In this article I examine the main conceptions of public reason in contemporary political philosophy in order to set the frame for appreciating the novelty of the pragmatist understanding of public reason as based upon the notion of consequences and upon a theory of rationality as inquiry. The approach is inspired by Dewey but is free from any concern with history of philosophy. The aim is to propose a different understanding of the nature of public reason aimed at overcoming the (...) limitations of the existing approaches. Public reason is presented as the proper basis for discussing contested issues in the broad frame of deep democracy. (shrink)

This article defends a pragmatic conception of objectivity for the moral domain. I begin by contextualizing pragmatic approaches to objectivity and discuss at some length one of the most interesting proposals in this area, Cheryl Misak's conception of pragmatic objectivity. My general argument is that in order to defend a pragmatic approach to objectivity, the pragmatic stance should be interpreted in more radical terms than most contemporary proposals do. I suggest in particular that we should disentangle objectivity from truth, and (...) I claim that moral inquiry is in most cases responsive to a normative standard that is closer to warranted assertibility than to truth. Using an argument that relies partly on Huw Price's account of forms of normative assertion, I will show that a practice-based account of warranted assertibility does the epistemic work required to defend objectivity while avoiding exposure to the criticisms that are usually addressed against this notion. (shrink)

What does evaluation mean? This article examines the evaluative process as a practical judgment that links a situation to a set of values in order to decide upon a course of action. It starts by discussing A. Sen’s “relational” and “comparative” account of evaluation, built in critical dialogue with J. Rawls’ deductive theory. Comparison, incompleteness, reality, and deliberation are the key principles of Sen’s approach, which, in some respects, echoes that of J. Dewey. The second part shows the relevance of (...) completing Sen’s approach with Dewey’s pragmatism, since Dewey’s emphasis on practical judgment is a useful counterbalance to Sen’s focus on evaluation as a cognitive process. Dewey introduces a shift from values to valuation and draws a distinction between prizing and appraising, which makes the logic of inquiry and the search for consistency between means and ends in a given situation the fulcrum of evaluation. The third part of this paper addresses the relationship between values and norms in evaluative processes. Neither Sen nor Dewey deals with this question in a systematic way, although norms, which are both similar and different from values, contribute to frame evaluations in different ways: as horizons, resources, or constrains. Bringing norms into the picture means completing the pragmatist account with an institutionalist perspective, as we suggest through the example of the evaluation of work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I first lay out a definition of perfectionism drawing mainly upon the works of Cora Diamond and Stanley Cavell. Secondly, I introduce the notion of “expressive rationality” and show how it contributes to expanding the scope of pragmatism beyond its original boundaries. I then proceed to examine pragmatism and perfectionism as competing alternative accounts of moral experience, through a discussion of Coetzee’s novel The Lives of Animals. In so doing, I intend to show that pragmatism and (...) perfectionism constitute two necessary and irreducible approaches to moral experience, pointing towards two diverging and yet irreducibly joined spheres of moral life. RÉSUMÉ : Cet article commence par proposer une définition du perfectionnisme inspirée en grande partie des travaux de Cora Diamond et Stanley Cavell. J’introduis ensuite l’idée de «rationalité expressive» et je montre comment elle contribue à étendre la portée du pragmatisme au-delà de ses frontières originales. Je fais enfin l’examen du pragmatisme et du perfectionnisme comme offrant des explications concurrentes de l’expérience morale en m’appuyant sur une discussion du roman The Lives of Animals de Coetzee. J’entends ainsi montrer que perfectionnisme et pragmatisme, loin de proposer deux philosophies éthiques irréconciliables, expriment deux exigences en même temps distinctes et irréductibles de la pensée éthique. (shrink)