Liberalism, deliberative democracy, and "reasons that all can accept"

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 253-274

  Bohman, James ^a   Richardson, Henry S ^b  

^a SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 68249120287     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00330.x     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. We would like to thank Dennis Thompson, David Estlund, Leif Wenar, William Rehg, and Paul Weithman for their many helpful criticisms and suggestions. In thanking them, we do not mean to imply that they could accept the reasoning offered here.
2. James Bohman The coming of age of deliberative democracy Journal of Political Philosophy, 4 (1998 418 43
3. Simone Chambers Deliberative democratic theory Annual Review of Political Science, 6 (2003 307 26
4. Samuel Freeman Deliberative democracy: a sympathetic comment Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29 (2000 371 418.
5. For the more general principle of discursive justification, see Jürgen Habermas, "Discourse ethics: notes on a program of justification," Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 43-115.
6. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 166; hereafter cited as BFN.
7. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, rev. edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. li, 137; hereafter cited as PL.
8. Habermas, BFN, p. 110.
9. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 41, 91; hereafter cited as JF.
10. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 55.
11. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 66.
12. Gerald Postema Public practical reason: an archeology Social Philosophy and Policy, 12 (1995 43 86.
13. Rawls, PL, pp. xliv, xlvi, li; cf. John Rawls, "The idea of public reason revisited," The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 137; hereafter cited as IPPR.
14. Rawls, PL, pp. 137, 139, 217; JF, pp. 41, 84, 90, 141; see also IPRR, p. 137.
15. Rawls, PL, pp. 218, 226, 236.
16. JF is based on Rawls's lecture notes from the 1980s, and hence represents material that antedated both PL and IPRR: see Samuel Freeman, "Public reason and political justification," Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 215-56, at p. 221 n.8.
17. Rawls, IPRR, p. 137.
18. This expectation-based aspect of the standard is present in Rawls's other statements of the liberal principle of legitimacy in PL, see pp. 137, 140, 217, 218, 226.
19. This late use of "reasonably" to characterize the mode of acceptance required seems to sum up, in a simplifying way, the range of other formulations Rawls earlier employed: "in light of their own reason" (JF, p. 91), "in light of free public reason" (JF, p. 141), "in light of shared political values" (JF, p. 202), "in light of common reason" (JF, pp. 41, 84; PL, pp. 137, 140), and "as reasonable and rational" (PL, p. 217). In taking "reasonably" to serve this role, we follow Freeman, "Public Reason and Political Justification," p. 215.
20. Rawls, PL, pp. 385-92.
21. We here pass over certain complexities that arise from Rawls's distinction between pro tanto justification and full justification. Full justification will require each citizen to embed the candidate political view within his or her reasonable comprehensive doctrine, and that will raise further questions about what he or she can accept. About this, however, our basic position is that the grounds for reasonable hope in the possibility of such acceptance will again rest on the content of the requirements of reasonableness, now as constraining the set of comprehensive doctrines that are relevant to consider.
22. See the full accounting in Freeman, "Public reason and political justification," p. 225.
23. We do not mean to claim that Rawls misleads us when he states his criterion of reciprocity; rather, we believe that the aspect of mutuality enters in via the publicity expected, on his view, of all justification, rather than via the way the acceptability of reasons is limited. Cf. ibid., pp. 217-220, on the connection between publicity and Rawls's account of public reason.
24. Paul Weithman has asked us what happens if the requirements of reasonableness boil down to just this: that people be willing to offer one another RACAs. Our answer is that a theory that held this would remain irretrievably vague. Rawls's own interpretation of the requirements of reasonableness, of course, is far more substantive than this. See Freeman, "Public Reason and Political Justification."
25. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 139.
26. Indeed, the formulation could be seen as triply hypothetical: could people have converged upon reasons that each could accept, which reasons could have supported the political outcome in question?
27. See Richardson, Democratic Autonomy.
28. Habermas, BFN, p. 344. For criticisms of attempts to separate deliberation from bargaining and negotiation, see Jane Mansbridge, "Conflict and self-interest in deliberation," Deliberative Democracy and Its Discontents, ed. Samantha Besson and José Luis Marti (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 107-32.
29. See Seyla Behabib, The Claims of Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 145.
30. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 65.
31. Philip Pettit, "Depoliticizing democracy," Deliberative Democracy and its Discontents, ed. Besson and Marti, p. 96.
32. James Druckman Political preference formation American Political Science Review, 98 (2004 671 686.
33. Pettit slips back into the strong version of convergence when he argues for forming various sorts of commissions on just these grounds, since their decisions have to be justified on the basis of strict guidelines that have already been accepted by all sides of politics. See Pettit, "Depoliticizing democracy," p. 96. In this case actual and not hypothetical agreement plays the justifying role, and the problem of deliberation is just put back a stage. Commissions are not themselves solutions to the problem of disagreement, but rather express the results already achieved in deliberation.
34. The quoted phrase is found in Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. edn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 19, 514.
35. Rawls, PL, p. 13.
36. Joshua Cohen, "Deliberation and democratic legitimacy," Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 75.
37. Rawls, PL, p. 386.
38. For the modality of hope, see Rawls, PL, pp. 40, 172, 246, 252, 392.
39. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for raising this objection.
40. Rawls, PL, pp. 36-7.
41. "Incompletely theorized agreements Harvard Law Review, 108 (1995 1733 72.
42. See David Estlund, "Deliberation down and dirty," The Boundaries of Freedom of Expression and Order in American Democracy, ed. Thomas P. Hensley (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), pp. 49-79.
43. Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? ch. 5.
44. James Bohman Deliberative toleration Political Theory, 31 (2003 757 79
45. James Bohman Democracy and the epistemic benefits of diversity Episteme, 3 (2007 175 90.
46. For a similar emphasis on sincere argument in political deliberation, coupled with some resistance to limits on admissible reasons, see Paul J. Weithman, Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 93 ff.
47. The phrase is from Dan Sperber, "Apparently irrational beliefs," Rationality and Relativism, ed. M. Hollis and S. Lukes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982). Sperber concludes his criticism of anthropologists as follows: "In pre-relativist anthropology, Westerners thought of themselves as superior to all other people. Relativism replaced this despicable hierarchical gap by a kind of cognitive apartheid. If we cannot be superior in the same world, let each people live in its own world" (pp. 179-80).
48. "Democratic deliberation within Philosophy & Public Affairs, 29 (2000 79 107
49. Deep compromise is thus defined in Richardson, Democratic Autonomy, p. 147. On "moral compromise" as necessary in cases of deep conflict, see James Bohman, Public Deliberation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 89-93.
50. See Estlund, "Deliberation down and dirty."
51. See, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 3; and see Henry S. Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pt. V.
52. On the importance of perspective taking, see Bohman, "Deliberative toleration," and Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
53. Cf. Rawls, PL, p. 217: "The duty of civility. also involves a willingness to listen to others and a fairmindedness in deciding when accommodations to their views should reasonably be made." Paul Weithman reminds us that a notion such as "open-mindedness" or "fairmindedness" surely cannot be analyzed without reference to complex counterfactuals. In arguing that the idea of RACAs cannot do useful work for theories of liberal democracy, however, we are not arguing that there is not hard work to be done. The requirement that one offer only RACAs in political dialogue presents an illusion of simplicity. We have not suggested replacing it by anything equally simple involving "do accept."
54. For an insightful elaboration of the contrast between third-personal and second-personal normative standpoints, see Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). For a discussion of these standpoints in cosmopolitan democracy, see Bohman, Democracy Across Borders, ch. 3.
55. Here, too, Rawls provides us with precedent. On the necessary attitude of hopefulness, see, e.g., PL, pp. 40, 172, 246, 252, 392.
56. Setting out a constructive approach to democratic authority and the will of the people that does not rely on the idea of RACAs poses too many complex issues for us to take up here. For our thoughts on the issue, see Bohman, Democracy Across Borders, ch. 5 and Richardson, Democratic Autonomy, esp. ch. 4.