applicable to all political moralities because the very notion of a stable political morality is implausible. Diversity, as reasonable pluralism understands it, is not a problem that can be solved either by identifying a stable political morality or by modifying a political morality in some way that will make it more stable. Instead, the fact of diversity indicates only that disagreements on all aspects of society's organization, including its organizing principles and matters of value, is a permanent feature of social life that cannot be ignored, wished away, or solved.

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