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1
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84884062670
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Princeton: University Press, especially Chs 1-3
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For discussion of this point, see Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: University Press, 1990), especially Chs 1-3.
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(1990)
Justice and the Politics of Difference
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Young, I.M.1
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2
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0003624191
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Columbia: Columbia University Press, especially
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This is, as Rawls calls it, the fact of reasonable pluralism. See this Political Liberalism (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1993), especially 55-68.
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(1993)
Political Liberalism
, pp. 55-68
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3
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52849134147
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note
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Rawls extends the ideal of public reason to issues closely related to matters of constitutional design or basic justice (ibid., 137). This is an important extension, but it nevertheless fails to go far enough. Ordinary legislation sometimes addresses issues which concern neither the essentials of constitutional design nor basic political justice, yet so impact upon the common public good that the ideal of public reason needs plausibly to be extended to cover them. Many of the issues addressed by ordinary environmental legislation come to mind.
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4
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84936068266
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Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
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Political Liberalism, op. cit., 226. It is important to emphasize that how judges ought to reason when deciding fundamental political issues in a legal context is part of what is at stake in any liberal account of public reason. Rawls's view of judicial reason resembles the views of Ronald Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman. It is Dworkinian insofar as a Rawlsian judge, like a properly Herculean Dworkinian judge, will always find judicial reason autonomous, complete and determinate. However, Rawls limits liberal public reason and hence judicial reason to political conceptions of justice, whereas Dworkin permits the inclusion of moral conceptions more or less comprehensive and general. Rawls's view resembles Ackerman's insofar as Rawls understands the role of the Supreme Court to be enforcing against episodic majoritarian threats a higher constitutional law, the authority of which rests ultimately on the reasoned will of the people as a single body politic. See Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986);
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(1986)
Law's Empire
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Dworkin, R.1
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6
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0347873666
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The Idea of Public Reason Revisited
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The first revision came in the Special Introduction to the 1996 paperback edition of Political Liberalism, 1-lvii. Further revisions came in "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", University of Chicago Law Review, 64 (1997), 765-807.
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(1997)
University of Chicago Law Review
, vol.64
, pp. 765-807
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52849117007
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note
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Rawls has not clearly addressed the need for some asymmetry in the ideal with respect to citizens and public officials. Unlike citizens, who must in due course be able to produce public reasons for their positions and votes, public officials presumably must be able to give public reasons for their positions and votes at the time they publicly take and cast them.
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An "essential feature of public reason is that its political conceptions should be complete": for "unless a political conception is complete, it is not an adequate framework of thought in light of which the discussion of fundamental political questions can be carried out". - "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 777.
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52849093163
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note
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Rawls's wide view, aside from my own reservations, needs clarification in two respects. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent the wide view permits judges or other officials or agents of the body politic publicly to invoke non-public reasons for their official positions on political issues. Second, it is not clear whether and to what extent the preservation of civic peace and comity functions as a constraint on public appeals to non-public reasons.
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note
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It should be clear, at this point, that the ideal of public reason is, for Rawls, an ideal that citizens and officials may honour, at least in principle, without ever actually talking to or engaging one another directly. The ideal demands that citizens and officials submit to a justificatory test any exercise of political power with respect to a fundamental political issue. But this they may do alone in the privacy of their kitchen or office.
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11
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0010932750
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Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusions of the Religious
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Philip Quinn disagrees. He defends a sort of supererogatory version of Rawls's wide view of public reason, arguing that good citizenship requires as a matter of duty only compliance with the law, nonviolence and the like. He takes as his starting point, however, a "citizen as subject" ideal, one at odds with, and far weaker than, the Rawlsian ideal of citizens as free and equal members of an autonomous body politic. See Philip Quinn, "Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusions of the Religious", Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 69 (1995), 35-56.
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(1995)
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
, vol.69
, pp. 35-56
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Quinn, P.1
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52849124105
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Political Liberalism
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See Political Liberalism, op. cit., 226, and also "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 771, where Rawls gives perhaps his clearest, but still somewhat opaque, statement regarding sincerity and the ideal of public reason.
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Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
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52849120997
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note
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This case must be distinguished from the following, within which the great goods underlying the ideal of public reason are realized to an adequate degree. A majority of citizens publicly take, and vote for, a position on a fundamental political issue for which they each sincerely affirm some public reason; yet they do not all, or do not even generally, sincerely affirm the same public reason. In this case, like that mentioned in the text, the majority of citizens do not sincerely affirm a single, shared public reason for the position they enact collectively through their individual votes. However, the majority of citizens in this case do each affirm sincerely some public reason for the position they enact. In this case, then, citizens may view the outcome of majoritarian democratic processes as the result of a collective exercise of the public reason they share as citizens.
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52849088598
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note
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A third sincerity requirement would require that citizens publicly give their non-public reasons for their positions on fundamental political issues. While the wide view of public reason permits citizens to give such reasons at any time, it ought not require them to do so. There is, within political liberalism, nothing dishonest about citizens withholding their non-public reasons for their positions on fundamental political issues. Liberal democratic citizens enter public political activity fully aware that they may each and all possess deep non-public reasons for their positions on political issues. See Political Liberalism, op. cit., 241-4. There is, of course, no reason for political liberalism to deny that citizens may advance certain goods, realize certain virtues, even express a kind of political respect for fellow citizens, insofar as they give others their non-public reasons for the positions they take and votes they cast. The point is just that citizens need not so confess their non-public reasons to realize the intrinsic goods or political virtues of, or express the form of political respect central to, political liberalism.
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This weakest requirement itself has a stronger and weaker version. The stronger requires that citizens would have been moved by the public reason(s) they intend to give others in public political activity. The weaker requires only that they would have been moved by some public reason(s) they have identified. For reasons which should be clear from the text, Rawls's political liberalism requires only the weaker version.
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52849107205
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note
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Of course, liberal public reason may rule out certain resolutions of a fundamental political issue, while leaving its final resolution indeterminate. Taking or voting for a position clearly excluded by liberal public reason is always a violation of the ideal of public reason, even when the issue remains finally indeterminate within liberal public reason alone.
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52849103650
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The fact that some citizens find liberal public reason incomplete with respect to some fundamental political issues is by itself no objection to Rawls's view. Some citizens may so find liberal public reason because they are poor reasoners or because they affirm an impoverished, if generically liberal, conception of political justice. The aim of this essay is to render plausible the stronger claim that with respect to some fundamental political issues many, and perhaps sometimes a majority, of citizens and officials will find liberal public reason incomplete, notwithstanding their competency as reasoners and the substantively rich nature of their respective conceptions of political justice.
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52849101842
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note
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Indeed, it is just this point that Rawls seems not to understand. He devotes a great deal of space to showing, successfully I think, that the content of liberal public reason bears on nearly all, if not all, the fundamental political issues confronted by pluralist liberal democracies such as the United States. In each case, however, he fails to show what his account of public reason requires him to show, namely that the content of public reason will prove rich enough to enable the majority of citizens to reach a determinate and reasoned resolution of such issues without appeal to non-public reasons. One gets the sense that Rawls fails to do so because he does not want to be seen as defending any particular stand within public reason on the issues he cites for illustrative purposes only. See, e.g., "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 779, note 38. But he must do exactly this if he is successfully to defend his claim that liberal public reason is indeed autonomous and complete.
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note
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Rawls's invocation of democratic institutions is of no help here. The "stand-off" within public reason here is not among citizens each of whom is able to reach and vote on his or her own determinate and reasoned judgment, but rather within citizens unable to do so (within public reason).
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52849124705
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note
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Most of these values are mentioned by Rawls as generically liberal political values belonging to the content of liberal public reason. See "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 776, 778-80.
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52849113165
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note
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Here it is worth remembering that Rawls's "justice as fairness" is but one member of the family of generically liberal political conceptions of justice. While the "original position" may provide those committed to "justice as fairness" with a mechanism for ordering conflicting or competing political values or ends in a wide range of new and difficult cases, not every liberal conception of justice will have such an internal mechanism for ordering competing or conflicting political values or ends.
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52849103344
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note
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This point may be extended to internal mechanisms such as the"original position" which are used to order competing or conflicting political values and ends in new and difficult cases. The merits of such mechanisms depend to a large extent on their ability to generate on a case by case basis the same results antecedently identified as correct on other grounds.
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52849114226
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note
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The problem here is not that Kathy is motivated by non-public reasons. As I have argued above, the only motivation requirement imposed by the ideal of public reason is counter-factual. On fundamental political issues citizens and officials must have for the positions they take at least one public reason which they can in good faith imagine themselves to be motivated by in the absence of actually motivating non-public reasons. The problem in the example given is that Kathy has only one reason for ordering the relevant political values as she does when she confronts her fundamental political issue de novo within public reason alone; namely, only by so ordering the relevant political values will she arrive at the position she prefers for non-public reasons. This, of course, is not a good and sufficient public reason, for it could not possibly motivate her to take the position she takes in the absence of actually motivating non-public reasons.
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See "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 777-8
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See "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited", op. cit., 777-8.
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52849137146
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note
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Of course, for every fundamental political issue that turns on the order of competing or conflicting such political values, there will be some resolutions which are unreasonable when viewed within public reason alone - namely those at odds with the order of political values not put in competition or conflict by the issue at hand. Rawls's proviso does do some work insofar as it disallows citizens and officials from ignoring the demands of liberal public reason entirely whenever liberal public reason provides good and sufficient reasons for thinking only that several positions are reasonable but none more so than any other.
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52849122036
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note
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Rawls and others have suggested that animal rights issues are not fundamental political issues properly speaking, as they do not concern basic political relations among citizens. But this is incorrect insofar as animal rights issues bear on property rights questions. It is a fundamental political question - one concerning constitutional essentials and/or basic justice - whether individuals or corporations ought to be able to acquire property rights in, say, any individual primate belonging to one of the species of "great apes". To the extent that many animal rights activists raise just this issue, they raise a fundamental political issue to which Rawls's ideal of public reason must apply.
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0003581882
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London: St. Martin's Press
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These reasons would turn on the similarities of capacity, behaviour and interest between human beings and the members of such species. See Paola Cavilieri and Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project (London: St. Martin's Press, 1993). I'm indebted to Andrew Williams for this point and reference.
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(1993)
The Great Ape Project
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Cavilieri, P.1
Singer, P.2
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52849121717
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note
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Andrew Williams has suggested to me that this need not be so, for citizens may resolve issues with respect to which liberal public reason is incomplete through some sort of decision procedure, perhaps flipping a coin, within which non-public reasons play no resolution-determinative role. Indeed, he suggests that there may be good public reasons for resolving such issues in this way rather than through resolution-determinative appeals to non-public reasons. This is an important thought which needs more attention than I can devote to it here. Let me just note that if there are good public reasons for so resolving such issues, they must somehow connect such an arbitrary decision procedure with the values of political autonomy and liberal legitimacy and establish these values as of greater weight than the value of a unified moral personality.
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52849116389
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To the issues discussed we could add a range of issues which cannot be resolved in a reasoned and determinate way without taking one or another general view of human nature, a matter with respect to which public reason is surely inconclusive. Whether it is reasonable to suppose that through "volunteerism" and a "culture of charity""alone a liberal capitalist society might honour its commitment to securing for all citizens a basic social minimum is a matter which surely depends on how one views human nature. Whether it is double-jeopardy civilly to commit repeat sex offenders upon completion of their penal sentences is likewise a matter which depends upon the overall view of human nature one affirms, which again is surely a matter with respect to which public reason is inconclusive.
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