“The answer is…. You shoot him.” – Burton Dreben (2003, p. 329)
Abstract
Public reason accounts commonly claim that exercises of coercive political power must be justified by appeal to reasons accessible to all citizens. Such accounts are vulnerable to the objection that they cannot legitimate coercion to protect basic liberal rights against infringement by deeply illiberal people. This paper first elaborates the distinctive interpersonal conception of justification in public reason accounts in contrast to impersonal forms of justification. I then detail a core dissenter-based objection to public reason based on a worrisome example advanced by Jonathan Quong. While we may be able to impersonally justify coercing the illiberal dissenter, public reason liberals must explain how we can interpersonally justify such coercion—meaning justify given the perspective of the dissenter. The two prominent strategies for dealing with dissenters involve idealization of reasoning and requiring liberal values; I show that these strategies do not succeed in a way compatible with the public reason project. That is, the prominent strategies leave public reason theorists with a dilemma between denying the legitimacy of using coercion to protect core freedoms against deeply illiberal people or abandoning the fundamental public reason project. I conclude by proposing a different answer to public reason liberalism’s fundamental question: what requires justification? On my account, it is not that coercion requires interpersonal justification for its permissibility, but that such justification is necessary as a constitutive element of a kind of moral community.
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Notes
Interpersonal justification may be called “justificatory internalism,” as by Gaus (1996, chap. 3), which is related to reasons internalism (à la Bernard Williams) in regarding the agent’s psychological states, but distinct from Quong’s (2010, pp. 5–7, and chap. 5) conception of justification internal to liberalism.
Steven Wall (2002, p. 386) refers to this as “correctness-based justification.”
David Enoch, in defending impersonalist justification against public reason theorists, emphasizes this point, though he admits that it is “hard to distinguish, from the first-person perspective, between that-p and that-I-believe-p.” According to Enoch (2013), when you coerce based on impersonalist justification, “[y]our reason for action… is that-p, not that-you-believe-that-p.” Against this view, see Locke (2010, para 1), Hobbes (1994, chap. V.3), Rawls (2005, p. 61), and Van Schoelandt and Gaus (forthcoming, sect. 2.1).
To be sure, externalists might discuss collective deliberation as a discovery procedure to help in arriving at the independently right answer. In addition, externalists are apt to pragmatically consider the actual views of people.
Quong (2010, p. 142) elaborates: “The mere fact that there exists a valid justification based on true premises for some proposition Q does not mean that we have justified Q to Peter,” for the latter justification depends “on Peter's wider epistemic situation.”
Cf. Quong’s (2012, p. 55) related, though less pernicious, case of Anna.
Raz (1999, p. 17) writes: “reasons are used to guide behaviour, and people are to be guided by what is the case, not by what they believe to be the case.”
On the burdens of judgment, see Rawls (2005, p. 56).
Agents may also maintain their commitments in light of objections they cannot answer if they have reason to believe that relevant authorities in their tradition could answer the objection.
Gaus rejects such idealizations as ultimately incoherent.
This starkly contrasts with Rawls (2005, p. 390) aim for justifying to citizens without “criticizing their deepest religious and philosophic commitments.”
Quong’s argument shows why Rawls’s own account cannot answer the dissenter-based objection, and Rawls never explicitly addresses this form of argument, so I do not discuss Rawls’s own account in detail.
Rawls (2005, p. 386) holds that the liberal values ground a “freestanding argument” that is only “pro tanto, it may be overridden by citizens' comprehensive doctrines once all values are tallied up.” This overriding is possible because, on Rawls’s (2005, p. 386) account, “it is left to each citizen, individually or in association with others, to say how the claims of political justice are to be ordered, or weighed, against nonpolitical values.” Vallier (forthcoming, sec. V) also defends permitting such balancing against the public values.
Quong’s gives the example of Anna, who balances the liberal values against religious concerns, and on balance she rejects laws prohibiting employment discrimination (2010, p. 169, 2012, p. 55; cf. related cases at 58). Okin (2005, p. 242) argues against including in the justificatory public members of faiths that exclude women from the priesthood, undermining the opportunities and self-respect of women. Quong (2005, pp. 312–313), however, writes that it would be reasonable to permit or prohibit gender discrimination in the Catholic priesthood.
Gaus (2003, p. 138) raises doubts about tailoring a view of justification to secure particular outcomes.
Quong (2010, pp. 162, 166, 190, 216 and 233) makes the same claim in terms of “unjust” people, sometimes with accomplices.
The liberal values must be seen as wholly sufficient for reasoning about political justice. If reasonable people disagree about what other values are relevant, they would still require Rawls's overlapping consensus test.
Quong's test begins “with certain fairly substantive commitments” instead of “a commitment to public justification…” (2012, p. 56).
Quong (2010, p. 2) claims we “correctly think of ourselves as free and equal from the moral point of view.” The first-personal nature of the reasoning can also be seen in Quong's discussion of reflective equilibrium (2010, pp. 155–156). In related vein, Blain Neufeld argues that political liberalism's foundation principle “should be affirmed as the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ one…” (2005, p. 287).
Quong (2010, p. 313) claims state action is justified, regardless of subjects' views, purely “by appealing [to] the values of freedom, equality, or fairness.”
Charles Larmore (1990, p. 352) similarly claims that we can justify to dissenters on the counterfactual supposition that they share certain liberal values. Wall (2010, p. 134) proposes a related move converting any impersonal justification into supposed interpersonal justification by attributing to the subject “[a]wareness and appreciation of the full range of evaluative considerations that apply to the situation at hand.”
I thank Jerry Gaus and Jon Quong for very helpful discussions regarding this point.
Raz (2006, pp. 1025–1026) adds a “knowability condition” for authority, but this remains in stark contrast to the access requirement of interpersonal justification.
Perhaps Quong’s political liberalism is distinguished from perfectionism for holding only that the liberal values are relevant for political justification. Note, however, that Lockean and some other externalist accounts also have a purely political scope.
According to Quong (2010, p. 135, cf. pp. 128, 130, 313): “Since we cannot rightfully refuse to do what justice requires, others can justify their legitimate authority over us by demonstrating they are merely enforcing the claims of justice that others have against us.” This distinction from the perfectionist vanishes if, as Wall (1998, p. 12) argues, perfectionist reasons are not additional to justice-based reasons, but instead are part of what determines the duties of justice.
Quong (2010, pp. 115, 110) also holds that the duties, including to promote justice, exist prior to the authority.
Quong (2010, p. 313) claims that “[i]f you believe freedom, equality, and fairness are the fundamental political values from which reasoning about justice must proceed, then you cannot also believe that other people are exempt from the normative requirements implied by these values.”
In contrast, Rawls's original position can involve the reasoning of a single agent, but his overlapping consensus stage necessarily involves multiple people with diverse perspectives.
Quong (2013, sec. III) claims we “have the authority to coerce people like Carl because we can justify our decisions by appeal to fundamental values or ideals that everyone (including Carl) ought to endorse and whose implications they ought to accord deliberative priority. If Carl cannot see the force of these reasons, that is not a defect in our justifications, but rather a defect in Carl.” Bohman and Richardson (2009, pp. 257–260) similarly argue that normative constraints dispossess agreement. Readers may wish to compare my argument to Quong's own “spare-wheel objection” to the “external conception” of political liberalism (2010, pp. 146–147).
Quong (2013, sec. II) endorses justification through “substantive” claims. Note that on Gaus’s account it is only consent of the moderately idealized agent, and not actual consent, that is justificatory.
Contrast with Quong (2012, p. 58). Though Estlund (2008, pp. 48–49) also appeals to a restricted, possible public, he defends acceptability to this “qualified” public as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for legitimacy. The acceptance (or moderately idealized acceptance) of actual “disqualified” citizens may also be required. Cf. discussion of membership in the public in Gaus and Van Schoelandt (forthcoming).
We can understand Raz (1998, p. 51) to be proposing a view like this, for he considers it a cost to force people to act against their consciences; presumably it is easier to justify laws not requiring such contra-conscientious force. Related views are defended by Enoch (2013) and Wall (2013, pp. 488, 498n13). That their staunchest critics propose this pluralism should lead public reason theorists to think, in the words of Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!”
Such a position is defended by Eberle (2002, pp. 189–191). Note that Eberle’s requirement still regards interpersonal justification, unlike Galston’s (1991, p. 109) view that “we show respect when we offer [dissenters], as explanations, what we take to be our true and best reasons for acting as we do."
Cf. Paul Weithman’s (2010, p. 44) discussion distinguishing “inherent” from “imposed” stability.
Some conceptions of community must be rejected as incompatible with social diversity (Benn 1988, chap. 12; Rawls 2005, p. 37ff, and Van Schoelandt 2014). For an interesting discussion relevant to liberal community, see Bosanquet (2001)—I thank Loren Lomasky for directing me to this underappreciated thinker.
Gaus’s account directly regards the authority of moral demands (2011, p. 19).
This is one place that my account importantly diverges from that of Gaus. Though he agrees that interpersonal justification is necessary for authoritative moral demands, Gaus (2011, sec. 17.3) also maintains that a general principle requiring the public justification of coercive acts and laws can itself be publicly justified within communities composed of what he calls “self-directing” moral persons. I hold that, instead, we have patchworks of entrenched particular rights and norms restricting interference without justification defined in terms other than those of interpersonal justification. Of course, our coercively backed laws are often moralized, requiring interpersonal justification to vindicate their implicit claims to authority. Such justification is not directly required for non-moralized laws. Though Vallier otherwise treats all coercive laws as requiring interpersonal justification, he accepts that this is properly only so for laws claiming moral authority (2014, p. 41 note 61). I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me for clarification.
On social-moral practice as a system of demands with inter-personal accountability through the reactive attitudes, see Darwall (2006, pt. I), Gaus (2011, chaps. 11–12), and Shoemaker (2014). Though Southwood (2010, p. 87) does not commit to the necessity of the moral reactive attitudes, he does hold that community is at least partially constituted by social authority based in internalized norms.
Smith (2009, p. 176).
Shoemaker (2011b) defends separating the conditions for criminal responsibility from moral responsibility. Wall (2010, p. 144) separates issues of coercion, criticism, and blame, and insightfully indicates that seeing that relevant impersonal justifications are inaccessible to an agent “should temper both our judgment of the person and how we respond to him.”
See Gaus (1990, chap. 2), Hurley and Macnamara (2011), Nussbaum (2001, chap. 1), Rawls (1999, sec. 73, 1963/1999, p. 107), Smith (2009, sec. I.i.3.5–10), Solomon (1973). The cognitive content of emotions may be a non-belief-based way of “seeing as,” as when in the grip of a phobia you do not believe that the bunny is dangerous, but you see it as dangerous nonetheless (Calhoun 2003).
McKenna (2011, p. 59) holds that the quality of an agent’s will consists in her regard for other moral agents, as well as a broader range of moral reasons. Shoemaker (2014, 2013) persuasively argues that we should in fact understand the variety of responsibility responses to regard different qualities of will. Acceptance of a quality of will thesis conflicts with Rawls’s (1999, pp. 421–422, 1963/1999, pp. 105–106) understanding of the moral emotions as responses to compliance with or violation of moral principles.
A number of theorists conceive the moral emotions specifically as nascent forms of communication. On such accounts, indignation is inappropriate when directed at those relevantly incapable of uptake or understanding. I believe these accounts too can be shown to have an important place for public reason as explicating one of the conditions for the capability to take up the message in an instance of indignation. For impressive discussion of the communication account, see Coleen Macnamara (2013), as well as McKenna (1998, p. 127, 2011, chap. 4), Shoemaker (2007), and Watson (1987, pp. 264–267).
Rawls (1999, sec. 35) argues that though the intolerant do not have standing to demand to be tolerated, we owe it to our constitution (and I believe ultimately each other) to tolerate even the intolerant. Benn (1988, p. 102) argues that “the category of psychopath is very uncertainly defined,” so “the status of moral persons is better safeguarded” by extending rights protection to psychopaths. Peter Vanderschraaf (2011) relatedly argues for extending protections to people unable to productively cooperate. Kavka (1986, p. 242), Lomasky (1987, p. 40), and Morris (1991, pp. 89–90), each defend derivative rights for some through social relations to primary rights holders. Cf. Korsgaard (2004), Gaus (1990, p. 371, 1996, p. 166), Kukathas (2003, chap. 4), and Quong (2010, sec. 10.1–2).
Cf. Brennan et al. (2010, p. 9).
Rawls (1987/1999, p. 431) writes that, “there is no practicable alternative superior to the stable political unity secured by an overlapping consensus on a reasonable political conception of justice.” Lomasky (1987, pp. 81–82) argues that the broad acceptability of the moral community requires limiting the demands placed on individuals, and particularly entrenching individual liberties. If Lomasky is right, then inclusive communities will have what Gaus (2010) calls a “classical liberal tilt.”
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Acknowledgments
Work on this paper was made possible by financial and intellectual support from the The Institute for Humane Studies, The Earhart Foundation, The Mercatus Center, and the University of Arizona Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. For valuable comments and discussion, I thank Sameer Bajaj, Mark Budolfson Tom Christiano, David Enoch, Bill Glod, William Kline, R. J. Leland, Andrew Lister, Loren Lomasky, Meica Magnani, Michael McKenna, Jon Quong, Massimo Renzo, Tristan Rogers, Dave Schmidtz, Dan Shahar, Dave Shoemaker, Stephen Stitch, Virgil Storr, Bob Taylor, John Thrasher, John Tomasi, Steve Wall, the participants of workshops on earlier versions of this paper at the IHS and the University of Virginia, and an anonymous reviewer whose challenging criticisms led to a better paper. Special thanks are owed to Kevin Vallier from whom I have learned much over the years. Expressing my appreciation and gratitude to Jerry Gaus could take an essay unto itself; his generosity and insight are inexhaustible sources of inspiration.
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Van Schoelandt, C. Justification, coercion, and the place of public reason. Philos Stud 172, 1031–1050 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0336-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0336-6