The Burdens of Judgement

§ 1

The first basic aspect of the reasonable, then, is the willing­ness to propose fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them provided others do. The second basic aspect, as I review now, is the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept their consequences for the use of public reason in direct­ing the legitimate exercise of political power in a constitutional regime.

Recall that in the first lecture (I:6) we noted two general facts about the public culture of a constitutional regime: the fact of reasonable pluralism and the fact that this diversity can be over­come only by the oppressive use of state power. These facts call for explanation. For why should free institutions lead to reasonable pluralism, and why should state power be required to sup­press it? Why does not our conscientious attempt to reason with one another lead to reasonable agreement? It seems to do so in natural science, at least in the long run.

There are, of course, various explanations. We might suppose, say, that most people hold views that advance their own more narrow interests; and since their interests are different, so are their views. Or perhaps people are often irrational and not very bright, and this mixed with logical errors leads to conflicting opinions. But while such explanations explain much, they are too easy and not the kind we want. We want to know how reasonable disagreement is possible, for we always work at first within ideal theory. Thus we ask: how might reasonable disagreement come about?

§ 2

One explanation is this. Let's say that reasonable disagree­ment is disagreement between reasonable persons: that is, be­tween persons who have realized their two moral powers to a degree sufficient to be free and equal citizens in a constitutional regime, and who have an enduring desire to honor fair terms of cooperation and to be fully cooperating members of society. Given their moral powers, they share a common human reason, similar powers of thought and judgment: they can draw infer­ences, weigh evidence, and balance competing considerations.

The idea of reasonable disagreement involves an account of the sources, or causes, of disagreement between reasonable per­sons so defined. These sources I refer to as the burdens of judgment. The account of these burdens must be such that it is fully compatible with, and so does not impugn, the reasonable­ness of those who disagree. What, then, goes wrong? An expla­nation of the right kind is that the sources of reasonable disagree­ment — the burdens of judgment — among reasonable persons are the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgment in the ordinary course of political life.

As reasonable and rational we have to make different kinds of judgments. As rational we have to balance our various ends and estimate their appropriate place in our way of life; and doing this confronts us with grave difficulties in making correct judgments of rationality. On the other hand, as reasonable we must assess the strength of peoples' claims, not only against our claims, but against one another, or on our common practices and institu­tions, all this giving rise to difficulties in our making sound reasonable judgments. In addition, there is the reasonable as it applies to our beliefs and schemes of thought, or the reasonable as appraising our use of our theoretical (and not our moral and practical) powers, and here too we meet the corresponding kinds of difficulties. We need to keep in mind these three kinds of judgments with their characteristic burdens.

§ 3

Except for the last two sources below, the ones I mention are not peculiar to the reasonable and the rational in their moral and practical use; items (a) to (d) apply mainly to the theoretical uses of our reason. Also, the list I give is not complete. It covers only the more obvious sources.

a. The evidence—empirical and scientific—bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate.

b. Even where we agree fully about the kinds of consid­erations that are relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at different judgments.

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