Philosophy & Social Criticism

Against arguments that suggest that Rawls’s notion of reasonability is ‘obscure’ and ‘unclear’ I argue in this essay that the idea of reasonability in the later Rawls can be defended in three ways. First, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to the architectonic of the later work. Reasonability, and the subordination of reason to reasonability, is fundamental to the later (post-1980) writings. Second, it can be shown that reasonability is not necessarily a vague term as many have claimed. Third, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to what Rawls calls the three major new ideas of Political Liberalism: overlapping consensus; the reconception of the priority of the right over the good; and the idea of public reason.

This paper aims to explore an important concept in the work of the later Rawls: the idea of the reasonable. While the concept has its roots in both Aristotle and Kant, Rawls develops a unique account of the reasonable in the light of his theory of political liberalism. The paper includes Rawlsian responses to the practical challenges of radical democrats on the one hand, and epistemological challenges to the reasonable on the other. It concludes that Rawls’s account of the reasonable helps to bridge the gap between liberal theory and democratic practice.

The main purpose of the paper is to contribute to reconstructing the kind of normativity underlying Rawls’s notion of public reason and of the reasonable. The implicit target is the somewhat popular view according to which the transition from the framework of A Theory of Justice to that of Political Liberalism would entail a loss of normativity. On the contrary, the related ideas of public reason and the reasonable are argued to presuppose a notion of normativity – linked with judgment – far more consistent with the premise of the fact of pluralism. After reconstructing Rawls’s notion of public reason, the two following problems are addressed: the problem of determining when allegedly shared truths, the building stones of public reason, are really such and, second, the problem of what it means for one reason to follow or proceed from a shared basis. In the context of such discussion three distinct meanings of the term ‘reasonable’ are identified, and the normatively more demanding one – the notion of some thesis or proposal being not just reasonable, but comparatively ‘more reasonable’ than another – is found to require that the reasonable be understood as the exemplary and, consequently, that we find ways to translate the Kantian doctrine of the exemplary yet universalist validity of aesthetic judgments into a non-aesthetic vocabulary.

The concept of reasonableness is essential to John Rawls’s political liberalism, and especially to its main ideas of public reason and liberal legitimacy. Yet the somewhat ambiguous account of reasonableness in Political Liberalism has led to concerns that the Rawlsian distinction between the reasonable and the unreasonable is arbitrary and ultimately indefensible. This paper attempts to advance a more convincing interpretation of reasonableness. I argue that the reasonable applies first to citizens, who then play an important role in determining which comprehensive doctrines and political conceptions of justice are reasonable. In addition, while Rawls fails to specify explicitly the meaning of the reasonable in his standard of political justification (i.e. the liberal principle of legitimacy based on the criterion of reciprocity), I offer an interpretation of what it means for citizens to present reasonable claims and arguments to one another in public reason.

Liberal theory seems to be caught in an impasse. On the one hand, since it has social order as its object, it appears to be committed to resolving the problem of disagreement between the various conceptions; on the other, insofar as it is philosophical theory, it seems destined to cause conflict. How, then, can liberalism offer a solution which guarantees the duration in time of a society, without, however, proposing a theory that would merely be one among others? And how can it do this without adopting reductionist strategies, and by trying to remain faithful to the idea that a society should be ordered by a conception of justice? This is the paradox of liberal political philosophy. And this same paradox is the theme that Rawls confronts in Political Liberalism.

This paper distinguishes three distinct processes of change that a system of values can undergo: modernization, liberalization and westernization. Modernization refers to the changes needed to establish compatibility with science and technology, along with the functional demands of a capitalist economy. Liberalization refers to the changes needed to bring values into alignment with the requirements of a bureaucratic nation-state, along with the specific institutional strategies used to manage cultural pluralism. In a slight regimentation of everyday use, the term ‘westernization’ is then reserved to describe the sort of influences generated through cultural contact with and emulation of the West. The goal of drawing this distinction is to show: first, that westernization, so understood, is a negligible force in the world today, and second, that despite the unimportance of westernization, we can still expect to see enormous convergence among the value-systems of different nations, due to the pressures imposed by modernization and liberalization.

If we are to find the criteria for critical analyses of social arrangements and processes not in some abstract, universalist framework, but from the guiding ‘self-interpretations’ of the societies in question, as contemporary contextualist and ‘communitarian’ approaches to social philosophy suggest, the vexing question arises as to where these self-interpretations can be found and how they are identified. The paper presents a model according to which there are four interdependent as well as partially autonomous spheres or ‘levels’ of socially relevant self-interpretation that have to be taken into account equally in order to provide a sound basis for social and political criticism. Thus, it is from the tensions and incoherences between (A) social ideas and doctrines, (B) social institutions and practices, (C) individual beliefs and convictions, and (D) body-practices and habits that social pathologies can be identified and possible solutions can be envisaged.

Jürgen Habermas’s recent book Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur (2001) is discussed. Particular attention is paid to the central argument concerning the adverse effects the general acceptance of cloning and pre-implantation genetic diagnostics (PGD) would have on the moral and political self-understanding of present and future generations. The argument turns to a critique of Habermas’s central arguments against PGD, and develops at least two arguments that are in harmony with his general defense of procedural democracy and deontological morality. Appeal is made to Peter Singer and John Rawls to develop arguments that do not reject either PGD or genetic engineering and that are nonetheless in full compliance with the spirit of political modernity, as it is defended and defined by Habermas. The conclusion calls for less moralizing and more political-economic critique of the biotechnologies unleashed by the information revolution.

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watered-down form – the ancients conceived of political apathy as a peculiarly democratic phenomenon that was likely to flourish in tandem with the expansion of egalitarian institutional structures and moral ideas. Evidence for the ancient recognition of political apathy as a uniquely democratic kind of affliction centers on, but is not limited to, three main sources. In literature, the Homeric epic, and specifically the story of Achilles, present apathy for politics and commitment to human equality as synonymous forces. In philosophy, one of the main reasons Plato opposes the democratic regime is precisely that it engenders apathy among the citizenry. And in history, Herodotus’ account of the first debate on constitutions as well as the ancient democratic practice of election by lot reveal an ancient egalitarian interest in using democracy to quell, rather than encourage, political behavior.