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I presented a version of this paper to Joseph Razs seminar at Columbia, and Im very grateful to
Joseph and all the other participants for their penetrating comments and questions. Thanks also
to Tom Sinclair and Rebecca Stone for detailed comments on an earlier draft.
*
But some think this principle doesnt go far enough. They argue for a
I believe both these views are mistaken. The former is too narrow, while
the latter is too broad. Coercion is not the only thing that stands in need of public
justification, but public reason is not so expansive as to regulate the whole of
social morality. Instead I defend an alternative account of public reasons role.
Every well-functioning society depends on a set of widely accepted rules that
define the terms on which we interact with one another. These terms include an
account of individual rights and liberties, an account of how political power can
be obtained and exercised, and an account of how the distribution of property
and other advantages and disadvantages arising from our society is to be
determined. Although there may be many other social or moral rules, these basic
rules are typically recognized as having priority over other considerations, and
whatever differences there are between persons, these are the rules to which all
persons are expected to adhere. I argue that the role of public reason is to
regulate the content of these rules, that is, to define the terms of public or social
justice.
The paper is structured as follows. Section I briefly sketches some key
issues for proponents of public reason. Sections II and III analyze, respectively,
Coercion and Social Morality. Section IV presents my account of the role of public
reason, Justice, and section V addresses some objections.
But before turning to the main arguments, let me make a few clarificatory
remarks. First, the main topic of this paper is the role of public reason, by which I
mean the purpose or function of public reasonwhat its supposed to do. But,
unsurprisingly, any view about the role of public reason will have implications
for other closely related questions. For example, the role of public reason is very
closely linked to the scope of public reason, that is, the range of topics to which
the constraints of public reason must directly apply. Ones view about the role of
public reason is also likely to be tightly connected to the issue of public reasons
moral basis: the underlying justification for public reason.
Second, and relatedly, this paper does not provide a comprehensive
defense of the idea of public reason, nor does it address many of the other
important questions relevant to a full account of public reason. Of course I hope
that my account of public reasons role is helpful in showing why the idea of
public reason is compelling, and why certain prominent objections pressed
against it are not necessarily successful, but this paper doesnt aim to persuade
those who see the idea of public reason as fundamentally misguided.
I
The idea of public reason is rooted in a particular view of persons as free and
equal. We are free in the sense that no person is our natural ruler or moral
freedom and equality of persons when those rules are, in some sense, acceptable
or justifiable to all those to whom the rules purportedly apply. Exactly why rules
that meet this standard are consistent with the freedom and equality of persons
is the subject of dispute amongst proponents of public reason, and I will
postpone any further discussion of this question for now. Instead I want to make
a few brief observations about public reason that will be useful for the discussion
to follow.
First, proponents of public reason do not take people as they are. Real
people may make simple inferential errors, they may hold morally repugnant or
irrational beliefs, or they may be driven by narrow self-interest or prejudice.
Proponents of public reason thus always engage in a certain amount of
idealization. The constituency of persons to whom rules must be acceptable or
justifiable can be idealized epistemically, morally, or both. The challenge for
All accounts of public reason make some assumption about the permanence of pluralism or
disagreement regarding religious, philosophical, and ethical ideas. Proponents of public reason
also typically assume that this disagreement is reasonable in the sense of being the result of
sincere and conscientious efforts of reasonable and rational people to reach answers about
religion, morality, and ethics under free conditions, rather than being the product of prejudice,
irrationality, or narrow self-interest.
1
proponents of public reason is not difficult to anticipate. The more one idealizes
the constituency of persons to whom the rules must be justifiable, the easier it
will be to get determinate results that also seem attractive, but this may come at a
steep cost: highly idealized accounts of the constituency may seem so detached
from what real persons are like that it may be unclear in what sense the resulting
rules are really acceptable or justifiable to the actual persons who are bound by
them. Alternatively, accounts of public reason that engage in very limited
degrees of idealization may seem to have greater application to people as they
are, but such accounts may struggle to yield any determinate rules that are
acceptable to everyone while also being consistent with minimal moral
standards. I will return to this issue in the concluding section.
accounts of public reason, by contrast, are those that require the reasons in
support of a given rule to be ones that all members of the constituency recognize
as sound considerations that are, at a minimum, plausibly sufficient to justify R.
The issues Ive just described are by no means the only areas of dispute
amongst those who favor some version of public reason, but they are central
areas of disagreement, and their relevance will hopefully be apparent in the
discussion that follows.
II
Lets return to the first view about the role of public reason:
Coercion: Coercion (defined broadly to include conditional threats or the
actual use of physical force) is only permissible or legitimate when
exercised on the basis of reasons that the subjects of coercion can
reasonably be expected to endorse. Coercion is, in this way, specialother
methods of influencing people do not stand in need of public justification.
This view can explain many core liberal convictions, in particular, why it
is wrong to use the coercive power of the state to enforce particular moral or
religious views on dissenting minorities. Coercion might also appear consistent
with our attitudes towards non-coercive behavior. For example, though it would
be wrong for me to coerce you on the basis of religious beliefs that you do not
share, it does not seem similarly objectionable for me to refuse to marry you on
the basis of religious beliefs that you do not share, or for me to give my money to
charitable organizations that share my religious convictions and refuse to give it
to those that do not. Because the latter actions are not coercive, I can legitimately
be guided by my own controversial religious views in deciding what to domy
I originally developed this objection in an online commentary I offered on a paper by Kevin
Vallier and Gerald Gaus. See: http://publicreason.net/wp-content/PPPS/Fall2008/JQuong1.pdf
5
Most will agree that Alberts action is coercive: threatening to destroy someone
elses property unless they do something that they otherwise would not do
seems like a paradigm case of coercion. But what about Carls behavior? I suspect
that many people will deny that Carls behavior is coercive in the same way. If
Carls attempt to get a date with Debra is not coercive in the way that Alberts is,
this seems to show that our beliefs about whether a given action is coercive
depends on our prior beliefs about rights or justice. If Carls action is not
coercive, it must be because Carl, unlike Albert, is acting within his rights. He is
only in threatening to destroy his own painting, not someone elses. Determining
whether or not someone is acting within his rights thus might seem to be one of
the variables necessary to decide if an act is coercive.
This pair of examples poses a dilemma for proponents of Coercion. On the
one hand, a proponent could agree the first case is an instance of coercion, and
the latter is not, and thus only the former is regulated by public reason. This
response effectively concedes that coercion is a moralized notionthat we
cannot know whether something is coercive until we already have a substantial
set of background beliefs about justice and individual rights. But to make this
concession seems fatal to Coercion since it precludes public reason from playing
any role in determining the content of all those individual rights and principles
of justice that are prerequisites for understanding whether a given act or rule is
coercive. On this view, public reason would seem to arrive far too late in the
justificatory process to play the sort of substantive role attributed to it by
proponents of Coercion. Any apparently coercive policy could be justified by
appeal to a controversial religious or ethical doctrine, and declared exempt from
the standards of public reason by virtue of the fact that the policy determines
10
what rights individuals possess, and thus is not coercive in the relevant
moralized sense.6
On the other hand, the proponent of Coercion could insist that the two
examples are in fact analogous; that Carl, just like Albert, is guilty of trying to
obtain a date via coercion. On this view coercion could be defined by reference to
the severity of the harm (physical, psychological, financial) that the coercer
threatens to impose, regardless of whether or not the coercer has the moral right
to impose this harm. Since (we can assume) the harm Carl threatens to impose on
Debra is equivalent to the harm Albert threatens to impose on Betty, then if
Alberts act is coercive, so is Carls.
Even if we set aside any doubts about the plausibility of this account of
coercion, this latter reply will not serve as an effective defense of Coercion. The
problem with this reply is that its not plausible to suppose that Carls act ought
to be subject to the same justificatory burden as Alberts. Because the painting
belongs to Carl, he surely ought to be able to decide what to do with the painting
without having to publicly justify his decision. Consider a different case.
Suppose I have justly acquired some wealth, and I now make the following
threat to my local pastor: stop condemning same-sex marriage in your sermons,
6
A proponent of Coercion might try to blunt the force of this first horn of the dilemma by
conceding that although coercion is a moralized notion, it can be defined relative to a fairly
minimal view about natural rights against physical force. Since most political rules do involve
threatened transgressions against individuals natural rights against physical force (there is
always the threat of criminal sanction lurking in the background), there will thus still be a large
role for public reason to play. This response, however, does not seem promising for two reasons.
First, it ties the proponent of Coercion to a particular view about natural rights against force, and
thus disputes about whether this view of individual rights is sound cannot be resolved by appeal
to public reason. Second, the proponent of Coercion seems committed to the view that coercive
acts stand in need of public justification because such acts threaten the natural rights of persons.
But then its open to opponents of Coercion to argue (plausibly) that the natural rights of persons
include more than claims against physical force, they also include positive rights to be provided
with urgently needed aid when its easy to do so, in which case failures to aid would also stand
in need of justification, regardless of whether they are coercive.
11
or I will leave my small fortune to the local animal shelter rather than your
church. If we adopt the non-moralized account of coercion, my threat is coercive,
but it seems very strange to insist that I cannot threaten my pastor in this way
unless I my threat can be justified to him on the basis of public reasons.
But lets set aside this concern about the formulation of coercion and turn
our attention to the main Kantian rationale offered for Coercion. Charles Larmore
says that to respect another person as an end is to require that coercive or
political principles be as justifiable to that person as they presumably are to us.7
Conversely, if we try to bring about conformity to a rule of conduct solely by
the threat of force, we shall be treating persons merely as means, as objects of
coercion, and not also as ends, engaging with their distinctive capacity as
persons.8 Similarly, Thomas Nagel says that if you force someone to serve an
end that he cannot be given adequate reason to share, you are treating him as a
mere meanseven if the end is his own good, as you see it but he doesnt. In
view of the coercive character of the state, the requirement becomes a condition
of political legitimacy.9
I think there are at least two problems with this rationale. First, I do not
think its true that whenever you coerce someone to serve an end he cannot be
given adequate reason to share, you treat that person as a mere means, if by
mere means we mean an object that has no moral claims or standing of its
own. As Derek Parfit has shown, we can coerce or harm otherseven when
those others lack sufficient reasons to share our endsand yet still treat those we
coerce or harm as much more than mere means.10 Suppose, for example, I force
you to help me rescue a boy that I believe to be the incarnation of the Buddha,
Charles Larmore, The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism, Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999), 608.
Ibid., 607.
9 Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 159.
10 Derek Parfit, On What Matters: Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 222-223.
7
8
12
and this rescue costs you your leg, but further suppose that I am going to lose my
own life in this rescue. I could save my life if I imposed further harm on you (say
the loss of another leg), but I dont do this because I believe doing so would be a
wrongful imposition on your freedom; I think you can be forced to sacrifice your
leg for a God, but not for a regular person like me. It does not seem right to say I
treat you as a mere means, as a mere object to be used however I see fit, since I
recognize significant moral constraints on the ways I may permissibly treat you.
A proponent of the Kantian rationale for Coercion may reply that this
objection misunderstands what she means by treating someone as a mere
means. She does not literally mean treating a person as if he were an inanimate
object; rather, she means forcing someone to serve an end that he does not have
adequate reason to share. But if this is what it means to treat others as a mere
means, the rationale becomes an empty tautology: whenever you coerce someone
to serve an end he cannot be given adequate reason to share, you coerce someone
to serve an end he cannot be given adequate reason to share.
But even if we set this objection aside, the proposed Kantian rationale also
fails to establish that coercion uniquely stands in need of public justification.
Coercion, we can assume, involves either threats made with the aim of getting
another person to perform or refrain from performing some act, or else the use of
violence or force against others. But suppose, for example, that I live upstream
and you live downstream along a river.11 We both rely on fishing the river to
survive. I construct a net that catches all the fish upstream and prevents any of
the fish from reaching you many miles downstream. I have no intention of
getting you to do anything, nor do I use violence or force to take anything from
you: Im just trying to catch as many fish as I can. But doing so means you will
I borrow the basic form of the example from Kok-Chor Tan, Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The
Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 162.
11
13
14
14
15
16
two reasons to doubt that an expansive account of public reasons role, like Social
Morality, is correct.
First, Social Morality seems implausibly broad. When adherents of a
religious community hold each other to account for failing to live up to their
religions requirements, the members of the religious community treat these
requirements as being authoritative, but not necessarily because the
requirements pass some test of public reason. The religious requirements are, by
their nature, controversial and not grounded in public reasons.
A proponent of Social Morality might respond that this misunderstands
how the demand for public justification operates. When a moral demand is made
of everyone, then its justification must eschew controversial religious or ethical
doctrines and appeal only to public or shared reasons,17 but when a moral
demand is made only of some sub-set, like the members of a particular religious
community, then the demand only needs to be justifiable to the members of the
community, and thus controversial or sectarian rationales for moral demands are
perfectly appropriate within particular religious or ethical communities.
I dont find this response persuasive. I think it misconstrues the way the
members of the community can understand the basis of their religious or moral
requirements. Members of particular religious and ethical communities do not
necessarily understand their practices of interpersonal moralityblaming,
resentment, indignation, holding accountableas being dependent on any
notion of public justifiability even when the constituency of persons to whom the
rules must be justifiable is restricted to members of the group. Rather, the
members of many such communities may see it as appropriate to hold each other
Proponents of convergence forms of public reason will protest that shared reasons are not
required even in these cases, but I set this worry aside for now.
17
17
18
The preceding objection focuses on the way public reason may not
necessarily regulate the moral claims we make on each other within certain
religious or ethical communities. But I also think public reason does not regulate
many of the moral claims that cross sub-group boundaries. Consider, for
example, the debate that two people from different religious communities might
have about pre-marital sex. Ernest is from an Evangelical Christian family, and
believes pre-marital sex to be morally wrong. Felicity is a liberal atheist, and
believes sex between consenting adults is not wrong, and more strongly, she
believes its a very good thing if most adults have pre-marital sex. One way to
characterize their dispute is that they disagree about the scope of social morality:
Felicity thinks self-regarding choices that do not harm others are essentially
outside the scope of social morality, whereas Ernest holds a different view. But of
course they hold different views about the scope of social morality because they
hold different views about the underlying grounds of moral wrongdoing: Ernest
thinks the underlying basis is Gods will, whereas Felicity thinks moral
wrongdoing must be explicable by reference to some setback to the interests of
persons. Ernest blames Felicity for engaging in and encouraging activity he sees
as wrongful, and Felicity blames Ernest for holding what she sees as narrow-
minded and Puritanical views.
19
and the reactive attitudes they hold? If we assume that Felicitys views depend
on an ethical framework that Ernest cannot reasonably be expected to endorse
(and vice versa) then the proponent of Social Morality must believe that Ernest
and Felicity cannot rightfully hold each other accountable or blame each other
such behavior is inconsistent with showing due respect for others as free and
equal interpreters of moralitys requirements.
consists in disagreements like the kind Ernest and Felicity are having. We often
disagree with others about the scope of social morality, as well as the underlying
basis of moral wrongdoing and rightness. When we have these disagreements,
and when we hold others accountable for acting on and holding what we take to
be false and morally pernicious views, we do not necessarily treat others
disrespectfully, nor threaten their status as free and equal interpreters of
moralitys requirements. Ernest need not deny that Felicity has the standing to
make her own judgments about moralitys requirementsI dont think he needs
to be acting in a way that ought to trigger public justification. Rather, we can
imagine Ernest saying, Of course you are [in some sense yet to be defined] at
liberty to make up your own mind about sexual morality, but I think you are
terribly mistaken in the judgments youve reached, and in reaching those
judgments and acting on them you show yourself to be, at least in one sense, a
bad person who acts wrongly, and I blame you for that. And Felicity may take a
similar view of Ernest. This kind of moral disagreement is an essential feature of
social morality in a pluralistic society, and yet because it involves foundational
disagreements about the underlying basis of morality, it cannot be regulated by
public reason.
20
Not all moral demands and reactive attitudes invoke the particular kind of
demands that should be the appropriate object of public reason. Ernest can hold
Felicity accountable for her (as he sees it) pernicious views, he can blame her, and
even shun her, while still respecting Felicity status as free and equal, as someone
who has the standing to make her own determinations about sexual morality. He
may think she is a bad person who violates moral requirements in a way that
merits criticism and condemnation, but if he recognizes that his judgment
depends on an evaluative perspective Felicity can reasonably reject, and thus
recognizes that this judgment should play no part in determining Felicity basic
rights, claims over property, and other matters of basic justice, then I submit that
Ernest shows the appropriate respect for Bettys status as free and equal. On this
accountwhich I develop and defend in the following sectionsmoral
judgments and demands only need to be publicly justified when they invoke the
special status reserved for justice.
IV
Lets begin with the circumstances that give rise to the problem to which I
believe public reason is addressed. The circumstances are familiarthey are the
circumstances of justice. These circumstances are characterized by a conflict as
well as an identity of interests. As Rawls famously explains, there is an identity
of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any
would have if each were to live solely by his own efforts. There is a conflict of
interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced
by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each
21
prefer a larger share to a lesser share.19 These circumstances give rise to the
special problem of social justice:
A set of principles is required for choosing among the
various social arrangements which determine this
division of advantages and for underwriting an
agreement on the proper distributive shares. These are
the principles of social justice: they provide a way of
assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of
society and they define the appropriate distribution of
the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.20
This is the problem of social justice. To live together in a way that will be
mutually beneficial, there must be rules, generally accepted as binding, which
allocate individual rights and duties, and determine the rightful division of
advantages and disadvantages, particularly given moderate scarcity of resources
and the fact that persons are not purely altruistic, but rather have their own
distinct ends they wish to pursue. A conception of justice provides a common
point of view from which competing claims can be adjudicated; one may think
of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental charter of a well-
ordered human association.21
But a conception of justice must do more than provide a commonly
recognized set of rules for allocating rights and resources. After all, authoritarian
societies ruled by tyrants might also have a publicly recognized set of rules that
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4.
Ibid., 4.
21 Ibid., 5.
19
20
22
perform this function that most people accept as binding. Instead, we want our
conception of justice to be one that is congruent with our status as free and equal:
we are each equally free, not naturally subject to anyone elses authority. And so
a conception of social justice, Rawls suggests, should be something that can be
shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political
agreement.22 Rules that are simply imposed with force, but that make no claim
to the reasoned allegiance of persons, cannot successfully serve as the public
charter of a society of free and equal persons.
If this is the role of a conception of social or public justice (I will use these
22
23
24
We may wish to add the caveat that the claims about priority described in this paragraph only
apply when the requirements of justice meet the further condition of being legitimate. I return to
this point in section V.
23
25
These two features, priority and reasonable pluralism, combine to explain
why the demands of social justice are special when compared to other moral
demands, and unlike other moral demands, stand in need of public justification.
Without the fact of reasonable pluralismif there were complete agreement
about religious, ethical, and philosophical issuesthe requirement for public
justification would be superfluous. Alternatively, if justice did not have the sort
of priority described in the penultimate paragraph, then the demands of justice
wouldnt call for public justification even assuming the fact of reasonable
pluralism. Whats special about the demands of justice is that we expect others to
give them priority over their reasonable religious, ethical, or philosophical views,
and others expect the same of us. Consider this way of expressing the priority of
justice: I know you think I am acting wrongly, and I know your judgment arises
as a result of your sincere and reasonable efforts to determine moral truth, but
nevertheless you must accord priority to my right to act wrongly (as you see it).
In order for the must in this sentence to be plausiblefor it to be consistent
with treating the person to whom the sentence is spoken as a free and equal
member of our societythe right in question must be justified by appeal to
shared values or reasons that others can reasonably be expected to endorse.
Unless this condition of public justification is met, there would be nothing to
ground the priority of justice. If Alberts act of -ing appears wrong when
viewed from within Bettys religious or ethical doctrine, then he cannot require
her to respect his right to do wrong if the justification for that right is sectarian
and grounded in Alberts religious or ethical doctrine that Betty reasonably
rejects. This would amount to Albert demanding Betty give priority to his
religious or ethical doctrine rather than her own reasonable doctrine.
The rules of social justice are meant to provide a fair set of terms by which
those with different plans and different religious and ethical views can interact
26
with one another in cooperative and mutually beneficial ways. If each person
must give priority to these rules over their own religious or ethical perspectives,
then the fairness of the rules depends on the rules being justifiable by appeal to
shared political values alone. If the rules of public justice did not meet this
conditionif they were grounded in some reasonably disputed religious or
ethical viewpointthen some citizens would be required to give special priority
to the religious or ethical views of others, views which they reasonably reject.
This would not be a world where citizens stand as equals. This is what makes the
demands of justice special, and the appropriate focus of public justification.
Other moral demandsones that do not have the special priority we
attach to the demands of justiceare different. As I suggested in the previous
section, we can criticize and blame others by appeal to what we take to be the
whole truth about religion or ethics, but we respect others as free and equal so
long as we also recognize that our beliefs about religious, ethical or philosophical
truth are subordinate to principles of social justice.
V
In closing, lets examine a few objections to the preceding account of the role of
public reason.
First, consider two related worries about the scope of political authority
and public reason. One worry is that Justice offers an unduly narrow picture of
what our legal and political institutions may legitimately do. It might seem to
entail that the only permissible objective of the legislative and executive branches
of government is justice, and any policies designed to promote other objectives
are precluded. But this isnt entailed by Justice: this view of public reasons role is
compatible with a broader account of the role of government or political life, one
where the government pursues objectives apart from establishing and securing
27
A second worry is that Justice yields a view about the scope of public
reason that is unduly narrow. Consider the recent Supreme Court ruling in Town
of Greece v. Galloway.25 In this case, the Court ruled that opening town board
meetings with public prayers did not violate the Constitutions establishment
clause. Some constitutional scholars have endorsed this view, apparently
endorsing something like a close cousin of Coercion, whereby the establishment
clause only protects citizens from religious coercion by the state, but does not
prohibit religious expressions or affirmations by the state that are non-coercive.
But others worry that this interpretation of the establishment clause is far too
narrow: shouldnt the state be prohibited from religious affirmations, even when
non-coercive?26 A similar worry might be pressed against Justice. Suppose the
federal government put up billboards declaring that Jesus is the Lord Our Savior.
This seems like something that an account of public reason ought to condemn,
but it might seem that Justice lacks the resources to do so. After all, surely
symbols or expressions are not the stuff of justicejustice concerns individual
rights and liberties, and the distribution of burdens and benefits.
I try to provide some of these further arguments in chapters 2-4 of my Liberalism Without
Perfection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
25 133 S.Ct. 2388 (2013).
26 For discussion of this case along these lines see Micah Schwartzmans and Nelson Tebbes
article in Slate, A Prayer for Liberals.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/05/the_strange_liberal_argu
ment_that_thin_skinned_religious_minorities_should.html
24
28
and expressive acts never have anything to do with justice. First, there is the
trivial point that government resources spent on symbols or expressive acts
could be spent in other ways (e.g. programs to improve opportunities for the
least advantaged) and thus at least many instances of government expression do
raise issues of the rightful allocation of resources. Second, setting this first point
aside, government expression may often affect the distribution of advantages in
society, and so government expression may be an appropriate object of social
justice. Consider, for example, a society with a history of racial injustice and
segregation where equality of opportunity for members of the minority, the
Greens, has not yet been achieved. Suppose the government were to issue public
statements such as, Greens are lazy and unmotivated, or Greens dont yet
possess the intellectual ability to compete for the best jobs. Such statements are
not merely racist; they are also unjust in light of the history of racial injustice in
our imagined society. Finally, individual citizens have a right, at the bar of
justice, to equal treatment under the law, and its not implausible to suppose this
right includes a claim that the government refrain from any acts of expression
that imply some members of society are worth less, or that the executive or legal
branches of government view their claims as having less weight. Whether any
particular instance of government expressionfor example the public prayer at a
town board meetinginfringes this right to equal treatment seems dependent on
historical and other contextual details, but theres no basis for holding that
government expression or symbolic acts are necessarily beyond the scope of
social justice.
public reason have pointed out, the fact of reasonable pluralism is not limited to
matters of religion and the good life: it extends to matters of justice as well.
29
30
31
But I think the force of this objection depends on the assumption that
public reason is trying to solve the puzzle of political legitimacy as framed by the
philosophical anarchist or voluntaristthat the goal is to use public reason as a
proxy for consent so as to reconcile the coercive power of the state with
individuals negative liberty. On my view, however, this is not public reasons
role. Public reason is not a pale form of consent, intended to satisfy the
voluntarists worry about political legitimacy. Instead, public reason is a
condition on an acceptable conception of social justice. We cannot treat one
another justly unless decisions about justice are regulated by the standards set by
public reason. The point of public reason is to ensure that the rules that regulate
our interactions with others are reasonably fair or just, by ensuring the
Joseph Raz, Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence, Philosophy & Public Affairs 19
(1990), 46.
29
32
justifications for the rules of justice are mutually acceptable to suitably motivated
parties.
But this leads to the second way public reason, more indirectly,
33
would almost certainly have very bad consequences for promoting and securing
justice in our society. If each person believed laws were illegitimate unless they
conformed exactly with their own preferred conception of justice, then on many
issues no matter which particular policy the state enacted, most people would
view the policy as illegitimate, and this would presumably make effective state
action difficult, if not impossible. This will not be a good result from the
standpoint of justice. A world where we have an effectively enforced progressive
taxation policy that I believe to be unjust is nevertheless vastly superior from the
standpoint of justice to a world where there is no effective taxation policy at all
because any policy the state tries to enact is rejected as unjust and therefore
illegitimate by the majority of citizens.
But the duty-based account of legitimacy can offer a solution to this
problem. In a pluralistic society where reasonable people disagree about what
justice requires, we better fulfill our natural duty to promote and maintain just
institutions by accepting as legitimate any publicly justifiable views about justice
that all reasonable citizens could endorse as just even if there is in fact a great deal
of reasonable disagreement about what justice requires. We reasonably disagree,
suppose, about which policy from the set [P1, P2, P3, P4, P5] is required by
justice on some issue, but no one can reasonably deny that justice is better
promoted and maintained if some member of the set is chosen and effectively
implemented as opposed to any one of the obviously unjust alternative. This is
why one member of the set can be legitimately imposed even in the face if
reasonable disagreement about justice.
We now have in hand an explanation of the relationship between three
central concepts: public reason, justice, and political legitimacy. Public reason is a
constraint or condition on acceptable conceptions of social or public justice. Such
conceptions must be publicly justifiable to successfully serve as a framework of
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binding rules that could be the basis of reasoned, informed, and willing
agreement amongst persons who reasonably disagree about religious, ethical,
and philosophical matters. There will be a plurality of publicly justifiable views
about social justice, any one of which might be the basis of legitimate political
authority, but political legitimacy is not derived directly from the idea of public
reason, rather it depends in addition on the duty-based conception of political
legitimacy. Notice that one might accept the justice-based view of public reason
while holding some alternative account of political legitimacy, and one might
accept the duty-based conception of legitimacy while rejecting the idea that
public reason is a constraint on acceptable conceptions of justice. My view is
distinctive in that I endorse both the duty-based view of legitimacy and the
justice-based view of public reasons role.
To return to the original worry, once we abandon the assumption that
public reason is an effort to mimic the normative role of consent as conceived by
anarchists or voluntarists, its no longer any sort of objection to point out that
public justification fails to look like consent. Public reason is not meant to
establish that each individual somehow consents to the coercive authority of the
state. Rather, its an attempt to construct a shared social perspective from which
reasonable people can reason together about the fair terms that will regulate their
interactions and determine their rights and duties with regard to one another.