I intend to provide a critical comparison of the principles and methods of public reason in which O’Neill and Rawls seek to ground the legitimacy and authority of coercive principles of justice. In particular, I want to consider the different ways in which O’Neill and Rawls would approach the task of ensuring the public justification of (for example) controversial anti-terrorism laws.
O’Neill argues that, in order for it to count as authoritative, public reason should ‘aim to be followable by others for whom it is to count as reasoning’, irrespective of a plurality of beliefs and values. Otherwise, she suggests, the normative claims it makes will risk being seen as arbitrary or incomprehensible by those to whom they are supposed to apply. The public justification of coercive political principles, on this account, would appear to rely upon reasons that are widely (or even universally) accessible and acceptable.
Rawls, on the other hand, argues that the authority of public reason (and the legitimacy of those political principles that it seeks to endorse) is grounded in the pursuit of ends (and the use of means) that are equally accessible to and acceptable by all ‘reasonable’ people. Rawls therefore restricts the audience of public justification to those persons he deems ‘reasonable’ (where this presupposes a commitment to a basic set of liberal rights and liberties, among other things). On this account, the authority of coercive political principles lies not in their universal accessibility but in their acceptance by a predetermined audience.
At this stage, there are a number of questions I want to consider. Should coercive principles of justice be morally binding on those citizens who fail to accept their legitimacy, or are excluded from the audience of justification? Does either O’Neill or Rawls provide a satisfactory account of the public legitimacy of coercive principles of justice? Or would a conception of public reason as dependent upon a flexible continuum between wide accessibility and liberal exclusivity be more successful in establishing the authority of coercive norms?
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3 comments:
Couple of questions because its (really quite) early..
1. What effects does the principle of (universal) followability have on the nature of the reasons given? Ie. does it have a (similar) effect to simplicity taken to an extreme that it renders the reasons unjustificatory? (Ie. Bush saying that he is just doing what the American people want him to do - the difference between abstraction and idealisation comes in here?)
2. Would this 'flexible continuum' be itself a subject of public reason? Would there be room for levels of reasoning which are followable to different groups due to the (practically) differing effect of the laws? (ie. to the Islamic community as opposed to the general community)
Also using the anti-terrorism laws or the new NT laws governing indigenous areas would be interesting for that reason - they would affect (whether aimed intentionally or not) at minority groups more than at the general population.
All very messy :| Will try to tidy it up at work today..
The topic is well-chosen. For Rawls on reasonableness, beyond the stuff you already have/know, two interesting papers are Leif Wenar, “Political Liberalism: An Internal Critique”, Ethics 106 (1995), and David Estlund,“The Insularity of the Reasonable: Why Political Liberalism Must Admit the Truth,” Ethics 108 (1998).
In comparing O'Neill's and Rawls' views, one thing to bear in mind is that these views apply to each other.
That is, from an O'Neillian, Kantian constructivist point of view, a Rawlsian standard of legitimacy would probably count as a substantive higher-order moral precept that may or may not be followable by all relevant others, and that depends for its reasonableness on its followability. This is of course quite opposed to a Rawlsian understanding of that standard according to which it has the status of a standard of theory-selection, i.e., a standard that governs the adoption or rejection of conceptions (theories, views, ideas) of practical reasoning, including views such as O'Neill's Kantian constructivism, while not itself being subjected to, or even being considered to being in need of, public political justification.
Yarran – It seems to me that it’s necessary to answer both of your questions at once. I’m tempted by the idea that the appropriate scope for an audience of public justification should be determined by the issue at hand – this is the reason why I intend to argue in favour of a more flexible account of public reason. Obviously any attempt to determine the scope of public justification in terms of the (potentially coercive) application of political principles that does not allow for variation will encounter difficulties of the sort we discussed in class: different political principles have a different scope of application – they may apply locally, state-wide, federally, internationally. Moreover, there are many principles that implicate or apply only to certain people or groups (as you alluded to), including anti-discrimination laws, welfare benefits, juvenile justice, anti-terrorism laws etc.
For this reason, I would argue that the scope of public justification should vary according to the issue at hand: some issues may require broad accessibility, others only a restricted audience (with any audience also constrained by some notion of ‘reasonableness’). Thus, I would also argue that O’Neill’s notion of ‘universal’ followability would inevitably need to be limited, and that any limitations would have be determined by the particular principle under consideration. (I’m just about to start reading her work on the scope of public justification, so I’ll be clearer about this in a few days!) Hopefully this will minimise the problems associated with simplicity (i.e. that it puts principles at risk of being trivial or unjustified).
Thomas – At the moment I’m leaning towards the O’Neillian rather than Rawlsian interpretation of public reason and its justificatory function. That is, I’d like to argue that any (flexible) understanding of the appropriate scope of public justification should itself be justified in terms of being accepted by or accessible to a given audience. I guess my problem at the moment would be determining the appropriate scope of that particular audience, given that my argument is primarily concerned with coercive political principles rather than normative principles of public reason (the application of which is somewhat broader and/or harder to determine). So I may revert to Rawls’ position after all!
Thanks for your comments
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