Public Reason

23/05/15 19:23Public Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Pgina 1 de 24http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/public-reason/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Public ReasonFirst published Mon May 20, 2013

Public reason requires that the moral or political rules that regulate our common life be, in some sense,justifiable or acceptable to all those persons over whom the rules purport to have authority. It is an ideawith roots in the work of Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, and has become increasingly influential incontemporary moral and political philosophy as a result of its development in the work of John Rawls,Jrgen Habermas, and Gerald Gaus, among others. Proponents of public reason often present the idea asan implication of a particular conception of persons as free and equal. Each of us is free in the sense of notbeing naturally subject to any other person's moral or political authority, and we are equally situated withrespect to this freedom from the natural authority of others. How, then, can some moral or political rulesbe rightly imposed on all of us, particularly if we assume deep and permanent disagreement amongstpersons about matters of value, morality, religion, and the good life? The answer, for proponents of publicreason, is that such rules can rightly be imposed on persons when the rules can be justified by appeal toideas or arguments that those persons, at some level of idealization, endorse or accept. But public reasonis not only a standard by which moral or political rules can be assessed: it can also provide standards forindividual behavior. Because we make moral and political demands of each other, if we are to complywith the ideal of public reason, we must refrain from advocating or supporting rules that cannot bejustified to those on whom the rules would be imposed. We should instead, some insist, only support thoserules we sincerely believe can be justified by appeal to suitably shared or public considerationsforexample, widely endorsed political values such as freedom and equalityand abstain from appealing toreligious arguments, or other controversial views over which reasonable people are assumed to disagree.In this way, public reason can be presented as a standard for assessing rules, laws, institutions, and thebehavior of individual citizens and public officials.

This entry is structured around questions about the nature of public reason that continue to be the subjectof sustained debate in the literature. Section 1 considers competing positions regarding the underlyingrationale for public reason. Section 2 identifies different views about the appropriate scope of publicreason. Does it apply to all moral rules, only to political rules, or only to some sub-set of political rules?Section 3 considers the question of public reason's constituency: to whom must our rules be justifiable inorder to be considered legitimate or authoritative? The next question, in section 4, concerns the content ofpublic reason; in particular, to what extent is this content determined via a process of philosophical

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ElenaNota adhesivaLos conservadores no se hacen esta pregunta directamente. En todo caso, afirman que su respuesta se halla en los arreglos institucionales concretos cuya esencia denota el legado pasado de la historia poltica.

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ElenaNota adhesivaF.M Barnard: ausencia de subjetividad,atractivas a todos,accountables o justificables.



reflection as opposed to actual moral deliberation? Section 5 considers the structure of public reason, withparticular focus on whether public reason requires some shared perspective or set of considerations, orwhether it can be achieved without any common moral or political perspective. Section 6 addresses thesite of public reason: where do its norms properly apply and when do they regulate individual conduct?Section 7 identifies some of the most influential objections that have been pressed against the idea ofpublic reason, and Section 8 concludes with a survey of a few important, but underdeveloped, topics.

1. Why Public Reason?1.1 Rationality and Morality1.2 Autonomy1.3 Coercion and Respect1.4 Community or Civic Friendship1.5 Justice

2. Scope3. Constituency4. Content5. Structure6. Site and Duties7. Objections

7.1 Self-Defeating7.2 Truth7.3 Incompleteness7.4 Exclusion7.5 Antidemocratic

8. Further Issues8.1 Non-ideal Conditions8.2 Problems of Extension8.3 Global Public Reason8.4 Assurance, Stability, and Publicity

BibliographyAcademic ToolsOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Why Public Reason?The idea of public reason appears to inhabit a middle ground between two more familiar standards ofevaluation in moral and political philosophy. On the one hand, there is consent. Some politicalphilosophers, for example, argue that political legitimacy requires the actual or implied consent of thegoverned (Otsuka 2003, 89113; Simmons 1999). On the other hand, there is truth: we can simply askwhether any alleged moral or political principle is true. Public reason does not aim either at consent ortruth. Public reason instead requires that our moral or political principles be justifiable to, or reasonablyacceptable to, all those persons to whom the principles are meant to apply. An account of public reasonmust find some way of giving the perspective of individual persons a significant role, without allowingthis to collapse into consent: public reason is not simply a way of identifying those principles to whichpeople already consent. But equally, public reason must not define those principles that could be justifiedto, or be acceptable to, each person as simply those principles that are true. In either case, the idea ofpublic reason would do no independent work.



This apparent middle ground between consent and truth may seem puzzling in several respects. Onepuzzle is whether there is, in fact, a coherent and stable way of explicating the notion of reasonableacceptability or justification (Raz 1990, 46). But even if we assume the idea of public reason is coherent,we can plausibly ask why we ought to accept this idea, that is, what is the basis for adopting public reasonas the relevant standard to evaluate rules and to govern individual conduct? This section considers fivedifferent answers to this question (these answers can, of course, also be combined). It is helpful to beginby considering these different positions regarding the basis of public reason, since how one chooses toanswer this question often has direct implications for the scope, constituency, content, site, duties, andstructure of public reason.

Each of the positions below is usually combined with an assumption about pluralism or reasonabledisagreement over a wide range of moral, ethical, and other philosophical matters. That is, virtually allproponents of public reason assume that there is deep and intractable disagreement amongst some people,and this disagreement is not simply the result of irrationality, prejudice, or self-interest, but rather arises asa result of the normal functioning of human reasoning under reasonably favorable conditions. Thisassumption about pluralism or disagreement seems an essential part of the rationale for public reasonsince without it, it might seem hard to understand why our moral or political principles ought to bejustifiable or acceptable to others, as opposed to simply true or correct. The most influential conception ofsuch pluralism or disagreement is Rawls's account of the burdens of judgment and the subsequent fact ofreasonable pluralism (Rawls 1996, 3637, 5557), though this account is controversial, and has beensubject to extensive criticism (e.g. Galston 2002, 4647; Gaus 1996, 131136; Wenar 1995, 4148).

1.1 Rationality and MoralitySome philosophers present the idea of public reason, or the public use of reason, as an essential andcentral part of the nature of rational discourse about moral norms. Habermas's influential account ofdiscourse ethics (Habermas 1990; Habermas 1996) has been presented by some as grounding a conceptionof public reason in this way. On this view, the validity of moral and political norms can only beestablished by an intersubjective and idealized practice of argumentation. Only through an inclusive andnoncoercive discursive process where all participants are equally situated can genuinely intersubjectivelyvalid norms emerge. Habermas thus proposes a dialogical principle of universalization, (U), stating that amoral norm is valid just in case the foreseeable consequences and side-effects of its general observancefor the interests and value-orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concernedwithout coercion (Habermas 1998, 42). For Habermas, this principle follows from the presuppositions ofrational moral discourse, and soat least on one interpretationto engage in reasoned moral or politicalargument with others is to commit oneself to something like the idea of public reasonto commit oneselfto finding norms that could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion. On this account, publicreason is grounded in the nature of reasoned moral argument: one cannot, without contradiction, avoid theidea of public reason insofar as one wants to engage in reasoned moral or political argument with others.

Although Habermas's account of discourse ethics has been influential amongst those who favor someversion of discursive or deliberative democracy (Bohman 1996; Dryzek 1990; Dryzek 2000), its capacityto serve as the basis for public reason is the subject of a number of criticisms. Perhaps most importantly,by grounding public reason in a broader account of truth, validity, and rational argument, public reasonbecomes tied to a specific and controversial philosophical doctrine. But some proponents of public reasonbelieve its role is to serve as a mechanism of justification amongst persons who reasonably disagree aboutphilosophical and other issues typically embedded in what Rawls calls comprehensive doctrines (Rawls1996, 13). If one believes the idea of public reason should stand apart from any particular comprehensivedoctrine or philosophical theory of truth and rationality, the appeal to the presuppositions of rationaldiscourse will be a problematic basis for public reason (see Rawls 1996, 376381).



Others, most notably Gaus, argue that the idea of public reason follows from certain basic features of oureveryday moral practices and reactive attitudes, along with certain claims about the nature of reasons(Gaus 2011). On this view, social morality involves a particular kind of interpersonal relationship; onewhere we claim the standing to make demands of others, and where, under the right conditions, weacknowledge the standing of others to make demands on us (Gaus 2011, 184). But for this sort ofrelationship to exist, we must believe that when we make moral demands of others, those others havesufficient reasons to comply with our demandsif they did not have sufficient reasons to comply, then thereactive attitudes that form an essential part of the interpersonal relationship of social morality wouldcease to make sense (Gaus 2011, 205232). If, as Gaus maintains, different people have different reasonsdepending on their differing epistemic positions and sets of justified beliefs, the practice of making moraldemands of others must involve public reason: the moral demands we make on others must be justifiableto those others by appeal to reasons they have, and not simply by appeal to the truth as we see it.

Although it differs from discourse ethics in important respects, this account also promises to groundpublic reason in a broader account of the nature of social morality and epistemology. It will thus also bevulnerable to similar worries about whether public reason ought to be embedded in a comprehensive andcontroversial philosophical theory of morality and epistemology.

1.2 AutonomyOn one prominent view, with both Kantian and Rousseauvian roots, freedom requires that we obey onlythose laws or rules that we could rationally give to ourselves. To be subject to the will of others, or to thearbitrary forces of nature, is to be unfree. We thus express our nature as rational and autonomous beingsby acting in accordance with maxims that we could will to be universal laws, or we express our politicalautonomy by acting in accordance with those laws that appeal only to the common good, and therebyrepresent the general will of all citizens. Insofar as one holds this conception of autonomy to be offundamental importance, autonomy might thus provide the basis for public reason. By ensuring that ourmoral or political principles are justifiable or reasonably acceptable to all those to whom the principlesapply, public reason appears to ensure that each of us is, in some important sense, governed only byprinciples that we can rationally give to ourselves. Some leading philosophers of public reason appear tomake this connection between public reason and autonomy. Gaus, for example, appeals to Rousseau'sstatement that the fundamental problem to which the social contract is meant to be the solution is to find away of imposing rules to regulate our common life in which each, while uniting himself with all, maystill obey himself alone, and remain as free as before (Gaus 2011, 1. Also see Rawls 1996, 219).

But the extent to which the appeal to autonomy can, on its own, justify the various features of publicreason is uncertain, and many proponents of public reason do not explicitly present the appeal to Kantianor Rousseauvian autonomy as the sole, or even primary, basis for public reason. This may be partlyexplained by the fact that this conception of our autonomy, particularly insofar as it is presented as part ofa broader account of our nature as rational beings, is controversial and the subject of reasonabledisagreement (Weithman 2002, 188191; Quong 2013).

1.3 Coercion and RespectA widely endorsed view regarding the moral basis of public reason appeals to a particular conception ofwhat it means to treat others with the respect they are due. On this view, we treat others as mere means,and not as ends, when we coerce them on the basis of reasons or arguments that they could not reasonablyaccept. Charles Larmore, for example, argues to respect another person as an end is to require thatcoercive or political principles be as justifiable to that person as they presumably are to us (Larmore1999, 608). Conversely, if we try to bring about conformity to a rule of conduct solely by the threat of



force, we shall be treating persons merely as means, as objects of coercion, and not also as ends, engagingwith their distinctive capacity as persons (Larmore 1999, 607. Also see Larmore 2002 and Nagel 1987).Public reason is presented as the way of ensuring that our coercion of others is consistent with respectingothers as ends: we do this by ensuring our coercive actions and institutions can be justified to all thosewho are the subjects of coercion. Some argue, more strongly, that public reason therefore involves apresumption in favor of liberty (Gaus 2011, 34146).

By grounding public reason in an account of how coercion can be suitably respectful, this view limits thescope of public reason in ways that may seem troubling. Not all laws and political institutions arecoercive, and yet some noncoercive political institutions may seem appropriate topics of public reason.For example, which forms of marriage, if any, ought to be granted legal recognition, or how the proceedsof a state-run lottery ought to be spent, might seem important topics of public reason, but fall outside thescope of public reason on this basis (Bird 2012 (Other Internet Resources); Quong 2013). A related worryis this: if coercive actions uniquely stand in need of public justification, then this may make it difficult, oreven impossible, for the state to legitimately pursue many goals that are widely perceived to bepermissible (Lister 2010).

1.4 Community or Civic FriendshipAn alternative, though largely neglected, basis for public reason appeals to the importance of a particularconception of political community or civic friendship (Ebels-Duggan 2010; Lister 2013). On this account,the practice of public reason is a constitutive part of a valuable relationship. This relationship might becharacterized in several ways. The relationship might have the same structure as other communitarianrelationships. In the same way relationships between co-nationals might be intrinsically valuable, andconstituted by particular social practices (e.g. shared language and cultural traditions), membership in apluralistic political community might be valuable, and constituted, in part, by a practice of publicreasoning amongst citizens with regard to political rules and institutions. Only when our politicalcommunity is regulated by laws that can be justified to each of us, despite our diverse perspectives, do westand in the appropriate sort of valuable communal relationship with our fellow citizens (Lister 2013, ch.5). A related, but slightly different view, appeals to a conception of reciprocity that obtains when peopleare willing to propose and abide by fair principles of cooperation acceptable to others, provided thoseothers are likewise willing (Rawls 1996, 4950). Rawls suggests that one role for this criterion ofreciprocity as expressed in public reasonis to specify the nature of the political relationship in aconstitutional democratic regime as one of civic friendship (Rawls 1996, li). Rawls has presented publicreason as part of the idea of democracy itself, especially the relationship in a democratic society betweenfree and equal citizens (Rawls 1996, 213; Rawls 1999b, 573). On this view, the idea of public reasonspecifies at the deepest level the basic moral and political values that are to determine a constitutionaldemocratic government's relationship to its citizens and their relation to one another. In short, it concernshow the political relation [of free and equal citizens] is to be understood (Rawls 1999b, 574). The valueof this relationship might thus provide at least part of the moral basis for public reason.

This potential basis for public reason is currently one of the least well-developed in the literature, and thusimportant features of the view remain unclear. For example, does this view presuppose a particular andcontroversial conception of the good life? And why should we believe that the value of civic friendshiphas enough weight to ground a very particular conception of the type of reasons that can be appropriatelydeployed in political deliberation? A full evaluation of this alleged basis for public reason would need toconsider these and other issues.

1.5 Justice



On one common view, public reason is a distinctively political idea: it paradigmatically applies to the lawsand other political institutions of our society. One way to explain its distinctively political nature is toground the idea of public reason in the value of justice (Quong 2013; Rawls 1996). On this view we beginwith an ideal of society as a fair system of social cooperation between free and equal citizens. As Rawlssays, this ideal provides a publicly recognized point of view from which all citizens can examine beforeone another whether their political and social institutions are just. It enables them to do this by citing whatare publicly recognized among them as valid and sufficient reasons singled out by that conception itselfthe aim of justice as fairness, then, is practical: it presents itself as a conception of justice that may beshared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political agreement. It expresses theirshared and public political reason (Rawls 1996, 9). Ensuring that the principles that regulate our sharedpolitical life can be justified to each citizen by reference to this common point of viewshowing theseprinciples can be the subject of public reasonis how we can know that the terms that regulate ourpolitical institutions are fair, and therefore just. If our political principles were instead justified by appealto some reasonably contested moral, philosophical, or religious doctrine, the terms of our public lifewould not be fair. Public reason, on this view, is the only way to achieve justice given certain assumptionsabout the nature of well-ordered liberal democratic societies. This rationale for public reason has severaladvantages (Quong 2013). First, it explains the distinctively political focus of public reason. Second,justice is widely agreed to be an important value, arguably the first virtue of social institutions (Rawls1999a, 1), and thus if public reason is grounded in the value of justice, this would also explain what sometake to be an important feature of public reason, namely, that its conclusions ought to have a certaindeliberative priority for citizens. Finally, the value of justice can be endorsed by people from diversereligious, moral, and philosophical backgrounds, and so the value of justice can provide a relativelyuncontentious basis for public reason.

But this view of the basis of public reason also faces important objections. Some will deny that politicalprinciples, even under conditions of reasonable pluralism or disagreement, need to be justifiable to each(reasonable) citizen in order to be fair or just. Others will object that this account does not provide the realfoundation for public reasonit merely shifts the focus to the value of justice. Unless we can explain thebasis for giving justice such practical importance, we lack an account of the importance of public reason.Others may object, more strongly, that justice cannot have deliberative priority or practical importancewhen restricted to those principles capable of being the subject of public reason. Some of these objectionsare considered in greater detail in section 7.

2. ScopeWhat is the scope of public reason? To which topics or domains of moral and political life does the idea ofpublic reason apply? On Rawls's influential account, the idea of public reason applies to what he calls theconstitutional essentials and matters of basic justice within a liberal democratic society, but not ingeneral for all the questions for all the questions to be settled by the legislature within a constitutionalframework (Rawls 2001, 91). Rawls suggests that citizens and legislators may properly vote their morecomprehensive views when constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice are not stake; they neednot justify by public reason why they vote as they do (Rawls 1996, 235). Constitutional essentials, forRawls, include: the principles that structure the government and political process (e.g. rules determiningwho may vote, and whether a system is parliamentary or presidential), and the basic rights and liberties ofcitizens (Rawls 1996, 227). Matters of basic justice involve principles regulating the distribution ofimportant resources (e.g. income, wealth) not covered by the list of basic rights and liberties (Rawls 1996,228229).

This proposal about the scope of public reason has been subject to two main challenges. First, some doubtthat there is a coherent way of drawing the distinction between constitutional essentials and matters of



basic justice on the one hand, and matters of ordinary political legislation on the other (Greenawalt 1994,68586). Almost everything the government chooses to do (or not to do) would seem to have an impact,even if indirect, on the basic rights and liberties of citizens, or else on the distribution of resources insociety. Second, assuming a satisfactory answer to the first question is possible; we can ask why publicreason should be restricted in the way Rawls proposes? Why not extend public reason to all instanceswhere citizens exercise political power over one another? Rawls offers no well-developed answer to thisquestion, though a number of possible arguments can be found in his work. These arguments appeal eitherto the special importance of the basic structure of society, or to the basic interests of citizens, or to theimportance of public reason being complete, that is, of being capable of generating at least onedeterminate answer to important political questions. But some deny any of these arguments, or someconjunction of them, can in fact justify restricting the scope of public reason to constitutional essentialsand matters of basic justice (Quong 2011, 273289).

An alternative viewderived from the account of respect and coercion discussed in sect. 1.3expandsthe scope of public reason to cover all instances where some person or group exercises coercive powerover another person or group (Larmore 1996, 137; Larmore 1999, 607608; Nagel 1991, 159). On thisview, the scope of public reason extends to almost all state action and activity, since the state's actions arebacked by coercive power, but it will also extend to include the non-political use of coercion by privateactors. Although this account may seem more clearly defined, it is also vulnerable to the charge of beingboth over and under inclusive. It seems underinclusive, as mentioned in sect. 1.3, because some stateactivities are expressive or symbolic, rather than coercive, but may still seem to stand in need of publicjustification. But it may also seem overinclusive because private individuals sometimes exercise coercivepower over one other in contexts (e.g. private associations or the workplace) where the idea of publicreason may seem inappropriate.

Finally, an even broader account extends the scope of public reason to the whole of social morality, that is,the set of social-moral rules that require or prohibit action, and so ground moral imperatives that wedirect to each other to engage in, or refrain from, certain lines of conduct (Gaus 2011, 2). On this view,the idea of public reason ought to apply whenever we purport to have the standing to tell others how theyought to behave. Being the most ambitious conception of the scope of public reason, this view is naturallyvulnerable to worries that it is too expansive, including parts of morality that are in fact governed bydifferent standards (e.g. religious standards of conduct). As noted in sect. 1.1, it is also an account thatdepends on a particular philosophical conception of epistemology and moral psychology.

3. ConstituencyTo whom do the relevant rules or principles need to be justified? Which persons, that is, are to be includedin the constituency of public reason? The most obvious answer is that everyone to whom the rules aremeant to apply must be included in the constituency of public reason. But this simple answer requiresclarification. For example, it seems that rules prohibiting murder and rape do not need to be justifiable to,or acceptable to everyone, including those persons who sincerely wish to engage in these actions andwould prefer that such actions be permissible. Similarly, those who hold racist and sexist views may notfind certain rules prohibiting discrimination justified or acceptable, but that does not seem to bear on thenormative status of those rules. For this reason, among others, virtually all proponents of public reasonfavor an idealized account of the constituency of public reason. Members of the constituency can beepistemically idealized, normatively idealized, or both.

On Rawls's influential account, reasonable persons represent the constituency of public reason.Reasonable persons are defined by their acceptance of two main ideas. First, reasonable persons are, whenamong equals, ready to propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by



them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do so. Those norms they view as reasonablefor everyone to accept and therefore as justifiable to them; and they are ready to discuss the fair terms thatothers propose (Rawls 1996, 49). Second, reasonable persons accept what Rawls calls the burdens ofjudgment and accept their consequences for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exerciseof political power in a constitutional regime (Rawls 1996, 54). The burdens of judgment are the manyhazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgment in theordinary course of political life, (Rawls 1996, 5556) which explain how reasonable and rational peoplewill permanently disagree about many matters of value and ethics. Rawls's list of the burdens includes thefollowing facts: (a) empirical and scientific evidence is often complex and conflicting; (b) we mayreasonably disagree about the relative weight of different considerations; (c) concepts are vague andsubject to hard cases; (d) the way we assess evidence and weigh values can be shaped by our total lifeexperience; (e) different normative considerations on different sides can make overall assessment difficult;and (f) the number of values any social institution can incorporate is limited (Rawls 1996, 5657). Theburdens of judgment explain why reasonable and rational people will be permanently divided over mattersof philosophy, religion, and other aspects of the good life. Because reasonable persons accept these twoideas, Rawls suggests they will also accept the idea of public reasonthe only terms of social cooperationthat will seem fair given the burdens of judgment will be terms that can be justified by appeal to ideals orarguments that all reasonable persons can accept. Reasonable persons will thus eschew appeals toreligious ideas or other controversial claims over which reasonable persons are assumed to disagree, andinstead appeal only to those public or political ideas that are part of a liberal democratic political cultureand can be assumed acceptable to all persons as reasonable and rational (Rawls 1996, 217).

This Rawlsian account of the constituency of public reason is both epistemically and normativelyidealized. We can assume the constituency of public reason includes only those persons who are rationaland so objections to proposed rules or principles cannot fail the test of public reason simply because somepeople have irrational views or have made clearly faulty inferences. But this epistemic idealization istempered by the fact that reasonable persons accept the burdens of judgment; controversial claims aboutreligion, morality, or philosophy cannot be part of public reason. And there is also normative idealization:the constituency includes only those who accept certain political values or ideals (e.g. the idea of citizensas free and equal, or society as a fair system of social cooperation). Both idealizations have been thesubject of much scrutiny and criticism. Some suggest, for example, that there is no need for reasonablepersons to accept the burdens of judgment (Lecce 2008, 162182; McKinnon 2002, 4556; Wenar 1995,4148). Others have argued that Rawls's conception of the reasonable person includes too much normativecontent (Bohman 2003; Habermas 1995, 126129). Some further objections will be discussed in section 7below.

A somewhat less idealized view of the constituency of public reason is offered by Gaus (2011), whosuggests that we should conceptualize the members of this constituencyhe calls them Members of thePublicas moderately idealized counterparts of the real people to whom our moral and political rulesapply. These Members of the Public are not so idealized that their reasoning is inaccessible to their real-world counterparts (Gaus 2011, 276), but instead are idealized in the following sense: they hold thebeliefs that their real-world counterparts would be justified in holding after engaging in a respectableamount of good reasoning (Gaus 2011, 250)reasoning that starts from the evaluative commitments ofthe real-world agents they represent and from the level of Kohlbergian moral reasoning those agents arecapable of (Gaus 2011, 277). This modest level of idealization ensures that the constituency of publicreason will be far more diverse than the one envisaged by Rawls. This constituency will include memberswho adhere to different standards of rationality and have widely divergent sets of normative beliefs,including very divergent beliefs about basic matters of justice. This conception of the constituency ofpublic reason thus purchases inclusivity, and greater approximation to real people's moral judgments. Butthis may come with a substantial cost, since it is less clear how such a diverse constituency may agree onany rules at all, let alone rules that we can be confident would reflect our considered judgments about



morality and justice.

On yet a different view, the constituency of public reason should be even more inclusive with very few, ifany, standards that need to be met before one qualifies as someone to whom rules or principles must bejustified. For example, some suggest that everyone affected by some proposed norm should be aparticipant in the public use of reason regarding the validity of that norm, provided they are willing toengage in a respectful justificatory dialogue with others (e.g. Bohman 2003). Support for this moreinclusive conception can be provided by Habermas's account of discourse ethics (see sect. 1.1 above),since on this account norms can only be valid when they can be the appropriate object of a suitableintersubjective agreement amongst all affected parties. The same worries about indeterminacy andnormative content that apply to Gaus's moderately idealized Members of the Public would appear applywith even greater force to this view.

4. ContentThe debate over the constituency of public reason has direct implications regarding public reason'scontent. The greater the degree to which the constituency of public reason is idealized, the more we arerestricting the content of public reason, that is, the pool of ideas or arguments that could be reasonablyendorsed by the members of the relevant constituency. And if the content of public reason is restricted inthis way, it may be possible to determine which rules or principles are conclusively publicly justified viaphilosophical analysis, without recourse to any actual deliberations amongst citizens. Conversely, the lessidealized our account of public reason's constituency, the more the content of public reason will bedetermined by some actual process of deliberation between agents in the real world, or at least morerealistic idealizations of such agents.

On Rawls's view, the content of public reason has two parts (Rawls 1996, 224). The first part consists ofthe principles of a political conception of justice. Although Rawls accepts that citizens can and willreasonably disagree about the specific content of this conception, he claims that this disagreement will belimited to a family of liberal political conceptions, all of which share the following features: (1) a list ofbasic rights, liberties, and opportunities; (2) an assignment of special priority to these rights, liberties, andopportunities, especially when compared with policies aimed at the general good or perfectionist values;and (3) measures ensuring all citizens have adequate all-purpose means to make use of their freedoms(Rawls 1996, 223; Rawls 1999b, 581582). Conceptions of justice, to be political, must apply to society'sbasic social and political institutions, must be able to be presented independently of any particular view ofthe good life, and must be worked out by appeal to ideas implicit in the public political culture of aconstitutional democracy (Rawls 1999b, 584). Thus, for Rawls, some of the paradigmatic examples of thepolitical values of justice and public reason would include: the idea of equal basic liberties; the idea ofequality of opportunity; and principles concerning a just distribution of income and wealth (Rawls 1999b,584). The second part of public reason, at least as presented by Rawls in Political Liberalism, areguidelines of inquiry which include principles of reasoning and rules of evidence to determine howsubstantive principles are to be applied, as well as important civic virtues such as reasonableness andcivility (Rawls 1996, 224). Together, these two components provide both the normative content and theguidelines for citizens when engaged in public reason with one another about fundamental politicalmatters.

Those who adopt a more inclusive view of the constituency of public reason object that the normativecontent of public reason cannot be as determinate as Rawls suggests (e.g. Benhabib 2002, 108112; Gaus2011, 3646; Habermas 1995, 126131). On Habermas's view, for example, the normative content ofpublic reason is not something that is determined via philosophical analysis or argument. Rather,philosophy provides a set of ideal rules or guidelines for the conduct of public reasoning. The ideal



guidelines for public reasoning would ensure that the discussion is inclusive, public, and free from anyinternal or external coercion, that anyone may raise a point that they believe is relevant to the topic athand, that any participant is allowed to challenge the rules for agenda setting, and that discussioncontinues until a consensus is reached (Habermas 1996, 304305). But on this account, the philosopherleaves substantial questions that must be answered here and now to the more or less enlightenedengagement of participants, which does not mean that philosophers may not also participate in the publicdebate, though in the role of intellectuals, not of experts (Habermas 1995, 131). In a similar vein, Gaussuggests that without making controversial assumptions, or else idealizing the constituency of publicreason in a way that excludes too much of the diversity to which public reason is meant to be the solution,the normative content of public reason is largely indeterminate, that is, many different possible rules canbe justified as better than anarchy, but no philosophical argument or analysis can establish a determinateset of rules as being uniquely capable of meeting the test of public reason (Gaus 2011, 4344). On hisaccount, the content of public reason is given determinate content not by philosophical argument, nornecessarily by deliberation amongst real citizens, but rather via a path-dependent evolutionary process,whereby stable norms evolve and are selected by virtue of their capacity to make cooperative life possible.

Although much of the debate regarding public reason's content has focused on the question of normativecontent, there are also important questions about the other aspect of public reason's contentwhat Rawlsdescribes as the guidelines of inquiry. Rawls suggests that these guidelines of inquiry direct citizens toabstain from appealing to comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrinesto what we as individualsor members of associations see as the whole truthnor to elaborate economic theories of generalequilibrium, say, if these are in dispute. Instead he suggests citizens must rely on plain truths nowwidely accepted, or available, to citizens generally, which include the conclusions of science when notcontroversial (Rawls 1996, 224225). There is at least one puzzling aspect of this proposal. As Rawlsconcedes, one of the things that reasonable people disagree about is the nature of truth itself. There arecompeting philosophical theories of truth, and public reason is meant to abstain from appealing toparticular philosophical doctrines. Rawls thus famously suggests that his account of political liberalism, ofwhich the idea of public reason is a central part, does without the concept of truth (Rawls 1996, 94). Butwithout a concept of truth, how can we make sense of what Rawls says about the guidelines of inquiry, inparticular his claim that citizens should rely on plain truths now widely accepted? Some argue thatRawls is mistaken, and political philosophy cannot abstain from at least some controversial claims aboutthe nature of truth (Estlund 1998; Raz 1990). Others accept that political philosophy must abstain fromcontroversial philosophical theories of truth, but insist that public reason requires a political (as opposedto philosophical) account of the truth (Cohen 2008). This is discussed further in section 7.

5. StructureIn order for some proposed principle or rule, X, to meet the test of public reason, do the reasons orarguments that justify X need to be shared by all members of the constituency of justification, or can Xmeet the test of public reason by being justified to different people by appeal to different arguments? Thisis a question about the structure of public reason, in particular, about whether that structure must involve akind of consensus, or whether it can allow different people to converge on the same rule or principle forentirely different reasons (D'Agostino 1996, 3031; Nagel 1987, 218219).

One possible view would require strong consensus in order for X to meet the test of public reason. On thisaccount, each member of the constituency of public reason would have to be justified in accepting X forthe very same reason or set of reasons. If members of the constituency do not share the same justificationfor X, then X would not pass the test of public reason. Habermas might be endorsing the strong consensusview when he says the consensus brought about through argument must rest on identical reasons able toconvince the parties in the same way (Habermas 1996, 339).



A second view requires only weak consensus. On this view, it is not necessary that each person shares thevery same justification for accepting X, but it is necessary that each person's justification for accepting Xshould depend only on shared or public reasons, that is, reasons that all other members of the justificatoryconstituency could accept as valid considerations that provide a plausible basis for accepting X, even ifthere is disagreement among the members as to which set of shared reasons in fact provides theappropriate justification for endorsing X. To illustrate, Albert might believe X is justified because itfollows from a commitment to equality of opportunity, whereas Betty might believe X is justified becauseit is a necessary means of protecting individuals' rights to freedom of religion, but so long as both theseconsiderationsequality of opportunity and the right to freedom of religionare accepted as validnormative considerations by all members of the constituency and provide a plausible or reasonable basisof support for X, then X can meet the test of public reason despite the fact that different members believeX to be justified for different reasons. The weak consensus view of public reason's structure seems toreflect Rawls's position, and has been explicitly defended by others (Macedo 2010 (Other InternetResources); Quong 2011, 261273).

It may be helpful to connect this view regarding the structure of public reason to Rawls's discussion of therelated concepts of public justification and the idea of an overlapping consensus. For Rawls, publicjustification is achieved when all the reasonable members of political society carry out a justification ofthe shared political conception by embedding it in their several reasonable comprehensive views (Rawls1996, 387). When each reasonable person has found a sufficient comprehensive or non-shared justificationof a political liberal conception of justice, then we can say that an overlapping consensus on a politicalconception of justice exists, and as a result of this consensus, there is a public justification of our sharedpolitical conception of justice. But Rawls is clear that while the public justification of the politicalconceptiondepends on reasonable comprehensive doctrines, it does so only in an indirect way. That is,the express contents of the doctrines have no normative role in public justification; citizens do not lookinto the content of others' doctrinesRather, they take into account and give some weight only to the factto the existenceof the reasonable overlapping consensus itself (Rawls 1996, 387). For Rawls, publicjustification thus depends on the fact that all reasonable persons can endorse a political conception ofjustice from within their non-public or comprehensive doctrines, but public reason itself makes noreference to the content of those nonpublic doctrinesit depends only on the shared political ideas foundwithin the political conception of justice.

By contrast, convergence accounts of public reason's structure allow for the possibility that a principle orrule may meet the test of public reason even in the absence of any shared or public reasons. Here is anillustration of the convergence view. X is justified for Albert by appeal to reason Ra, but this reason isdrawn from Albert's religious doctrine. Ra is, we can temporarily assume, only normative for Albert andothers who adhere to this religious doctrine. For Betty, on the other hand, X can be justified by appeal toRb, a reason drawn from her different religious doctrine. Suppose Albert and Betty are the only membersof the justificatory constituency and suppose there are no shared reasons that would justify accepting X.Under these conditions, the convergence account holds that X meets the test of public reason becauseAlbert and Betty each have a sufficient justification for X, even though the reasons supporting theirconvergent justifications are not shared. Note that proponents of the convergence view need not (andtypically do not) deny that shared justifications of the sort described in the preceding paragraphs are also asuccessful way for a proposed rule to meet the test of public reasonthey simply insist, contra proponentsof consensus views, that convergent justifications are also an acceptable structure for public reason (Gaus2009; Gaus 2011, 276292; Gaus and Vallier 2009, Stout 2004, 7272).

The convergence view appears to depend on the assumption that justifications and reasons can be relativeto particular persons, that is, what constitutes a valid justification for Albert may not succeed as ajustification for Betty, and vice versa. But some have argued that this means the convergence viewdepends on a controversial philosophical position that is the subject of reasonable disagreement. Unless



this controversial view is assumed, the convergence view cannot assure us that Albert and Betty can eachsincerely believe that the other is justified in accepting X. The convergence view, according to thiscritique, thus either depends on a reasonably disputed philosophical thesis, or else it fails to show that allparties to a convergent justification are indeed justified in endorsing the rule in question (Quong 2011,261273). Other critics of the convergence view argue that it has unwelcome institutional implicationsregarding the interpretation and application of laws, and that unlike consensus approaches, it fails toprovide citizens with the type of mutual assurance that others are committed to the project of publicreasoning about fundamental political matters (Macedo 2010, Other Internet Resources).

For their part, proponents of the convergence view argue that what matters for public reason is that rulesor laws be justified to each individual person to whom the rules or laws apply. If, as proponents of theconvergence model insist, different people can be justified in endorsing the same rule for entirely differentreasons, then proponents of public reason have no principled basis to oppose convergent forms ofjustification. Defenders of the view also insist that the requirement for consensus or shared reasons isoverly demanding, and fails to be consistent with the pluralistic forms of reasoning that are possibleamongst the relevant members of the constituency of public reason. Part of the point of public reason, onthis view, is to accommodate the diverse forms of reasoning that are bound to exist among any reasonablycompetent group of reasoners (Gaus 2011, 288292).

6. Site and DutiesWhat duties, if any, does the idea of public reason impose on individuals? And in what domains or parts ofour life do the requirements of public reason apply?

Rawls argues that public reason imposes a moral duty of civility on all citizens to explain to one anotherhow, at least with regard to constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, the political positionsthey advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason (Rawls 1996, 217).Citizens, Rawls suggests, should think of themselves as if they were legislators, supporting only thosepolitical positions that they believe could be justified by appeal to reasons that all reasonable personscould endorse, and holding government officials to this standard (Rawls 1999b, 576577). But Rawlsappears to believe that public reason imposes greater duties on public officials: elected officials and thosewho run for office, their staff, and judges. This is because, in these roles, these people work at what Rawlsconsiders the main site of public reason, namely, the public political forum. This forum has three parts: (1)the discourse of judges, (2) the discourse of government officials, and (3) the discourse of candidates forpublic office and their campaign managers (Rawls 1999b, 575). The public political forum is the arenawhere our fundamental political principles and institutions are shaped and debatedit is where collectivepolitical power is most directly exercisedand thus it is the most appropriate site for the application ofindividual duties of public reason. When engaged in discourse in this arena, officials are to refrain fromappealing to religious or other comprehensive doctrines over which reasonable persons are assumed todisagree, and instead make arguments that appeal to our shared political values. Rawls does, however,qualify this duty by appeal to what he refers to as the wide view of public political culture, whichpermits officials and citizens to introduce their religious or otherwise comprehensive views into politicaldiscussion at any point, provided appropriate public reasons are provided in due course (Rawls 1999b,591). It is also important to note that the duty of civility is, on Rawls's view, a moral but not a legal dutyit cannot be coercively imposedand it does not apply to the discussions citizens may have outside thepublic political forum, for example, the discussions individuals have qua members of private associations,or family members, or discussions within universities, religious institutions, or other parts of what Rawlscalls the background culture (Rawls 1996, 220).

Rawls's account of the duty of civility and the site of public reason has been subject to a number of



criticisms, some of which will be discussed in section 7 below. But even setting these objections aside, notall proponents of public reason believe that it ought to directly regulate the behavior of individual citizensin the manner suggested by Rawls. Some argue that the aims of public reason are best served bypermitting ordinary citizens, and perhaps even elected officials, to debate and deliberate unconstrained bythe duty of civility (e.g. Benhabib 2002, 108112; Bohman 2003; Gaus 2009; Gaus and Vallier 2009).Some argue for this less restrictive view because they hold different conceptions of the constituency andcontent of public reason; the more philosophically indeterminate those conceptions are, the less plausibleit is to impose a restrictive duty of civility on individual citizens, since only by allowing citizens to engagein a fairly unconstrained discourse can the content of public reason emerge (Benhabib 2002; Bohman2003). Others reject the duty of civility because they endorse a different account of the structure of publicreason. If, for example, the convergence view of public reason's structure is correct, then citizens andofficials need not refrain from appealing to religious or otherwise comprehensive arguments in politicaldeliberations, since those reasons might succeed in justifying a proposed law to some members of thepublic, even if others cannot reasonably accept those reasons (Gaus 2009; Gaus and Vallier 2009). Thosewho endorse consensus conceptions of public reason's structure, however, are likely to protest thatabandoning the duty of civility in this way is to effectively abandon the idea of public reason, since therewould no longer be any requirement that public policies be justified by appeal to shared or commonreasons.

Different accounts of public reason thus yield sharply different views regarding the duties of citizens andpublic officials. On Rawls's view, and other similar views, citizens and public officials should generallyrefrain from relying on ideas or reasons that other reasonable citizens reject, and must always show howthe political positions they support can be justified by appeal to shared political values. On other accounts,the idea public reason may regulate the way we design our democratic institutions, and may be a standardby which particular principles and laws can be assessed, but it imposes few, if any, moral restrictions onthe behavior of citizens and perhaps even elected officials.

7. ObjectionsThis section considers some of the most prominent objections to the idea of public reason. The list belowis not exhaustive, and some of the objections below apply to some conceptions of public reason, but notothers.

7.1 Self-DefeatingThe idea of public reason tells us that, for some set of moral or political rules, the rules in question are notlegitimate, or lack normative authority, unless the rules in question can be justified, or are reasonablyacceptable, to all those to whom the rules apply. Some critics argue that the idea of public reason is self-defeating because the idea itself cannot be justified to all those to whom the idea applies (Wall 2002).Public reason, the critic points out, is a moral or political rule like any other, and so surely it ought to besubject to the same test of moral and political rules which proponents of public reason advocate. But, thecritic continues, the idea of public reason will be unable to pass this test.

There are, broadly, two ways one might defend the idea of public reason from this objection. First, onemight deny that the idea of public reason does indeed apply to itself. On some formulations, the idea ofpublic reason is a constraint on the exercise of political power, or a constraint on the exercise of coercion,but not itself an exercise of political power, nor an exercise of coercion. When the proponent of publicreason states that political or moral rules must be publicly justifiably to be legitimate, she does not exertpower or coercion over anyone, she merely states a condition that any purportedly legitimate exercises ofpower or coercion must meet to be legitimate. The success of this reply, however, may depend on a



controversial presumption in favor of states of affairs where political power or coercion is not exercised. Itseems to assume, for example, that refusals to aid others, and other non-coercive choices, need not meetthe test of public reason. Proponents of public reason might also argue that the principle of public reasondoes not apply to itself because it is a meta claim about the appropriate conditions for moral or politicaljustification, and not a first order normative claim within that discourse (Gaus 2011, 227228). But thisline of reply is also open to challenge, since the idea of public reason does sometimes appear to operate asa first order normative claim, for example, it can be deployed to justify why one person cannotpermissibly coerce another, or why the latter person is justified in forcefully resisting that coercion.

The second way to defend public reason from the objection is to concede that the idea ought to apply toitself (Estlund 1998) and argue that it does so successfully. This strategy might be pursued in severalways. The proponent of public reason may point to some allegedly public or shared idealmoralautonomy or respect for personsand argue that this ideal both justifies a commitment to public reasonand is publicly justifiable by virtue of being a suitably public or shared ideal. This strategy, however, facestwo related challenges. If the ideal in question is formulated in a sufficiently detailed or rich way, suchthat a commitment to public reason is plausibly entailed by the ideal, then the ideal runs the risk of beingone that is no longer suitably public or shared. This defense thus runs the risk of grounding public reasonin some reasonably contested moral ideal or claim about philosophical truth, though some argue this is theonly appropriate way to defend the idea (Estlund 1998). On the other hand, if the alleged ideal is pitchedat a level of abstraction that ensures it does remain suitably public, it may no longer be obvious that theideal does in fact entail a commitment to public reason (Wall 2002, 390391). Alternatively, a proponentmight argue that public reason can successfully meet its own test by appeal to a convergence form ofjustification. On this view, the idea of public reason is justifiable or acceptable to all the relevant membersof the constituency because each member has his or her own nonpublic reasons to accept the idea. Forexample, all reasonable people might converge on the importance of the value of justice for nonpublicreasons, and then the advocate of public reason need only establish that justice, at least under conditionsof reasonable pluralism, requires a commitment to public reason (see sect. 1.5 above). But this line ofresponse may be vulnerable to the charge that it can only succeed by stipulationby defining the relevantmembers of the constituency as those who converge on the importance of public reason.

7.2 TruthMany accounts of public reason, most notably Rawls's, recommend that we assess moral and politicalrules while abstaining, in several ways, from claims about truth. On Rawls's account, for example,philosophical theories of the truth are the sort of thing over which reasonable people are assumed todisagree, and so an account of public reason cannot purport to deliver moral or political principles that aretrue according to some particular philosophical conception of truth; rather it can only deliver principlesthat are reasonable (Rawls 1996, 94). Many accounts of public reason also tell citizens that they mustrefrain, when engaged in public reasoning with others, from appealing to the whole truth as they see it.Regardless of what you may believe is true about religion or the good life, citizens must abstain fromappeals to such truths, and instead appeal only to those public or political considerations that can beendorsed by other reasonable members of the moral or political community.

These two ways in which public reason limits appeals to truth generate several distinct objections. First,some worry that if a system of moral or political justification ignores the whole truth, the resulting moralor political principles may be false. For example, if it is true that all sinners will go to hell when they die,but we are precluded from appealing to this truth in developing our political principles, we may endorse apolitical principle that permits people to engage in various sinful activities. If we could appeal to thewhole truth about hell, however, we would see that this political principle is false. A related worrythatprecluding the appeal to certain truths will render us unable to solve certain problemsis considered insection 7.3 below.



Second, we might worry that if an account of moral or political justification seeks to validate conclusionswithout contradicting anything that a diverse group of people believe to be truefor example, withoutcontradicting anyone's reasonable religious viewssuch an account will be committed to the view that itis desirable to propagate false beliefs or unsound inferences (Raz 1998, 42).

Third, some critics focus on Rawls's claim that the content of public reasonthe principles of a politicalconception of justicecan be presented as merely reasonable, but not true. If these principles are merelyreasonable, but not presented as true, then why should individuals accord these principles priority in theirdecisions about how to behave, particularly when these principles come into conflict with religious orother requirements that individuals believe to be true, and not merely reasonable (Raz 1990, 23)?

Fourth, it might seem that public reason cannot successfully abstain from some claims about moral orpolitical truth. In order to explain why we ought to accept a principle of public reason or publicjustification, we cannot simply say it ought to be accepted because the principle itself can be publiclyjustified. Such a claim might be trivially trueits truth established by restricting the constituency ofpublic reason to those who endorse the idea of public reasonbut this does not vindicate the principle,nor does it distinguish a principle of public reason from similarly insular principles that appear clearlydubious, for example, a principle mandating that moral principles are valid only when endorsed by Albert,who also happens to endorse this principle granting him exclusive moral authority (Estlund 1998).

Fifth, other critics have suggested that the idea of public reason entails that individuals must doubt, or beskeptical about, their religious or otherwise nonpublic beliefs (Barry 1995, 901914; McCabe 2000, 316324; Wall 1998, 9194; Wenar 1995, 4148). Some argue this is entailed by the Rawlsian appeal to theburdens of judgment or the fact of reasonable pluralism (see sect. 3). Others claim that only if we wereskeptical about the truth of our nonpublic beliefs would it make sense to bracket those beliefs whendeliberating about moral and political matters. If skepticism is entailed for either of these reasons, thisposes two potential problems. One is that this looks to be the sort of controversial epistemological viewthat Rawls and others want to avoid in constructing an account of public reason. The other is that manyotherwise apparently reasonable and well-motivated people are not skeptical about their religious ornonpublic beliefs, but then does this mean such people cannot endorse the idea of public reason?

Proponents of public reason have offered various responses to the objections described above. First, andmost generally, not all conceptions of public reason purport to do without the concept of truth entirely, inthe way that Rawls's particular account aims to do. Second, even those who endorse Rawls's account, orone similar to it, argue that it can meet the objections pressed against it. According to some, this isbecause it is a mistake to suppose that a theory of public reason or political justification must also justifythe deliberative priority of its conclusions. On this view, it is up to individuals to decide whether, and why,to accord to deliberative priority to the conclusions of public reason. If deliberative priority is notsomething a theory of public reason should be expected to supply, the third, fourth, and fifth objectionsabove can be defused (Quong 2011, 221242). Third, proponents of public reason point out that whenmethods of justification require participants to refrain from appealing to the whole truth, this does notentail the conclusions reached will not be true, or that the method is somehow indifferent with regard tothe truth of the conclusions reached (Mendus 2002, 2628; Rawls 1996, 150). Certain appeals to truthfor example, hearsayare not permitted in a courtroom, but this does not show that we are unconcernedwith the truth of the conclusions we reach in criminal trials. Fourth, and relatedly, in contexts when weaim at truth or justification, we also recognize the importance of other considerations and allow theseconsiderations to constrain the means by which truth is pursued, for example, spouses cannot be requiredto testify against one another (Freeman 2007, 233235; Rawls 1996, 218). Finally, some might argue,following Rawls, that we do not need to affirm any given political principle or rule as true, only as themost reasonable one available in light of our commitment to certain public political values; this is



sufficient to show why we ought to endorse the principle or rule in question, at least insofar as we seeourselves as reasonable citizens.

7.3 IncompletenessOne of the most important objections pressed against the idea of public reason concerns its capacity toprovide solutions to all, or almost all, of the important moral and political questions we face, that is, thequestion of whether public reason is complete (Rawls 1996, 244246; Rawls 1999b, 585586). A numberof critics argue that public reason lacks the resources to offer solutions to many important moral orpolitical questions because the answers to these questions depend on appeal to controversial moral,religious, or metaphysical claims of the sort over which reasonable people disagree and that are excludedfrom many conceptions of public reason, particularly those conceptions that adopt a consensus approachto the structure of public reason (Horton 2003: de Marneffe 1994; Reidy 2000: Sandel 1998).

There are two ways in which public reason might be incomplete (Gaus 1996, 151158: Schwartzman2004). First, public reason might be indeterminate, that is, it may be unable to deliver any clearconclusions about a particular question. In these cases, it is sometimes said that public reason runs out:its content simply proves insufficient to yield an answer to the question posed. Second, public reasonmight be inconclusive with regard to some question, that is, a plurality of different answers might beapparently justified by appeal to public reason, and public reason alone cannot clearly tell us whichanswer is correct or the most reasonable alternative.

Indeterminacy is the more serious charge, but critics maintain that even if public reason was onlyinconclusive with regard to many questions, this would also be a serious, perhaps fatal, objection to publicreason. Some of the topics with regard to which critics allege public reason is either inconclusive orindeterminate include: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, prostitution, justice for futuregenerations, the treatment of animals, and other issues where critics allege getting the right moral orpolitical answer depends upon religious or metaphysical claims about personhood, or else on controversialclaims about human flourishing or the good life. Some critics believe that virtually all moral or politicalquestions depend, to a certain extent, on truths about personhood, metaphysics, or human flourishing, andso these critics are likely to see the charge of incompleteness as a deep and pervasive problem for publicreason.

What responses are available to the proponent of public reason? With regard to the charge ofinconclusiveness, most advocates of public reason are inclined to accept the charge, but deny that itrepresents an objection (Freeman 2007, 242243; Gaus 2011, 303333; Quong 2011, 204212, 285287;Rawls 1996, 240241; Schwartzman 2004; Williams 2000). If, for a given moral or political question,public reason seems to yield a number of equally reasonable answers, we should find an appropriate wayto choose between these competing answers. If we do so, the idea of public reason is upheld, rather thanundermined. On this view, the critics wrongly suppose that the point of public reason is to deliver a uniqueanswer to each question we face; the point is rather to ensure that the rules or principles that we adopt canbe reasonably justified to all. Showing that some rule we currently apply is not the only rule that can meetthe test of public reason is no objection, provided the mechanism by which different public justifiablerules are selected can itself be reasonably justified. The charge of indeterminacy seems more serious: ifpublic reason can provide no answer to a given moral or political question, we are apparently left with noalternative but to rely on nonpublic forms of reasoning. In response to this objection, there are two mainstrategies. One is to insist that public reason is unlikely to be indeterminate in many cases, or at least torebut specific attempts by critics to show that public reason is indeterminate with regard to a particularquestion (Bell 2002; Freeman 2007, 241251; Schwartzman 2004, 205208; Williams 2000, 205208).The second strategy is to insist that, even if public reason is indeterminate with regard to a given question,this does not suffice to establish that it is permissible to resort to nonpublic forms of reasoning.



Alternative solutionsdeferring decisions if possible, finding forms of mutual accommodation, or randomdecision-making proceduresmay be preferable to resorting to nonpublic reasoning (Schwartzman 2004,209214; Williams 2000, 209211).

7.4 ExclusionSome critics argue that the idea of public reasonagain particularly Rawls's conceptionis in some wayunfair or unduly exclusionary. This complaint is most often made on behalf of those who would rely onreligious arguments when deliberating about important moral and political questions (Eberle 2002;Greenawalt 1995; Smith 2010; Stout 2004; Weithman 2002), though the objection is also sometimes mademore generally on behalf of those who are excluded from the constituency of public reason on normativegrounds (Bohman 2003; Friedman 2000). There are many different versions of this objection, and the listthat follows is not exhaustive. Put most forcefully, public reason is a sham: it purports to be an impartialor neutral method of moral or political justification, but it is, in fact, a form of sectarian secularism ormodern liberalism masquerading as something more inclusive. A second, less strident, version of thisobjection points out that even those theories of public reason that are not explicitly secular willnevertheless make it more difficult, on balance, for religious citizens to justify their favored views. Publicreason cannot help but tilt in a secular direction given its requirement that principles or rules bereasonably justifiable to all members of the community. Everyone can understand and endorse a variety ofsecular considerations, but there is no religious idea or argument that all reasonable people can accept, andthus public reason has an in-built bias against religious doctrines and those who believe such doctrines arerelevant to moral and political argument. A third version of the objection queries why controversialreligious arguments, claims about the good life, or metaphysical arguments, are excluded from playing arole in public reason, but controversial arguments about justice or individual rights are not similarlyexcluded. If, as the critic alleges, nothing can justify this asymmetric treatment of controversial argumentsfrom different domains of inquiry, then the idea of public reason is unjustifiably biased against those whorely on religious, metaphysical, or perfectionist arguments. This objection is sometimes called theasymmetry objection (Brower 1994, 2122; Caney 1995, 258; Sandel 1998, 202210; Waldron 1999, ch.7). A variant of this objection focuses on the claim that reasons must be accessible in order to qualify aspublic. The critics allege that, however the notion of accessibility is defined, there will be no clear groundsfor declaring that many religious arguments are not accessible and thus nonpublic when compared tovarious apparently public non-religious arguments (Eberle 2002, 255-260). Fourth, some critics worry thatRawls's moral duty of civility (see sect. 6 above) will either discourage some citizens from engaging inlegitimate acts of religious expression and association, or at least will create a political atmosphere wherereligious arguments and those who espouse them are treated as less valuable when compared with purelypublic reasons and those who restrict themselves to such arguments. Finally, some critics argue thatpublic reason is not the only way, and perhaps not the best way, to show respect for others, or showcivility, when engaged in moral and political dialogue. There are equally plausible conceptions of respectand civility which favor presenting others with the whole truth as we see it when engaged in moral orpolitical debate, rather than restricting ourselves to shared or common reasons. If this is true, then thosewho ground their moral or political arguments only in religious or otherwise nonpublic reasons are notbeing unreasonable or disrespectful: they are simply following a different, but equally plausible,interpretation of what respect or civility requires (Eberle 2002; Stout 2004, 6785; Weithman 2002).

A variety of different replies are available for the proponent of public reason. In response to the firstcharge, defenders of public reason can point out that it is not only religious doctrines that are deemednonpublic by leading theories of public reason such as Rawls's. Secular doctrines such as utilitarianismor controversial secular claims about the good life are also deemed nonpublic. Thus it seems unfair toallege that public reason is simply a fig leaf for a secular agenda. In response to the second objection,theorists of public reason may concede that there is a sense in which public reason tilts in a secular



direction, but insist this is not an arbitrary bias, but rather the justifiable result of the requirement thatcertain principles or rules be justifiable to all those who are bound by them. The charge of bias thus in factdepends on a much deeper objection to the public reason project, and so the critic who presses the chargeof bias must be prepared to rebut the more fundamental arguments offered in favor of public reason.

Several different responses have been offered in reply to the third objection: the asymmetry objection.Some argue the objection can be defused by constructing an account of public reason (or the closelyrelated idea of a political liberalism) without appeal to what Rawls calls the burdens of judgment, or otherapparently epistemological premises (see sect. 1 above) (Lecce 2008, ch. 6). Others deny that publicreason should include an accessibility requirement (Vallier 2011). Finally, others argue that it is a mistaketo suppose that religious arguments are excluded from public reason because they are controversial or thesubject or reasonable disagreement amongst citizens, since the same can be said for many non-religiousarguments. Rather, on this view, they are excluded because the disagreements or controversies overreligious and other comprehensive doctrines are deeper or more foundational and lack the normativecommon ground that characterize reasonable disagreements over matters of justice and individual rights(Quong 2011, 192220).

In response to the fourth chargethat an ideal of public reason will directly or indirectly discouragereligious expression, or create the perception that those who invoke religious arguments are, in somesense, second class citizensthe proponent of public reason can offer at least two replies. First, not alltheories of public reason share Rawls's view regarding the moral duty of civility. As we saw in section 6,some accounts of public reason entail fewer, if any, direct restrictions on the behavior of individualcitizens. Second, Rawls's own view does not prohibit citizens from offering religious or nonpublicarguments for their favored positions; it only requires that individuals who do so eventually supplementthese arguments with public reasons (again see sect. 6). Finally, proponents of public reason are likely todeny that there are plausible alternative conceptions of civility or respect that would allow religious andother non-shared arguments to play a more central role in moral or political justification (Quong 2013), orelse they may deny that the grounds of public reason are in fact best explicated by appeal to notions ofcivility or respect (see sect. 1).

7.5 AntidemocraticA further objection to the idea of public reasonagain particularly Rawls's accountis that it isantidemocratic. On Rawls's account, the content of public reason is partly fixed via philosophicalargument, prior to any actual democratic deliberation amongst citizens (see sect. 5). Seyla Benhabib thuscomplains that public reason in Rawls's theory is best viewed not as a process of reasoning amongcitizens, but more as a regulative principle, imposing certain standards upon how individuals, institutions,and agencies ought to reason about public matters. The standards of public reason are set by a politicalconception of liberalism (Benhabib 2002, 108). Similarly, Habermas argues that Rawls's theory does nottake seriously enough the importance of democratic or political autonomy, and by giving public reasondeterminate content in the shape of certain liberal principles generates a priority of liberal rights whichdemotes the democratic process to an inferior status (Habermas 1995, 128). Although these complaintsare made about Rawls's account, the objection obviously applies, with greater or lesser force, to anyconception of public reason that fixes the content of public reason, to some extent, prior to any actualdemocratic debate.

The response on behalf of Rawls's account and similar views is likely to take the following form. First,Rawls does not purport to offer a determinate account of public reason's content; rather he suggests thatthe content of public reason is given by a family of political conceptions of justice. His theory thus doesnot try to fix public reason once and for all in the form of one favored political conception of justice(Rawls 1999b, 582). Second, insofar as the content of public reason is partly determinatefor example,



Rawls claims it must include certain basic rights and liberties for all personsthis does not appearparticularly objectionable, nor does it seem a problematic restriction of the democratic process, unless onebelieves that democratic majorities can permissibly vote to deny the basic rights of certain individuals(Quong 2013). Finally, since all conceptions of public reason aim at the public justification of moral orpolitical rules, it is not strange to suppose that the content of public reason might be partly determinateprior to any actual discussion and deliberation. It is plausible to believe that certain basic rules prohibitingnon-consensual harming of innocent persons, or protecting certain minimal rights of bodily integrity, mustbe justifiable to all members of the constituency of public reason, provided we assume those members arecommitted to certain minimal ideals of freedom and equality (Cohen 2010, 272277). To assumeotherwiseas those who press the antidemocratic objection appear to dowould be to concede that wecannot be certain, in advance of actual deliberation amongst real persons, that our most basic moral andpolitical commitments are publicly justifiable. If this assumption were true, it seems more likely to countagainst the very idea of public reason, as opposed to something that counts against Rawls's particularconception of public reason.

8. Further IssuesThis section briefly lists some further topics that have received relatively little attention in the literature todate, but seem promising subjects for future analysis. Again, the list is not exhaustive; it only aims toidentify some important but relatively neglected questions about public reason.

8.1 Non-ideal ConditionsThe idea of public reason is often presented as a normative ideal, as the way our moral or political rulesought, ideally, to be justified, and also as the way individuals ought, ideally, to engage in deliberation anddiscussion. Rawls, for example, stipulates that his account of public reason belongs to a conception of awell-ordered constitutional democratic society (Rawls 1999b, 573), by which he means a society where:(a) everyone accepts, and knows that others accept, the same conception of justice (or at least everyoneaccepts some member from the family of liberal conceptions); (b) the basic structure of society is publiclyknown to satisfy this conception and; (c) citizens have a normally effective sense of justice (Rawls 1996,35).

But what does public reason entail in non-ideal circumstances, such as our own, where arguably none ofthe three conditions listed above are met (Boettcher 2012, 174175)? Some proponents of public reasonencourage us to observe the moral duty of civility in our political life, but if the duty of civility has beendesigned for ideal conditions, it is unclear whether or how it might apply under less than ideal conditions.For example, many accounts of public reason include a sincerity principle that directs individuals to onlysupport those principles or rules they sincerely believe meet the test of public reason (Gaus 1996, 139140; Rawls 1996, 241242; Schwartzman 2011). But does this requirement still apply in conditions wheremany of those with whom we are debating do not embrace the idea of public reason, and may behave onlystrategically or cynically? Similarly, if we believe our existing political institutions are not publiclyjustifiable or do not meet certain minimal requirements of justice, do the requirements of public reasonnevertheless apply to our political deliberations and discourse, or do those requirements only apply oncereasonably just institutions have been secured (Rawls 1996, 247252)?

8.2 Problems of ExtensionAs we saw in section 7.3, an important objection to the idea of public reason is that it will proveincomplete; that it lacks the theoretical resources necessary to provide answers to many of the importantmoral or political questions we face. Although this objection is often voiced by critics of public reason,



the existing literature provides relatively little in the way of detailed case-by-case analysis of theplausibility of the charge (an exception is Greenawalt 1988). In particular, the charge of incompletenessseems most plausible when we consider certain problems of extension, that is, topics where it is unclearwhether public reason can be extended to provide reasonable answers (Rawls 1996, 244246). Someexamples of these problems include: What principles should regulate our treatment of future generations?What principles should regulate our treatment of animals and nature? What principles should apply todecisions about the provision of health care? For each of these questions, there is a plausible prima faciecase that our deliberations must be informed by considerations that go beyond the limits of public reasonand appeal to controversial claims about the moral status of animals, or future persons, or particularclaims about what constitutes human flourishing. But whether this is indeed the case with regard to theseissues, among others, is something that awaits more sustained analysis.

8.3 Global Public ReasonAnother issue that Rawls lists as a problem of extension is the topic of international relations. But thetopic of international relations may not simply be a problem of extension, that is, it may not simply be aquestion of whether some existing account of public reason can be extended to provide the necessaryanswers to questions about international relations or global justice. There is also the further question as towhether the principles that regulate international or global justice require an independent or separateconception of global public reason. The case in favor of a distinct account of global public reason mightappeal to at least three facts. First, if the fundamental ideas that form the basis of domestic public reasondraw on the shared public or political culture of a constitutional democracy (Rawls 1999b, 584), globalpublic reason appears to require a different basis, since either there is no shared political culture spanningthe globe, or else that shared culture looks very different to that of a constitutional democracy. Second, ifthe relevant agents in the global or international arena are not primarily individual persons, but are ratherstates or other collective entities, then global public reason may require a very different conception of theconstituency of public reason. Third, and relatedly, if we assume that a global society regulated by aconception of global public reason is comprised of different states, which are each internally regulated bytheir own domestic forms of public reason, we face several questions regarding the relationship betweenthese domestic and global principles, for example, can these principles come into conflict, and if so, howdo we adjudicate such conflicts? Each of these assumptions, however, is open to dispute, and thus somemight plausibly insist that there is no need for a distinct account of global public reason.

Although the topic of global justice has been the subject of much recent philosophical attention,comparatively little recent work has focused on the idea of a global public reason, with some notableexceptions (Cohen 2010, 319372; Porter 2012; Rawls 1999b, 529564; Smith 2011; Wenar 2008).

8.4 Assurance, Stability, and PublicityAlthough the idea of public reason is primarily a view about the justification of moral or political rules, itmay have other important social functions. Paul Weithman suggests that public reason also plays anessential roleat least in Rawls's Political Liberalismin establishing mutual assurance with regard to acommitment to a public conception of justice amongst citizens who are deeply divided about religious,moral, and philosophical matters (Weithman 2010, 326335). On this view, citizens need to be assuredthat others are committed to justice in order to know that acting from their own sense of justice is notsomething to regret. Without this assurance, citizens might reasonably worry that acting justly conflictstoo deeply with their narrow conception of the good, in which case society would not be stable and well-ordered in Rawls's senses (see also Macedo 2010, Other Internet Resources).

The extent to which the idea of public reason does or can perform this social function depends on the



answers to several further questions. In particular, the potential of public reason to function as amechanism of mutual assurance depends on how we interpret the duties that public reason impose

Public Reason

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