Abstract
In this issue of Philosophical Studies, Richard Arneson, Jonathan Quong and Robert Talisse contribute papers discussing The Order of Public Reason (OPR). All press what I call “agent-type challenges” to the project of OPR. In different ways they all focus on a type (or types) of moral (or sometimes not-so-moral) agent. Arneson presents a good person who is so concerned with doing the best thing she does not truly endorse social morality; Quong a bad person who rejects it and violates the basic rights of others, and Talisse a morally ugly person, a hypocrite, who criticizes others for failing to do what he does not do. All suggest that OPR does not give a satisfying account of what we are to say to, or how we should act towards, such agents. In my response I highlight some core concerns of OPR, while also seeking to show that OPR does not say quite what they think it says, and it often leaves them room for saying what they would like to say about such agents.
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Notes
Rawls (1999b, p. 326).
For a much more detailed account, see Gaus (2014a).
I explore this idea further in Gaus (forthcoming b).
Weithman (2010, esp. Chap. 2). On the distinction between stability and robustness, see Gaus (forthcoming b).
To be read: “is ordered above” or “is preferred to.”
This line of reasoning presents us a moralized version of Hobbes’s fool. The fool wants the benefits of a social life according to settled rules, but whenever he can do even better by breaking them, he does so. See Hobbes (1994, p. 90, Chap. 15, ¶4). Allessandra seems a moral fool.
Kant (1999, p. 116, §43). Emphasis added.
On some views living according to the moral constitution will never depart from personal moral optimization: e.g., a moral view according to which what is morally best is for you to follow the society’s eligible morality. A rule consequentialism might be designed in a way to do this (compare a Hobbesian whose greatest desire is to obey the sovereign). That some views can avoid the conflict does not show that the conflict is not basic to social life.
Rawls (2005, p. 51).
For skepticism of suppositions about rational moral monsters, see Gaus (forthcoming a).
Green (1986, §105).
I think that Talisse’s opponents of stem-cell research are making much the same point. I regret that space limitations do not allow consideration of important worries from the perspective of religious citizens raised by Talisse. Happily, Kevin Vallier’s (2014) new book carefully and comprehensively analyzes these issues—and with much more knowledge than I possesses.
Hobbes (1994, p. 25, Chap. V, ¶3).
For a fascinating study of the place of the authority relation in our attribution of moral responsibility, and what may be left of our normative relations with those who cannot make sense of it, see Shoemaker (2011).
I am a bit perplexed that Quong thinks this result is intimately related to my objection to the “bracketing strategy.” My complaint about the bracketing strategy is as a strategy for justification of a moral constitution. If we say that rule R is justified to Alf just because it satisfies a subset of his relevant reasons, then (i) we have only offered a pro tanto justification, since relevant reasons were excluded and (ii) if we insist that the pro tanto justification is sufficient, we do not have strong grounds for thinking that if R is justified to Alf he will tend to comply with it, for in our “justification” we have bracketed many of the reasons, even morally relevant ones, that matter in his decision to comply. This is a problem of inherent stability. In contrast, the result concerning Carl does not concern someone to whom R is said to be justified, but people living among us to whom we acknowledge it is not. This raises a question of external stability: how can we stabilize a scheme when some with whom we interact reject it? On some of the problems of relating public justification and stability, see Weithman (2014).
Smith (1982, pp. 176–177). Chad Van Schoelandt has taught me a great deal about this issue; it was he who alerted me to the importance of this passage of Smith’s. Van Schoelandt has analyzed the problems raised by Carl in much more depth, and with much more subtlety, than I have been able to here. See Van Schoelandt (2014).
I am grateful to Paul Weithman for getting me to think more deeply about this issue.
Compare the unsympathetic Carl to President America, who holds that the rule against killing civilians without trial has no authority over him when he decides other values outweigh it.
Sayre-McCord (2002) has explored this thought—that violations may cause one’s standing in the moral community to temporarily lapse.
See further Gaus (2014b).
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I have greatly benefitted from many discussions with Chad Van Schoelandt about these matters. My special thanks to Jon Quong for cheerfully enduring, in three different countries, my less than-enthusiastic reception of Carl.
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Gaus, G. The good, the bad, and the ugly: three agent-type challenges to The Order of Public Reason . Philos Stud 170, 563–577 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0269-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0269-5