I. Introduction: Does Justificatory Liberalism Imply Exclusion of Religious Reasons?

Commitment to justificatory liberalism (hereafter JL), where all citizens are free and equal and not to be forced to submit to the judgments of others without having a reason to accept that coercion. This commitment requires that not just any reason can be given to justify a law/policy, but only those that the citizenry could deem acceptable. Religious reasons, according to many JL theorists for laws are taken to be a species of the reasonings that are ruled out of this acceptable category. Gaus and Vallier (hereafter G/V) want to argue that the exclusion of religious reasons does not follow from the commitment to public justification. This (false) implication is based on three errors: Consensus: Every law must have a reason everyone accepts Symmetry: The reasons for proposing a law have the same requirements as reasons for rejecting a law Deliberation among citizens in constitutive of justification G/V want to show that justificatory liberals are committed to far more permissive principles of restraintif they are committed to principles of restraint at all (65). II. Two characteristics of Justificatory Liberalism A. Definition of Public Justification: L is a justified coercive law only if each and every member of the public P has [at least one] conclusive reason for accepting L. (53) 1. Every adult member has a reason for accepting L that conclusively defeats all of the reasons against L as well as any reasons for accepting one of Ls competitors. A further stipulation for JLers is that the justification for laws takes place in an environment of 2. Reasonable pluralism, where citizens of roughly equivalent reasoning power and access to the relevant evidence nevertheless come to different conclusions about the basic questions of good and value (55). Furthermore, this range of reasonable pluralism does not prima facie exclude religious beliefs or any other kind of comprehensive beliefs about the ultimate values and good of life. Key question: To what extent does the commitment to the having justified reasons (1) constrain the reasons that might arise from beliefs in a reasonable pluralistic environment (2)? B. Spectrum of answers to this key question, from most restrictive to least (56): 1. Macedo: Only shareable1 reasons count as public justification. This need not claim that acceptable reasons are in fact shared by everyone, only that they are able to be
1

This section is loose in its use of public, shareable, and secular. For the sake of clarification, I use the least controversial of these terms, public, except when an alternative more clearly describes the persons position (eg. Macedo).

shared. 2. Audi: Religious reasons are allowed provided that there is a sufficient public motive and rationale accompanying the religious reason. 3. Rawls: Religious reasons can motivate, as long as there is an attendant public reason as well. 4. (Objection to 1-3) Wolterstorff: Many peoples reasonings for accepting a particular policy cannot be cleanly divorced from the religious reasonings they have about an issue. To ask that they regard those religiously-based reasonings as second-rate is to compromise the integrity of those beliefs. Religious reasonings should therefore be allowedwithin the realm of public reasons and justificationspresumably unaccompanied by other, non-religious reasons. G/V seem to sympathize with Wolterstorffs position. III. A. Error of Consensus 1. The Shareability Requirement: On a strong view of public justification (e.g. Macedo), a reason meets the standard of public justification if it is able to be shared by all members of the public (57). The end goal of this standard is that ideally we would arrive at a consensus of This standard is far too strong, as it is in tension with the commitment to reasonable pluralism that JLers. To have a shared reason, on a strong JL view, one must first have a conclusive reason that defeats all competitors. Ultimately, according to G/V, meeting this standard would require everyone to reason in same way (58). And even if achieving a consensus were feasible, it would go against the pluralism and reasonable disagreement that JLers have said to be a permanent fact of life. 2. An Alternative: Mutual Intelligibility/Covergence: An alternative to the shareabilty understanding of public justification is one of mutual intelligibility. The standard is not that the everyone share that justification as a decisive reason, but that those people who fall within the range of reasonable pluralism would be able to make sense of a vast range of reasonings that might be employed to justify a proposal. Each reasoning need not be conclusive in the sense of defeating all other reasonings.2 What is sought is not consensus of one reason unilaterally justifying a proposal, but of a variety of different proposals converging onto one proposal. This respects the pluralism amongst reasonable people and the variety of reasoning they might use to support a particular policy 3. Objection to Mutual Inteligibility/Covergence First, suppose I find out that a policy P that I support for reasonable reason R is also supported by the evil Lord Morgoth for depraved reason D. Should this covergence with bad justifications lead me to withdraw my support of P altogether? G/V: Yes, withdrawing support from a policy that is (validly?) supported by bad justifications is appropriate (60). Assuming, however, that all participants are within the range of reasonable pluralism Morgoth surely isntthen even deep conflicts are able to come to some proposal that would
2

NB: For standard JLers, is a conclusive reasoning in C of law L one that defeats all reasoning of not-L as well as defeating all non-C reasoning of L?

mutually benefit all involved (61). Assuming some moderate sociability, some modicum of convergence is possible. 4. Minimalist Proviso: When giving a proposal, one cannot have only a religious justification. One must also believe in a non-religious justification that could plausibly justify the proposal to the reasonable non-religious public (62) for the proposal in question to be counted as a public justified proposal. Questions about Convergence: 1. If stripping a proposal of its native religious reasoning compromises its integrity (Wolterstorff), is grafting a non-religious reason onto a natively religious reasoning equally compromising? 2. Does the Minimalist Proviso put substantial distance between this proposal and the others (i.e. Rawls and Audi)? 3. Is the description of public justification given here adequately public? B. Error of Symmetry The Minimalist Proviso states that religious citizens cannot impose a law on others without having a non-religious justification that the others might find plausible. This conforms with the traditional liberal respect of persons that protects citizens from being coerced into submitting to a law that is based solely on someone elses belief. The respect of persons, in other words, prevents people from being in a state of domination by others. 1. Symmetry: Thus, when a persons religious belief requires that they force upon others a religiously but otherwise unjustified legislation, the respect of those persons overrides the individuals religious beliefs. Yet some liberals think that the minimalist provision of requiring the public reasons for proposing legislation applies equally to rejecting legislation. This is the idea of Symmetry, that if religious justifications cannot legitimately stand on its own when proposing legislation, then they cannot legitimately stand on its own when rejecting legislation either. Put positively, if we require public, non-religious reasons for proposing policies, then we require public reasons for rejecting them as well (Strict Symmetry) 2. Incosistencies of Symmetry with JL: a. undermines liberal commitment to non-domination, as it subjects one set of reasonable values to dominion of another b. Also undermines freedom of conscience and integrity which liberalism also claims to defend. c. If a liberal holds strict symmetry and a condition of unanimity (laws must be unanimous to be permissible), therenders the public justification principle irrelevant. 3. constraints on coercive proposals must be different from those for rejections: minimalist proviso applies only to proposals for coercive laws, not to rejecting them.

Questions about Symmetry 1. If all religious values within the range of reasonable pluralism can serve as defeaters for proposed justifications, then it seems we would almost need a de facto consensus to actually get anything done. C. Deliberation Constitutive of Justification To many JLersin our case, both Rawls and Cohenthe vehicle of justification for how people associate with one another is through public argument and reasoning. In line with this is the Principle of Politics as Public Reasoning (3PR), that we decide our political policies by debating with those who disagree with us (65). G/V think that we can separate justificatory liberalism from deliberative democracy, which is closely tied to 3PR. Two roles institutions can play in regards to making political choices: 1. Registering: accurately cataloging the views of the citizens about a given publicly justified resolution. 2. Generating: take citizens views on an issue and then synthesize a publicly justified resolution. This is the market model of political institution. No one person is in a position to gauge other peoples reasons for accepting or rejecting a proposal. We have to discover this by confronting other peoples goals, values, what is a potential defeater for them. We need to cast a net around as broad a range of information from others as we can. To cut off any stream of information about other peoples values, etc can lead to distortion and misperceptions about where actual agreement exists (69). G/Vs critique of deliberative democracy restrains certain inputs from being in play in public discussion (i.e. religious beliefs/reasonings) sanitizes the public discussion before it even begins: the best political institutions draw directly on the firmest knowledge by citizens both of their own values, etc and the values of others (69). Every citizens individual input to a deliberation is imperfect, both in the sense of not always accurately depicting the citizens wants and needs, but also not by itself producing anything resembling consensus or even broad agreement. The task of governing should be taking those imperfect inputs and generating something that has converging lines of support among citizens: to make chicken salad out of chicken shit Objections 1. G/Vs construal of Cohens Deliberative democracy seems like a strawman: Cohens DD is significantly more hermeneuticand thus, generativethan just registering where each person stands on X.