Abstract
The paper begins with a hypothetical story and asks: how should a Rawlsian political liberal state justify its coercion over Nozick, an unreasonable but intelligible citizen (UIC)? I use this thought experiment to illustrate a recent critique of political liberalism. It argues that political liberalism coerces UIC on a sectarian ground. Call it the sectarian critique. My paper addresses the sectarian critique from a political liberal perspective. I suggest a condition of state conjecture, which argues that the state officials should use conjecture to engage with UIC, like Nozick. This brings two benefits to the stability of a political liberal society. First, UIC may be convinced and become reasonable citizens. Secondly, the activity of offering conjectures can strengthen the public confidence of political liberalism as a valuable collective project. Although, eventually, some UIC may remain unpersuaded and be coerced on grounds that are unjustified to them, the force of the sectarian critique will be significantly weakened after the condition of state conjecture is fulfilled.
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Notes
Here coercion is defined as a phenomenon that occurs when an agent is threatened by another agent(s) to pursue, or refrain from pursuing, certain options that otherwise would be pursued by this agent. Threat, which is a core concept in this definition, means an offer such that, if one rejects this offer, one would expect to suffer great harm. The existence of a threat might make a particular course of action unreasonably costly, to the extent that one has to choose alternatives involuntarily. Under these definitions, a state is thereby a coercive regime because citizens are demanded to accept the laws and policies made by the state. Otherwise, citizens would be punished. Due to the cost of punishment, many citizens involuntarily choose to accept the laws and policies. Therefore, political liberals argue, these coercions would not imply disrespect for citizens if and only if these coercions are publicly justified to citizens. In the words of Nagel, offering public justification for coercions, can make “this involuntary condition voluntary” (Nagel 1991: 36). For the definitions of coercion and threat, they can be found in Lamond (2000: 43), Lamond (2001: 36) and Yankah (2008: 1218).
Rawls (2005, 137); Vallier (2018). However, it should be noted that the approach of justifying the requirement of public justification by coercion has become controversial recently. Some political liberals (cf. Bird 2014; Lister 2013; Quong 2014) argue that the requirement of public justification may arise even if no coercion occurs. These philosophers rather suggest other grounds for the requirement of public justification, such as civic friendship and justice. Nevertheless, while the coercion-based account is still the standard approach in the literature, I shall assume it here. For a defense of the coercion-based account, see Wong (2020).
In fact, Nozick in his later years became critical of his earlier beliefs (Nozick 1989: 286–287).
This definition is summarized from Gaus (2011: 279–281; 288–291). Usually, intelligibility is used to describe reason, but here it is used to describe those citizens who are willing to offer intelligible reasons in the public domain.
For this distinction between the consensus and convergence conception of public justification, see Vallier (2011).
Apart from these replies, political liberals can also choose to keep silent and refuse to argue with UIC. This is the position of Burton Dreben. “We are not arguing for [liberal democratic] society. We take it for granted that today only a fool would not want to live in such a society.” (Dreben 2003: 328) However, this position merely avoids the question. For a critique of this position, see Clayton and Stevens (2014: 70–73).
Some might argue that the assumption that UIC should have a sense of justice is not a questionable assumption, since justice is in general a basic element of societies. However, one should be careful that a sense of justice has substantial moral meaning in Rawls’s theory. It specifically means a motivation to act from the Rawlsian principles of justice as fairness (Rawls 1999a: 497). It also means a desire to cooperate with others in a reciprocal way (Rawls 1999a: 274–275). That is to say, a sense of justice can be described as a motivation to be reasonable (Rawls 2005: 48–50). As I mentioned in the last section, given the substantial moral meaning of reasonableness, many people in fact fall into the category of unreasonable citizens, including some brilliant philosophers. The motivation to be reasonable is not a moral sentiment commonly found among people. It is also hard to find a conclusive reason that people should be reasonable, i.e., people should have a sense of justice. Hence, I argue that the assumption that UIC should have a sense of justice cannot be taken for granted. In fact, some philosophers before also argue that Rawls’s assumptions, including the assumption of the sense of justice, are controversial (Wenar 1995: 50; Klosko 1997: 641). I thank an anonymous reviewer for asking me to clarify this point.
Stephen Macedo also makes a similar claim that “[i]f some people nevertheless feel silenced or marginalized by the fact that some of us believe that it is wrong to seek to shape basic liberties on the basis of religious or metaphysical claims, I can only say ‘grow up!’” (Macedo 1997: 21).
I should clarify that this condition is different from the requirement of toleration proposed by Kelly and McPherson (2001). According to Kelly and McPherson, being reasonable has two aspects: political (propose principles of justice) and philosophical (respect burdens of judgment). On condition that citizens are philosophically unreasonable but political reasonable, these citizens should be included in public justification. I do not think the scope of public justification should stop here. Citizens that are political unreasonable should also be considered, given that they are intelligible. The state should offer conjectural arguments to justify its coercion.
My position is compatible with a claim that a state is permitted to grant exemptions to UIC. While the government offers conjectural arguments to UIC, in some cases it also exempts them from burdensome laws and policies. Nevertheless, some conditions should be satisfied. For example, the exemptions should be justified by reasons shared or accessible among free and equal citizens. Also, UIC should not be exempted from a law or policy that is needed to secure and protect the equal standing of all persons as free and equal citizens (Watson and Hartley 2018: 106–131). For example, suppose that a drug is very important to the sacred ritual of a UIC group, but it is prohibited by the government. Not being able to use this drug in the ritual constitutes a severe mental burden for the UIC. In this case, while no one’s equal standing is harmed, a government is permissible to exempt these UIC because the reason of respecting a person’s deep, spiritual, conscientious commitment is publicly justified to all reasonable citizens. However, suppose that a UIC wants to ensure that his child believes in his religion, and thus prohibits his child to attend any public schools and be exposed to “corrupted” secular ideas. Despite his deep religious commitment, this should not be exempted because this affects the chance of his child to acquire an equal standing of free and equal citizens. I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting me to clarifying whether exemptions are permitted to be granted to UIC.
I should clarify that I do not mean the liberal officials have a moral or political duty to convert UIC. Rather, I only suggest the benefits of converting UIC by offering conjectures. But it does not mean that the liberal officials should convert UIC. I thank an anonymous reviewer for reminding me to clarify this difference.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possible negative effect of conjecture.
This possibility is also mentioned by Audi. When an audience is “move[d]…to a view by noting one or more reasons there are for it from the audience’s point of view”, the audience may feel that she is manipulated. Audi calls this “leveraging by reasons” (2000: 110).
A real-world example is Bernie Sanders. In 2015, Sanders delivered a speech at the Liberty University, a leading evangelical Christian university. During his speech, Sanders quoted Bible verses and offered religious reasons to justify his liberal claim of economic reform. This is a kind of conjecture under the definition of Rawls. Sanders honestly acknowledged his true belief in the conjecture and engaged with the Christian audience sincerely. The impressions of the audience are positive. Many Christian students appreciated Sander’s attempt and even changed their views. This shows that conjecture is not necessarily offensive to the audience. For details of this example, see Wong (2019: 123–124).
I do not mean that Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy is uncontroversial. My point is, suppose that the liberal principle of legitimacy is true, how a political liberalism can be less sectarian. The liberal principle of legitimacy may be objected by some political philosophers, but I cannot address here due to the limit of space. For a defense of Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy, see Weithman (2010: 312–320) and Song (2012).
I am unable to offer a full evaluation of the convergence conception here. I agree that the convergence conception is more inclusive to UIC than political liberalism does. However, compared with political liberalism, the convergence conception has a number of weaknesses. For example, it fails to realize the value of civic friendship (Lister 2013), political autonomy (Neufeld 2019) and civic respect (Quong 2011; Wong forthcoming). It also has a problem of incompleteness (Boettcher 2015). My concern is, therefore, how a theory of political morality can avoid these weaknesses without ignoring the complaints of UIC. I thank an anonymous reviewer for reminding me to consider a comparison between my position and the convergence conception here.
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Acknowledgments
The earlier versions were presented at the workshop “Political Theory and Modus Vivendi” and “Conflict of Public Reason” in MANCEPT, the Religious and Public Justification workshop at UCL, as well as the “Ploughing Classics Reading Group” at CUHK. I am grateful for the comments on drafts from Paul Billingham, Luca Costa, Po-Chung Chow, Elizabeth Edenberg, John Horton, Jeffrey Howard, Konstantino Kalliris, Chris Li, David McCabe, Roberta Sala, Siu-Fu Tang, Han van Wiermarschen, as well as other audience members at these events. I gratefully acknowledge these people’s advice and criticism, which clarified my thoughts and improved my argument. In addition, thanks also to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article. This article results from an ongoing Faculty Development Scheme (FDS) project on “Exploring the Idea of Public Reason” (#FDS14/H12/20), funded by Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee.
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Wong, B. Is it Sectarian for a Rawlsian State to Coerce Nozick? – On Political Liberalism and the Sectarian Critique. Philosophia 51, 367–387 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00351-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00351-5