This paper provides a new analysis and critique of Rawlsian public reason’s handling of the abortion question. It is often claimed that public reason is indeterminate on abortion, because it cannot say enough about prenatal moral status, or give content to the (allegedly) political value which Rawls calls ‘respect for human life’. I argue that public reason requires much greater argumentative restraint from citizens debating abortion than critics have acknowledged. Beyond the preliminary observation that fetuses do not meet the criteria (...) of political personhood, I contend, public reasoners may say nothing about prenatal moral status. Indeed, respect for human life (as distinct from respect for persons) is not, I show, a genuine political value, whose interpretation lies within public reason’s remit. This fact does not, however, prevent deliberators from drawing determinate conclusions regarding the law of abortion. Instead, I show, public reason has radically permissive implications for the legal regulation of feticide, inclining heavily towards the view that abortion should be allowed with little or no qualification, right until birth. I end by giving grounds for thinking that, even if the argumentative restraint which public reason enjoins over prenatal moral status does not generate indeterminacy, it is nonetheless objectionable. (shrink)

Compared to standard liberal approaches to public reason and justification, the asymmetric convergence model of public justification allows for the public justification of laws and policies based on a convergence of quite different and even publicly inaccessible reasons. The model is asymmetrical in the sense of identifying a broader range of reasons that may function as decisive defeaters of proposed laws and policies. This paper raises several critical questions about the asymmetric convergence model and its central but ambiguous presumption against (...) coercion. By drawing on the theory of structural coercion, a main conclusion of the paper is that the asymmetric convergence model ultimately encounters the very incompleteness problems that its proponents often associate with more familiar consensus models of public justification. The paper also develops an alternative, Rawlsian-inspired account of public justification that includes elements of both convergence and consensus but not asymmetry. The Rawlsian model enables us to understand how democratic decisions may possess a degree of procedural, but still morally significant, liberal legitimacy under conditions of pluralism even when citizens fail to agree fully about either the premises of or conclusions to their political arguments. (shrink)

While an environmental ethic is not explicitly developed in A Theory of Justice, or Political Liberalism, it is possible to extrapolate some principles dealing with non-human nature, and thereby some environmental protections, with what Rawls provides. However, his inability to provide a non-anthropocentric environmental ethic might threaten the stability of a 'well-ordered' society, and this possibility gestures to the potential 'problem' of pluralism in general. Certain environmentalists will be dissatisfied with the status of their environmental values in a Rawlsian society. (...) If the group is 'unreasonable', then while they are not technically threats to 'stability' (in that they are not part of the 'overlapping consensus' to begin with), they might instead be threats to the well-orderedness of the society. If the group is 'reasonable', Rawls must hope that they will also agree with enough of the political conception of justice, and be swayed by appeals to reasonableness, that they will join in the overlapping consensus despite their environmental concerns. There appear to be reasons to believe that, at least given a well-ordered society, this will often be the case. (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 A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics, I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this (...) understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this (...) understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement. (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)

ABSTRACTCitizens in John Rawls's well-ordered society face an assurance dilemma. They wish to act justly only if they are reasonably sure their fellow citizens will also act justly. According to Rawls, this assurance problem is solved through public reasoning. This paper argues that public reason cannot serve this function. It begins by arguing that one kind of incompleteness public reason faces that most Rawlsians grant is ubiquitous but unproblematic from a normative standpoint is problematic from an assurance perspective: it makes (...) it possible for citizens to argue for policy conclusions that are favored by their private interests, rather than justice. In response, perhaps the thing to do is structure deliberative democratic institutions such that citizens will always be incentivized to use public reasons to only argue for conclusions they believe are favored by justice. The paper proves that this is impossible by extending the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. (shrink)