Public reason as a social basis of self‐respect

Abstract

The idea of public reason has become increasingly influential in the liberal tradition as a result of its development in the work of John Rawls (1993, 217). This idea involves a standard of legitimacy that requires that certain laws and institutions be acceptable to all reasonable people, regardless of their moral, philosophical, or religious views. 1 Many philosophers such as Robert Audi (1993, 701), Charles Larmore (1996, 37), 2 Christopher Eberle (2002, 54), Gerald Gaus (2003, 146), 3 and Rawls himself (1993, 217) have argued that the idea of public reason is adequately motivated by the need to justify the exercise of coercive power to reasonable persons who do not agree on the truth of any particular conception of the good. On this traditional view, the main purpose of public reason is to legitimate coercion against individuals. In recent years, however, some authors have offered alternative accounts. Thus, James Boettcher (2007, 223-49) argues that the idea of public reason can find justification in the concept of respect for persons as fellow citizens. Andrew Lister (2008, 278) holds that that the distinctive contribution of public reason is to constitute a "relationship of civic friendship." Colin Bird (2014, 202) claims that the case for public reason depends on individuals' civic standing as "free and equal co-legislators." Finally, Jonathan Quong (2014, 273) holds that we should see public reason as grounded in the value of "fairness." In this paper, I show why the traditional, coercion-based, view is problematic, and offer a different account of public reason: the "self-respect account." In addition, I argue that this account is capable