Value Pluralism and the Problem of Judgment

Abstract

This essay examines the significantly different approaches of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt to the problem of judgment in democratic theory and practice.

Beyond Nussbaum’s Ethics of Reading: Camus, Arendt, and the Political Significance of Narrative Imagination

“…67 For Arendt, then, the plurality of political affairs is not something to be overcome, but the very condition of bringing into existence a shared, public world. 68 Rendering things into a matter of discourse between a plurality of different perspectives, representative judgement brings into existence a space, where the particular occurrences can appear in their worldly, intersubjective meaning. 69 Representative aesthetic judgement thus answers to the difficulties of intersubjective recognition by revealing humans in the way they appear on the temporal and spatial plane of the common world, in how their identities both change and remain the same through their interactions in the political realm.…”

Forgiveness, Representative Judgement and Love of the World: Exploring the Political Significance of Forgiveness in the Context of Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Debates

“…The paramount importance of the representative judging capacity for thinking the political significance of forgiveness then can be said to lie in its willingness to depart from any pre-established standard, including the lures of empathy, and open itself to consider the outside world and separate others in their particularity. For in its acts of imaginative world-travelling, of actively reclaiming a plurality of memories on the past, worldly judgement first of all allows for “things [to] become public,” for painful pasts to become a part of shared reality (see Zerilli 2012 , 21–2, 23) – and is thus already engaged in the tentative process of reconciling with reality. As such, it is especially relevant to face up to the challenge of forgiveness in instances of grave suffering and wrongdoing that – as alluded to above – do not simply represent a violation of a pre-given and valued moral principle, but a thorough shattering of the very world, of shared modes of interaction and meaning, within which the crimes and experiences of loss and suffering could be recognized and vindicated (Carse and Tirrell 2010 , 51–2).…”

Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification

“…Some might say that they do not and that any liberal attempt to argue for the difference is yet further evidence of liberal bad faith and failure to give the aspiration to neutrality the (dis)honorable dispatch that it deserves (Zerilli 2012). Those are arguments that tend to be justified by reference to a clear scriptural, revealed, or clerical command.…”

“…Common criticisms are that public reason is incomplete (Frohock 1997(Frohock , 1999Horton 2003;Reidy 2000;in response: Schwartzman 2004;Williams 2000), that the liberal terms of public reason are arbitrary (Campos 1994;Coles 2005;Fish 1997;McConnell 1999;Quinn 1995), and thus that demands of self-restraint in a society with many religious citizens are both unfair to believers and unduly diminish political life. Given these charges, inclusivists usually argue (directly or by implication) for a different understanding of democracy, a less deliberative, consensus-seeking one and a more competitive or agonistic one (Bader 2008;Coles 2005;Connolly 1999;Dyzenhaus 1996;Honig 1993Honig , 2009Mouffe 1999;Zerilli 2012). Given these charges, inclusivists usually argue (directly or by implication) for a different understanding of democracy, a less deliberative, consensus-seeking one and a more competitive or agonistic one (Bader 2008;Coles 2005;Connolly 1999;Dyzenhaus 1996;Honig 1993Honig , 2009Mouffe 1999;Zerilli 2012).…”

“…Nonetheless, I argue here that the debate has been hampered by a tendency for advocates of both exclusivist and inclusivist views to treat the two central concepts at stake-"religious arguments" and "political issues"-in unitary terms. Discourse theorists like Habermas and Benhabib in particular have claimed that their view is more hospitable that even public-reason left liberals are likely to appreciate (for example, the role of religious citizens in opposing slavery (Zerilli 2012), torture (Waldron 2012), or cuts to social services (Wolterstorff 1997b)), by warning about the dangers of excluding religious energies from politics (Coles 2005;Connolly 1999;Waldron 2006;Walzer 1999), and thus concluding that religious arguments are prima facie acceptable or even desirable in political argument. Inclusivist critiques will often proceed by presenting a religious argument 2 I cannot do justice to all of the important differences between these various positions.…”