Public Reason and Political Community

Abstract

Public Reason and Political Community defends the liberal ideal of public reason against its critics, but as a form of moral compromise for the sake of civic friendship rather than as a consequence of respect for persons as moral agents. Andrew Lister shows how the demand for public justification can be framed in different ways: as a constraint on state coercion directly, with a default of inaction, and as a constraint on reason for decisions, with a default of exclusion from deliberation. He defends the reasons model on grounds of the value of political community, and applies it to recent debates about marriage. Lister explores the ‘anti-perfectionist dilemma’ that results from the fact that there are two different ways of framing the idealized unanimity requirement that is at the heart of the principle of public justification. Is it our reasons for political decisions that have to be unanimously acceptable to