Political Liberalism's Normative Foundations
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Political Liberalism’s Normative Foundations
1. Introduction
Many, and perhaps most political liberals resist attempts to
inquire into the normative foundations of political
liberalism.1 John Rawls’s account, for example, famously
1 See in particular John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political Not
Metaphysical”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 223-251; Political Liberalism,
expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 89-129.
Henceforth PL. Jonathan Quong, Liberalism Without Perfection (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 221-255. Henceforth LWP. Older views include
Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980), 1-24; Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 154-168. One very important exception might be Charles
Larmore. See “The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism”, The Journal of
Philosophy 96 (1999): 599-625. I think it is possible, however, that
Larmore’s attempt to found political liberalism on the basis of a principle
of ‘respect for persons’ might amount to what Joshua Cohen calls a
‘political conception of truth’, and is therefore compatible with the
spirit of Rawlsian political liberalism. “Truth and Public Reason”,
Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2009): 2-42. Stephen Macedo seems to criticise
the ‘reticent liberal’ for being unwilling to engage questions about the
relationship between liberal politics and comprehensive doctrines. Liberal
disavows any commitment to ‘truth’, holding that
‘reasonableness is its standard of correctness, and given its
political aims, it need not go beyond that.’2 Instead of
providing a foundation for the concept of reasonableness,
Rawls holds that ‘it is up to each comprehensive doctrine to
say how its idea of the reasonable connects with its concept
of truth, should it have one.’3 Jonathan Quong names this
justificatory strategy ‘buck-passing.’4
Buck-passing has its virtues. If political liberalism were to
offer a single justification for the concept of
reasonableness, it would risk entangling itself with claims
made by different reasonable comprehensive doctrines, whose
Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon University Press, 1990), 51-64. However, I think
these remarks could be accommodated within a Rawlsian framework, if they
are understood as advocating for arguments from conjecture. See PL, 463f.
Elsewhere, Macedo, claims that political liberalism does not rely on ‘the
justifiability of any particular comprehensive ideal or view of the whole
truth.’ “Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of
God v. John Rawls?” Ethics 105 (1995): 477.
2 PL, 127.
3 PL, 94.
4 LWP, 230.
endorsement political liberalism requires.5 Doing so would
risk allowing political liberalism to degenerate into a
comprehensive liberalism, where one can endorse liberalism
only by accepting a single, particular comprehensive doctrine
as true. And comprehensive liberalism, so understood, is
incompatible with the liberal principle of legitimacy, which
requires that the constitutional essentials must be acceptable
to all reasonable people, not just those who endorse one
particular comprehensive doctrine over others.6
Buck-passing, I allow, succeeds insofar as it allows political
liberalism to avoid making claims in favour of some reasonable
comprehensive doctrines over others as far as the
specification of the content of reasonableness is concerned. I
argue, however, that the function of reasonableness in political
liberalism draws on claims that do favour some reasonable
comprehensive doctrines and disenfranchise others. In fact, I
will argue that it draws on a claim that some reasonable
comprehensive doctrines necessarily reject.
5 PL, 100n.
6 See PL, 137.
Specifically, I will argue that the function of reasonableness
in political liberalism commits it to a principle that can be
illustrated by the following example. Suppose that Amy
chooses to pursue a comprehensive conception of the good life,
C. According to this principle, it is permissible for Amy to
pursue C just in case she has chosen it freely. The question
of whether C is true or correct has no bearing on the moral
permissibility of her chosen way of life.
Let us call this principle Choice, and formulate it as follows:
Reasonable people are morally permitted to pursue their
conception of the good life if this conception is one
that they have freely chosen.
We should note that Choice is not something that Rawls
explicitly endorsed, nor would he have likely accepted it as a
requirement of political liberalism. Although he does
acknowledge that the conception of the person in political
liberalism entails that citizens make about their conception
of the good are to be regarded as ‘self-authenticating’, it
seems that they should only be regarded as such ‘from a
political point of view’.7 If, however, political liberalism
is committed to Choice, it follows that this qualification is
unnecessary. Political liberalism holds that citizens – or at
least, reasonable citizens – are self-authenticating sources
of value, period.
Note also that Choice is incompatible with many, and perhaps
most familiar comprehensive doctrines, generally regarded by
political liberals as reasonable.8 A Catholic person who lives
out a Catholic way of live will hold that it is morally
permissible (and indeed, obligated) to live this way, because
the claims that Catholicism makes about God and the world are
true. Likewise, consider a secular comprehensive doctrine
such as utilitarianism. Utilitarians must necessarily hold
that it is morally permissible to live according to the7 PL, 32f.
8 On the reasonableness of Catholicism, at least in its post-Vatican II
form, see PL, 438, 477n; Leslie Griffin, "Good Catholics Should be Rawlsian
Liberals", Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 5 (1997): 297-371..
Regarding the reasonableness of utilitarianism, see PL, 170. Quong,
however, appears more sceptical of the reasonableness of utilitarianism.
See LWP, 185f.
principle of utility just because utilitarianism is in some
way true or correct as a moral doctrine. In both cases, the
fact that a person chooses to be a Catholic or a utilitarian
is neither here nor there; their lives are conducted in a
morally permissible way insofar as they conform to a
comprehensive doctrine that is true.
One further clarification concerning the meaning of Choice is
appropriate. Rawls and all reasonable comprehensive doctrines
would agree that Amy, as a reasonable person, is free to
pursue C in the sense that her pursuit of C ought to be safe
from the interference of coercive state power. Catholics and
utilitarians may ascribe value to some notion of ‘freedom of
conscience’ in this respect. But this does not, by itself,
imply anything about the more complete moral status of Amy’s
pursuit of C – that is, whether it is actually morally
permissible for her to do so. My point, however, is that the
way in which reasonableness functions as a justification for
the former implies the latter. That is, the justificatory
foundations of political liberalism entail a commitment to
Choice, even if political liberalism makes every effort to
avoid such a claim.
In the next section, I briefly outline the content and
function of reasonableness in political liberalism.
Importantly, the function of reasonableness centres around its
identification of a selection of people, namely, embodied
reasonable people, who form the constituency of political
liberalism. The third section considers Jonathan Quong’s
“spare wheel” objection to this claim. The fourth section
shows how the fact that real reasonable people are the
constituency of political liberalism entails that it is
committed to Choice. In the fifth section, I briefly explore
what significance Choice might have for the viability of
political liberalism.
2. Reasonableness: content and function
Rawls outlines the concept of reasonableness in terms of its
content. This concept consists of two features:
Persons are reasonable in one basic aspect when, among
equals say, they are ready to propose principles and
standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by
them willingly, given the assurance that others will
likewise do so.9
The second basic aspect . . . is the willingness to
recognise the burdens of judgment and to accept their
consequences for the use of public reason in directing
the legitimate exercise of political power in a
constitutional regime.10
Some have argued that familiar comprehensive doctrines will be
unable to accept the concept of reasonableness, so understood.
Samuel Scheffler, for instance, casts doubt over the capacity
of utilitarians to abide by fair terms of cooperation, since,
as the early Rawls acknowledged, utilitarianism rejects the
idea of reciprocity.11 Leif Wenar, argues that most major
9 PL, 49.
10 PL, 54.
11 Samuel Scheffler, “The Appeal of Political Liberalism”, Ethics 105 (1994):
10; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard: Belknap University Press, 1971),
religious traditions reject the burdens of judgment, since a
religion ‘characteristically presents itself as universally
accessible to clear minds and open hearts.’12 In other words,
the fact of reasonable pluralism is incompatible with a view
that reason renders a decisive verdict in favour of one’s own
doctrine.
The strategy of buck-passing enables political liberalism to
provide these objections with a response, of sorts. If
comprehensive doctrines are capable of accepting the two
concepts of reasonableness, so much the better for them. But
if they are not, then they are unreasonable doctrines. The
fact that this would render many familiar comprehensive
doctrines unreasonable may strike us as highly counter-
intuitive13, but it does not, by itself, render political
liberalism incoherent, in the sense that it ensures that
political liberalism remains acceptable to those (select few)14.
12 Leif Wenar, “Political Liberalism: An Internal Critique”, Ethics 106
(1995): 44.
13 See for example David Enoch, “Against Public Reason”, in Oxford Studies in
Political Philosophy, ed. David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne, Stephen Wall (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 122.
whom it regards as reasonable. Buck-passing saves political
liberalism from taking a stance on its own foundations, albeit
at the cost of an ever-shrinking constituency of
justification.
So much for the content of reasonableness. But what is its
function in political liberalism? First and most obviously,
it provides a standard of acceptability that forms part of the
liberal principle of legitimacy. Rawls formulates this as
follows:
Our exercise of political power is fully proper only when
it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the
essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may
reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of
principles and ideals acceptable to their common human
reason.14
The concept of reasonableness thus sets a standard of
acceptability for principle selection and institutional
design, where the constitutional essentials are concerned.14 PL, 137.
But it has functions that go beyond this. The concept of
reasonableness also sets a standard of acceptability for the
selection of the theory itself. That is, the procedure or
‘framework’, in accordance with which political liberalism
selects principles must also be acceptable to reasonable
people.15 This seems to be a requirement of Rawls’s publicity
condition, according to which it is not enough for a political
conception of justice to be acceptable to reasonable people;
rather, its justification, too, must always be ‘publicly
known, or at least . . . publicly available’.16 Hence, the
liberal principle of legitimacy itself must be acceptable to
reasonable people. Reasonable people must be able to accept
the claim that political legitimacy requires that the
constitutional essentials must be acceptable to other
reasonable people.
Now this may seem like a requirement that stretches the
concept of reasonableness beyond its content, as specified by
the two features that Rawls identifies. But this does not
15 See Thomas Besch, “Political Liberalism and Public Justification: The
Deep View”, 2. Available at https://whu-cn.academia.edu/ThomasBesch
16 PL, 67.
seem to be the case. As Quong points out, the idea of
fairness implies reciprocity, meaning that the first feature
tells us that reasonable people must be committed to a
justification of the constitutional essentials that is
acceptable to all other reasonable people.17 The second
feature, meanwhile, informs us that reasonable people accept
the fact of reasonable disagreement, and so limits the kind of
values and principles that can be acceptable to all other
reasonable people.
However, the function of reasonableness as a standard of
acceptability does not end here. Rawls’s characterisation of
the point of view from which justification ought to take place
is not. In response to communitarian criticism over the
conception of the person presupposed by the idea of the
original position in A Theory of Justice, he distinguishes three
different points of view:
that of the parties in the original position, that of
citizens in a well-ordered society, and finally that of
ourselves - of you and me who are elaborating justice as17 LWP, 38f.
fairness and examining it as a political conception of
justice.18
Rawls is careful to stress that the first two points of view
are ‘merely the artificial creatures inhabiting our device of
representation.’ It is the third point of view – that of you
and me as real, existing, embodied people as we are – that
political liberalism is addressed to. Now, if we read this in
such a way as to be consistent with the restricted scope of
justification found in the liberal principle of legitimacy, we
should take it to mean ‘you and me as reasonable people.’19
This tells us two important things. First, the constituency
of political liberalism consists of real, existing, embodied
reasonable people (as opposed to, say hypothetical or
idealised versions of reasonable people) are the constituency
of political liberalism. This does not mean, of course, that
all embodied people are reasonable, but rather, that the kind
of reasonable person to whom Rawls thinks political liberalism
18 PL, 28.
19 On this point, see Thomas Besch, “Political Liberalism, The International
Conception, and the Problem of Public Dogma”, Philosophy and Public Issues 2
(2012): 161.
needs to justify itself is an embodied reasonable person.
Second, real reasonable people provide the ultimate standard
of justification in political liberalism, meaning that
political liberalism in its entirety must be acceptable to
this constituency. Not only questions regarding institutional
design or principles of justice, but every aspect of the
theory, including its framework, must meet this standard of
justification. As Rawls puts it:
Here the test is that of reflective equilibrium: how well
the view as a whole articulates our more firm considered
convictions of political justice, at all levels of
generality, after due examination, once all adjustments
and revisions that seem compelling have been made.20
That this limits the extent to which Rawls’s political
liberalism can be read as exclusively concerned with ideal theory
should be clear.21 To be sure, Rawls focuses considerable
20 PL, 28.
21 For a fuller explanation of the way in which Rawls’s political liberalism
transcends the limitations of ideal theory, see Besch, “Political
Liberalism and Public Justification: The Deep View”.
attention on the kinds of principles that might be acceptable
to idealised citizens in a well-ordered society, where they
are assured of full compliance.22 But if acceptability by
embodied reasonable people is truly the ultimate standard of
justification in political liberalism, the choices that these
idealised citizens might make in these idealised circumstances
carry normative authority only if real reasonable people agree
that they would make similar choices in similar circumstances.
This, then, is the real function of reasonableness. It
identifies a particular selection of real existing people, to
whom political liberalism accords nothing less than a genuine
‘veto’ power. Each aspect of political liberalism –
institutional design, principles, and justificatory framework
– can be justified only through their acceptance of it. This
means that political liberals can only rely on buck-passing
where the function of reasonableness is concerned if each
aspect of its function continues to be acceptable to all
reasonable people.
22 PL, 35-40.
In section 4, I will argue that this is not the case. The
fact that reasonableness has this extraordinary function in
political liberalism means that political liberalism is
committed to Choice – a claim which many, and perhaps most
reasonable people reject. First, however, it is important for
us to address Quong’s “spare wheel” objection, since it so
directly challenges what I have claimed thus far.
3. The spare wheel objection
According to Quong, the appeal to real reasonable people is
redundant in political liberalism, since it does not perform
any normative work:
It is the two aspects of the reasonable as defined by
Rawls that ensures a distinctively liberal outcome; the
assent of real citizens does not appear to be essential
to the project at all. The idea of justification aimed at
real citizens is thus nothing more than a spare wheel,
and so we can call this the spare-wheel objection to the
external conception.23
23 LWP, 146.
For Quong, it seems, it is enough that political liberalism
can meet the standard of justification that Rawls identifies
as the second standpoint, namely, that of idealised citizens
of a well-ordered society. Since we modified the third
standpoint to refer only to real reasonable people, it seems
fitting that we should do the same with this second
standpoint, so that it refers only to idealised reasonable
citizens of a well-ordered society.
Let us now consider how political liberalism is changed if
Quong’s standard of justification is adopted by political
liberalism. We could distinguish between two standards as
follows:
S1: Justification requires acceptability to all real
reasonable people.
S2: Justification requires acceptability to all reasonable
idealised citizens of a well-ordered society.
S1 represents the standard to which, I am arguing, Rawls’s
political liberalism is committed. S2, on the other hand,
represents the standard that Quong believes is sufficient.
Admittedly, S2 has an important role for Rawls, insofar as he
is at least partly interested in what principles would be
agreed to where the parties can be assured of full
compliance.24 But if S1 is the ultimate standard of
justification in political liberalism, any role that S2 might
have results from the fact that it itself meets the standard
of S1.
Now the point of Quong’s objection, I think, is that there is
no significant difference between S1 and S2. If we formulate
S2 in such a way that requires acceptability to idealised
reasonable citizens, then whatever will meet the standard of S2
will also meet S1, and vice versa. Both standards set a
standard of reasonable acceptability, according to which X
meets the standard just in case X is at least consistent with
the two features of the reasonable person. The design of the
constitutional essentials, the principles of justice, and the24 See PL, 35-40.
liberal principle of legitimacy itself seem entirely
unaffected by the selection of a standard of justification.
Their content under a political liberalism where S1 is the
standard would seemingly be identical to their content under a
political liberalism where S2 is the standard. For this
reason, it seems, Quong regards the appeal to real reasonable
people as an unnecessary ‘spare wheel’.25
There is, however, an important difference between S1 and S2.
If S1 is truly the ultimate standard of justification, then any
role that S2 might have is contingent on its own capacity to
meet the standard of S1. If S2 was the ultimate standard of
justification in political liberalism, then S2 would be exempt
from the standard of acceptability to real reasonable people
(S1). If real reasonable people were dissatisfied with the
idea that the standard of acceptability should be identified
with idealised reasonable citizens of a well-ordered society,
then this would be of no consequence as far as the
justification of S2 is concerned.
25 LWP, 146.
True, Quong might argue that real reasonable people cannot
remain reasonable without accepting S2, and that the
distinction between it and S1 has no practical significance.
Let us assume, perhaps optimistically, that S2 itself is
capable of meeting the standard of S1. Even if this is so (and
I’m not so sure that it is), the fact that S1 is the standard
of justification in political liberalism means that real
reasonable people possess a kind of authoritative status that
they would not otherwise have.
I think Thomas Besch’s recent work on the idea of discursive
respect can help us see how this is the case. A theory
accords people discursive respect when it attempts to relate
to others on the basis of reasons that must be, in some
relevant sense, acceptable to them.26 Political liberalism is
clearly one such theory. Importantly, however, the value of
discursive respect – or rather, the extent to which discursive
respect really conveys respect – can vary for individuals to
whom it is accorded. In particular, it can be affected by two
26 Thomas Besch, “On Discursive Respect”, Social Theory and Practice 40 (2014):
207.
main factors: purchase, and depth.27 The greater degree of
purchase and depth, the greater the value of discursive
respect, other things being equal.28
The idea of purchase refers to the particular notion of
acceptability at hand. An actualist conception, for example,
requires acceptability to real people as they are, while a
counterfactualised conception requires acceptability to some
idealised version of people, such as a more rational or
coherent version of themselves.29 Needless to say, an
actualist conception generates a greater degree of purchase
and, other things being equal, a form of discursive respect
that is more valuable for those to whom it is addressed, than
a counterfactualised conception.
27 Besch calibrates discursive respect in terms of three factors: depth,
purchase, and scope. A theory has a broad scope of discursive respect if
its constituency includes a wide constituency of people, as opposed to a
very select group. “On Discursive Respect”, 214-216. I do not discuss
scope here, since a wider scope might increase the overall value of
discursive respect, but does not necessarily increase its value for those
who are already included within the scope.
28 Besch, “On Discursive Respect”, 224.
29 Besch, “On Discursive Respect”, 216-220.
The idea of depth, meanwhile, refers to the material that must
be acceptable to the constituency. A deep form of discursive
respect will hold that not only the reasons for a particular
action must be acceptable, but also the principles governing
these actions. Discursive respect is deeper still if it holds
that all standards of practical justification must be
acceptable, while it becomes less deep if it only holds that
reasons for action must be acceptable.30
If S1 is the standard of justification for political
liberalism, then real reasonable people are the beneficiaries
of a deep, purchase-rich, form of discursive respect. It is
rich in purchase because it requires acceptability by real
reasonable people, rather than some idealised version of
themselves. It is deep, because this standard of
justification is the ultimate standard of justification. Both
the content of political liberalism and its framework need to
meet it.
30 Besch, “On Discursive Respect”, 213-214.
What about S2? It could be interpreted as suggesting that the
kind of acceptability required by political liberalism is only
a counterfactualising kind, addressing idealised reasonable
citizens of a well-ordered society, as opposed to real
reasonable people. However, if we assume that S2 can meet the
requirements of S1, then there is still a sense in which Quong
might claim that political liberalism offers an actualised
conception of acceptability. Real reasonable people can
accept S2, and hence, the entirety of a political liberalism
built on S2 as an ultimate standard of justification. In this
case, however, depth is compromised. Real reasonable people
do not possess full authority over the standards of
justification. Their acceptance or rejection of S2 has no
bearing on its becoming the ultimate standard of justification
in political liberalism. The fact that they might all happen
to accept it any way is neither here nor there. As a result
of this, the depth of discursive respect is compromised by
making S2 the standard of justification.
Let me explain this further by way of the following example.
Suppose a father takes his daughter to an ice cream stand.
The father knows that his daughter wants chocolate-flavoured
ice cream, and his daughter will also choose chocolate ice
cream if given the opportunity to do so. It seems, then, that
whatever decision-procedure is followed, the outcome will be
the same: his daughter gets chocolate ice-cream. But this
does not necessarily make the selection of a decision-
procedure redundant. Three options seem available:
i) The father picks an ice cream flavour for his daughter.
ii) The father lets his daughter choose a flavour for
herself.
iii) The father asks his daughter whether she would like to
choose the flavour herself, or whether she would prefer
him to choose one for her.
In this case, ii) displays a greater degree of depth of
discursive respect than i), while iii) is deeper than ii). In
iii), other things being equal, the daughter is maximally
enfranchised by the decision-procedure. She has veto-power,
not only over the choice of ice-cream, but over the choice of
decision-procedure for the choice of ice-cream. Now consider
the case of real reasonable people in political liberalism.
If S2 is the standard of justification, their status is
somewhat analogous to ii) in the example above: they have the
ability to select principles of justice, but their influence
over the selection of the procedure for principle-selection is
limited at best, given that they have no authority to accept
or reject S2. If S2 is capable of meeting the requirements of
S1, then they still ultimately get what they want, no less than
the daughter gets the ice cream she wants. But they receive a
substantially greater degree of enfranchisement if the
standard of justification is S1, which is analogous to iii).
Hence, greater discursive respect is shown to real reasonable
people if S1 is adopted as the ultimate standard of
justification for political liberalism, rather than S2.
It might still be an open question whether the most compelling
version of political liberalism adopts S1 over S2. The
advantage of the former is that it offers a greater degree of
discursive respect to real reasonable people. The idea that
this is an overwhelmingly important value for political
liberalism might be challenged. What I hope to have
demonstrated, however, is that the appeal to real reasonable
people is not an unnecessary spare wheel, as Quong suggests.
And if Rawls’s political liberalism holds that real reasonable
people are the constituency of justification for political
liberalism as a whole, then it must hold that S1 is the
ultimate standard of justification in political liberalism.31
4. S1 and Choice
We have seen that political liberalism, at least in its
Rawlsian form, is committed to taking S1 as the ultimate
standard of justification. I now intend to show that this
entails that it is committed to Choice. Recall that Choice holds
that a reasonable person is morally permitted to pursue her
chosen conception of the good life, as long as she freely
chose it. Recall also that most political liberals would31 Other prominent political liberals seem to share this same commitment.
Larmore’s attempt to found political liberalism on a moral principle of
‘respect for persons’ seems similar to the idea that real people ought to
be the recipients of a valuable form of discursive respect. See Larmore,
“The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism”. See also Macedo, Liberal Virtues,
39-77; Thomas Nagel, “Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy”, Philosophy
and Public Affairs 16 (1987): 221.
likely resist the claim that political liberalism is committed
to Choice, even those who, like Rawls, present political
liberalism in such a way that it is committed to S1. As we
have seen, Rawls thinks that reasonable citizens are ‘self-
authenticating’, but only ‘from a political point of view’.
Macedo similarly holds that ‘the goodness of good reasons, for
a public moral theory, becomes entirely a function of their
capacity to gain widespread agreement among reasonable
people.’32 Both are slightly ambiguous in their language here,
but I think it likely that both would reject the idea that
political liberalism holds that good reasons are those that
reasonable people would accept, when it comes to questions
about comprehensive doctrines.
Why, then, should we think that S1 commits political liberalism
to Choice? The answer lies in the fact that S1 is the ultimate
standard of justification in political liberalism. In order
to maximise depth, and accord real reasonable people maximal
discursive respect, it provides a standard of justification
for all aspects of the theory. There can be no deeper
principle that governs S1; if there were, then it would no32 Macedo, Liberal Virtues, 46f.
longer be the case that the entirety of political liberalism
needs to be justifiable to real reasonable people. It would
also no longer be the case that political liberalism accords
reasonable people as high a level of discursive respect, since
its depth would now be substantially limited.
We have seen how the role of ideal theory in political
liberalism, as specified by S2, depends on its ability to be
acceptable to real reasonable people, and thus meet S1. The
same goes for the idea, so central to political liberalism,
that the domain of the political is unique and requires a
special standard of justification. Although Rawls and Macedo
sometimes seem to imply that S1 is a standard of justification
for the domain of the political only, this is a view that is
inconsistent with S1’s status as the ultimate standard of
justification in political liberalism. What they seem to be
doing, in effect, is invoking a principle that is lexically
prior to S1, which we might call P:
P: The exercise of political power requires a special
justificatory standard that applies exclusively to this
domain.
It is only by invoking P, or something like it, as a lexically
prior claim to S1 that Rawls and Macedo can claim that S1
applies exclusively to politics. But if S1 really is the
ultimate standard of justification in political liberalism,
operating at a maximally deep level, then it is the fact that
P meets the requirements of S1 that generates special
justificatory standards for politics. S1 is not itself
constrained by P; rather, P follows from S1.
Now the only way in which political liberalism could avoid
committing itself to Choice would be to constrain S1 with P. If
P does not provide such a constraint, S1 simply states that
acceptability to real reasonable people is what justifies,
period. It does not limit its applicability to politics. It
therefore includes the decisions that real reasonable people
make about which comprehensive doctrine they wish to pursue.
One might claim that the content of reasonableness itself
implies P. Fairness, according to the first feature of
reasonableness, is identified as necessary for ‘terms of
cooperation’, rather than as a broader, comprehensive value.33
Similarly, the second feature, concerning the burdens of
judgment, requires that reasonable people ‘accept their
consequences for the use of pubic reason in directing the
legitimate exercise of political power in a constitutional
regime.’34 It seems, then, that the concept of reasonableness
itself has some idea of politics as constituting a unique
domain, requiring a special standard of justification.35 This
does not, however, enable political liberalism to avoid
committing itself to Choice. It would simply mean that P, and
whatever else is entailed by the two features of
reasonableness, carries normative weight in political
liberalism only because it meets the justificatory standard of
S1.
33 PL, 49.
34 PL, 54.
35 I owe this point to an anonymous reviewer.
Another, perhaps more vexing problem for my claim that
political liberalism is committed to Choice concerns
paradoxical circumstances where Choice is rejected by certain
real reasonable people. Indeed, as I have earlier noted,
Choice is incompatible with many familiar comprehensive
doctrines that political liberals commonly take to be
reasonable. I do not deny that this poses a considerable
difficulty for political liberalism – in fact, this is the
very point of my argument here – but it arises because
political liberalism is committed to taking S1 as the ultimate
standard of justification. In fact, it is only because S1 has
this status in political liberalism that it is so concerned
with what real reasonable people might think in the first
place. Hence, I do not think that political liberalism can
avoid committing itself to Choice by pointing out that Choice is
rejected by many real reasonable people.
5. Two options
I have argued that political liberalism is committed to Choice,
in virtue of its commitment to taking S1 as its ultimate
standard of justification. Since many, and perhaps even most
real reasonable people reject Choice, this puts political
liberalism in a problematic position. Buck-passing, as we
have seen, presumes that the claim for which justification is
sought must be acceptable to reasonable people, and that a
person’s inability to provide herself with a justification for
this claim simply reveals her own unreasonableness. The fact
that reasonable people can coherently reject Choice therefore
shows that buck-passing cannot work in this particular case.
I will finish here by considering two ways in which political
liberalism might deal with this.
First, it might explore the possibility of abandoning S1, or at
least, not taking it to be the ultimate standard of
justification. The motivation for doing so might come from
the objection we considered at the end of the previous
section, which might be rephrased in the form of a reduction
ad absurdum. If political liberalism is takes S1 as its
ultimate standard of justification, then it arrives at an
absurdity. On the one hand, it says that any claim that
political liberalism makes is justified if and only if it is
acceptable to real reasonable people. On the other hand, it
is committed to a particular claim (Choice) that many real
reasonable people reject. The upshot of this, it might be
suggested, is that political liberalism cannot really take S1
as the ultimate standard of justification.
The immediate consequence of this move would be to diminish
somewhat the value of discursive respect for the constituency
of political liberalism, on account of a reduction of its
depth. Certain aspects of political liberalism, such as P,
which stipulates the importance of politics as a domain
requiring a special standard of justification, would no longer
be subject to the acceptance of real reasonable people. Yet
strangely, I would conjecture that many reasonable people
would respond more warmly to a political liberalism that was
not committed to Choice. Of course, this goes without saying
for those reasonable people who reject Choice.
This might seem like a relatively simple adjustment to the
order of justification in political liberalism. Rawls’s claim
that political liberalism as a whole needs to be justifiable to
real reasonable people should be modified slightly, so that
this standard of justification applies exclusively to the
domain of politics. But the sheer fact that this adjustment
might be necessary has some potentially disturbing
implications. It seems to suggest that many people, including
many reasonable people, do not regard discursive respect as an
overriding good, or even one that might rank alongside of
their comprehensive commitments. Perhaps many of these people
might think that Raz was right after all: they think they are
most properly treated with respect, not when others relate to
them on the basis of reasons that they can accept, but rather,
on the basis of reasons that reflect the truth.36 At the very
least, they seek a form of social cooperation that does not
deny that the authority of moral judgments can be determined
on acceptability-independent grounds. For a theory like
political liberalism that seems to put a premium on discursive
respect, this would be a strange concession, though perhaps
not fatal.
At the same time, it is worth remembering that there are some
reasonable people who may find Choice unobjectionable, and even36 Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 157.
accept it. Take individual subjectivists for example.
Although Choice does not strictly imply that individual
subjectivism is true, since it speaks only of moral
permissions, and not about moral truth or falsity, it does
seem plausible to expect that an individual subjectivist will
be quite comfortable, other things being equal, with a
political theory committed to Choice. The individual
subjectivist may well prefer this as an alternative to
abandoning S1 as the ultimate standard of justification, and
diminishing the value of discursive respect.
We are thus led towards a second option for political
liberalism: retain S1 as the ultimate standard of
justification, acknowledge a commitment to Choice, and deal
with the consequences. As we have just noted, some, such as
the individual subjectivist, will likely be untroubled by
this. But for the many reasonable citizens who reject Choice,
it seems to place them in a difficult position. It may be an
exaggeration to say that they are now forced to choose between
political liberalism and their comprehensive doctrine. But
the extent to which they would then identify with the project
of political liberalism might well now be called into
question. Their status as reasonable seems to compel them to
acknowledge the legitimacy of political institutions that are
designed in accordance with a proper ordering of political
values, and as such, it is unlikely that they would seek to
overthrow them. But it seems just as unlikely that they will
continue to view themselves as citizens in the fullest sense.
The notion of a resident alien, who, as Andrew March puts it,
‘does not seek to share political sovereignty with his
compatriots, does not identify with the political system, and
resents or is indifferent to the contribution he makes to
society’s welfare and security’, may be a more appropriate
description of their status.37 Political liberals should find
the prospect of a society full of reasonable people who see
themselves as resident aliens extremely unattractive, to say
the least. It is hard to imagine a scenario further from the
spirit of public justification.
37 Andrew March, “Liberal Citizenship and the Search for an Overlapping
Consensus: The Case of Muslim Minorities”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34
(2006): 383.
Ultimately, I think political liberals will be inclined
towards the first option over the second, given that the
latter pays an extraordinary price for retaining S1 as the
ultimate standard of justification. But I think the fact that
this is the case should prompt further reflection about how
political liberalism can best meet its deepest normative
commitments. The motivation behind public justification, it
seems is to treat reasonable people with respect. But perhaps
what reasonable people want most from politics is to be
treated not just in ways that they can accept – important
though this may be – but in ways that can allow for the
intelligibility of robust moral commitments that are justified
on acceptability-independent grounds.
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