Public Reason in the Universe of Reasons

Artykuł analizuje pojęcie „racji publicznej” (rozumu publicznego) porównując ze zbliżonymi pojęciami w filozofii racji praktycznych

In this article, I examine the ways in which “Public Reason” (or public reasons, in plural) can be said to resonate with some types of reasons as presented and defended in contemporary legal theory. I begin by identifying the concept of Public Reason within the context of a discussion sparked by the between “internal” and “external” reasons, which was made famous by Bernard Williams. I will then compare this interpretation of Public Reason with Joseph Raz’s celebrated concept of exclusionary reasons. Next, I refer to two concepts of moral “neutrality” and how such concepts affect our understanding of Public Reason. I also reflect upon whether it is tenable to draw a distinction between the good reasons for actions that we conduct in our own lives and good reasons to be adopted in public life. Finally, I raise the question of a distinction between the reasons which we press in general societal discourse and those that we press in the advocacy-related law-making process. Much of the discussion about “Public Reason”—an ideal supporting a conception of liberal legitimacy under which only such laws are legitimate which are based on reasons endorsable by everyone to whom they apply—concentrates on the “public” ingredient of the concept. The question asked is, how some reasons can be said to be “public,” in the sense that they may command a collective endorsement by a large number of citizens, even if they espouse different moral and philosophical views? The requirement of “publicity” has been understood, from time to time, as demanding that citizens accept and know that others likewise accept certain common principles, or that these principles can be supported by publicly shared methods of reasoning, or that the full and satisfactory justification for such principles can be discerned in the public culture without resorting to controversial, comprehensive, personal conceptions of the good, etc.Footnote1 This has arguably been the main issue discussed by both advocates and critics of the ideal of Public Reason. In this article, however, I will concentrate on the noun rather than an adjective and, in doing so, will examine the ways in which “Public Reason” (or public reasons, in plural) can be said to resonate with some types of reasons—rather than others—as presented and defended in contemporary legal theory. I will begin by identifying the concept of Public Reason within the context of a discussion sparked by the distinction between “internal” and “external” reasons, which was made famous by Bernard Williams (part 1). I will then compare this interpretation of Public Reason with Joseph Raz’s celebrated concept of exclusionary reasons (part 2). In part 3, I will refer to two concepts of moral “neutrality” and how such concepts affect our understanding of Public Reason. In part 4, I will reflect upon whether it is tenable to draw a distinction between the good reasons for actions that we conduct in our own lives and good reasons to be adopted in public life. Finally, in part 5, I will raise the question of a distinction between the reasons which we press in general societal discourse and those that we press in the advocacy-related law-making process. Before we begin, a caveat is needed. The concept of Public Reason is merely a subset of a far broader view that a sound liberal society must be governed by rules which are justifiable to those to whom they apply. In this way, the idea of Public Reason is narrower than the general idea of justifiability or of public reasoning because, in addition to justifiability, it provides standards for what reasons can be produced in justification of the rules (namely, that they just be such that they are not reasonably rejectable by any reasonable people), hence, which can be deemed not merely justifiable but also acceptable.Footnote2 This move from justifiability to acceptability (which underlies the idea of Public Reason though sans le nom) had been outlined, albeit in a rough manner, by Bernard Williams, in the following stylized steps:Footnote3 firstly, every use of coercion by one group towards another requires legitimation (Williams dubbed it as the “Basic Legitimation Demand”); secondly, the claims of a state to authority requires a legitimation to be given to every subject; thirdly, some rationalization of disadvantage, for instance in terms of race or gender, are invalid; fourthly, the hierarchical (or authoritative) structures are not self-legitimating and the absence of legitimation increases their coerciveness, and so the Basic Legitimation Demand yields “a constraint of roughly equal acceptability (acceptability to each subject)”.Footnote4 Public Reason is therefore narrower than the concept of public justification. To be sure, under some—typically, Kantian in their philosophical provenance—understandings of public justification it is coextensive with Public Reason. Such is, for instance, an interpretation adopted by Pavlos Elefthariadis in his Legal Reasons—a book articulating a Kantian-Rawlsian understanding of legal rights as expressions of equal citizenship justified by appeal to Public Reason. As Elefthariadis urges, “Public, as opposed to private, justification means an argument that can be reasonably endorsed by others who disagree with us. It suggests an effort to find common ground on one issue, while respecting our mutual differences in others.”Footnote5 As a normative theory, a directive that public justification should rely on reasons acceptable to others is unimpeachable. This is, in fact, the main idea adopted by the dominant, Rawlsian, conception of Public Reason. But as a definition of “public justification,” it is unhelpfully narrow. There may be views about public justification which do not endorse the ideal of Public Reason but which may be authoritarian, paternalistic, or moralistic in ways that do not boil down to search for the “common grounds” in justification and yet are also “public” and “justificatory” in their requisite senses. Thus, whether they are attractive or not, as a moral and political ideal, is a matter of a substantive argument, and no conceptual clarity is achieved by narrowing down the very concept of “public justification” in this way. However, as announced before, this article will put these controversies to one side and focus on the “reasons” rather than on the “public” in Public Reason.