Politics of knowledge and the voice (or silence) of a scholar: reply to commentaries on Kant on public reason and the linguistic Other

ABSTRACT According to the idea of public reason, fundamental political questions should be resolved solely on the basis of considerations that all citizens can reasonably accept. While various rationales—such as the ideal of civic friendship—have been offered in support of public reason, most arguments assume ideal, well‐ordered conditions. Yet many real‐world societies are far from ideal, often dominated by unreasonable persons—sometimes even those in power. Emil Andersson addresses the question of how familiar rationales for public reason fare under such conditions. More specifically, he argues that the political community view—which grounds public reason in the ideal of civic friendship—faces serious challenges in non‐well‐ordered, asymmetrically divided contexts characterised by large numbers of unreasonable people. In this paper, I show that, while Andersson's critique of the political community view of public reason is on target, his argument against the most plausible construal of this view—namely the inclusive political community view—is unsuccessful, because the value of inclusion can be understood as carrying sufficient weight even in non‐well‐ordered contexts. I then argue that Andersson's alternative conception—namely Rawlsian political autonomy—does not convincingly address the rationale for, or the applicability of, public reason in non‐well‐ordered societies, especially when compared to the inclusive political community view.

The article critically examines the tension between political neutrality and moral perfectionism within contemporary liberalism, with particular attention to Denis Coitinho’s (2024) proposal to reconcile both traditions through what he calls moderate perfectionist liberalism. Based on a brief reconstruction of the debate between Rawls (1993), Raz (1986), and other interpreters of liberalism, the paper argues that the internal coherence of liberal theory depends on a minimal ethical foundation. It is claimed that Rawls’ (1971; 1993) attempt to sustain political legitimacy without appealing to substantive conceptions of the good leads to a weakening of its own normativity, since neutrality, when understood as epistemic abstinence regarding moral truth, becomes self-contradictory. By distinguishing between political consensus and moral truth, the paper maintains that liberalism preserves its intelligibility only when it recognizes that values such as freedom, equality, and respect possess normative force independent of mere procedural agreement. From this diagnosis, the article contends that Coitinho’s hybridist project offers a promising alternative by affirming the complementarity between ethics and politics and conceiving public reason not merely as a neutral space of deliberation, but as a moral practice of mutual recognition.

This study conceptualises Corruptio Legis as a form of structural corruption operating within Indonesia’s legislative process, where formally valid procedures conceal substantive distortions of law, justice, and constitutional democracy. Using Wintgens’ legisprudence, Ekins’ theory of legislative intention, and Tuori’s ratio–voluntas framework, the analysis identifies key patterns of distortion, including legislative subordination to party elites, transactional lawmaking, and the marginalisation of public deliberation. Case studies of the stalled Asset Confiscation Bill and the Job Creation Law illustrate how oligarchic political interests displace public reason in lawmaking. The study proposes a four-step Corruptio Legisprudential Diagnosis Formula and advocates a Legislative Impact Assessment grounded in this framework to ensure that legislation is guided by rational deliberation rather than power-based interests.

This article examines judicial authority in adjudicating village fund corruption, analyzing Decision Number 11/Pid.Sus-TPK/2023/PN through a normative juridical approach and John Rawls’s fairness perspective. While the Panel of Judges applied Article 3 of the Anti-Corruption Law, the three-year sentence is disproportionate given state losses of approximately IDR 1.95 billion, the Defendant’s public office, and the lack of restitution. The ruling highlights a tension between procedural legality and substantive justice, emphasizing the need for judges to exercise social sensitivity, apply public reason, and consider the socio-structural impact on vulnerable communities. A holistic approach ensures that judicial decisions are legally valid, ethically sound, and socially responsive, reinforcing the moral authority of the courts and protecting marginalized groups.

Being called, as all the other Conventionalists, to give his opinion on the judgement of Louis XVI, Condorcet wrote, in November 1792, a text of great interest where he sustained the idea of the duality of the monarch’s person, as well as that of the necessity of a regular trial before a national court. If he considered that the king should not be above the rules, he did that for the purpose of offering him all the guarantees of the penal code, but he inferred from the same logic of the members of the Constituent that the loss of sovereign power could not be the only penalty against the king. Anyway he discarded the hypothesis that the death sentence, alien to all his principles, could be applied. If he pretended the observation of the conventions which he hoped to be more rigorous if coming from a court wholly made up of elected citizens, anyway he did not exclude that the execution of the sentence was going to be suspended for political reasons and that the king was going to be detained for public security reasons. Being a matter of a big public trial, which went beyond Louis XVI, the same idea of monarchy was put at its core by Condorcet and together with it the idea of the republic he wanted to constitute, without any act of injustice. His thought was not lacking contradictions, the least of which was not to pick on all the kings, facing a man accused of precise facts. This improbable concept of the trial of the king in a country at war greatly contributed to politically isolate Condorcet during the winter 1792-93.

This study investigates public perceptions of artificial intelligence governance and ethics through a mixed-methods analysis of YouTube comments from three highly engaged international videos published between 2021 and 2025. Using YouTube Data API extraction and rigorous preprocessing, a total of 711 cleaned comments were analyzed to capture contemporary discourse surrounding global AI regulation, ethical concerns, and societal implications. The quantitative phase employed a combination of lexicon-based and transformer-based sentiment classification. Results show that public sentiment is predominantly positive, followed by significant negative responses reflecting concerns about safety, existential risks, and institutional trust. Aspect-based sentiment analysis reveals strong positive reactions to themes such as ethics, bias mitigation, and innovation, while safety and regulatory uncertainty generate the most negative sentiment. Topic modeling using LDA and BERTopic consistently identifies clusters related to existential threat narratives, human–machine comparison, governance debates, and skepticism toward industry figures. The qualitative phase deepens these findings by examining rhetorical patterns, discursive framing, and emotional expressions within a stratified sample of comments. Users frequently articulate contrasting frames of technological optimism and pessimism, often invoking metaphors, analogies, and references to current global developments. This interpretive layer complements the computational results, illuminating how societal hopes, fears, and expectations shape public reasoning about AI governance. Integrated analysis demonstrates strong convergence between quantitative and qualitative insights, indicating that public discourse is complex, polarized, and highly sensitive to both technological advances and the communication strategies of influential actors. The study underscores the importance of transparent policy communication, inclusive governance frameworks, and sustained public engagement in shaping responsible AI development.

Public Reason in and out of the Well-Ordered Society

Sivan Shlomo Agon, "Going Public: Reasoning and Justification at the World Trade Court", in Public Reason and Courts (Silje A. Langvatn, Mattias Kumm, and Wojciech Sadurski eds., Cambridge University Press, 2020).

This paper critically integrates the idea of local public value with deliberative democracy to provide a theoretical investigation of local participatory governance. From my perspective, contemporary democratic concerns cannot be satisfactorily handled through representational or managerial models alone; rather, they require participatory frameworks that combine democratic legitimacy with meaningful governance achievements. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory, the study emphasizes public reasoning, inclusivity, and reciprocity as normative grounds of participation. Concurrently, public value theory is used to investigate how collectively desired results that improve social well-being, institutional trust, and democratic capability at the local level can be translated from participatory and deliberative procedures. The article makes the case that local governance arenas—like community forums, participatory planning bodies, and decentralized institutions—are essential places where value creation and discourse meet. By combining these theoretical traditions, the study illustrates both the possibilities and limitations of participatory government, particularly in circumstances marked by socioeconomic inequality and institutional constraints. In the end, this investigation advances democratic theory by putting forth an integrated framework in which public value formation and citizen deliberation mutually reinforce one another. This framework provides a normative and analytical basis for rethinking inclusive and outcome-oriented local governance in the twenty-first century.

This study analyzes the ethical architecture of the teaching profession in Indonesia by examining how teacher ethics is governed and evaluated within a context of institutional and religious pluralism. It seeks to explain why teacher ethics has largely functioned as an instrument of professional governance rather than as a framework of public moral reasoning that supports teachers’ moral agency. This study adopts a qualitative normative–philosophical approach, analyzing Indonesian education policy documents—particularly the Regulation of the Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology No. 67 of 2024—and codes of ethics issued by major teacher professional organizations (PGRI, IGI, PERGUNU, and Muhammadiyah). The analysis employs conceptual and argumentative methods, using Kantian ethics as an evaluative framework, while media-reported cases are referenced illustratively to contextualize normative tensions. The study identifies three central findings. First, teacher ethics in Indonesia is primarily framed in the language of compliance, discipline, and procedure, positioning ethics as a mechanism of professional governance. Second, the pluralism of organizational codes of ethics produces ethical fragmentation, whereby similar professional actions may be evaluated differently depending on institutional affiliation and adjudicative authority. Third, this configuration constrains teachers’ moral agency by prioritizing administrative conformity over rational moral justification that is public and universal in character. The findings suggest that addressing ethical fragmentation in the teaching profession requires more than regulatory harmonization or procedural standardization. Instead, there is a need for a shared framework of public moral reasoning that enables plural religious and institutional ethics to be evaluated through consistent and publicly justifiable criteria. Such a framework has implications for education policy, professional ethical governance, and the cultivation of teachers as autonomous moral agents in plural societies. This study contributes to religious studies and professional ethics scholarship by reframing ethical fragmentation not as a technical governance problem but as a problem of public moral justification within plural moral traditions. By employing Kantian ethics as an evaluative lens rather than a prescriptive doctrine, the study offers an original conceptual contribution to debates on religious pluralism, professional ethics, and moral agency in highly regulated educational contexts such as Indonesia.

This classroom action research addressed a persistent research gap concerning the limited availability of structured instructional processes that effectively translate philosophical and educational theory into practice at the graduate level by exploring the use of the ESSENCE instructional process—a seven-step framework designed to bridge theory and practice—in a graduate-level Philosophy and Theory of Education course. Instruction was delivered online over four consecutive weeks through synchronous sessions. The study aimed to (1) examine learning achievement following the intervention, (2) assess graduate students’ ability to design an Integrated Learning Unit synthesizing philosophical and educational theories, contemplative education, experiential learning theory, participatory action research (CPAR), and the sufficiency economy philosophy, and (3) analyze the quality of students’ reflective thinking regarding learning and self-change. Participants were 11 graduate students—all full-time university lecturers from non-education fields (4 doctoral, 7 master’s). The ESSENCE-based intervention comprised four lesson plans. Research instruments included an achievement test (Cronbach’s α = .86), a performance assessment rubric, and a reflective-journal protocol. Quantitative data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation; qualitative data were examined through content analysis. Results indicated gains in learning achievement, with mean scores increasing from 16.20 to 23.11 out of 34. Graduate students demonstrated the ability to translate theory into practice through integrated learning unit design products (𝑥̅ = 25.05 out of 30), reflecting creative synthesis of conceptual frameworks with instructional planning. Reflective-journal analysis revealed a shift from externally oriented practice toward internalized professional growth, including increased attention to deep listening and deliberate mental cultivation. Overall, the findings highlight the distinctive contribution of the ESSENCE process in supporting theory-in-action and transformative professional learning by integrating structured public reasoning, collaborative design, and reflective refinement in graduate instruction.

Abstract Autonomous weapon systems (AWS) are emerging technologies capable of selecting and engaging targets without direct human control, raising profound ethical, legal, and political concerns. Yet, little is known about how the public conceptualizes AWS, despite the relevance of public conscience for international humanitarian law and national policy-making. This study examines Austrian representations of AWS in comparison with manual weapon systems (MWS), using a within-subjects free-word association task ( N = 200) analyzed through content analysis, Hierarchical Evocation Method (HEM), Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), Mantel tests, and Procrustes analyses. Findings reveal that MWS are coherently represented around pragmatic and destructive functions, whereas the central core of the AWS representation is dominated by the category ‘Unknown’. This suggests that respondents are largely unable to anchor AWS to familiar cognitive, moral, or technological schemas. Structural analyses confirm this finding, indicating AWS and MWS to constitute distinct representational fields. These results highlight the cognitive indeterminacy of AWS, illustrating how uncertainty shapes public reasoning and raising implications for democratic legitimacy and international governance.

This essay argues that Artificial Intelligence (AI) subtly destabilizes the human-centered foundations of democracy. While AI does not disrupt formal procedures, it replaces the human judgment that historically grounds political legitimacy. Drawing on theological, literary, and philosophical frameworks, the essay conceptualizes AI as simia hominis—an imitator of human cognition without interiority or accountability. AI-generated speech and decisions create responsibility without an author, breaking the democratic requirement of traceable agency. By filtering information and preconfiguring public reason, AI reshapes the infosphere before citizens deliberate it. Democracy remains formally intact but becomes materially post-human as human judgment becomes optional. It also introduces the symposium discussion in our Conversation section, which brought together nine contributors to consider the question: as AI becomes embedded in campaigning, policymaking, information ecosystems, and surveillance, what is the most urgent challenge it poses to democracy, and which democratic institution is best equipped to address it?

Western intellectual traditions have long recognized knowledge as a decisive force shaping economic productivity, social organization, and political authority. From the Enlightenment onward, the gradual displacement of theological authority by scientific rationality raised critical questions not only about the value of knowledge, but also about its accessibility, circulation, and social purpose. Although early thinkers did not employ contemporary terms such as Open Science or knowledge commons, many articulated principles emphasizing dissemination, public reasoning, and shared intellectual resources as essential conditions for social progress. This paper offers a bird’s-eye view of the concept of knowledge as power and the ethical imperative of its wide dissemination, as articulated across Eastern and Western intellectual traditions. It traces convergent ideas from Western thinkers such as Rousseau and Marx, to Eastern philosophical lineages represented by Sankara and Chattampi Swamikal, and extends the discussion to modern theorists including Joseph Schumpeter and Alvin Toffler. By situating contemporary debates on open knowledge within these broader philosophical trajectories, the paper highlights a shared civilizational concern with knowledge as a collective resource vital for social transformation and human emancipation.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the multifaceted relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), programming languages, and ethical-political structures, emphasising how AI development both reflects and reshapes global power dynamics. When prompted about its participation in political discourse or its potential to function as a public intellectual (a hybrid human–nonhuman actor that redefines the link between technology, politics, and public reason), generative AI often expresses a willingness to engage with complex ideas, while simultaneously acknowledging its limitations in terms of original thought and its inability to advocate for social change. It tends to prioritise neutrality over taking definitive stances, which raises critical concerns. This neutrality may inadvertently contribute to inequality, particularly in the context of the divide between the Global North and the Global South. Moreover, the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, combined with AI’s growing role in decision-making processes, underscores its potential to privilege certain agendas – often those aimed at power maximisation and wealth accumulation. This paper argues that the promise of AI must be weighed against its risks, especially in high-stakes domains, and that meaningful accountability demands more than ethics-as-branding. By framing AI as a sociotechnical artifact embedded in ideology and power, the study highlights the need for global, pluralistic, and enforceable ethical frameworks in the face of accelerating digital transformation.

This article aims to examine the intellectual positioning of Murtaza Mutahharī—one of the most prominent figures of twentieth-century Iranian thought—within both historical and theoretical frameworks. Focusing on Mutahharī’s intellectual identity, innovative linguistic strategies, and public discursive interventions, the study explores his effort to construct a dialogical bridge between the classical Hawza tradition and modern academic discourse. Drawing on Edward Said’s notion of the “universal intellectual,” Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action and the public sphere, Michel Foucault’s distinction between knowledge and consciousness, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “epistemic habitus,” the article analyzes the discursive structure of Mutahharī’s thought. Another key focus of the article is the reception of Mutahharī’s works in post-1980 Turkey. His translated texts, which circulated through magazines, publishing houses, and intellectual platforms, constituted not only a private reading practice but also a discursive intervention that contributed to the intellectual transformation of Turkish Islamism. Through indicators such as editorial strategies, the publication of articles in periodicals, and growing academic interest, the study investigates the influence of Mutahharī’s ideas—particularly among younger generations—on regional formations of Islamic public reason. Methodologically, the article adopts a multilayered strategy combining qualitative discourse analysis with conceptual textual interpretation. Mutahharī’s conceptual architecture, discursive patterns, and social critiques are examined through intertextual readings within the context of Islamic intellectual history. Special attention is given to key notions such as “philosophical insight” (basīrat), “public reason,” and “intellectual responsibility.” These analyses reveal not only the nature of Mutahharī’s intellectual identity but also the dynamic interplay between discourse and its historical and social context. Ultimately, the article conceptualizes Mutahharī’s intellectual practice as a transnational form of public reason that resonates beyond Iran in both regional and interdisciplinary dimensions. His legacy is marked by an effort to transform traditional epistemic structures within the Hawza, combining epistemological reform with ethical critique. Thus, Mutahharī should be reevaluated as a critical, transformative, and participatory Islamic intellectual. From this perspective, the article calls for a renewed discussion on the role of public reason and intellectual representation within Islamic thought.

Many countries have implemented taxes on junk food, believing this to have beneficial health outcomes. The Health Protection Argument maintains that (1) junk food is harmful to health; (2) consumers should reduce their consumption; (3) taxation is an effective means of achieving this goal, and governments should implement effective measures. Consequently, governments should tax junk food for health reasons. However, the premises in this argument are problematic. The definition of junk food and the causal relationship between junk food consumption and health outcomes remain ambiguous. Without clear health standards and justified public reasons, governments should not implement restrictive measures to reduce junk food consumption. Furthermore, the effectiveness of taxation as a policy tool, as well as the justification for prioritizing tax interventions over alternative measures, calls for closer evaluation. Therefore, the conclusion that governments should impose taxes on junk food is not sufficiently justified on health grounds.

The history of India’s development after independence is inseparable from the evolution of its print media. From 1947 to 2000, newspapers and periodicals not only chronicled political and economic change but also actively shaped India’s democratic consciousness. The Indian press emerged as a bridge between state and society, simultaneously reflecting and constructing national transformation. Newspapers functioned as educators, mobilizers and mediators of public discourse and turning abstract policies into moral narratives. This study examines the press’s contribution through four major dimensions—political, social, economic and cultural—tracing its transition from nationalist advocacy to democratic accountability and later corporate transformation. By outlining these transitions, the study demonstrates that the Indian press did not merely inform but enlightened; it converted information into participation and participation into citizenship. The study concludes that the press was not a passive observer but an architect of India’s developmental democracy—sustaining public reasoning and shaping moral imagination (Jeffrey, 2000; Mehta, 1979; Schramm, 1964).

To say “I don’t know” appears at first as absence, yet this phrase contains within it a disciplined stance that resists premature conviction. Human discourse often leans toward certainty, but certainty offered without ground can corrupt inquiry and spread error. The practice of hesitation deserves close study, for it is not silence but a particular form of speech that refuses to disguise ignorance. If belief is written as Bp and knowledge as Kp, then the admission “I don’t know” can be expressed as -Bp ˄-Kp, which reveals its logical form as suspension rather than negation of truth. This article examines the virtue of uncertainty in philosophy, logic, and science, showing how hesitation can serve as a method of clarity rather than as deficiency. Socratic dialogue begins with acknowledged ignorance, modern logic admits undecidability, and probability theory advises suspension when P(p) < t, with t as the threshold for rational acceptance. To embrace uncertainty under such conditions is not to abandon truth but to keep the space open for truth to arrive. This article draws from classical and modern sources, examines with logical symbols that clarify the structure of belief, and reflects on the ethical weight of honest hesitation in domains such as science, ethics, and public reasoning. The conclusion offered is that uncertainty is a reasonable alternative to belief, a posture that, far from weakness, affirms the responsibility of thought and shields inquiry from the hazards of unwarranted assertion.