Abstract
Clayton and Stevens (Res Publica 20: 65–84, 2014) argue that political liberals should engage with the religiously unreasonable by offering religious responses and showing that their religious views are mistaken, instead of refusing to engage with them. Yet they recognize that political liberals will face a dilemma due to such religious responses: either their responses will alienate certain reasonable citizens, or their engagements will appear disingenuous. Thus, there should be a division of justificatory labour. The duty of engagement should be delegated to religious citizens. In this comment, I will argue that the division of justificatory labour is indefensible. This dilemma can be avoided if politicians and political philosophers correctly use conjecture, a form of discourse that involves non-public reason. As a conditional response, conjecture avoids alienating any reasonable citizens. Also, if conjecture is given in a sincere and open-minded manner, then the problem of disingenuousness can be overcome. My comment concludes that while the engagement of politicians and political philosophers does not necessarily jeopardize overlapping consensus, they should be permitted, or perhaps even required, to engage with the religiously unreasonable due to the natural duty of justice.
Notes
It should be noted that Clayton and Stevens are not discussing whether a liberal state can legitimately coerce the religiously unreasonable, since the state is not committed to offer a justification that is acceptable to everyone, including the religiously unreasonable. Rather, the focus of discussion is on why the religiously unreasonable should be engaged in the public domain, and what kind of speech should be used, given that coercion is inevitable. I appreciate the anonymous reviewer for clarifying this point.
For a more detailed discussion on how conjecture can be sincere and respectful, see Schwartzman (2012, pp. 529–534).
I agree with Quong’s claim that citizens have no right to be unreasonable. A state should not protect citizens’ pursuit of unreasonable objectives (Quong 2011, pp. 290–314). However, I do not think that this normative claim implies a factual claim that it is impossible for a liberal citizen to become illiberal.
Sanders’s full speech is in C-SPAN (2015). All quotations are from this video clip.
References
Clayton, Matthew, and David Stevens. 2014. When god commands disobedience: Political liberalism and unreasonable religions. Res Publica 20: 65–84.
Corasaniti, Nick. 2015. Bernie Sanders makes rare appeal to Evangelicals at Liberty University. New York: New York Times.
C-SPAN. 2015. Bernie Sanders Full Speech at Liberty University. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ZB8Lg1tcA.
Gaus, Gerald, and Kevin Vallier. 2009. The roles of religious conviction in a publicly justified policy. Philosophy & Social Criticism 35: 51–76.
Macedo, Stephen. 2000. Diversity and distrust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Quong, Jonathan. 2011. Liberalism without perfection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rawls, John. 1999. The idea of public reason revisited. In Collected papers, ed. John Rawls, and Samuel Freeman, 573–615. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 2005. Political liberalism, Expanded edn. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Roberts, Dan. 2015. Bernie Sanders’ appeal to Christian students met with polite scepticism. London: The Guardian.
Schwartzman, Micah. 2012. The ethics of reasoning from conjecture. Journal of Moral Philosophy 9: 521–544.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Joseph Chan, Chandran Kukathas, Albert Weale and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and encouragement.
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Wong, B. Conjecture and the Division of Justificatory Labour: A Comment on Clayton and Stevens. Res Publica 25, 119–125 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-017-9373-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-017-9373-2