Michael Sandel on “Political Liberalism” and the Limits of Public Reason

Three Debates inspired by Rawls:

1. Utilitarians vs. Rights-Oriented Liberals

2. Which Rights?  (Nozick, Hayek vs. Rawls, Progressives)

3. The idea that the government should be neutral among competing conceptions of the good life.  The right is prior to the good

Contesting the Priority of the Right over the Good

Right is prior to the good in two senses:

1. Certain individual rights “trump,” or outweigh, considerations of the common good.

2. The principles of justice that specify our rights do not depend for their justification on any particular conception of the good life.

Notion of the “person” or the “self” presupposed

But are there attachments that “claim” us?

Defending the Priority of the Right over the Good

No longer “Kantian”

Political versus Comprehensive Liberalism

The case for liberalism, Rawls now argues, is political, not philosophical or metaphysical.

A “practical” response to the fact that people in modern democratic societies disagree about the good.

The distinction between political liberalism (Rawls now) and liberalism as part of a comprehensive moral doctrine.

Overlapping consensus

Previous Kantian justification; newer non-philosophical one

The Political Conception of the Person (as opposed to a philosophical or metaphysical one)

Conception of the person for political purposes, though not necessarily for all moral purposes.

The political conception of the person embodied in the original position closely parallels the Kantian conception of the person, with the important difference that is scope is limited to our public identity, our identity as citizens: our public identity is not claimed or defined by ends we espouse at any given time.

Claims founded on duties and obligations of citizen or solidarity or religious faith are just things people want [NB: the failure to distinguish between “reasonable demand according to conscience or religious conviction” vs. “intensely desire.”] Their validity as political claims has nothing to do with the moral importance of the goods they affirm.

BUT why should we adopt the standpoint of the political conception of the person in the first place?  Why should our political identities not express the moral and religious and communal convictions we affirm?

Answer: Because of the special nature of democratic political culture.

[BUT, we might ask: Is this “fragmentation” healthy or really psychically possible?”]

Rorty: Social policy needs no more authority than successful accommodation among individuals.

Rawls: Not so radical.  Political liberalism does not affirm these principles simply on the grounds that they are widely shared.  Though Rawls argues this principles of justice could gain the support of an overlapping consensus, the overlapping consensus “is not a mere modus vivendi or compromise among conflicting views.”

As people learn to live in a pluralist society governed by liberal institutions, they acquire virtues that strengthen their commitment to liberal principles: tolerance, reasonableness, and a sense of fairness.

But note: political liberalism affirms liberal values for political purposes only

Assessing Political Liberalism

Open to three objections

1. Bracketing Grave Moral Questions

Bracketing so as to secure “social cooperation.”   BUT even granting the importance of securing social cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, what is to guarantee that this interest is always so important as to outweigh any competing interest that could arise from within a comprehensive

moral or religious view?

Deny that it could be true; or allow that it might be true: If so, then what is to assure that none can generate values sufficiently compelling to burst the brackets: so that it would NOT be true that “political values normally outweigh whatever nonpolitical values conflict with them.

Two controversies: Abortion and Slavery

Cease being agitated by the very thing that every body does care the most about

2. The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism

But here there arises a difficulty: Why not assume that “reasonable pluralism” applies to different conceptions of justice.

Political liberalism is not without a reply to this objection, but ... (371R)

With morality as with justice, the mere fact of disagreement is no evidence of the “reasonable pluralism” that give rise to the demand that government must be neutral. (374L)

3. The Limits of Public Reason

The political life [political liberalism] describes leaves little room for the kind of public deliberation necessary to test the plausibility of contending comprehensive moralities — to persuade others or to be persuaded by them. [contra Socrates, Mill, Newman]

The ideal [and limits] of public reason [374 R and ff.]

The analogy between liberal public reason and restrictive rules of evidence is instructive. [376R]

The costs of liberal public reason are of two kinds:

1. The strictly moral costs depend on the validity and importance of the moral and religious doctrines liberal public reason requires us to set aside when deciding questions of justice.

2. Political costs: yearning for a public life of larger meanings

Two conceptions of mutual respect:

1. We respect our fellow citizens’ moral and religious convictions by ignoring them.

2. The “deliberative conception”: we respect our fellow citizen’s moral and religious convictions by engaging or attending to them [and developing the virtues and skills and discourse and disagreement]