The idea of public reason

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Contents 1 The idea of public reason 1.1 1. The questions and forums of public reason 1.2 2. Public reason and the ideal of democratic citizenship 1.3 Nonpublic Reasons 1.4 The content of public reason 1.5 5. The idea of constitutional essentials 1.6 6. The supreme court as exemplar of public reason 1.7 7. Apparent difficulties with public reason 1.8 8. The limits of public reason 2 The idea of public reason revisited 2.1 Reviewing the idea of public reason 2.2 2. The content of public reason 2.3 3. Religion and public reason in democracy 2.4 4. The wide view of public political culture 2.5 5. On the family as part of the basic structure 2.6 6. Questions about public reason 2.7 Conclusion

The idea of public reason

Reason in political society

• Means for planning, prioritizing, decision-making
• Intellectual and moral power
• Rooted in the capacities of its human members

Public reason

• Characteristic of democracy
• Emerges from the shared status of equal citizenship
• "Public" in 3 ways:
  • It is the reason of public citizens
  • Its subject is the good of the public
  • Its nature and content is public, its work conducted in the open
• Not an observable fact nor actionable law but an ideal and a possibility

Rawls notes that his understanding of public reason is based on a political conception of justice that is "broadly speaking liberal" (94)

• He is also limiting this discussion to only the most clear cut cases, "the most fundamental matters" (95)

1. The questions and forums of public reason

Public reason in a democratic society is...

• Of equal citizens
• Who exercise final, coercive power over one another via laws and an amendable constitution

Public reason does not apply to all political questions, only:

• "Constitutional essentials"
• "Questions of basic justice" (94)
• e.g. suffrage, religious tolerance, protections for private property, etc.

Public reason is not limited to discourse

• It should also govern the act of voting

Within government, legislative and executive acts may be made outside of public reason

• On the contrary, the task of judicial review is exemplary in that justices are required to explain their decisions

2. Public reason and the ideal of democratic citizenship

1. Rawls presents a paradox: why should not citizens appeal to their own fundamental "whole truths" when they confront "most fundamental questions"? Doesn't public reason impose unnecessary constraint?

• "Whole truths" includes religious doctrine and belief

Some basic principles to Rawl's response:

"Political relationship among democratic citizens":

• "Relationships of persons within the basic structure of the society into which they are born and in which they normally lead a complete life" (96)
• Political power is always coercive and is the power of the public - free and equal citizens acting as a collective body (96)

Assumption of on-going diversity

• Religious, philosophical, moral

Legitimacy

• When can citizens justifiably act in such a way that will coerce one another through political power?
• Only when they appeal to a set of commonly accepted principles and ideals as those in a constitution

Civility

• A duty to explain one's reasons to other citizens
• As well as to listen to others with a fair-mind

2. Why public reason extends beyond legislators in parliament:

• Citizens taking a share in governance and thus holding coercive power over one another should be prepared to explain the basis of their choices and actions
• A reasonable listener should be able to understand this explanation and "endorse it as consistent with their freedom and equality" (97)

The political values in a constitutional regime are "very great" and not easily overturned

• Combined with the duty to civility, the limits of public reason should not feel like a compromise (97)

3. Other situations in which we don't appeal to a "whole truth" include:

• Criminal proceedings in which unlawfully obtained evidence is thrown out due to respect for the right of the defendant to a fair trial
• Public reason is similar in that we avoid the "whole truth" in pursuit of common ideals, basic rights

4. On fundamental political questions, public reason rejects the notion that voting is a private matter

• (which either fails to recognize the duty of civility or attempts to incorporate a "whole truth")
• In these cases, the aim of voting should be to advance the common good

Nonpublic Reasons

There are many nonpublic reasons, only one public reason

• "Background culture", private organizations, civil society
• The reasons required by churches, schools, corporations, clubs, etc.

1. What differentiates reasoning from other forms of discourse (persuasion, rhetoric)?

• The concept of judgement
• The principles of inference
• Rules of evidence
• Standards of correctness
• Criteria of justification

Different constraints and balances depend on the goals and values of a given circumstance:

• e.g. the rules of evidence are different for science than criminal law

2. Nonpublic power is freely accepted, if one disagrees with the conditions of nonpublic power, one may depart (e.g. cease to be a member of a church)

• Public power, vested in a government, cannot be similarly escaped
• The costs of emmigration are too high to call this a "free choice" (101)

The content of public reason

1. Principles of justice

• "Political conception of justice", "broadly liberal" as the three characteristics may exist in different balances to each other (101)
  • Specifies certain basic rights, liberties, opportunities
  • Assigns a special priority to these rights, liberties, opportunities
  • Affirms measures assuring all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of their basic liberties and opportunities

Three implications of a political "conception of justice" (101-2)

• It applies only to the "basic structure of society"
• Independent of any specific religious or philosophical doctrine
• Based on fundamental political ideas implicit in the public culture of a democratic society

The values of political justice include:

• Equal liberty, opportunity, etc.

2. "Guidelines of inquiry" explain how public reason is carried out

The values of public reason

• Guidelines that make inquiry free and public
• Virtues of reasonableness, moral duty of civility

3. Public reason should appeal to common sense to ensure political legitimacy

• Not religious doctrine
• Scientific knowledge only where common sense is inadequate

4. Justice as fairness

• Fair political arrangements in an ideal democractic society (the original position) are based on the same principles as public reason (guidelines of inquiry, principles of justice)
• Without these criteria, representatives and trustees could not act responsibly or legitimately

5. There are many forms of political liberalism that fall within the boundaries set here

• Public reason does not require a specific form of political liberalism
• The point of public reason is to establish a shared framework within which the work of self-governing citizens can be carried out

5. The idea of constitutional essentials

1. Citizens need to agreement in judgement about constitutional essentials as these undergird public reason

There are two kinds of constitutional essentials

• Fundamental principles specifying the structure of government and the political process
• Equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship

2. Once the structure of government is decided, it should be revised only insofar as experience demonstrates a weakness in assuring justice

• Frequent changes to the structure of government may indicate exploitation to the advantage of one or another political stakeholder
• Equal basic rights are much less open to revision

3. Equal basic rights and liberties are fundamental and distinct from other principles of liberty

• Equal basic rights form a foundation on which other principles are expressed (opportunity, mobility, etc)

4. Political values come in two forms: basic equal rights, social/economic justice

• The first concerns the establishment of structures that can be used to publicly justify the second
• The first are thus more urgent to settle but also easier to agree upon and easier to assess their realization

6. The supreme court as exemplar of public reason

1. The Supreme Court is the exemplar of public reason

Five principles of constitutionalism

1. The power of people to dissolve or establish a new regime is different from the everyday power of government officials
2. "Higher law" is assumed to be an expression of Common Will and binds the exercise of Congress's "ordinary law"
3. A democratic constitution expresses higher law through public reason and establishes the political ideal by which a people will govern itself
4. Equal basic rights and liberties are established within the constitution and serve as a reference for the development and enforcement of ordinary laws
5. The ultimate power exists in the balanced relationship among branches of government, not in any one alone

2. The supreme court defends higher law in a dualist constitutional democracy

• Supreme court may seem anti-majoritarian as it can overturn ordinary laws if they do not conform to the higher laws of the constitution
  • But the fundamental values of the constitution are presumably democratic and commonly held by the people

3. The supreme court promotes public reason by example

4. The supreme court gives public reason a "vividness" and "vitality" when it interprets the constitution in a clear, effective, and reasonable way

• The meaning of the constitution is established by the people and if the desired meaning is not being carried out by the court, the constitution may be amended

7. Apparent difficulties with public reason

1. Resolution is not self-evident, public reason allows more than one reasonable answer to a given question

• Full agreement is rare so public reason should not be abandoned in cases of disagreement

2. What is meant by voting with "sincere opinion"?

• Accepting and expressing the ideals of public reason
• This should not be incompatible with strong belief in a religious or philosophical doctrine
  • What if a doctrine undermines public reason?

3. How do we know when a question is successfully resolved by public reason?

• There are some problems which are not answerable by public reason, which is OK because these do not concern constitutional essentials and may be voted on by citizens based on nonpolitical values

4. When is a fundamental questions resolved?

• When it is at least reasonable as judged by public reason
• It need not be the same conclusion that would be reached by proceeding from a different doctrine

8. The limits of public reason

1. Religious or philosophical doctrines cannot be entered into public reason except where its principles are rooted in public reason

2. In cases where religious groups come into conflict and opponents grow skeptical of each others' commitment to fundamental political values, leaders might justify the commitment of their doctrine in a public forum

3. In cases where there is a major schism on a constitutional essential, proponents of change may invoke a doctrine other than public reason (e.g. religious belief)

• One reason for doing this is that people do not often distinguish public reason and the invocation may open the possibility for a position that will alter fundamental political values
• e.g. Abolitionists invoked religious belief but they did so in support of an ideal of equal basic rights

4. The limits of public reason vary according to historical and social circumstances

5. Main points:

• An ideal of public reason is an appropriate complement to constitutional democracy, in which there is a plurality of comprehensive doctrines (123)
• Limits are "the ideal of democratic citizens trying to conduct their political affairs on terms supported by public values that we might reasonably expect others to endorse" (123)

"Innovations" in this article?

• Duty of civility
• Content of public reason is given by the political values and the guidelines of a political conception of justice (124)

The idea of public reason revisited

Note: page numbers refer to the .doc on blackboard

"The ideal [of public reason] is realized, or satisfied, whenever judges, legislators, chief executives, and other government officials, as well as candidates for public office, act from and follow the idea of public reason and explain to other citizens their reasons for supporting fundamental political positions in terms of the political conception of justice they regard as the most reasonable" (1)

Public reason is proposed for democratic societies with a plurality of mutually irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines of truth

Reviewing the idea of public reason

• 1.1 Political liberalism is not evangelical of a whole truth, in fact, trying to embody a whole truth in politics is incompatible with public reason

Five aspects of public reason (3)

• The fundamental political questions to which it applies (constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice)
• The persons to whom it applies (government officials and candidates for public office)
• Its contents as given by a family of reasonable political conceptions of justice
• The application of these conceptions in discussions of coercive norms to be enacted in the form of legitimate law for a democratic people
• Citizens' checking that the principles derived from their conceptions of justice satisfy the criterion of reciprocity

How is public reason public? (3)

• As the reason of free and equal citizens
• Its subject is the public good
• Its nature and content are public

Where is public reason? (3)

• Only in the public political forum
  • The discourse of judges, esp. SCOTUS
  • The discourse of government officials
  • The discourse of candidates for public office

Background culture (3)

• Distinct from the public political forum
• The culture of civil society, guided by a plurality of ideas, principles, and beliefs

The ideal of public reason (as distinct from the idea of public reason)

• Realized or satisfied whenever govt officials and candidates for public office follow the idea of public reason and explain their reasons to other citizens
• Citizens enact the ideal of public reason by holding govt officials to it

"Citizens are reasonable when, viewing one another as free and equal in a system of social cooperation over generations, they are prepared to offer one another fair terms of cooperation according to what they consider the most reasonable conception of political justice; and when they agree to act on those terms, even at the cost of their own interests in particular situations, provided that other citizens also accept those terms" (4-5)

When govt officials and citizens act from public reason, the resulting legislation may be considered legitimate law

• Each stakeholder believes all have spoken/voted reasonably and have honored their duty of civility

Legitimacy is based on the criterion of reciprocity

• Both in constitutional structure, and to particular statutes and laws
• Legitimacy requires comprehensibility, the reasons given should be reasonably understandable by others

3. Public reason takes place within deliberative democracy

Three essential elements of d.d.: (6)

• Public reason
• Framework of constitutional democratic institutions that specifies the setting for deliberative legislative bodies
• Knowledge and desire on the part of citizens generally to follow public reason and to realize its ideal in their political conduct

Additional characteristics of d.d.:

• Widespread education and access to information are critical for all citizens to participate

At present, deliberative democracy is "paralyzed" in the U.S. because of campaign financing (7)

2. The content of public reason

Original position is a term that refers to the fundamental political principles and guidelines for democracy (and, by extension, public reason)

• Citizens are free and equal persons, society is a fair system of cooperation over time
• From the original position, a plurality of possible liberalisms may emerge
• Justice as fairness (Rawls liberalism) is one example

All of the political conceptions built atop the original position depend on 3 main features: (7)

• A list of basic rights, liberties, and opportunities (this may be in a constitution or bill of rights)
• An assignment of special priority to those rights, liberties, and opportunities
• Measures ensuring for all citizens adequate all-purpose means to make effective use of their freedoms

Political liberalism does not have as a goal or prerequisite particular fixed political conception of justice

2. Distinguishing public reason from secular reason and values

• Secular reason may simply be a non-religious comprehensive doctrine, still a "whole truth"

Liberal political principals and values are moral but limited by political conceptions of justice:

• Their principles apply only to basic political and social institutions
• They are independent of any comprehensive doctrine (though they may be supported by one or many such doctrines)
• They can be derived from fundamental ideas present in the public political culture of a constitutional regime
  • e.g. basic equal rights

"Political" is narrowly defined as taking place within "political institutions" part of the apparatus of governance (9)

3. The political conceptions of public reason should be complete

• Each conception should include principles, standards, ideals, and guidelines of inquiry
• Public reason depends on the political conceptions of justice as an interdependent group
• Completeness refers to an independence from citizens' comprehensive doctrines or "whole truths"
• We should be able to reason about constitutional essentials with the political conceptions of public reason alone

3. Religion and public reason in democracy

"How is it possible - or is it - for those of faith, as well as the nonreligious (secular), to endorse a constitutional regime even when their comprehensive doctrines may not prosper under it, and indeed may decline?" (12)

• To be equal citizens under the law, each must commit to upholding constitutional essentials even if it is in the disinterest of his or her religious affiliation
• All citizens must agree to fundamental foundation on which their doctrines may compete:
  • Toleration (political and doctrinal)
  • Liberty of conscience

4. The wide view of public political culture

Comprehensive doctrines may be introduced into public political discussions at any time, provided that

• Proper political reasons are given that support whatever the doctrines were introduced to support
• The introduction of both forms of support clarifies the distinction between public political and background cultures (14)

Public reason is actually strengthened when participants express mutual knowledge of one another's comprehensive doctrines

• This demonstrates mutual respect for those doctrines as the contexts for their political conceptions
• Honor for the duty of civility

Public reasoning aims for public justification

• This goal depends on a respect and understanding of the reasoning and doctrine of others
• On the road to this goal, one must express one's own doctrine and explain how common fundamental principles emerge from this doctrine

5. On the family as part of the basic structure

The family is an "association" of citizens within the "basic structure" of a democratic society

Political society is imagined over time and without end (16)

• The family structure is crucial to the production and reproduction of society
• Therefore, the work of families to produce able citizens is a necessity for the persistence of a society

The point of view of an individual citizens is distinct from the point of view of that same citizen as a family member

• Political principles of justice should not apply to the internal life of the family
• But political principles do ensure that the individual citizens within the family have basic essential rights
• However, if unjust organization of families is threatening to undermine the future of society, political principles may come to bear on its internal relationships and activities

Rawls proceeds to demonstrate how fundamental political principals of justice come to bear on many aspects of gender inequality within the family structure (18-20)

6. Questions about public reason

Does public reason unreasonably limit political argument and debate?

• No, because comprehensive doctrines are not precluded but rather must be reasonably supported with appeals to fundamental political values

Does public reason lead to stalemate?

• Reasonable political conceptions of justice do not always lead to the same conclusion
• Citizens are to reason by public reason and by the criterion on reciprocity
• Citizens should not fall back on comprehensive doctrines but vote on what they "sincerely believe" to be "most reasonable"
• The goal is not truth or absolute correctness but reasonable, legitimate law
• Reasoning is not closed simply because a law is passed
  • Additionally, it is possible to follow nonpublic reasons (e.g. Catholic prohibition on abortion) while still honoring public reason (e.g. that abortion is lawful in some circumstances)

What is the relationship between a comprehensive doctrine and its accompanying political conception?

• Political conception occurs in overlaps among many irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines
• Caveat: comprehensive doctrines that cannot support a democratic society are not reasonable

What is the role of public reason in a political society that is well-established, democratic, and stable?

• Without public reason and honor for the duty of civility, discord will emerge among irreconcilable doctrines

Conclusion

"Can democracy and comprehensive doctrines, religious and nonreligious, be compatible? And if so, how?"

Three limits to reconciliation by public reason:

• Those deriving from irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines
• Those deriving from differences in status, class position, or occupation, or from differences in ethnicity, gender, or race
• Those deriving from the burdens of judgement

Political liberalism addresses the first limit by providing common fundamental principles that may be shared among doctrines

• The second conflict should not arise "so forcefully" if constitutional essentials are reasonably accepted

There are limits to what public reason can accomplish

Concluding revision of the opening question:

How is it possible for those affirming a comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, and in particular doctrines based on religious authority, such as the Church or the Bible, also to hold a reasonable political conception of justice that sup- ports a constitutional democratic society?