It has been widely argued that East Asian governments should be permitted to promote Confucian values. Recently, Zhuoyao Li rejected this view and advocates that East Asian govern- ments should be neutral to all cultures and religions, including Confucianism. Nevertheless, Li believes that Confucianism does not loses its significance in a political liberal state because Confucians can still propose laws and policies, so long as their proposals are justified by public reason. In this paper, I argue that Li misunderstands the (...) true significance of Confucianism in his model. Under the constraint of public reason, Confucians can hardly give any novel input in public deliberation. Rather, I believe that the contribution of Confucianism is to educate citizens to become fully just in the private sphere. Citizens may learn to be unjust if injustices are common in the private sphere. However, a political liberal state would be criticized as being overly invasive if it directly regulates the private sphere. Hence, I propose a division of educational labour between po- litical liberalism and Confucianism in the public and private sphere. Finally, I use the Confucian workplace as an example to show how rituals in the workplace can enhance citizens’ sense of justice in the private sphere. (shrink)

While Susan Moller Okin found much to celebrate in Rawls's earlier articulation of his theory of justice, she worried that his later turn to political liberalism evacuated his theory of its feminist potential. Here, I argue that we need not be so pessimistic: some of the strongest arguments for pursuing certain feminist projects can and should be made from within a politically liberal framework. In advancing this claim, I develop Rawls's idea of primary goods—namely those goods that all citizens need (...) qua citizens—as a key conceptual resource for arguing for the elimination of the gendered division of labor using public reason. Drawing on recent empirical literature, I point out that the gendered division of labor continues to distribute to women an unfair allocation of primary goods. I then advocate for a specific public policy, which I call Gender Egalitarian Daddy Quota—a parental leave policy that sets aside time specifically for fathers to encourage men and women to engage in childcare related leave-taking to similar extents—on the grounds that this policy would help secure a fairer distribution of primary goods, and thus is required as a matter of justice. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue that citizens would accept (...) political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

Despite women’s increased labor force participation, household divisions of labor remain highly unequal. Properly implemented, gender egalitarian political interventions such as work time regulation, dependent care provisions, and family leave initiatives can induce families to share work more equally than they currently do. But do these interventions constitute legitimate uses of political power? In this article, I defend the political legitimacy of these interventions. Using the conception of citizenship at the heart of political liberalism, I argue that citizens would accept (...) political interventions aimed at protecting the ‘genuinely available option’ to enact gender egalitarian lifestyles. More strongly still, I argue that under certain circumstances, citizens would insist on the enactment of political interventions to protect this option. According to political liberalism’s constraints on legitimacy, this insistence renders these interventions not only legitimate but positively mandatory. It is legitimate for a state to exercise power to preserve the genuinely available option to enact a gender egalitarian lifestyle, and under certain circumstances, it is illegitimate for a state to fail to do so. (shrink)

Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that a society in which most persons act (...) in accordance with ‘gender equal’ ethos justice is morally superior to one in which most persons do not. A shared commitment to a particular conception of ethos justice, however, cannot be required by a conception of legitimacy justice. A political liberal feminist is committed to promoting gender equality with respect to both legitimacy justice and ethos justice, but recognizes that different means are necessary to do so. (shrink)

Convergence liberalism has emerged as a prominent interpretation of public reason liberalism. Yet, while its main rival in the public reason literature—the Rawlsian consensus account of public reason—has faced serious scrutiny regarding its ability to secure equal citizenship forallmembers of society, especially for members of historically subordinated groups, convergence liberalism has not. With this article, we hope to start a discussion about convergence liberalism and its (in)ability to address group-based social inequalities. In particular, we aim to show that given the (...) core features of the viewandreal-world pluralism, the policies needed to secure gender equality and protect equal citizenship for women will not be justified. We make our case by considering various inequalities that are due to the gendered division of labor and potential convergence liberal responses. (shrink)

The ‘consensus’ model of public reason, associated with John Rawls’s political liberalism, has been criticised for excluding certain reasons from receiving consideration where the justification of the constitutional essentials is concerned. One limitation of these criticisms is that they typically focus on the exclusion of reasons political liberals are committed to excluding, notably reasons based on religious and comprehensive views. I argue that public reason excludes some reasons, central to the interests of many oppressed groups, that public reason advocates will (...) agree should not be excluded.L’idée de raison publique comme «consensus», associée au libéralisme politique de John Rawls, a été attaquée du fait de sa supposée incapacité à permettre la prise en compte de certaines raisons dans les cas où la substance même de la constitution est en question. Une limitation de ces critiques est qu’elles se concentrent habituellement sur l’exclusion de ces raisons que les libéraux eux-mêmes s’efforcent d’exclure, en particulier des raisons fondées sur des vues globales ou religieuses. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la raison publique exclut de fait certaines raisons, essentielles aux intérêts de nombreux groupes opprimés, que les tenants de la raison publique eux-mêmes considèreraient ne pas devoir être exclues. (shrink)

Explains the concept and conceptions of public justification found in the philosophy and political theory literatures.

Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply freely with those proposals should they become law. Hence public reasoning involves (...) 'local ideal theorizing': the justification of political proposals includes their consideration and evaluation under conditions of compliance with them by the citizens to whom those justifications are addressed. Local ideal theorizing, moreover, can lead to 'full ideal theorizing', wherein citizens outline and evaluate an amended version of their society’s 'basic structure'. This argument is illustrated by some recent empirical work on inequality within the United States. (shrink)