How is Political Liberalism Possible?

§ 1

One of the deepest distinctions between conceptions of justice is between those that allow for a plurality of reasonable though opposing comprehensive doctrines each with its own conception of the good, and those that hold that there is but one such conception to be recognized by all citizens who are fully reasonable and rational. Conceptions of justice that fall on op­posite sides of this divide are distinct in many fundamental ways. Plato and Aristotle, and the Christian tradition as represented by Augustine and Aquinas, fall on the side of the one reasonable and rational good. Such views hold that institutions are justifiable to the extent that they effectively promote that good. Indeed, beginning with Greek thought the dominant tradition seems to have been that there is but one reasonable and rational concep­tion of the good. The aim of political philosophy — always viewed as part of moral philosophy, together with theology and meta­physics — is then to determine its nature and content. The classi­cal utilitarianism of Bentham, Edgeworth, and Sidgwick belongs to this dominant tradition.

By contrast, we have seen that political liberalism supposes that there are many conflicting reasonable comprehensive doc­trines with their conceptions of the good, each compatible with the full rationality of human persons, so far as that can be ascer­tained with the resources of a political conception of justice. As noted before (I:6.2), this reasonable plurality of conflicting and incommensurable doctrines is seen as the characteristic work of practical reason over time under enduring free institutions. So the question the dominant tradition has tried to answer has no answer: no comprehensive doctrine is appropriate as a political conception for a constitutional regime.

§ 2

Before asking how political liberalism is possible let us note that the political relationship in a constitutional regime has these two special features:

First, it is a relationship of persons within the basic structure of society, a structure of basic institutions we enter only by birth and exit only by death (or so we may appropriately assume). To us it seems that we have simply materialized, as it were, from nowhere at this position in this social world with all its advan­tages and disadvantages, according to our good or bad fortune. I say from nowhere because we have no prior public or nonpublic identity: we have not come from somewhere else into this social world. Political society is closed: we come to be within it and we do not, and indeed cannot, enter or leave it voluntarily.

Second, political power is always coercive power backed by the government's use of sanctions, for government alone has the authority to use force in upholding its laws. In a constitutional regime the special feature of the political relation is that political power is ultimately the power of the public, that is, the power of free and equal citizens as a collective body. This power is regu­larly imposed on citizens as individuals and as members of asso­ciations, some of whom may not accept the reasons widely said to justify the general structure of political authority — the consti­tution — or when they do accept that structure, they may not regard as justified many of the statutes enacted by the legislature to which they are subject.

§ 3

This raises the question of the legitimacy of the general structure of authority with which the idea of public reason (VI) is intimately connected. The background of this question is that, as always, we view citizens as reasonable and rational, as well as free and equal, and we also view the diversity of reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in democratic societies as a permanent feature of their public culture. Granting this, and seeing political power as the power of citizens as a collective body, we ask: when is that power appropriately exer­cised? That is, in the light of what principles and ideals must we, as free and equal citizens, be able to view ourselves as exercising that power if our exercise of it is to be justifiable to other citizens and to respect their being reasonable and rational?

To this political liberalism says: our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason. This is the liberal principle of legitimacy. To this it adds that all questions arising in the legislature that concern or border on constitutional essentials, or basic questions of justice, should also be settled, so far as possible, by principles and ideals that can be similarly endorsed. Only a political conception of justice that all citizens might be reasonably expected to endorse can serve as a basis of public reason and justification.

"Die menschliche Vernunft" ist der Schlüsselbegriff. Sie wird in einer politischen Konzeption der Gerechtigkeit begründet: "each compatible with the full rationality of human persons, so far as that can be ascer­tained with the resources of a political conception of justice."

Let us say, then, that in a constitutional regime there is a special domain of the political identified by the two features above described, among others. The political is distinct from the associational, which is voluntary in ways that the political is not; it is also distinct from the personal and the familial, which are affectional, again in ways the political is not. (The associational, the personal, and the familial are simply three examples of the nonpolitical; there are others.)

§ 4

Given the existence of a reasonably well-ordered constitu­tional regime, two points are central to political liberalism. First, questions about constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice are so far as possible to be settled by appeal to political values alone. Second, again with respect to those same funda­mental questions, the political values expressed by its principles and ideals normally have sufficient weight to override all other values that may come in conflict with them.

Now in holding these convictions we clearly imply some rela­tion between political and nonpolitical values. If it is said that outside the church there is no salvation, and therefore a consti­tutional regime cannot be accepted unless it is unavoidable, we must make some reply. In view of II:2—3 we say that such a doctrine is unreasonable: it proposes to use the public's political power — a power in which citizens have an equal share — to enforce a view bearing on constitutional essentials about which citizens as reasonable persons are bound to differ uncompromis­ingly. When there is a plurality of reasonable doctrines, it is unreasonable or worse to want to use the sanctions of state power to correct, or to punish, those who disagree with us.

Here it is important to stress that this reply does not say, for example, that the doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus is not true. Rather, it says that those who want to use the public's political power to enforce it are being unreasonable (II:3). That does not mean that what they believe is false. A reply from within a com­prehensive view — the kind of reply we should like to avoid in political discussion — would say that the doctrine in question is a misapprehension of the divine nature, and hence not true. How­ever, as we see below in §4, there may be no way to avoid entirely implying its lack of truth, even when considering consti­tutional essentials.

Querverweis Gegenkulturen. Davidsons Thesen angewandt auf Toleranz.

Der Katholizismus als vernünftige umfassende Weltanschauung vertritt Auffassungen über Trauergottesdienste. Wie geht man mit ihrem Wahrheitsanspruch um? Solche Ansprüche werden nach Tarski und Davidson in einer Metasprache ausgedrückt. Umfassende Weltauffassungen artikulieren nicht nur Behauptungen, sondern ebenso Sätze über diese Behauptungen. Sie affirmieren die Wahrheit ihrer Affirmationen. Folgender Beispielsatz ist nach Davidsons Tarski-Anleihe gebaut:

Dies ist ein Trauergottesdienst für die Opfer des Seilbahnunglücks von Kaprun ist wahr, wenn es sich um einen Trauergottesdienst handelt.

Rawls würde dazu sagen: sprechen wir nicht darüber, ob der Satz wahr ist. Es bleibt offen, wie er in der Metasprache beurteilt wird -- das heisst auch: zu welcher umfassenden Weltauffassung er gehört. Für den politischen Liberalismus ist interessant, dass es unvernünftig ist, diese Aussage (und die entsprechende Praxis) zu verbieten. Diese Entkoppelung von Wahrheit und Gesellschaftsordnung ist ein neuralgischer Punkt. Davidsons Wahrheitstheorie kann dazu beitragen, die (fehlenden?) Zusammenhänge schärfer zu fassen.

Die Doppelverwendung von "Trauergottesdienst" enthält eine methodologische Pointe. Ihre gedankliche Spannung entfaltet sich, wenn der Satz als eine Verschachtelung objekt- und metasprachlicher Operationen begriffen wird. Unter dieser Perspektive kondensiert sich in ihm eine Abfolge distinkter Schritte.

• er sagt etwas über einen Sachverhalt
• er bedient sich dabei der Hilfe von verständlichen Worten einer (Meta-)Sprache
• dabei ergibt sich, daß die Metasprache auch Worte der Objektsprache enthält

In welchem Sinn ist dieses Verfahren nicht zirkulär? Die Worte liegen auf zwei verschiedenen Sprachebenen. Das eine Mal handelt es sich um einen aufgegriffenen Terminus, das andere Mal um den Gebrauch eines Ausdrucks. Zuerst die separierte Zeichengestalt, dann die Erklärung. Die Rafinesse des Satzes läßt sich so explizieren: zur Charakterisierung eines Ereignisses ("dies") wird ein Wort verwendet, das lautgleich mit dem Wort für eine bestehende Praxis der Metasprache ist. (Vergleiche: "funeral service heißt Trauergottesdienst".) Unter den Bedingungen mehrerer vernünftiger Gesamtkonzeptionen der Welt ist damit zu rechnen, dass die beiden Verwendungen von "Trauergottesdienst" auseinanderfallen können. Dass nicht alle Angehörige der Sprachgemeinschaft von denselben Ereignissen behaupten, sie seien ein Trauergottesdienst.

Der Beispielsatz verdeutlicht also die Struktur einer "reasonable comprehensive doctrine", sofern wir Phänomene mit uns zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln zu verstehen und erläutern versuchen und auch behaupten, dass wir mit diesen Sätzen einverstanden sind. Aber damit gibt er auch die Struktur abweichender Doktrinen vor, weil die Übersetzung von der Objektsprache in die Metasprache nicht gelingen muss. Es kann sich herausstellen, dass die Betrachtung eines Satzes und der Gebrauch von Ausdrücken, die in dem betrachteten Satz vorkommen, divergieren. "Dies ist ein Trauergottesdienst ist eine Gotteslästerung." Nach Rawls stehen einander Sätze zweier vernünftiger Weltauffassungen gegenüber. Nach Davidson können wir etwas über den Wahrheitsanspruch solcher Sätze sagen.

Wahr ist eine Aussage, wenn aus der Betrachtungsposition ein entsprechender Inhalt behauptet werden kann. Was ist das Kriterium für "entsprechend"? Dass der interpretierten Verhaltensweise ein Vertrauensvorschuss zugestanden wird, in dessen Rahmen sich so viele Äußerungen wie möglich in unsere Ausdrücke übersetzen lassen. Der Vertrauensvorschuss, den wir in unsere eigene Sprache haben ist (für gewöhnlich) hoch, das erfasst die quasi-zirkuläre Formulierung. Es gibt aber in natürlichen Sprachen auch Bereiche, die heikel sind, d.h. es kommt auf sehr genaue Festlegungen an. Hier ergeben sich Konflikte zwischen dem "principle of charity" und dem Prinzip der Selbst-Wertschätzung. Was dem Vertrauensvorschuss entsprechend ein Trauergottesdienst wäre, kann nach meiner "comprehensive doctrine" kein Trauergottesdienst sein.

Das ist eine Schwierigkeit im Verständnis fremdartiger Aussagen. Sie gehört zur Konzeption der Wahrheit im Zusammenhang mit radikaler Interpretation. Die "Last des Urteils" heisst in diesem Fall, dass wir auf eine Unschärfe in der Ausübung unseres Urteilsvermögens stoßen. Es ist vernünftig anzunehmen, dass Wahrheitsansprüche in Anwendung an diskrepante "comprehensive doctrines" wenig belastbar sind.

A basic point, however, is that in saying it is unreasonable to enforce a doctrine, while we may reject that doctrine as incor­rect, we do not necessarily do so. Quite the contrary: it is vital to the idea of political liberalism that we may with perfect consis­tency hold that it would be unreasonable to use political power to enforce our own comprehensive view, which we must, of course, affirm as either reasonable or true.

§ 5

Finally, we come to the question of how, as I have characterized it, political liberalism is possible. That is, how can the values of the special domain of the political — the values of a subdomain of the realm of all values — normally outweigh what­ever values may conflict with them? Put another way, how can we affirm our comprehensive doctrine and yet hold that it would not be reasonable to use state power to gain everyone's allegiance to it?

The answer to this question, the various aspects of which we shall discuss from now on, has two complementary parts. The first part says that values of the political are very great values and hence not easily overridden: these values govern the basic frame­work of social life — the very groundwork of our existence — and specify the fundamental terms of political and social cooperation. In justice as fairness some of these great values — the values of justice — are expressed by the principles of justice for the basic structure: among them, the values of equal political and civil liberty; fair equality of opportunity; the values of economic rec­iprocity; the social bases of mutual respect between citizens.

Other great political values — the values of public reason — are expressed in the guidelines for public inquiry and in the steps taken to make such inquiry free and public, as well as informed and reasonable. We saw in II:4.1 that an agreement on a political conception of justice is to no effect without a companion agree­ment on guidelines of public inquiry and rules for assessing evidence. The values of public reason not only include the appro­priate use of the fundamental concepts of judgment, inference, and evidence, but also the virtues of reasonableness and fair­mindedness as shown in abiding by the criteria and procedures of commonsense knowledge and accepting the methods and con­clusions of science when not controversial. We also owe respect to the precepts governing reasonable political discussion.

Together these values express to the liberal political ideal that since political power is the coercive power of free and equal citizens as a corporate body, this power should be exercised, when constitutional essentials and basic questions of justice are at stake, only in ways that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of their common human reason.

§ 6

Political liberalism tries, then, to present an account of these values as those of a special domain political hence as a freestanding view. lt is left to citizens individually - as part of liberty of conscience — to settle how they think the values of the political domain are related to other values in their com­prehensive doctrine. For we always assume that citizens have two views, a comprehensive and a political view; and that their overall view can be divided into two parts, suitably related. We hope that by doing this we can in working political practice ground the constitutional essentials and basic institutions of justice solely in those political values, with these values understood as the basis of public reason and justification.

But for this to hold, we need the second, and complementary, part of the answer as to how political liberalism is possible. This part says that the history of religion and philosophy shows that there are many reasonable ways in which the wider realm of values can be understood so as to be either congruent with, or supportive of, or else not in conflict with, the values appropriate to the special domain of the political as specified by a political conception of justice. History tells of a plurality of not unreasonable comprehensive doctrines. This makes an overlapping con­sensus possible, thus reducing the conflict between political and other values.

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