Political liberalism holds that some kinds of disagreement give rise to a duty of restraint. On this view, citizens ought to limit the considerations they invoke in political advocacy to those that meet a certain kind of publicity requirement. Many of the arguments for political liberalism's duty of restraint contain a grain of truth. But properly understood, these arguments instead support the duty of responsiveness, which directs citizens to respond to disagreement in (...) a very different way than the duty of restraint recommends. (shrink)

This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, I explain the foundational differences between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, despite the fact that Rawls maintains the Two Principles of Justice in both works. Moreover, I expound why, in view of the fact that reasonable people would subscribe to different comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, Rawls needs a new foundation for social stability in a constitutional liberal democracy. I explain the connection between Rawls’ ideas (...) of overlapping consensus, political conception, and public reason. Moreover, I explain Rawls’ idea of “duty of civility” and the condition under which a controversial issue can be legitimately resolved by way of voting. Further, instead of pursuing Rawls’ idea that bioethical issues could be resolved by way of “reasonable balancing” of “political values,” I turn to T. M. Scanlon’s contractualist approach, which is congenial to Rawlsian political liberalism and can resolve moral, political, and bioethical issues. In the second part of this chapter, I try to resolve the problem of medical assistance in dying by using Thomson’s/Scanlon’s idea that permissibility is not affected by intention. I deal with the Slippery Slope Arguments, the argument from abuse, and the argument from pressure on elderly patients who might feel obligated to die. Finally, I argue that Scanlonian contractualism is preferable to utilitarianism, and that contractualism can defuse the problem from pressure which has plagued utilitarianism. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess John Rawls' repeated claim that the duty of civility is only a moral duty and should not be enforced by law. In the first part of the paper, I examine and reject the view that Rawls' position may be due to the practical difficulties that the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might entail. I thus claim that Rawls' position must be driven by deeper normative reasons grounded in a conception (...) of free speech. In the second part of the paper, I therefore examine various arguments for free speech and critically assess whether they are consistent with Rawls' political liberalism. I first focus on the arguments from truth and self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I argue, rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I claim, can be justified instead on the basis of Rawls' political conception of the person and of the two moral powers. However, Rawls' wide view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls' opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition, I claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of unconstrained freedom of speech grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy. Yet, I conclude, while public reason and the duty of civility are essential to political liberalism, unconstrained freedom of speech is not. Rawls and political liberals could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech, and endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, while remaining faithful to political liberalism. (shrink)

My aims in this paper are twofold: (1) to develop an account of a kind of respect for persons as reasoners which is motivated by John Rawls’ defense of reasonable pluralism on epistemic grounds, and (2) to demonstrate that this kind of respect vindicates a stronger civic duty to incorporate nonpublic comprehensive doctrines in public deliberation than Rawls provides in his account of public reason. I begin with a discussion of Rawls’ account of the epistemic sources of reasonable (...) class='Hi'>disagreement – the burdens of judgment – and argue that this idea provides support for an important conception of respect currently absent in scholarship about norms of public deliberation. I then outline the conception of persons as reasoners and the corollary duties of respect that follow from the recognition of persons as reasoners. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this conception of respect for the idea of public reason. (shrink)

For many contemporary liberal political philosophers the appropriate response to the facts of pluralism is the requirement of public reasonableness, namely that individuals should be able to offer to their fellow citizens reasons for their political actions that can generally be accepted.This article finds wanting two possible arguments for such a requirement: one from a liberal principle of legitimacy and the other from a natural duty of political civility. A respect in which conversational restraint in the (...) face of political agreement involves incivility is sketched.The proceduralist view which commends substantive disagreement within agreement on procedures is briefly outlined, as is the possible role for civic virtue on this view. (shrink)

The political liberalism of Rawls and Larmore is presented as uniquely able to solve the problems of modern political theory. In the face of a plurality of reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good, a legitimate liberal state can legislate solely on the basis of a modular conception of justice affirmed from within each reasonable conception. However, it is argued that this view, while restrictive, has to permit the promotion of its own pre-conditions. This demanding duty of civic (...) restraint requires citizens who have been educated for citizen virtue in the context of associational life in civil society. This challenge to expand liberalism to cover its own preconditions at the level of a moral background culture, has usually been levelled by one kind of republican/communitarian (Charles Taylor) or so-called "ethical liberals". It can be met by the adoption of a liberal republicanism that operates within the constraints of Rawls' political liberalism but nevertheless explains and justifies why such a view must treat traditional republican themes such as active citizenship and the importance of associational life. The solution lies in treating these values as option values, in a sense that is explained. (shrink)

What legal rights and duties immigrants should have is among the most ferociously debated topics in the politics of liberal societies today. However, as this article will show, there is remarkably little disagreement of great magnitude among political theorists and philosophers of immigration on the rights and duties of resident immigrants (even in contrast to the closely related philosophical discussion of justice in immigrant admissions). Specifically, this article will survey philosophical positions both on what legal rights immigrants (documented (...) permanent residents, guestworkers, and undocumented immigrants) ought to have (including to citizenship and against deportation), and on what liberal societies may justly do to require immigrants to integrate. This article will reveal that there is a substantial, growing gap between contemporary politics worldwide and what the moral norms of liberalism seem to entail concerning the rights and duties of immigrants. (shrink)

In his new book, Constitutional Essentials, Frank Michelman provides a splendid elaboration and defense of ‘the constitutional theory of political liberalism’ implicit in John Rawls’s classic work, Political Liberalism. In this essay, we make some observations about what a difference 30 years makes, comparing the political and constitutional climate in which Rawls wrote and published Political Liberalism in 1993 with the climate in which Michelman wrote and published this exegesis of it. We focus on (1) changes (...) in our circumstances of pluralism, including the accentuation of polarization and unreasonable views, and (2) the simultaneous breakdown of trust in the Supreme Court authoritatively to resolve disputes concerning constitutional essentials. Throughout, we acknowledge and seek to reckon with the possibility that Michelman may have given Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy its fullest, most coherent account just at the moment when the possibility of realizing it seems to be passing. (shrink)

The victims of severe injustice are allowed to employ disruption and violence to seek political change. This article argues for this conclusion from within Rawlsian political liberalism, which, however, has been criticised for allegedly imposing public reason’s suffocating norms of civility on the oppressed. It develops a novel view of the applicability of public reason in non-ideal circumstances – the “no self-sacrifice view” – that focuses on the excessive costs of following public reason when suffering from severe injustice. (...) On this view, those treated in what Rawls describes as less than a reasonably just way are relieved of the duty of public reason and therefore entitled to employ disruption and violence. In contrast, their privileged fellow citizens must still obey public reason’s civility unless they have been authorised by the oppressed to join their fight. This article also starts exploring from within political liberalism the normative principles governing disruptive and violent protest. (shrink)

Political liberals typically hold that reasonable citizens should not form political associations (e.g. political parties) with unreasonable citizens. This is because unreasonable citizens are unlikely to conform to the duty of civility—the duty to be able, and willing, to use public reasons in their public political deliberations. Here I argue that a general prohibition on political associations with the unreasonable can undermine the fair value of their political liberties. This is because unreasonable (...) citizens can grow up in epistemic environments that make it difficult to be reasonable, and so to direct citizens to not associate with them can deprive citizens from certain social backgrounds the equal opportunity for political influence. I propose instead that political liberals should distinguish between unreasonable citizens who are disposed to support de re publicly justifiable laws and policies and unreasonable citizens who support illegitimate laws and policies. Reasonable citizens may form political associations with the former group, but not the latter group. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the nature and value of political disagreement, with reference to contemporary work in political philosophy. I will attempt to answer the following questions: Why do we disagree? Is political disagreement a good thing? Do we have a duty to disagree? Should we expect consensus or mere compromise in politics? When is civil disobedience a justified way to express disagreement with the law? Is consensus a threat to democracy?

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are almost universally agreed upon, (...) such as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed that, because political, ideological distinctions between kinds of violence arise from the creation of moral equivalences to the commonsense view of violence, political ideology is the source of disagreement. The second chapter argues that the concept of violence and of the political are essentially contested concepts. Gallie’s criteria for what counts as an essentially contested concept are utilized in order to argue that violence is an essentially contested concept at the level of the political, though not at the level of the commonsense view of violence. In fact, the paradigmatic cases that the commonsense view of violence pertains to serve as the core cases that are then interpreted as kinds of violence at the ideological level. To define violence as altogether wrong, or to define kinds of violence as acceptable and others as wrong is itself a politically ideological move to make, such as when liberalism defines its own uses of violence as justified and legitimate, and its enemy’s violence as unjustifiable and illegitimate. The World Health Organization and Bufacchi’s definitions for violence are presented, as are the definition for terroristic violence defined by Nagel. Erlenbusch’s critique of a liberal view, such as that of Nagel and the World Health Organization, is addressed as a reflection on the fact that, beyond the commonsense view of violence, violence is an essentially contested concept for which an ideologically, politically non-neutral definition is unlikely. The third chapter outlines numerous definitions produced by various philosophers, historians, and theorists, such as Machiavelli, Arendt, Hobbes, Kant, Treitschke, Weber, Bakunin, Sorel, Žižek, and Benjamin. The definitions produced by each demonstrates that person’s political ideological assumptions. Their definitions demonstrate an ongoing disagreement, in the sense of Rancière’s formulation for what counts as a disagreement in that each theorist defines kinds of violence under the yoke of their own political ideology. They all might agree that a single act is violent, under the commonsense view of violence, but they disagree concerning what kind of violence it is. So, though they may point to the same events and actions as examples of violence, what they mean fundamentally differs, and this means that they disagree. Their disagreement arises due to their respective political ideologies. This disagreement shows that there is no neutral justification for the neutrality of a state, particularly if a neutral state must defend itself. The state is instead defined in historically contextual terms of how the state relates to kinds of violence, and the distinctions between kinds of violence are not themselves politically, ideologically neutral. So, the concept of violence, beyond the commonsense view, is an essentially contested concept for which a non-neutral definition is unlikely. Beyond the commonsense view, political ideology is inextricably bound up within distinctions between kinds of violence. The fourth chapter then examines arguments on the question of whether nonviolence counts as a kind of violence. If distinctions between kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally defined, and nonviolence is defined as distinct from violence, then it follows that nonviolence is an essentially contested concept for which no non-neutral definition is possible, at least beyond a commonsense view of nonviolence. A commonsense view of nonviolence is defined as the assumption that nonviolence is not violent in the way that the commonsense view defines violence. That is, nonviolence occurs when there is no action or event that most people would define as a violent one. Definitions for nonviolence, civil disobedience, nonviolent political actions, and nonviolent direct actions are then outlined. These definitions aim at showing that the doctrine of nonviolence does not merely refer to nonviolent acts, but to a strategy that is a means to defeating violence. Given that what counts as the nonviolence that defeats violence is ideologically a matter of disagreement, nonviolence, in this sense, can count as a kind of violence. The fifth chapter concludes, raising questions concerning how violence can be valued, the degree to which a state cannot neutrally justify its neutrality, and the degree to which, beyond the commonsense view of violence, there ever could be agreement concerning what counts as kinds of violence. 1 In this dissertation, I draw on a number of ideas/passages that appeared earlier in my paper “The Efficacy of Scapegoating and Revolutionary Violence," in Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions: A Journal of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, ed. William Sweet, 10(2014), 203-219. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to draw on this material here. (shrink)

Mirrors for princes, in general, give advices to the rulers about the subtleties of political art. Another aim of these books is to define and explain the administration of the state and the duties of rulers based on experience. In consequence of this they reflect the practical ethics of the period in which they were written. As such, they resemble practical handbooks written for rulers. Another point regarding the mirrors for princes works in which the political understanding of (...) the era can be observed is that they generally use sacred texts in order to prove the political legitimacy or invalidity of the power, as well as the rightfulness or the unlawfulness of the claims to the throne. Evidences from the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth literature was almost always used to support such advocated opinions. In fact, during the Middle Ages when religion and politics were considered coupled, it was unthinkable that religious elements should not be included in the works of state administration. The important point here is that the verses and ḥadīths were sometimes removed from their contexts and interpreted and explained in a way to support the ideology of the author or the ruler whom the author presented his work. In this study, we will try to reveal the subjects in which the verses and ḥadīths used in the mirrors for princes, which is a genre that has emerged within the Islamic culture and civilization. Thus, we aim to prepare a background for the future studies, which will focus on a specific verse or ḥadīth.Summary: The first political splits in Islamic history occurred immediately after the death of prophet Muḥammad. These differences were resolved by the agreement of the majority of Muslims on Abu Bakr's name. Until the second half of the rule of the third caliph ʿUthmān, Muslims came together around the unifying power of the idea of conquest. Nevertheless, substantially as a result of economically based problems the period of tranquility in Islamic society came to an end and was replaced by disputes. Disputes turned into conflict and ultimately seperation fused with the massacre of ʿUthmān in the capital Medina turned into a big fire with the Battles of the Camel and Ṣiffīn, the emergence of Khārijīs, the formation of the Shia and the deepening of the intellectual divisions after the all of these. Islamic history has witnessed a clash of different religious views and beliefs. along with deepening of intellectual disagreements as a result of political debatesIn the Islamic political thought, especially the first two centuries process was formed around the views of the jurists, muḥaddiths and theologians. The first sources used by those who tried to justify their opinion in the differences of opinion experienced during this period were the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature which Muslims accepted as the determining factor in all their acts. The views based on the Qur'an and the hadiths, which are the two main sources of Islamic religion, had been used to influence the people, legitimize the actions and refute the claims of the opponents. On the other hand the sort who gave direction to political thought changed and political thought adhered a new path with Turks and Persians served as bureaucrats and soldiers and took an active position in the state. Especially Persians carried the culture of advice to Islamic thought, which is the product of both Greek and Hind civilization. Such books had brought in the İslamic society with translation movements began in the Umayyad period and peaked with the Bayt al-Ḥikma in the Abbasid period. Together with these books, the ideas of these civilizations on ideal state administration, politics and morality were recognized by Muslim scholars.These type of works, which are famous in terms of Islamic thought as mirrors for princes, have been written by Muslim scholars since the middle of the eighth century. Mirrors for princes are political, moral and religious content books that gives the rulers practical advice to maintain their power in accordance with the religious orders and prohibitions, and to the consent of Allāh’s who grant them this authority and people which appointed for their administration. Mirrors for princes are mostly theoretical books since they are mostly focused on what should be. In addition, since they are written for names that currently hold power, they are centered on how the rulers can maintain and increase their power and with which practices the state will maintain its existence for a longer period. The basic point of political thought and political interpretation are concepts and definitions. When the concept meaning of a word is mentioned, it is generally considered that there is a general definition. However, the concepts reflect the meaning that the user assigns to him in the context of his thoughts, perceptions, criticisms, explanations and analyzes. Concepts such as fair, honest, brave, hero, beautiful, rich, good and clean express what the person imposes on the meaning. In other words, everyone’s experience determines the content of the concept so far. The meaning of the concepts varies with the age and its user of that concept. Even concepts such as justice, merit and consultation can change meaning in different periods and geographies. The concepts, which are often used to facilitate understanding, are sometimes used to judge, to mold or mislead the interlocutor. In this context, it is imperative to enter the mind of the user in order to make concept analysis.In Islamic civilization, the principles of management are explained with concepts. The idiosyncrasies that Muslims expect from an ideal ruler are defined as justice, consultation, merit, trust and legitimacy and a broad corpus has been written about the concepts related to the administration, especially those mentioned. One type of this corpus is mirrors for princes.In Islamic history, there are many Mirrors for princes who are written in different time periods by names coming from different geographies and different backgrounds. Although the advice given in Mirrors for princes indicate a great similarity to each other, the preferred arguments and examples in the foundation of the counsel are different. While the persons in active politics mostly based their opinions on political arguments, scholars with scientific tradition supported their advices with religious arguments.Verses are the leading religious elements highlighted in Mirrors for princes. While explaining the concepts and emphasizing the importance of the advices, many verses have been exploited. Some verses are used only by one author, while some verses are the subject of their work by many authors. In the same way, ḥadīths and the sentences accepted as ḥadīths were also used to reinforce the emphasis and meaning. At this point, sometimes the context of the verses and ḥadīths were not taken care of. In this study, we aim to address the use of religious elements.In the literature, different opinions have emerged about who is ülü’l-emr and the limits of obedience to ülü’l-emr that used describe the names of senior executives and leaders of society. The reason for the difference is that each sect or religious school provides an interpretation on the basis of grounding its own views in explaining the verse. Justice is the most emphasized concept among the advices given to the rulers in mirrors for princes. Justice, which is shown as the most important feature of a sovereign, has been regarded as extremely important for the state to existences until the Doomsday. In addition, justice has been described as the most important condition for the maintenance of the state/sovereign authority. Consultation was important to make the right decision.Verses and ḥadīths were used in the explanations about the personal characteristics of the sovereign. Some features such as being compassionate, keeping promise, controlling anger, patience, honesty, blessing, extravagance, self-esteem, break a promise, revoke a promise and arrogance have become the subject of politics. When the mirrors for princes are considered as a whole, it is seen that religion and state are considered as inseparable twin brothers, taken one step further the understanding that accepts religion and the world as brothers especially is a product of the old Persian tradition. In this understanding, religion was accepted as the root and was given the duty of its patronage to political authority. It is seen that in the Mirrors for princes verses and ḥadīths hold a significant amount. As the reason for this can be said that along with religion takes place on the basis of morality, the authors of the Mirrors for princes, which put deep meanings on the relationship between religion and the state in the period that we are dealing with, consider both institutions to be complementary and integrative. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

Many accounts of political liberalism contend that reasonable citizens ought to refrain from invoking their disputed comprehensive beliefs in public deliberation about constitutional essentials. Critics maintain that this ‘refraining condition’ puts pressure on citizens to entertain skepticism about their own basic beliefs, and that accounts of political liberalism committed to it are resultantly committed to a position – skepticism about conceptions of the good – that is itself subject to reasonable disagreement. Discussions in the epistemology of (...) class='Hi'>disagreement have tended to reinforce this critique, which has come to be known as political liberalism’s skeptical problem. This paper responds to the skeptical problem by providing a novel rationale to the refraining condition, which I call the burden of total experience. Such a burden emphasizes that full communication of the basis of individual belief is not always possible, even between epistemic peers. Accepting the burden of total experience allows individuals to recognize the reasonableness of the refraining condition in a way that stops the slide to skepticism, all while avoiding, or so I argue, relying on a problematically controversial explainer for disagreement. (shrink)

For years business ethics has limited the moral duties of enterprises to negative duties. Over the last decade it has been argued that positive duties also befall commercial agents, at least when confronted with large scale public problems and when governments fail. The argument that enterprises have positive duties is often grounded in the political nature of commercial life. It is argued that agents must sometimes take over governmental responsibilities. The German republican tradition argues along these lines as does (...) Nien-Hé Hsieh. Agents in commercial life are bound by positive duties because at some point they become citizens that must take on the responsibilities of the state. In this paper we leave undisputed the claim that corporations must acknowledge positive duties. However, we demonstrate that the political grounding fails, at least in the sense that this theory insufficiently acknowledges a long standing liberal tradition that vindicates apolitical markets and clear borderlines between politics and economics. We carve out an alternative route to the grounding of one specific positive duty—the duty to further justice. Our argument is based on the moral nature of commercial agents and tries to demonstrate that the duty to further justice ensues from liberalism. Taking a Kantian perspective, it conceptualizes the duty to further justice as a moral duty, orientated toward the political domain. It is grounded in the obligation to attain moral autonomy in the civil condition. (shrink)

Women continue to be in charge of most childrearing; men continue to be responsible for most breadwinning. There is no consensus on whether this state of affairs, and the informal norms that encourage it, are matters of justice to be tackled by state action. Feminists have criticized political liberalism for its alleged inability to embrace a full feminist agenda, inability explained by political liberals’ commitment to the ideal of state neutrality. The debate continues on whether neutral states can (...) accommodate two feminist demands: to enact policies aimed at dismantling the feminization of caregiving, especially childrearing, and to compensate women for some of the disadvantages they incur by being primary care-givers. I contribute to this debate with three arguments in support of policies meant to de-gender care-giving and compensate care-givers. The first appeals to equality of opportunity to positions of advantage and justifies policies that prevent or mitigate statistical discrimination and implicit biases. The second draws attention to a possible causal relationship between the specialization of women in early childcare and misogyny; since the latter is incompatible with political liberal justice, it yields the conclusion that political liberals ought to further investigate the causal hypothesis with the aim of establishing or refuting it. The third argument concludes that legitimate childrearing prohibits adults from socializing children or, at least girls, into gender norms; it justifies duties of justice on the side of parents, educators, and economic agents, and state policies meant to offset foreseeable breaches of some of these duties. (shrink)

Since the publication of his A Theory of Justice (TJ), John Rawls has revolutionized political philosophy in many ways, including the understanding of human rights. His theory of rights in TJ is drawn from a comprehensive liberal doctrine and is limited to the domestic society. However, his account of human rights developed in his last major work, The Law of Peoples, claims to be politically free standing, following the model of his Political Liberalism. For Rawls, human rights are (...) necessary conditions for social cooperation. They are meant to serve as one of the principles of foreign policy of the reasonable liberal peoples, in their relations with non-liberal societies. Rawls believes that his category of human rights cannot be rejected by non-liberal peoples as parochial or particular to the Western tradition, because they are not based on any comprehensive doctrine. On the other hand, however, many African scholars have dismissed the current international human rights regime on the account of being too liberal, and not corresponding to the African communalist worldview. It is in that regard that The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and subsequent African human rights instruments were adopted to dress a list of human rights that take into account African history, civilization, and values. Thus, in three main sections, this article examines whether the Rawlsian account and the African view of human rights can enrich each other, or whether they are completely opposed. (shrink)

On the standard version of political liberalism, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all reasonable persons. Correspondingly, reasonable disagreement about the moral doctrines underlying a law makes that law not justifiable to all reasonable persons. In this paper, I argue that political liberals are committed to understanding reasonable disagreement as being rational, rather than praiseworthy disagreement between morally reasonable person because other conceptions of reasonableness commit them to (...) an incoherent triad of claims. (shrink)

Cécile Laborde's important book, Liberalism's Religion, attempts to develop an ethic governing political officials that requires that they only use, and be responsive to, accessible reasons. Laborde's accessibility requirement articulates her unique approach to the role of religion in liberal politics. This article challenges Laborde's accessibility ethic on three grounds: (1) the ethic suffers from a lack of idealisation, (2) there is little reason to prevent inaccessible reasons from defeating coercion, and her ecumenical approach to exemptions recognises this in (...) effect, and (3), the question of whether the accessibility ethic is true is partly empirical, but Laborde does not supply us with an adequate empirical argument. (shrink)

John Rawls’s articulation of what makes for justice in war includes one of his most interesting, yet least discussed, assessments of religion and state coercion. Rawls claims that “the duties of the statesman in political liberalism” are incompatible with adherence to “the Catholic doctrine of double effect” when that doctrine precludes the deliberate targeting of innocent and harmless human beings in a “supreme emergency.” I explicate Rawls’s argument in favor of that claim, articulate various theological objections, and assess some (...) proposed restrictions on the justificatory role of religious reasons in the light of that disagreement. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political (...) theory and practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

We provide a justification for political liberalism’s Reciprocity Principle, which states that political decisions must be justified exclusively on the basis of considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. The standard argument for the Reciprocity Principle grounds it in a requirement of respect for persons. We argue for a different, but compatible, justification: the Reciprocity Principle is justified because it makes possible a desirable kind of political community. The general endorsement of the Reciprocity (...) Principle, we will argue, helps realize joint political rule and relationships of civic friendship. The main obstacle to the realization of these values is the presence of reasonable disagreement about religious, moral, and philosophical issues characteristic of liberal societies. We show the Reciprocity Principle helps to overcome this obstacle. (shrink)

"In this fresh critique of Rawls’s political liberalism, Dostert offers a bold and stimulating account of the political potential of religion that actually enhances the prospects of a genuinely democratic public discourse. Drawing lessons from the civil rights movement to the Jubilee 2000 effort, _Beyond Political Liberalism_ presents a profoundly hopeful challenge to the ways of thinking about liberalism and religion that dominate both political science and religious studies today. Setting aside worn diatribes and tattered dichotomies, (...) _Beyond Political Liberalism _constructs a promising vision of religion's role in liberal society that will be of interest to anyone concerned about the future of contemporary western culture." —_Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary_ "This is a fine book. It is clearly written, accessible to a broad audience, and of special relevance now, both in academia and in the larger political and intellectual culture." —_Eldon Eisenach, University of Tulsa_ In _Beyond Political Liberalism,_ Troy Dostert offers a critical examination of political liberalism, the approach to liberal political theory advanced most forcefully in the later work of John Rawls. Political liberalism's defenders claim that an “overlapping consensus” of shared values holds out the strongest prospects for regulating democratic politics in light of our moral diversity. Dostert contends, however, that the attempt to establish such a consensus in fact works to restrict and control the presence of religious and other moral perspectives that can ennoble and invigorate public life. Dostert argues that there is a steep price to be paid for this conception of politics, for what results is a political vision characterized by a profound distrust and fear of citizens' comprehensive convictions—the animating source of many citizens' political activity. He suggests that a “post-secular” ethics is a more appropriate response to moral diversity than restricting and managing the presence of religion and other moral perspectives in public life. By drawing on the religious witness of the civil rights movement and the work of theologian John Howard Yoder, Dostert elucidates several core dialogic practices and illustrates their value through a consideration of the contemporary debates surrounding international debt relief and abortion. (shrink)

Across almost a decade, Desmond Tutu, Anglican cleric and chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, supported a model of civil resistance against the apartheid regime based solely on religious argument. Tutu is one of what Appleby (2000) calls the “religious militants for peace”: people of faith who use religious arguments to buttress resistance against unjust regimes and to support vital political change with regard to rights and justice. Yet the employment of religious arguments to justify political (...) action seems to contradict the liberal democratic requirements of public reason, particularly the duty of liberal citizens to provide reasons that others could reasonably endorse. If “religious militants” violate their duty of civility by appealing to their comprehensive doctrines, should liberal democracy exclude this form of religiously founded dissent as being unreasonable? Or, rather, should liberal democracy embrace and support the efforts of “religious militants” to enhance and/or restore political justice? (shrink)

The thirteen essays in this volume approach the liberal-communitarian debate from a variety of perspectives. Some discuss disagreements between liberals and communitarians over the nature of moral agency and the proper functions of government. Some examine alternative ways of conceiving liberalism or community, or challenge widely held beliefs about the harmful effects of capitalism on community, or about the value of traditional practices as guides to judicial reasoning. Other essays seek to determine whether it makes sense to think of societies (...) as having and pursuing a common good, or whether culturally diverse societies can ever hope to achieve social unity. Still others examine the role of states in promoting citizens' civic education and their participation in the voluntary associations and institutions of civil society. (shrink)

John Rawls’s political liberalism demands that reasonable citizens comply with the duty of civility, which limits the justification of state action to public reasons. However, many religious citizens in liberal democratic societies reject the exclusion of religious reasons from public debate. What can be done to encourage these citizens to endorse public reason? Rawls proposes the idea of reasoning from conjecture (RC), i.e. directly engaging with someone’s comprehensive doctrine and showing them that such a doctrine actually supports public (...) reason. In this article, we argue that reasoning from conjecture faces serious objections and that interfaith dialogue (ID) provides a better and more effective tool to encourage religious citizens to endorse public reason. More specifically, ID provides support to public reason by (i) relying on the principles of equality, sincerity and self-criticism, which are also central to public reason; (ii) leading participants to de-parochialize religion; and (iii) promoting tolerance. Moreover, ID avoids the main objections faced by RC, which undermine the latter’s morality and effectiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity by Steven B. SmithSteven NadlerSteven B. Smith. Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii + 270. Cloth, $30.00.Steven B. Smith’s aim in this elegant, well-written book is to restore Spinoza to his important and rightful place in the history of political and religious thought. At the heart of the book (...) is a discussion of the central themes of the Theological-Political Treatise, with a good deal of attention given both to Spinoza’s other writings and to other political thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, as well as to the immediate historical situation in the mid-seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. But this is more than just a commentary on a work that for a long time has largely (and unjustly) been ignored by philosophers. Smith has a full appreciation of the radical nature of the Treatise, and uses it to bring out what is peculiarly fascinating about Spinoza’s religious and political ideas.According to Smith, it was Spinoza who first made the “Jewish Question”—the problem of how the Jews, after centuries of separation and ghettoization, can be granted admission to, and even assimilation into, the modern polity—central to reflection on the “theological-political problem,” that is, the problem of the place and role of religion in the state. Smith sees Spinoza’s solution to both problems in the process of secularization. Jews must, in order to become an integrated part of modern society, shed their ancient, traditional identity; Judaism has to be transformed from “an authoritative body of revealed law into what today would be called a modern secular identity” (xiii). The allegiance of Jews must be transferred from the Law to laws, from a life of halakhic (or Jewish legal) ritual to a life focussed on nonsectarian, civil and social duties. Particularism—and this would be true of all historical religious identities that will, ideally, be absorbed into the modern state—must be exchanged for universalism.Smith shows how Spinoza’s thinking on the Jewish question is intimately bound up with his particular political philosophy. He argues, in fact, that the Treatise represents the “first and most profound expression of the Jewish-liberal symbiosis that has survived to the present.” For the kind of polity that will make Jewish emancipation possible and foster the emergence of a modern, secular, nonparticularistic Jewish identity is the democratic, liberal state. But if liberalism, through its offer of toleration and participation, nourishes modern Judaism, it is no less true, Smith claims, that it has taken its own sustenance from Jewish traditions. Rabbinic Judaism, with its emphasis on law, has long served as a model for classical liberal thought.Spinoza himself is, in Smith’s eyes (although Smith is certainly not the first to suggest this) the “prototype” of the modern emancipated Jew, liberated from (and even critical of) religious tradition and authority. He is, in other words, the first “secular Jew.” Amsterdam, meanwhile, with its linked traditions of toleration and commerce, is the prototype of the modern, liberal society, one that both offers the conditions for Jewish emancipation and is ever vigilant against interference from ambitious religious authorities. Smith does not really take note of the fact that Dutch society in the Golden Age, with its rigid system of regent families controlling the all-important municipal governments, was far from democratic. And it seems to me misleading to speak of Spinoza as a “secular Jew.” Spinoza seems to have liberated himself—with a [End Page 321] little help from his congregation’s rabbis—not only from an orthodox conformity to Jewish traditions, but from any sense of Jewish identity whatsoever. Perhaps it might be more accurate to call Spinoza the “first secular citizen.”One of the more contentious claims of Smith’s book is his insistence that Spinoza’s Treatise contains an esoteric dimension, an intentionally hidden doctrine that only the most careful readers could ascertain. Part of the defense of this Straussian model is the identification of “deliberate contradictions” in the text. I, for one, do not see any esoteric doctrines in the Treatise; nor... (shrink)

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This question has become particularly pressing after the recent successes of right-wing populist leaders and parties across Europe, in the US, and beyond. This book develops a normative account of liberal democratic self-defence that denounces the failures of real-world societies without excusing those supporting illiberal and antidemocratic political actors. This account is innovative in focusing not only on the role of (...) the state but also on the duties of nonstate actors including citizens, partisans, and municipalities. Consequently, it also addresses cases where the central government has at least been partly captured by illiberal and antidemocratic agents. Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti's approach builds on John Rawls's treatment of political liberalism and his awareness of the need to 'contain' unreasonable views, that is, views denying that society should treat every person as free and equal through a mutually acceptable system of social cooperation where pluralism is to be expected. The authors offer original solutions to vexed problems within political liberalism by putting forward a new account of the relation between ideal and non-ideal theory, explaining why it is justifiable to exclude unreasonable persons from the constituency of public reason, and showing that the strictures of public reason do not apply to those suffering from severe injustice. In doing so, the book further politicizes political liberalism and turns it into a framework that can insightfully respond to the challenges of real politics. (shrink)

Rawls says in Political Liberalism that “the focus of an overlapping consensus is [more likely to be] a class of liberal conceptions” than a single one. In conceding that members of the well-ordered society are unlikely to live up to justice as fairness, Rawls would seem to have conceded that they are also unlikely to live autonomously. This is exactly the conclusion some commentators have drawn. I contend that the likelihood of “reasonable pluralism about justice” does not have the (...) implication for Rawls’s project that it is said to have: political autonomy remains available even when such pluralism obtains. (shrink)

Three interlocking features appear to underpin Rawls’s justification of political compliance within the context of political liberalism: namely, a specific territory; a specific society; and a specific conception of what it is to be reasonable. When any one feature is subject to critical examination, while presupposing that the other two are acceptable, Rawls’s argument for political compliance may seem persuasive. But when all three features are critically examined together, his justification of political compliance within political (...) liberalism can be seen to lack cogency. Thus, political compliance fails to be justified by a free-standing political liberalism. Key Words: philosophical anarchism • political duties • political liberalism • political obligation • Rawls. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what some critics suggest, political liberalism is not exclusionary with regards to the rights and interests of individuals with cognitive disabilities. I begin by defending four publicly justifiable reasons that are collectively sufficient for the inclusion of members of this group. Briefly, these are the epistemic uncertainty that inevitably exists about individuals’ actual capacities, the political liberal duty to treat parents fairly, the social framework that is required for the (...) fulfilment of parental duties, and the necessity of cultivating certain emotions that are strongly associated with reasonableness. These reasons show why a more inclusive reading of political liberalism is plausible, and how this can be achieved without abandoning or revising the theory’s commitment to public reason, the political conception of the person, and the role of social cooperation. I then turn to the question of what a more inclusive political liberalism would look like. More specifically, I argue that, although it would not require the participation of individuals with cognitive disabilities in the practice of legitimation, it would require their full inclusion in the realm of justice as equal rights-bearers. (shrink)

In a morally diverse society, moral agents inevitably run up against intractable disagreements. Civility functions as a valuable constraint on the sort of behaviors which moral agents might deploy in defense of their deeply held moral convictions and generally requires tolerance of other views and political liberalism, as does pluralism. However, most visions of civility are exceptionless: they require civil behavior regardless of how strong the disagreement is between two members of the same society. This seems an excellent (...) idea when those required to do the tolerating might otherwise smash us. However, the demands of civility are universal and fall upon everyone, including ourselves. They may seem to require us to tolerate the intolerable, leading us not into pluralism but rather into functional relativism, and also require the powerless to moderate their demands for redress. They also place moral agents in a very difficult position with respect to realizing our deeply held moral values. Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism, by contrast, allows us to violate tolerance when we come up against values which, put into practice, are incompatible with a form of life we can tolerate. Despite the many fronts on which civility and pluralism align, they are also pitted against each other. Only a qualified (not exceptionless) civility based in respect for persons can cohere with pluralism and thus resolve the double bind in which the moral agent seemed to be placed by exceptionless civility. I develop a rule for Accepted Exceptions that helps to explain how moral agents can be civil, value pluralism, demand redress, and maintain their own deeply held moral commitments. (shrink)

In this article by way of reply, the author responds to the challenging comments on The Democratic Horizon provided by Michelman, Benhabib, White, Scheuerman and Laden. In response to Michelman, some reflections are propounded (1) on the function of judicial review, in order to alleviate the tension between two understandings of the mandate of the highest interpreter of the constitution as aimed at remedying either an occlusion of democratic authorship or a shortfall of agreement, and (2) on the need to (...) rethink how the authority of the supreme interpreter relates to the will of the people in a deeply changed historical context. In response to Benhabib, the author discusses the new limits of the accommodation of diversity in Fairburg, a fictional polity that expands the Rawlsian standard of ‘ reasonable disagreement’, and defends the normative relevance and democratic credentials of his notion of ‘ multivariate polity’. In response to White, after recalling the importance of putting the ‘democratic ethos’ at the center of a reflection on the democratic quality of complex societies where formal procedures often mask elitist substance, the author defends the ‘political, not metaphysical’ credentials of ‘openness’ (as well as of ‘exemplarity’ as the ‘upstream source’ of openness) and accepts a complementarity of ‘openness’ and ‘presumptive generosity’. In response to Scheuerman, the author restates his focus on the democratic ethos as a supplement to, not a replacement of, the reflection on democratic procedures and defends the conceptual diversity of governance from government. In response to Laden, the author highlights the diversity of contexts to which his own and Laden’s versions of ‘democratic justification’ are responding and defends a more moderate version of ‘openness’, which still keeps constitutional essentials and political values shielded from ongoing questioning. Finally, the author interprets the debate aroused by The Democratic Horizon as indicative of the persistent vitality of the Rawlsian legacy in the 21st century. (shrink)

At the core of political liberalism is the claim that political institutions must be publicly justified or justifiable to be legitimate. What explains the significance of public justification? The main argument that defenders of political liberalism present is an argument from disagreement: the irreducible pluralism that is characteristic of democratic societies requires a mode of justification that lies in between a narrowly political solution based on actual acceptance and a traditional moral solution based on justification (...) from the third-person perspective. But why should we take disagreements seriously? This – epistemic question – has not received the attention it deserves so far. I argue that the significance of public justification can be explained through the possibility of reasonable disagreement. In a reasonable disagreement, the parties hold mutually incompatible beliefs, but each is justified to hold the belief they do. I shall use the notion of a reasonable disagreement to explain the possibility of an irreducible pluralism of moral and religious doctrines and, on that basis, why the justification of political institutions has to be public. (shrink)

Political liberalism holds that political decisions should be made on the basis of public considerations, and not on the basis of comprehensive religious, moral, or philosophical views. An important objection to this view is that it presupposes doubt, hesitation, or skepticism about the truth of comprehensive doctrines on the side of reasonable citizens. Proponents of political liberalism, such as John Rawls and Jonathan Quong, successfully defend political liberalism against several objections of this kind. In this paper, (...) I argue that recent developments in the epistemology of disagreement require us to revisit these skeptical concerns. I will argue that the correct understanding of political liberalism’s epistemic commitments, in combination with a conciliatory view about peer disagreement, lead to a new skeptical problem for political liberalism. All reasonable citizens who also hold a set of religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, I will argue, suffer from a breakdown of epistemic rationality. I will show that existing answers to skeptical objections fail to resolve this problem. (shrink)

The dissertation seeks to characterize the style of government embodied in Adam Smith's vision of civil society. It is composed of two parts. The first, preparatory part develops a framework for offering a historically sensitive interpretation of Smith's works by drawing on and criticizing the treatment of the eighteenth century in the work of several contemporary political theorists and historians of political thought. Part II gives the full-fledged interpretation of Smith's thought, based on both detailed textual interpretation and (...) broad contextual juxtaposition. Smith's highly systematic knowledge of the governance of conduct in civil society forms an innovative response to a political problem first articulated in sixteenth-century raison d'etat, reformulated in seventeenth-century natural jurisprudence, the eighteenth-century discourse of polite sociability and its Mandevillean critique, and posed in acute form by Hume. The problem was how to secure the survival, and enhance the strength, of the political order under conditions both of international military-commercial competition and potentially devastating internal social conflict that could eventuate in the kinds of civil wars that wracked the seventeenth century. ;Accepting Hume's reduction of civil society to an immanent plane devoid of providential guarantee of social harmony, Smith shows, in a first moment, how individuals in civil society are able to govern themselves freely and naturally, and how social order is produced and reproduced naturally. The sympathetic sociability and the natural development of the individual's conscience and sense of duty depicted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the commercial society depicted in the Wealth of Nations seem to obviate the need for invasive political governance. To this extent, Smith's "system of natural liberty" entails a minimal style of governance, oriented around the negative activity of administering justice, that is, of protecting individuals' rights by preventing and punishing injustice. However, Smith observes that the contemporary form of civil society necessarily produces among those he calls "the labouring poor," who constitute "the great body of the people," the very forces of "faction" and "fanaticism" that threaten to destroy political authority and social tranquillity. In response, Smith theorizes a more minute, controlling style of governance, oriented around the positive activity of forming and reforming the unruly lower ranks through habituation to a condition of orderliness, discipline and moderation. Smith takes up a series of existing practices for moderating conduct and forming character---practices embodied in educational, military, religious, manufactory and even recreational institutions---and projects them into an overall governmental strategy, theoretically unifying them by means of the jurisprudential category of police. Commerce, polite sociability, the self-governing individual, the practice of justice, the stability of government---in short, civil society as such---turn out to be dependent on the effective subjection of the great body of the people to police institutions. In Smith's comprehensive picture of civil society and government, justice and police represent not an ideal for civil society and its unfortunate but merely de facto subversion, respectively, but rather two ideals of civil society which exist in a relationship of uneasy complementarity. (shrink)

This article considers how successfully Watson and Hartley achieve the two main aims of their excellent book, Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: first, developing and defending a distinctive version of political liberalism and, second, showing that this is a feminist political liberalism. I challenge both their general defence of their view and the arguments regarding feminism. Both discussions raise questions about the conceptualisation of reasonable disagreement, so I finish with some further comments about ways in which reasonable (...) disagreement about justice creates internal tensions within Watson and Hartley’s theory. (shrink)

In his incarnation as ‘Morus’ in Utopia, Thomas More asserts his profound disagreement with his fictional character, Raphael Hythlodaeus. Whereas Hythlodaeus extols the merits of commonality and the moral value of pleasure, Morus dismisses the whole project as absurdity, or hopeless wishful thinking. This divergence has been variously interpreted, but mostly played down. This paper argues that the civilized, amicable, and yet genuine discord between Raphael Hythlodaeus and Morus is the key to Utopia. We can appreciate its importance only (...) if we understand who Hythlodaeus is, and what the purpose of the dialogue is. We also have to do justice to Thomas More’s politics, which were grounded on the authority of the Christian tradition, in the Old and the New Testament. Over the years, Thomas More maintained a very clear and consistent line of thought on the legitimacy of worldly wealth, the responsibilities inherent in its management, the imperative to curb their enjoyment, the temptation of ‘business’ and greed, the duty of charity, and the value of penance, remorse, prayer, and other kinds of self-inflicted suffering. In A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, Anthony, the wiser character, conveys Thomas More’s relentless praise of pain. Anthony has the last word. So, too, does Morus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn by Paul WeithmanMatthew ArboWhy Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn Paul Weithman New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 379 pp. $65.00In Why Political Liberalism? Paul Weithman takes a bifocal look at political liberalism in the Rawlsian tradition. First he interrogates the rationale for John Rawls’s “political turn” from A Theory of Justice (...) to Political Liberalism. Second, he explores the viability of political liberalism in contemporary Western societies. The soundness of the former—the logic of Rawls’s argument, that is—validates the workability of the latter. Weithman argues that the monumental turn in Rawls’s thought is based first on his dissatisfaction with how Theory of [End Page 203] Justice treated the principle of stability, failing as it did to show that “members of a [well-ordered society] would all judge it good to preserve their ‘firm good will’” (369). Liberalism emerged as a potential answer to the question of stability by further elaborating the criteria for fairness and reasonableness in a civil society composed of citizens desirous of justice and who maintain for themselves a “sense” of justice. Weithman affirms Rawls’s explanation of how the virtue of justice is displayed in fairness and reasonableness. Just how monumental this shift turns out to be, however, depends a great deal on how compelling one finds “justice as fairness” to be.In recent decades, reasonable doubts have been expressed over the viability of Rawls’s liberal dictum: whether liberty and equality are mutually reinforcing or parasitic, or whether fairness is too morally opaque to shoot for as a political ideal. Weithman seems to believe the principle sound; it is, after all, merely a descriptive explanation of how justice is upheld politically, not a prescriptive project. Rawls concerned himself with the stability and endurance of political liberalism and with how to achieve fair and rational equilibrium. Why Weithman believes the project of Rawlsian liberalism to be fruitful, or at least philosophically successful, is due at least in part to its repeated appeal to reasonableness—that is, the rational promotion of equal liberty for all citizens. Political liberalism, as a theory, affirms and encourages all that the West values in civil society: We must desire and actively support justice for it to be preserved.This book is intended primarily for Rawls scholars. Weithman assumes his reader to have “fairly sophisticated” acquaintance with Rawls’s major theories and texts, and thus also assumes proficiency in symbolic logic and analytic methods. Weithman furnishes a way around this demand for analytic aptitude from all readers, however, by inviting those “uninterested in textual exegesis” and “content with a general understanding” of why Rawls made his turn to “read selectively” from chapters 3 through 9 (15). Be that as it may, all eleven chapters of this text are dense, rigorous, and tightly argued—standard industry practice in contemporary analytic philosophy. If one can also forebear the methodological vices of analytic philosophy, its propensity for tedious detail and narrowness, then one will eventually enjoy unexpected clarity on the subject under consideration. It will be of value to scholars with interests in the development of Rawlsian thought, the conditions for the possibility of political liberalism, and theories of justice Rawls’s account of liberalism seeks to elucidate.I doubt one unconvinced by Rawls’s political vision will undergo intellectual conversion upon reading Weithman’s Why Political Liberalism?, but that is not the point. His aim is to defend Rawls’s political turn and the project of political liberalism broadly construed. Defense of the former is done rather successfully; defense of the latter may require more voices than Weithman’s. [End Page 204]Matthew ArboUniversity of EdinburghCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This article argues that political liberalism, of the type formulated by John Rawls and Charles Larmore and further developed in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, is superior to more comprehensive political views both in domestic and in global affairs. Perfectionist liberalism as advocated by John Stuart Mill and Joseph Raz attempts to erase existing religions and replace them with the religion of utility or autonomy. This is wrong, because in the ethico-religious environment of reasonable disagreement (...) that we inhabit all comprehensive forms of political morality pose a threat to people's liberty and equality. Only thin and narrow conceptions of value like the ones suggested by Rawls, Larmore, Sen, and Nussbaum can guarantee the respect for diversity that is needed in a pluralistic world. Although Rawls famously failed to extend this idea from domestic to transnational matters, the argument of the article is that not only do the principles of political liberalism apply to global mat.. (shrink)

Liberalism and ecologism are widely regarded as incompatible. Liberalism and (anthropocentric) environmentalism might be compatible but liberalism and (non-anthropocentric) ecologism are not. A liberal state cannot promote policies for ecological or ecocentric reasons. An individual cannot be both a liberal and a committed advocate of ecologism. This paper challenges these claims. It is argued that Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ is compatible with ecologism and, in particular, the idea of ‘ecological justice’. A Rawlsian state can promote ecological justice. A committed (...) class='Hi'>political liberal can also be a committed advocate of ecological justice. The argument is developed through a close textual examination of Rawls’s brief discussion of our duties to ‘animals and the rest of nature’. Rawls leaves far more scope for liberal ecologism than his critics have suggested. The proposed version of liberal ecologism is defended against charges of substantive and procedural bias toward humans and against nonhuman nature. Liberal ecologism may not be enough for some ecologists-especially ‘ecological constitutionalists’ seeking constitutional protection for nonhuman nature-but it is a serious and defensible political and moral theory. (shrink)

In this article, we scrutinize several arguments that are frequently used to legitimize a ban on religious symbols for civil servants. Most arguments, however, do not stand up to the test of Rawlsian political liberalism. One argument stands out as underpinning such a general ban: state neutrality. While this argument has the most potential, we argue why it is still not decisive for a ban on all religious symbols for all civil servants. We conclude that from a political (...) liberal point of view the discussion is inconclusive, and therefore advocate a context-sensitive and balanced approach to the matter of civil servants’ dress code with respect to religious symbols. By arguing that political liberalism is indecisive, our position is different from both ‘exclusive neutrality’ and ‘inclusive neutrality’. (shrink)

Political liberalism, or public reason liberalism, has taken a decisive turn towards the Convergence Conception of public justification and away from the orthodox Consensus Conception. Convergence theorists argue that public justification should be understood as all reasonable people having some conclusive reason to endorse coercively enforced moral rules that are issue and context specific. They argue for this on the basis that, given the nature of deep moral and political disagreement, only the Convergence Conception can show reasonable (...) people how to achieve a stable political order. I argue however that the Convergence Conception faces the Verbal Agreement Objection which puts pressure on its claims to show people how to maintain a political order. This is because at its core it involves a tension between its account of the nature of the agreements that constitute public justification and the objects of those agreements that make it highly sensitive to context changes. (shrink)

The author argues that the distinctive aspects of political liberalism have historical roots in the republican tradition that is often described as “neo-roman,” and recently given articulation in the work of Q. Skinner and P. Pettit. The primary task of this paper will be to layout these correlations, to provide, as it were, a mapping between the vocabulary of the neo-roman theory and that of political liberalism. By tracing the genealogy of political liberalism, the author argues that (...) we ought to rethink the history, the vocabulary, and conceptual framework of contemporary political philosophy. In particular, seeing political liberalism as a form of republican theory as well as a form of liberal theory changes how we understand it: it brings out certain distinctive features of the structure of the view that are often overlooked, such as its stress on certain civic duties and its conception of freedom as a freedom of the city. If leading republican and liberal thinkers turn out to have much in common, then we will have to rethink also our intellectual geography: we will have to sketch in some land-bridges between the continents. (shrink)

Do citizens of any modern state have a general duty to acknowledge its authority to determine for them, for action guiding purposes, whether certain kinds of conduct are morally permissible, required, or forbidden? That is, is there a duty to obey the law? Moral Contractualism, I contend, entails that citizens of a liberal democratic state have such a duty. ;Treating others morally often requires agents to act collectively, but even agents who accept the moral necessity of collective (...) action will sometimes disagree over the specification of the ends to be achieved, and the means for doing so. I argue that a liberal democratic state can justifiably claim the authority to resolve such disagreements, which it does mainly by enacting and applying laws. Obedience to democratic laws expresses respect for others' autonomy. ;In defending these claims, particular attention is paid to the problem posed by disagreement over the design of democratic decision procedures, conflicts between democratically enacted laws and individual rights, and conflicts of rights. Civil disobedience, conscientious objection, and over-inclusive laws are also addressed. (shrink)

Citizens are politically autonomous insofar as they are subject to laws that are (a) justified by reasons acceptable to them and (b) authorized by them via their political institutions. An obstacle to the equal realization of political autonomy is the plurality of religious, moral, and philosophical views endorsed by citizens. Decisions regarding certain fundamental political issues (e.g., abortion) can involve citizens imposing political positions justified in terms of their respective worldviews upon others. Despite citizens’ disagreements over (...) which worldview is correct, ‘political liberalism’ claims that there is a form of political autonomy that is realizable within pluralist societies. (Political liberalism differs from ‘comprehensive liberalism’ by, inter alia, being ‘freestanding’ vis-à-vis citizens’ different worldviews.) Citizens can be politically autonomous if they enjoy equal political power and justify its exercise with ‘public reasons.’ A political liberal education would aim at ensuring that all students can become politically autonomous citizens by teaching them how to exercise their democratic rights effectively and how to engage in public reasoning. Some political and educational theorists, however, argue that teaching students how to be politically autonomous amounts to teaching them how to be ‘comprehensively’ autonomous. If this is so, then the distinction between political liberalism and comprehensive liberalism collapses, at least with respect to education. This chapter outlines the main elements of political liberalism, summarizes the main requirements of a political liberal citizenship education, and surveys three arguments in support of and against the thesis that a political liberal education amounts to an education for comprehensive autonomy. (shrink)