The Challenge of Public Reason: Justified Property Rights and Disability
2018
When is political power legitimate? Public reasons
liberals argue that political power is legitimate only when it is
supported by reasons drawn from principles of justice that each
citizen could endorse. The most well known model for identifying
whether a principle satisfies this requirement is John Rawls’ idea
of an overlapping consensus. Typical interpretations of the idea of
overlapping consensus hold that it expresses a necessary conceptual
condition of any reasonable conception of justice. Against this
ahistorical view, my analysis shows that Rawls’ mature account of
overlapping consensus rests on a particular historicist thesis that
liberal institutions are necessary for social cooperation given the
presumption of moral and religious pluralism. The authority of
public reasoning ultimately rests on a widespread consensus about
the necessity of liberal institutions, rather than on a consensus
on any particular conception of justice. The limits of public
reason, on my analysis, are fixed first and foremost by liberal
institutions. Given the prominent historical role of classical
liberalism in specifying and defending liberal institutions, one
might suppose that classical liberal conceptions of justice would
have a central place in any consensus that defines the boundaries
of public reasoning. I argue that this appearance is misleading.
The work of scholars in disability studies show that conceptions of
justice must be sufficiently sensitive to the unique needs and
interests of citizens with disabilities. I argue that applying
these insights to the idea of public reason shows that classical
liberalism can satisfy the requirements of public reason only by
unjustly ignoring the perspective of disabled citizens I show that
Rawls’ model of public reason rests on a nuanced and historically
grounded view of the consensus circumscribing public reason.
Further, it shows that a historically conditioned concept of public
reason and political legitimacy need not imply a drastic retreat
from central egalitarian commitments, despite initial appearances
to the contrary.
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