Abstract
Jonathan Quong’s book, Liberalism without Perfection, provides an innovative new defense of political liberalism based on an “internal conception” of the goal of public justification. Quong argues that public justification need merely be addressed to persons who affirm liberal political values, allowing people to be coerced without a public justification if they reject liberal values or their priority over comprehensive values. But, by extensively restricting members of the justificatory public to a highly idealized constituency of liberals, Quong’s political liberalism becomes objectionably sectarian. Coercing citizens without a public justification if they hold non-liberal comprehensive views is no different from the sectarian perfectionist view that people can be coerced without a public justification if they hold false comprehensive views. Quong argues that some degree of sectarianism is unavoidable in formulating a conception of political liberalism. While this may be, I maintain that the internal conception is nonetheless excessively sectarian. To demonstrate this, I develop an attractive competitor conception, the convergence conception, which addresses public justification to a diverse, moderately idealized justificatory public. If convergence is a viable interpretation of political liberalism, I argue, then the internal conception is excessively sectarian.
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Notes
Or as Quong would put it, such persons are offered a public justification in terms of shared values, but they reject it for their own reasons or reject its deliberative priority.
Though, from what I can tell, no political liberal endorses the external conception.
Quong (2012, p. 53).
Quong (2011, p. 36).
I assume here that Quong’s understanding of what “can be justified” to persons is equivalent to the related idea that each person has sufficient reasons to endorse the same. Also, while the quote does not mention it, Quong commits himself to the idea that a main object of public justification is coercive law. See pp. 273–275.
Ibid.
Rawls (2005, pp. 54–58).
Quong (2011, p. 37).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Quong (2011, p. 38).
Rawls (2005, p. 137).
Quong (2011, p. 39).
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid., p. 226.
Ibid., p. 41.
Weithman (2010, pp. 329–330) provides a brief overview of Rawls’s duty of civility and a relatively more inclusive interpretation of it.
Quong (2011, p. 137).
Ibid., p. 138.
Ibid., p. 139.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 145.
Ibid., p. 144. Emphasis added.
Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., p. 145. Rawls (2005, p. 54).
Quong (2011, p. 147).
Ibid., p. 148.
Ibid.
Quong addresses other objections to the internal conception, such as the concern that political liberalism permits the mistreatment of unreasonable citizens, but I do not believe we need to address them here.
Rawls (2005, p. 392).
Quong (2011, p. 162).
Ibid.
Rawls (2005, p. 384).
Quong (2011, pp. 166–167).
Ibid., p. 167.
Ibid., p. 173.
Ibid., p. 185.
Rawls (2005, p. 28).
Rawls (1971, p. 16).
Quong (2011, p. 192).
Rawls (2005, p. xxxvi).
Ibid., p. 214.
After all, idealized citizens can be illiberal, and actual citizens can be liberal.
Gaus (2012, p. 8).
In response, Quong has claimed that he simply idealizes the justificatory constituency so that they share enough common ground about justice to prevent disagreements about justice from being foundational, but not enough common ground to prevent disagreements about the good from being foundational. This seems to me ad hoc.
Gaus points out that Quong’s view is not dogmatic, in the sense that it excludes appeal to any values other than shared liberal values. Instead, it’s just “exclusionary” because the liberal values are all that count towards a public justification. Quong (2012, p. 12).
Ibid., p. 53.
Quong (2012, p. 53).
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid.
I thank Chad Van Schoelandt for this point.
Quong (2012, p. 56).
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 58.
Importantly, this is not Quong’s view. In conversation, Quong denies that “if a theory X is less sectarian than Y, then it is necessarily better than theory Y in at least one respect.”
Paul Billingham has pressed me to specify that convergence citizens treat others as free and equal as they understand those ideals, which permits, for instance, perfectionist citizens into the idealized constituency. But, as I explain, just because people can advance illiberal or perfectionist reasons does not mean that perfectionist policies will be publicly justified. In fact, they will be defeated so long as others have sufficient reason to reject those policies.
Quong (2011, p. 262). I believe this requirement simply follows from the idealization.
I cannot address all worries about the plausibility of convergence, but some may worry that convergence citizens may give very little priority to liberal values, which might make convergence citizens less attractive as the subjects of public justification, as opposed to say Quong’s citizens. I thank Quong for this point.
Though the extent to which it does so will depend on how moderate idealization is fleshed out; it should do better than the external conception on almost any construal.
Quong (2012, p. 58).
Quong (2012, p. 58).
Gaus (2012, p. 8).
Again, the convergence conception is not wedded to Quong’s grounding values. They might flow from other foundations, like those offered in Gaus (2011).
Quong (2012, p. 55). Importantly, though, it forbids violating rights justified for them according to shared liberal ideas.
Quong (2012, p. 54).
Quong (2012, p. 55).
It would take more work to show that the reciprocity condition on convergence can generate more specific liberal policies, such as anti-discrimination laws. Given the power of illiberal defeaters on convergence, whether convergence can do so is an open question. I cannot demonstrate as much here, but I believe convergence can vindicate at least some anti-discrimination laws. I thank Quong and Van Schoelandt for this point.
Perhaps Quong can reject convergence based on a weaker claim: while a liberal political theory need not make the justification of illiberal institutions impossible, it must show that illiberal results are remote or unlikely. He could claim that convergence is a poorer expression of liberal commitments than the internal conception because it does not make the justification of illiberal institutions remote enough. But I think there is a good prima facie case that convergence will vindicate broadly liberal institutions because convergence can be rooted in liberal moral ideas and requires that citizens be reasonable. Admittedly, I lack the space to make that case here. Gaus (2011) is an extended attempt to show that a convergence conception can vindicate liberal institutions.
Though even if convergence permits insincerity, avoiding sectarianism might be more important.
Micah Schwartzman has perhaps the most developed conception of sincerity within the literature. See Schwartzman (2011).
Rawls (2005, p. 241).
Quong (2011, p. 266).
Ibid., p. 267.
Quong uses “→” to denote whatever justification relationship one prefers.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 43.
Quong (2011, p. 270).
Ibid., p. 271.
Gaus (2011, pp. 265–267).
See Wall (2002, 2013). In correspondence, Quong remarks that my response may imply that real citizens can offer each other reasons they believe are not justificatory as long as the reasons actually are justificatory. This may seem tantamount to rejecting a principle of justificatory sincerity. Not so. Citizens do need to think that the reasons they offer each other are justificatory, but they do not need to have any view about the philosophical explanation for why those reasons are justificatory. That is, they must recognize that others can have different reasons for action, but they do not need to have a theory of epistemic justification to do so. That’s why citizens interested in sincerity need not endorse any epistemic theory of justificatory reasons. I thank Quong for raising this concern and Billingham for encouraging me to clarify.
Pollock (2006, p. 6). Note that both consensus and convergence liberals can make use of Pollock’s distinction.
Quong insists that reasonable people will still often view one another’s doctrines as lacking justification even in Pollock’s sense. I simply disagree. I am prepared to stipulate that reasonableness requires that a citizen be prepared to ascribe Pollockian justification to many doctrines incompatible with her own.
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Acknowledgments
Author would like to thank Jonathan Quong, Paul Billingham, Massimo Renzo and Chad Van Schoelandt for providing me with valuable comments on drafts of this paper.
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Vallier, K. On Jonathan Quong’s Sectarian Political Liberalism. Criminal Law, Philosophy 11, 175–194 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9350-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9350-1