Are Public Reason Liberalism’s Epistemological Commitments Indefensible?

• Published in: The Philosophical quarterly Vol. 73; no. 2; pp. 602 - 624
• Main Author: Tahzib, Collis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 21.03.2023
• Subjects: public justification; reasonableness; political liberalism; reasonable disagreement; public reason liberalism
• ISSN: 0031-8094; 1467-9213
• DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqac051

Abstract Public reason liberalism holds that laws and policies must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Recently, David Enoch has offered an impressive and influential argument against the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism on the grounds that they are ‘highly controversial’. After setting out this argument (Sections I and II), I show how its central claim is ambiguous between two senses of ‘controversial’. This gives rise to a dilemma: either Enoch's claim is that the relevant epistemological commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst actual people, in which case this is true but not troubling for public reason theorists; or the claim is that the relevant commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst reasonable people, in which case this simply begs the question against public reason theorists (Section III). I then defend each horn of the dilemma against objections (Sections IV and V). I conclude by generalizing this dilemma, showing how it defuses not just Enoch's argument but also a number of other arguments frequently made in the literature on public reason liberalism (Section VI).