Public Reason and Political Community

Description

Public Reason and Political Community defends the liberal ideal of public reason against its critics, but as a form of moral compromise for the sake of civic friendship rather than as a consequence of respect for persons as moral agents. Andrew Lister shows how the demand for public justification can be framed in different ways: as a constraint on state coercion directly, with a default of inaction, and as a constraint on reason for decisions, with a default of exclusion from deliberation. He defends the reasons model on grounds of the value of political community, and applies it to recent debates about marriage. Lister explores the ‘anti-perfectionist dilemma’ that results from the fact that there are two different ways of framing the idealized unanimity requirement that is at the heart of the principle of public justification. Is it our reasons for political decisions that have to be unanimously acceptable to qualified points of view, or is it coercive state action that must be unanimously acceptable, otherwise we default to not having a common rule or policy? Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Preface 1. Public Reason in Practice and Theory 1 Appeals to public reason in the debate about Same-sex marriage 2 The idea of public reason 3 The reasons-for-decisions frame versus the coercion frame 4 Preliminary objections to the reasons frame 5 Looking ahead 2. False Starts: Unsuccessful Justifications of Public Reason 1 Freedom of conscience 2 Democracy 3 Anti-paternalism 4 Equal treatment 3. Respect for Persons as a Constraint on Coercion 1 Larmore’s argument from respect for persons 2 Gaus’s argument from respect for persons 3 The order of public justification 4. The Higher-Order Unanimity Escape Clause 1 The asymmetry objection and the anti-perfectionist dilemma 2 The higher-order unanimity response 3 Two questions 4 Maximal feasible disaggregation 5 Reasonable disagreement about the eligible set 6 The reasons frame and the aggregation problem 5. Civic Friendship as a Constraint on Reasons for Decision 1 Civic friendship versus conflict avoidance 2 A razian conception of public reason? 3 Why care about reasons? 4 Moral compromise and public reason 5 Respect, mutual respect and reciprocity 6 Reflexivity, insularity and reasonableness 7 Objections 6. Public Reason and (Same-Sex) Marriage 1 The reasons in play in the debate over same-sex marriage 2 The apparent conflict between public reason and marriage 3 A public case for marriage 4 Paternalism 5 Equal treatment 7. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index