I argue that public-reason (PR) political philosophy – in all its many different versions (I discuss mostly Rawls, Waldron, Estlund, Gaus, and Quong, but without doing exegesis) – should be rejected. There are in the literature already, of course, many critical discussions of specific PR accounts (to an extent, I draw on work by Hampton, Brower, Raz, and Wall). My criticism applies – if it works – to all versions of public reason accounts. But my arguments in this paper are unique primarily in that they address PR from a much broader philosophical perspective than is common in this literature.In particular, I use here a general discussion of idealization in meta-normative theory (put forward in my "Why Idealize?") to shed light on the use that PR theorists make of idealization. I argue that it is going to be very hard to for PR theorists to motivate idealizing the relevant agents consistently with their underlying intuitions, and that this – together with the insurmountable difficulties facing a non-idealizing version of PR theory – is a major difficulty for PR. Also, I rely on more general discussions of reasons for action and for belief to discuss the thought (or family of thoughts) that in order to be legitimate a political principle must be such that all have reason to endorse, as well as the thought that there is something objectionably "private" in the reasons for action of an agent who relies – in the political sphere – on the moral views that seem to her to be correct. Despite the negative general tone, I conclude with two more positive points: The first has to do with the right way for a political philosopher to think of her- or himself. PR accounts seem to think of the political philosopher as an arbiter who doesn't (in her capacity as political philosopher) enter the arena of "private" political disagreements, but takes that disagreement as a given and proceeds to ask how to respond to it. I suggest that political philosophers should acknowledge that all there is is that arena, enter it, and join non-philosophers in thinking about and fighting for the good and the just. True, they should also ask themselves how to respond to the fact of reasonable pluralism (or some such), but such questions too can only receive an answer from within the arena. Second, even if I'm right and PR accounts are at the end of the day deeply and importantly mistaken, still they are on to something, they respond to a genuine normative concern. I make this point by noting that even if the kind of accessibility or publicity or consensus or convergence that PR theorists are after is not to be had (without some ad hoc idealization), still it would be good to have it. I conclude, then, by suggesting a way of accommodating this underlying intuition without endorsing PR.

The Limits of Public Reason

Against Public Reason

This article presents a unifying interpretation of Rawls’s major works. The interpretation emphasizes the parallels in Rawls’s theories of justice and legitimacy for domestic and global institutions.

The Unity of Rawls’s Work

Liberal legitimacy, reasonable disagreement and justice

The Restoration remains an underserved era in the historiography of French political thought, particularly in scholarship focused on liberalism and representation. This article begins to re...

‘L’âme générale d’une assemblée’: A neglected parliamentarian and the restoration theory of representation

For well over a decade, much of liberal political theory has accepted the founding premise of Rawls's political liberalism, according to which the fact of reasonable pluralism renders comprehensive versions of liberalism incoherent. However, the founding premise presumes that all comprehensive doctrines are moral doctrines. In this essay, the author builds upon recent work by Allen Buchanan and develops a comprehensive version of liberalism based in a partially comprehensive social epistemic doctrine. The author then argues that this version of liberalism is sufficiently accommodating of the fact of reasonable pluralism. The conclusion is that the founding premise of political liberalism admits of a counterexample; there is a version of comprehensive liberalism that is sufficiently pluralistic.

The Limits of Public Reason

Citations

Against Public Reason

The Unity of Rawls’s Work

Liberal legitimacy, reasonable disagreement and justice

‘L’âme générale d’une assemblée’: A neglected parliamentarian and the restoration theory of representation

Toward a Social Epistemic Comprehensive Liberalism

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