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Political Reasonability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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According to Stephen Macedo, ‘[liberal], democratic politics is not only about individual rights and limited government, it is also about justification… political justification… understood politically.’ ‘Political justification,’ he asserts, ‘is a core liberal goal.’ Gerald Gaus, similarly, writes that the ‘idea of public justification is at the heart of a contractual liberalism.’ Very many other contemporary political philosophers believe that the politics of a liberal polity must be justifiable to its Citizens. In what follows I shall seek to understand the basis for such a belief and, in particular, to expose two possible sources in the views of Locke and Kant. Neither source, I shall argue, provides any warrant for the demand in question. First the bald claim — that the politics of a polity needs justifying — must be unpacked. By way of initial clarification I shall say something about, respectively, ‘justification’ and ‘politics.’
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References
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3 Note that I am probably also required to give you reasons for those of my actions that adversely affect you but which do not fall within the political sphere — for instance, the action of assaulting you in the privacy of your home. I am accountable to others for some at least of my non-political acts. What is at issue is the fundamental distinction between ‘public’ or political acts, and private non-political acts. It should not be thought that we are accountable to others only for the former.
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24 Ibid. §98
25 Ibid., §101-5
26 Ibid., §119
27 Ibid., §122
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62 Earlier versions of this paper have been read at Essex University, Glasgow University, the Oxford Political Thought Conference, and a meeting of the Irish Philosophical Club. I have benefited greatly from the comments of those present at these talks, especially Tom Sorell, Simon Critchley, Mark Sacks, Katrin Flikschuh, Andrew Lockyer, Dudley Knowles, Mike Lesnoff, Jerry Cohen, Christopher McKnight, and Alan Weir. My thanks also to two anonymous referees of this Journal for some suggested improvements.
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