When Public Reason Fails Us: Convergence Discourse as Blood Oath

Abstract

Public officials in John Rawls's well-ordered society face an assurance problem. They prefer to act in accordance with the political conception of justice, but only if they are assured that others will. On Paul Weithman's influential interpretation, Rawls attempts to solve this problem by claiming that public reason is an assurance mechanism. There are several problems with Rawls's solution: Public reason talk is too cheap to facilitate assurance, it is difficult to know when particular utterances express public reasons, and the requirements of public reason conflict with the fact of reasonable pluralism. We argue that convergence discourse—not public reason—solves the assurance problem by being a costly signal that indicates commitment to the political conception. This solution has none of Rawls's problems and has an interesting corollary: As diversity increases in society, so too does society's ability to solve the assurance problem. In short, the more diversity the better.