Idea Of Public Reason Research Articles

Public reason under the tree: Rawls and the African palaver

Public reason is central to John Rawls’s political liberalism, as a mechanism for citizens to discuss about matters of common interest. Although free and equal, reasonable and rational, citizens of a democratic society disagree on their understanding of truth and right, giving rise to the fact of reasonable pluralism. Thus, Rawls works out an idea of public reason which allows citizens to argue about political matters and yet remaining divided in their comprehensive doctrines. On the other hand, African culture has developed the practice of palaver as way of dealing with social and political questions of the community. Usually held under a tree, scholars believe that the palaver is the African version of deliberative democracy. In this article, I elaborate the two ideas and compare them in order to see whether they are completely opposite or whether they can enrich each other. Thus, the first section focuses on Rawls’s idea of public reason, the second explores the palaver practice and the last section compares them.

Pragmatism and Political Practice: Language, Skills and Institutions

This article aims to show the importance of the pragmatic conception of language proposed by Wittgenstein in relation to his philosophy of action, as well as the possibilities it offers to political theory, by explaining the impact and influence that his theory had in some of his readers. This is particularly important for the notion of political representation, which emerges as a linguistic practice of rule-based behavior in terms of giving and asking for reasons. This idea will be reinforced by a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s arguments applied to a social instance a work that is done by many of his readers and commentators, specifically Searle, Brandom and Mouffe. Such instance would be limited in this text, by making use of Rawls’ idea of public reason through the lens of this socially conceived Wittgenstein’s pragmatism. 

The Rebuilding of the Liberal: Reading Rawls’s Debate in Ian McEwan’s Saturday

ABSTRACT Between the end of the Cold War and the financial crash of 2008, liberalism dominated the geopolitical stage, although it faced challenges. In his 2005 novel Saturday, Ian McEwan constructs a self-confident liberal protagonist facing the heterogeneity of the world. This novel’s engagement with the processes of identity formation can be discerned in some detail when read in light of John Rawls’s idea of public reason. By concentrating on formal debating spaces particularly, this reading discovers an iterative process of identity formation and social construction in the novel, in which the success or failure of directed dialogic exchanges shapes both personal identity and the chance for social change. The reader is presented with the potential for reimagined forms of and arenas for liberal debate to respond to the complexity of the world.

Public reason as a social basis of self‐respect

AbstractThe idea of public reason was traditionally explained in terms of the need to justify the exercise of coercive power to reasonable people who do not agree on the truth of any particular conception of the good. In this paper, I show why this traditional, coercion‐based, view is problematic, and offer a different account of public reason: the “self‐respect account.” In addition, I argue that this account is capable of informing recent, nontraditional, accounts of public reason. The conclusion is that public reason can be conceptualized as a social basis of self‐respect.

Religious Reasons and Public Reason: Recalibrating Ireland’s Benevolent Secularism

Liberal regimes in the West are not homogeneous in their application of secular principles. What kind of “secular” state a particular government promotes depends in large part on the strength and influence of the majority religion in that region. This article acknowledges the heuristic value of a recent threefold taxonomy of secularism: passive, assertive, and benevolent forms of secularism. I take issue with and challenge certain institutional privileges granted to the majority religion in one benevolently secular regime, the Republic of Ireland. I consider how benevolent secularism, while remaining benevolent toward religion, can align its application of secularism in the arena of publicly-funded education (primary and secondary education). A politically liberal regime, defined by the idea of public reason, invokes the principle of publicity, namely, that discourse and public policy be intelligible (and acceptable to a large degree) not only to an individual’s religious or moral community but also to the broader collection of members who constitute a liberal state. Drawing on John Rawls’ conception of public reason, and using Ireland as a case study, I show how this particular state-religion interrelation can be recalibrated in order to increase the prospects of reconciliation with a secular space of public reason.

The first scientific journals and the idea of public reason in the modern science

The first scientific journals and the idea of public reason in the modern science

John Rawls e a questão da religião e da razão pública

A problemática que permeia todo O liberalismo político, livro tardio de Rawls, é saber como pessoas com diferentes doutrinas compreensivas tais como as filosóficas, morais e religiosas, podem chegar a um acordo sobre questões políticas fundamentais. No entanto, as questões religiosas permeiam o conjunto da obra rawlsiana como, por exemplo, quando John Rawls morreu, em 2002, foi encontrado entre seus arquivos um texto intitulado On my religion. Nele Rawls descreve a história de suas crenças, referindo-se ao período como aluno de graduação em Princeton (1941-1942). Em dezembro de 1942, ele escreve Uma breve investigação sobre o significado de pecado e fé: uma interpretação baseada no conceito de comunidade. Nesses casos, o problema é saber como pessoas com diferentes doutrinas compreensivas religiosas podem chegar a um consenso sobreposto. A solução para o problema de como a legitimidade política pode ser alcançada, apesar do conflito religioso, e de como, entre cidadãos de diferentes crenças, a justificação política pode prosseguir sem referência, em específico, à convicção religiosa. Isso tudo é relacionado com a ideia de razão pública.

Rawlsian originalism

ABSTRACTHow should judges reason in a well-ordered constitutional democracy? According to John Rawls’s famous remarks in Political Liberalism, they ought to do so in accordance with the idea of public reason, to the point that they act as an (if not the) institutional exemplar of public reason. There are many attractive features of this view, but it is still too vague. For the idea of public reason is permissive – it rules certain modes of reasoning and discourse out, but the modes of reasoning and discourse it deems permissible are pluralistic. The current paper tries to remedy this indeterminacy by further fleshing out how judges ought to reason in something like a Rawlsian well-ordered constitutional democratic society. Our conclusion may come as a surprise: judges in such a society should be Originalists.

Rawls, Liberalism, and Democracy

This article offers a critique of John Rawls’s great work, Political Liberalism, from a non-Rawlsian liberal standpoint. It argues that Rawlsian political liberalism is influenced as much by a comprehensive view I call “radical-democracy” as by comprehensive liberal views. This can be seen in Rawls’s account of some of political liberalism’s fundamental ideas—notably the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, the “liberal” principle of legitimacy, and the idea of public reason. I further argue that Rawls’s impressive attempt to unify liberal and democratic traditions philosophically obscures the prudent liberal attitude to democracy, which remains sound.

Pluralismo y derecho al disenso: cr�tica a Chantal Mouffe como lectora de Rawls

The aim of this paper is to discuss Chantal Mouffe’s critique to the work of John Rawls. In order to achieve this we will review Alexander Kaufman's and Alessandro Ferrara's critiques to Mouffe's reading of Rawls. Furthermore, we will expound that the Belgian theoretician overlooks the importance of dissent and pluralism as a source of normativity in Rawls' idea of public reason.

From public reason to deliberative democracy

In this paper I shall investigate the relationship between public reason and deliberative democracy, mainly as it is presented in Rawls?s later political theory. Against the critics who claim that Rawls has no deliberative democratic theory, I shall argue that he presented a complex view of public deliberation that contains a set of formal and substantive requirements derived from the idea of public reason. My main aim in this paper is to defend and further elaborate the thesis that Rawls?s later political theory is crucially important for deliberative democracy. Furthermore, in light of the recent literature on deliberative democracy, I examine the relevance of Rawls?s view for addressing some current problems, but also look at some limits of the public reason perspective.

Should ‘Public Reason’ Developed Under US Establishment Clause Jurisprudence

John Rawls’ idea of public reason holds that comprehensive doctrines including religion should not be allowed a voice in the public square. Such ideas prevent society achieving that ‘overlapping consensus’ which is said to be a requirement for enduring peace and progress. However, the suggestion that some ideas should be excluded from public debate is anti-democratic. This article reviews Rawls’ idea of public reason’ against its US legal context and suggests it was a response to US Supreme Court decisions concerning their First Amendment. Though our framers copied most of that clause into the Australian Constitution, the High Court has interpreted it completely differently. The article concludes that Rawls’ idea of public reason does not fit in a Westminster democracy tied to parliamentary sovereignty rather than judicial review.

Should 'Public Reason' Developed Under US Establishment Clause Jurisprudence Apply to Australia?

John Rawls' idea of public reason holds that comprehensive doctrines including religion should not be allowed a voice in the public square. Such ideas prevent society achieving that 'overlapping consensus' which is said to be a requirement for enduring peace and progress. However, the suggestion that some ideas should be excluded from public debate is anti-democratic. This article reviews Rawls' idea of public reason' against its US legal context and suggests it was a response to US Supreme Court decisions concerning their First Amendment. Though our framers copied most of that clause into the Australian Constitution, the High Court has interpreted it completely differently. The article concludes that Rawls' idea of public reason does not fit in a Westminster democracy tied to parliamentary sovereignty rather than judicial review.

Stout, Rawls, and the Idea of Public Reason

Jeffrey Stout claims that John Rawls's idea of public reason (IPR) has contributed to a Christian backlash against liberalism. This essay argues that those whom Stout calls “antiliberal traditionalists” have misunderstood Rawls in important ways, and goes on to consider Stout's own critiques of the IPR. While Rawls's idea is often interpreted as a blanket prohibition on religious reasoning outside church and home, the essay will show that the very viability of the IPR depends upon a rich culture of deliberation in which all forms of reasoning can be put forth for consideration. This clarification addresses the perception that the IPR imposes an “asymmetrical burden” upon believers. In fact, the essay suggests that there are good reasons why believers, qua believers, might endorse the IPR.

Legitimacy of Law in a Liberal State: The Contours of Public Reason

In contemporary liberal philosophy, the idea of Public Reason is intimately tied up with the liberal principle of legitimacy which postulates that only those laws that are based upon arguments and reasons to which no members of the society have a rational reason to object can boast political legitimacy, and as such can be applied coercively even to those who actually disagree with them. In this working paper I suggest the ways of fine-tuning the idea of Public Reason in such a way as to make it more immune to its critics. In particular, I explain what specifically it means for Public Reason to be an exclusionary, second-order rule about the exclusion of reasons which can figure in justifications for law (Part 1), how we can plausibly claim that Public Reason may be thought to be a feasible political imperative in pluralistic societies (Part 2), what should be its scope of application, both in terms of the types of laws to which it applies and the actors who should be bound by it (Part 3), and what specifically is at stake if we see the status of Public Reason as a legitimacy-conferring device (Part 4).

Public Discourse between Counterfactual Idealisations and Practical Realisation in Public Sphere

The article explores different approaches to the theoretical grounding of public use of reason developed by Habermas, Kant and Rawls. It is focused on Habermas’s idea of communicative rationality and the public sphere, and then this approach is related to Kantian practical reason and Rawls’s idea of public reason. The article highlights liberal and republican elements in Habermas’s concept of public sphere, and emphasises that liberal concepts of democracy require public reason as a device of justification of constitutional norms, while the republican idea of popular sovereignty opens up the popular public sphere. The second part of the article describes the tension between the counterfactual nature of Habermas’s discourse ethics and its practical realisation in deliberative politics in institutions of the state.

An overview of Liberalism Without Perfection

Quong?s influential book probably represents the most sophisticated defence of Rawlsian political liberalism. This review focuses on its content and systematizes it by chapters, emphasizing its relevance both in the first part, where the author puts the liberal perfectionist position under critical scrutiny by advancing three major objections (regarding autonomy, paternalism and political legitimacy), and the second, where the author presents and defends a distinctive version of political liberalism that clearly differs from the one presented by Rawls in several important features. The review also summarizes Quong?s innovative arguments regarding the nature of an overlapping consensus, the structure of political justification, the idea of public reason, and the status of unreasonable persons.

Common Good and Respect for Persons

We need a “working” conception of the common good, i.e. a conception that does not rely on where one stands in various current political controversies about specific aims, purposes and measures of achieving them, including controversies reflected in debates about and within constitutional law. Such a “working conception” can be supplied by the idea of public reason as a characteristically liberal device of legitimacy in a pluralistic society: attempts to equate “common good” with a set of common actual first-order interests must fail. Public reason is justified by a principle of respect for persons who may or may not agree with the specific laws but who will likely feel they are “second class” citizens, thus deeply disrespected, if the law is based on grounds which are not endorsable by them. Hence, this paper explores a triangle of concepts: common good, public reason (as a working conception of common good), and respect for persons (as a justificatory argument for public reason). In the first part of this paper I discuss the concept of common good, and its relationship with public reason, and in the second part I discuss respect for persons as a justification for public reason. It is argued, in particular, that respect (as a justificatory value of public reason) should be seen as part of a constellation of values, of which freedom (understood through a presumptive evil of coercion) and political equality (understood in an outcome-based, agency-related sense), are of particular importance.

Foucault's 'Critique' of Neoliberalism, Rawls and the Genealogy of Public Reason

Foucault devotes seven out of the twelve lectures he delivered at the College de France in 1979 to German and American neo-liberalism. Contrary to the widespread view that the purpose of these lectures was to ‘critique’ neoliberalism, I sketch another reading of those lectures that connects them with a different kind of critique of liberal political reason that we find in the work of John Rawls. I begin by showing that Foucault is more normative than is often realised: at one point he raises the question ‘what form of governmentality would be appropriate to socialism?’ I then show that Rawls is not simply normative but also descriptive of the institutions and policies of liberal government: his argument for property owning democracy as an alternative to welfare state capitalism is one element of a conception of governmentality associated with his conception of justice as fairness. Finally, I point to some of the ways in which Rawls’s conception of the kind of government and economy compatible with his principles of justice was influenced by elements of postwar neoliberalism. I conclude by suggesting that Foucault’s sketch of a genealogy of neoliberal economic and political thought points to a historical conception of Rawls’s idea of public reason, and that the egalitarian tradition of neoliberal thought on which Rawls draws points toward possible answers to Foucault’s question about a governmentality appropriate to socialism.

Parental education and public reason: why comprehensive enrolment is justified

Matthew Clayton claims that ‘comprehensive enrolment’ – raising one’s children in accordance with one’s own conception of the good – is illegitimate. In his argument against comprehensive enrolment, Clayton refers to Rawls’s idea of public reason. In a recent response to Clayton, Christina Cameron not only rejects Clayton’s conclusions, but also denies that the idea of public reason can be applied to the parent–child relationship. This article responds to both Clayton and Cameron: It is stated, first, that political arrangements concerning children’s upbringing must be acceptable in the light of public reason. Second, it is claimed that comprehensive enrolment can nevertheless be considered as legitimate.