PANEL 3 /// PUBLIC REASON IN A POLARIZED WORLD
CONVENORS: JOANA PINTO AND ROBERTO MERRIL
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
The discussants in this panel will include Silje Langvatn (University of Bergen).
Normative theories of public reason subscribe to the idea that political and legal impositions in constitutional liberal democracies must be publicly justifiable to be fully legitimate, and they also prescribe some duty or ideal of public reason for at least some political agents in order to meet this such a criterion of public justifiability. For long this approach was exclusively associated with John Rawls and his political liberalism, but different interpretations of Rawls are in play, and a range of non-Rawlsian versions of public reason approaches have also developed. This panel seeks to bring together different perspectives on public reason and public justification with a special focus on how ideas and ideals of public reason hold up under non-ideal circumstances, or in liberal democracies that are less well ordered than those Rawls discussed. What is the role and appropriate version of public reason in a world marked by distrust and polarization where we need to act together to face existential threats to democratic life, such as the climate crisis problem.
The panel welcomes contributions relating to (but not limited to) the following questions:
• What is the most convincing grounding of the idea of public reason, or the idea that exercise of political power over a range of issues must be publicly justifiable?
• Which type of public reason approach is better suited in a non-well-ordered setting? In a setting where we are facing an existential climate crisis? Does this challenge speak in favor or against the consensus or convergence approach, for example?
• What constraints or orientations should a public reason Ideal impose on the political debate to address the climate crisis, if any?
• Public reason and political parties: Should an ideal of public reason apply to political parties or is it legitimate for parties to serve an aggregative function in liberal democracies? Can and should ideals of public reason reduce political polarization?
• Critical objections to public reason.
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
The discussants in this panel will include Silje Langvatn (University of Bergen).
Normative theories of public reason subscribe to the idea that political and legal impositions in constitutional liberal democracies must be publicly justifiable to be fully legitimate, and they also prescribe some duty or ideal of public reason for at least some political agents in order to meet this such a criterion of public justifiability. For long this approach was exclusively associated with John Rawls and his political liberalism, but different interpretations of Rawls are in play, and a range of non-Rawlsian versions of public reason approaches have also developed. This panel seeks to bring together different perspectives on public reason and public justification with a special focus on how ideas and ideals of public reason hold up under non-ideal circumstances, or in liberal democracies that are less well ordered than those Rawls discussed. What is the role and appropriate version of public reason in a world marked by distrust and polarization where we need to act together to face existential threats to democratic life, such as the climate crisis problem.
The panel welcomes contributions relating to (but not limited to) the following questions:
• What is the most convincing grounding of the idea of public reason, or the idea that exercise of political power over a range of issues must be publicly justifiable?
• Which type of public reason approach is better suited in a non-well-ordered setting? In a setting where we are facing an existential climate crisis? Does this challenge speak in favor or against the consensus or convergence approach, for example?
• What constraints or orientations should a public reason Ideal impose on the political debate to address the climate crisis, if any?
• Public reason and political parties: Should an ideal of public reason apply to political parties or is it legitimate for parties to serve an aggregative function in liberal democracies? Can and should ideals of public reason reduce political polarization?
• Critical objections to public reason.
