Whose public reason? Which reasonableness?
Rawlsian public reason liberalism holds that laws must be justified in terms of reasons that all reasonable citizens can accept. But who counts as a "reasonable" citizen? Rawlsians typically answer that reasonableness is conditional on acceptance of liberal values. But they do not typically defend t...
| Publicado en: | Philosophy & Phenomenological Research Vol. 110; no. 3; pp. 1013 - 1031 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Wiley-Blackwell
May2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=185257774&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 185257774 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318205 PPO jtl: Philosophy & Phenomenological Research issn: 00318205 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: May2025 vid: 110 iid: 3 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 185257774 10.1111/phpr.70000 ppf: 1013 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 351KB tig: atl: Whose public reason? Which reasonableness? aug: au: Tahzib, Collis affil: University of Southern California, Los Angeles California, , USA su: Reason Cognitive science Metaphysics Communitarianism Liberals sug: subj: Reason Cognitive science Metaphysics Communitarianism Liberals ab: Rawlsian public reason liberalism holds that laws must be justified in terms of reasons that all reasonable citizens can accept. But who counts as a "reasonable" citizen? Rawlsians typically answer that reasonableness is conditional on acceptance of liberal values. But they do not typically defend this answer by explaining why the Rawlsian definition is superior to alternative possible definitions of reasonableness—for instance, libertarian reasonableness, perfectionist reasonableness, communitarian reasonableness, and so on. Once this full range of possibilities is set out in plain view, it creates a novel challenge which I call the which‐reasonableness challenge. This is the challenge of showing that the Rawlsian definition of reasonableness is superior to all the alternatives. In this paper, I set out this challenge (Section 1) and consider potential ways to overcome it: namely, by arguing that the Rawlsian definition of reasonableness is superior to the alternatives on grounds of its free‐standingness and stability (Section 2), its implicitness in the public political culture (Section 3), its anti‐sectarianism (Section 4), its fidelity to the underlying motivations of the public reason project (Section 5), and its avoidance of triviality, ad‐hocness, shoehorning and related perils (Section 6). I argue that while these considerations narrow the range of possible definitions of reasonableness, they do not do so by enough to uniquely pick out the Rawlsian definition. Rawlsian public reason liberals thus face a pressing challenge stemming from the simple question: Whose public reason? Which reasonableness? pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Philosophy & Phenomenological Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Philosophy & Phenomenological Research holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|