Abstract
In this paper I argue that Rawlsians have largely misunderstood the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, thereby failing to delineate in an appropriate way the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. My argument rests on two core claims. The first claim is that (i) political liberalism is committed to three theses about the overlapping consensus. The first thesis concerns the subject of the overlapping consensus; the second thesis concerns the function of the overlapping consensus; the third thesis explains how the overlapping consensus can serve its function in accordance with political liberalism’s commitment to epistemic neutrality. The second claim on which my argument relies is empirical: (ii) Rawlsians typically deny at least one of the three theses to which political liberalism is committed. Based on (i) and (ii), I conclude that Rawlsians have hitherto provided unconvincing accounts of the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism.
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Notes
Accordingly, by ‘Rawlsians’ I mean those who are in some way sympathetic to Rawls’s project of political liberalism, without however necessarily accepting all its assumptions, goals and commitments.
Maybe even unreasonable citizens could affirm reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Based on the reasonableness requirement, I assume that these citizens (should they exist) should not be part of the constituency of the overlapping consensus—though of course their reasonable comprehensive doctrines could be advocated by other reasonable members of the constituency.
Quong could retort that, on his ‘internal view’ of political liberalism, an overlapping consensus on the ideals of freedom, equality and fairness is not something that the theorist must endeavour to ‘prove’. In fact, the theorist merely assumes that all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will endorse those ideals by definition, and proceeds from that basis with the construction of liberal principles (see for instance Quong 2011, pp. 190–191). Again, though, if reasonable citizens are by definition committed to the subject of the overlapping consensus, then it is not clear why such a consensus is relevant in the first place. Interestingly, Quong himself advances a similar argument in his criticism of T1; see note 5 below.
In effect, most advocates of the basic objection to T1 endorse the No Subject Thesis. An interesting exception is Quong’s defence of the Narrow Subjected Thesis. Quong does not seem to think that the Narrow Subject Thesis is vulnerable to the same sort of objection he raises against T1, namely, that reasonable citizens will endorse the alleged subject of the overlapping consensus by definition.
To put it differently, ‘the focus of an overlapping consensus is a class of liberal conceptions that vary within a certain more or less narrow range’ (Rawls 2005, p. 164).
Rawls’s position on this point is actually quite ambiguous. More on this below.
Quong, I think, commits this error. On the one hand, he claims that political liberalism should not rest ‘on a controversial … epistemology’ (Quong 2011, p. 33); on the other hand, he raises the basic objection against T1, thereby committing himself to a controversial epistemic claim such as C2. To be sure, some advocates of the basic objection to T1 (most notably Habermas) do affirm epistemic theories that allow them to consistently hold C2. For an overview of the various attempts to substantiate C2 (on epistemic grounds) see Zoffoli (2012, §2).
Note that even C1 looks like a distinctively epistemic claim, since C1 essentially states that the generic freestanding argument should be shared by everyone’s belief system. However, my criticism of the basic objection to T1 does not and need not challenge C1. My point is simply that even if political liberals could defend C1 in an epistemologically neutral way, the basic objection to T1 would still be unwarranted because C2 is definitely a controversial epistemic claim.
Cohen (1989, pp. 273–274) does seem to imply that the overlapping consensus has a justificatory function when he claims that achieving such a consensus ‘does count in favour of the correctness of a conception of justice’. Nonetheless, Cohen appears to deny T2 because he seems to view the achievement of an overlapping consensus merely as a desideratum, and not as a necessary condition for the correctness of a conception of justice.
Gaus is, of course, aware of this. In fact, although he describes himself as a Rawlsian, he stresses that his justificatory account differs from political liberalism in many respects, among which the different take on epistemology is perhaps the most prominent (see Gaus 1996, pp. 3–12; 2003, pp. 177–230). As I stressed at the outset, however, the purpose of this paper is not to defend political liberalism against alternative views such as Gaus’s, which may in fact look quite appealing (see Zoffoli 2012, §3.3). I claim that political liberals are committed to epistemic neutrality; I do not claim that Rawlsians are necessarily committed to political liberalism.
In his formulation, Quong conflates the liberal objection with the basic objection, thus suggesting that they point to the same problem: given T1, citizens may not accept the generic liberal conception. However, those two objections actually raise two different issues. The basic objection makes an epistemic point: one cannot be justified in rejecting the generic liberal conception; the liberal objection, instead, is concerned only with preserving the results of the freestanding stage, regardless of the epistemic status of citizens’ comprehensive beliefs.
See note 11 above.
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Zoffoli, E. The Place of Comprehensive Doctrines in Political Liberalism: On Some Common Misgivings About the Subject and Function of the Overlapping Consensus. Res Publica 18, 351–366 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9197-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9197-z