On two critics of justificatory liberalism: A response to wall and Lister

Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 177-212

  Gaus, Gerald ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

Author keywords

Coercion; Justificatory liberalism; Liberty; Lister; Public justification; Wall

Indexed keywords

EID: 77951882688     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: 17413060     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X09345678     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Vol. 18, Ch. 1, para. 1.
2. Stephen Darwall, The Second-person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 4.
3. Ibid., pp. 10-11, 76.
4. John Rawls, 'Justice as Fairness', in John Rawls: Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 55.
5. Steven Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue): 123-50, p. 130.
6. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), p. 52.
7. I concur with Peter Strawson that it is grand, but ultimately implausible, to depict each as a moral legislator. ('Social Morality and Individual Ideal', Philosophy Vol. 36 (2001): 10-11.).
8. I argue that all that is required is a type of endorsement in The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Part Two. The grand formulation, however, will suffice for present purposes.
9. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 126. Notation altered.
10. I develop this idea is much greater depth in The Order of Public Reason, Ch. IV.
11. See Gerald Gaus, Value and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 19, 332, 439ff.
12. Gerald Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 138ff.
13. see also Gerald Gaus, 'On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns', Social Philosophy and Policy 1 (2007): 84-119.
14. Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier, 'The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified Polity', Philosophy and Social Criticism 35 (2009): 51-76.
15. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 134.
16. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 51-2.
17. Rawls adds: 'within the framework of free institutions of a constitutional regime'.
18. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism, paperback edn. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. xviii.
19. Gaus, 'On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns', pp. 94-9.
20. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 134. Notation altered.
21. Ibid., p. 135.
22. Justificatory liberalism also endorses a universalization principle involving judgment consistency. See Gaus, Value and Justification, p. 307.
23. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 139 (emphasis added).
24. Ibid., p. 134.
25. Ibid., pp. 139ff.
26. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), p. 23 (Ch. 5, para. 3).
27. See further David Gauthier, 'Public Reason', in Public Reason, edited by Fred D'Agostino and Gerald F. Gaus (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), p. 51.
28. Compare E.W. Ewin, Virtues and Rights: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), Ch. 2.
29. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 140.
30. Gerald Gaus, 'The Place of Autonomy in Liberalism', in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, edited by John Christman and Joel Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 272-306.
31. Bernard Williams, 'Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame', in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 35-6.
32. See further Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, Ch. 3.
33. I should again stress that this internal-reasons requirement is not a metaphysical thesis about what reasons there are, but a doctrine about what reasons a person has access to.
34. See Jonathon Anomaly, 'Internal Reasons and the Ought-Implies-Can Principle', Philosophical Forum 39 (2008): 469-83.
35. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 269-319.
36. Ibid., Section 6.
37. See Jesse J. Prinz and Shaun Nichols, 'Moral Emotions', in Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, edited by J. Doris and S. Stich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
38. Jesse J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Ch. 2.
39. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 26-41.
40. Thus, according to Alan Gibbard, 'what a person does is morally wrong if and only if it is rational for him to feel guilty for doing it, and for others to resent him for doing it'.
41. See Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 42 (emphasis in the original).
42. Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 87-92.
43. On the way in which unjustified childhood beliefs can become justified adult beliefs, see Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 23-5.
44. Nichols, Sentimental Rules, pp. 93-4.
45. As I have put it, following Piaget, the objective moral agent 'decenters'. See Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 198-203.
46. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 144.
47. See Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 118.
48. Christopher Eberle, Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 133.
49. See Paul Rozin, 'The Process of Moralization', Psychological Science 10 (1999): 218-21.
50. A variety of findings on this point are reported in Shaun Nichols, 'Emotions, Norms, and the Genealogy of Fairness', Politics, Philosophy and Economics (forthcoming).
51. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), pp. 139-40.
52. See for example, Rainer Frost, 'Political Liberty' in Autonomy and Challenges to Liberalism, p. 240, note 24.
53. Steffen Ganghof has raised what I believe to be similar worries. See his 'Must Democracy Be Supermajoritarian? Justificatory Liberalis and Political Institutions', manuscript.
54. For example, Gaus, 'On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns', pp. 89-92.
55. For example, Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 162-8.
56. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 379-97.
57. Gaus, 'The Place of Autonomy in Liberalism', pp. 274ff.
58. For example, Gerald Gaus, 'Liberal Neutrality: A Radical and Compelling Principle', in Perfectionism and Neutrality, edited by George Klosko and Steven Wall (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 145.
59. Gaus and Vallier, 'The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified Polity', Section 2.1.
60. Gaus, Value and Justification, Section 17.
61. Recall that I am concerned with social morality, not all uses of moral terms. On the distinction between personal and social norms, see Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Ch. 1.
62. As Bicchieri notes, some moral norms can be understood as personal norms, but norms of interpersonal justice are social norms with social functions.
63. See Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Ch. 2.
64. The quote is from Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 132.
65. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), pp. 130ff.
66. This is the view that Susan Wolff disputes and which Scheffler endorses. See Susan Wolff, 'Moral Saints', Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 436.
67. See Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 381ff.
68. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 162-6.
69. Stanley I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 87.
70. Gaus, 'Liberal Neutrality', pp. 150ff.
71. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 388ff.
72. See John W. Chapman, 'Toward a Theory of Human Nature and Dynamics', in Nomos VXIII: Human Nature in Politics, edited by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1977), pp. 292-319.
73. Zevedei Barbu, Problems of Historical Psychology (London: Routledge, 1960).
74. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 383-6.
75. Wall, 'On Justificatory Liberalism' (in this issue), p. 130.
76. Benn, A Theory of Freedom, p. 87.
77. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Vol. 3, Bk. 5, Ch. 9, Section 1.
78. 'In practical matters, the burthen of proof is supposed to be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition, either any limitation of the general freedom of human action, or any disqualification or disparity of privilege affecting one person or kind of persons, as compared with others.'
79. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J.M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Vol. 21, Ch. 1, Section 3.
80. 'Liberty should be the norm, coercion always needs some special justification.' Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 9.
81. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, edited by Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 44.
82. Ibid., p. 112.
83. Many followers of Rawls ignore this principle, and wrongly insist that for Rawls the only reasons for leaving people free are stated in his first principle of justice.
84. See, for example, Benn, A Theory of Freedom, pp. 87ff.
85. John Kleinig, Paternalism (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), pp. 5-14.
86. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 420-3.
87. Gerald Gaus, 'Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State: Justificatory Liberalism's Classical Tilt', Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 27 (Winter 2010): 233-75.
88. Lister, 'Public Justification and the Limits of State Action' (in this issue), p. 165 (emphasis added).
89. Ibid., pp. 163ff.
90. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 66-70.
91. Lister, 'Public Justification and the Limits of State Action' (in this issue), p. 164.
92. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 420-3.
93. Lister, 'Public Justification and the Limits of State Action' (in this issue), p. 162.
94. See Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 184-91.
95. Gaus, Value and Justification, pp. 269-75.
96. See Gaus, 'On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns'.
97. See Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, Part 3.
98. See Gaus, 'On Justifying the Moral Rights of the Moderns'.
99. This is a simplification. In recent works, I have argued that informal evolutionary mechanisms may allow us to select from the eligible set even though those mechanisms have not been justified. But that point is not at issue here.
100. I am simplifying here, and restricting myself to legislation concerning justice, not policy aiming at efficiency or the provision of public goods.
101. See Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, pp. 267-71.
102. See further Gerald Gaus, On Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008), pp. 191-202.
103. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, p. 270.
104. Lister, 'Public Justification and the Limits of State Action' (in this issue), p. 159.
105. Ibid. (emphasis added).
106. Optimality is not important to what follows; I shall henceforth omit it. See Gaus, On Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Ch. 2.
107. This is merely for the purposes of exposition; a cardinal analysis is not required. Lister, 'Public Justification and the Limits of State Action' (in this issue), p. 162.
108. Amartya Sen, 'Maximization and the Act of Choice', in his Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 184.
109. A similar view has been attributed to me by Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 220. I consider these matters in much greater depth in The Order of Public Reason, section 23.
110. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 48.
111. Samuel Freeman, 'Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism Is Not a Liberal View', Philosophy and Public Affairs 30(2): 105-51.