Is there a need for political liberalism to have an account of pre-overlapping consensus reasoning?

• Published in: Filozofija i društvo (Zbornik radova) Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 57 - 74
• Main Author: Zelic, Nebojsa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade 2014
• Subjects: moral duty of civility; political liberalism; public reason; Quong; Rawls; reasonableness; sincerity
• ISSN: 0353-5738; 2334-8577
• DOI: 10.2298/FID1401057Z

In his Liberalism without Perfection, Jonathan Quong argues for internal
conception of political liberalism which goal is to show that a liberal
well-ordered society is internally coherent ideal and that citizens who would
be raised in such society could endorse and support their own liberal
institutions and principles if those institutions and principles are
justified in particular way These institutions should be justified by
particular conception of public reason which main feature is that overlapping
consensus is the first stage of its justificatory structure. So, public
reasoning of citizens in well-ordered society should be based solely on
values and ideas inherent to liberal conception of justice - freedom,
equality, fair system of cooperation and burdens of judgment. Another
important feature of Quong?s conception of public reason concerns its scope.
Quong argues for a wide scope of public reason which demands that all
coercive or binding laws or public policies should be justified (whenever
possible) on basis of these values alone. Thus, reasonable citizens in
well-ordered society by definition accord deliberative priority to public
reasons over their other comprehensive or nonpublic beliefs whenever they
exercise their collective political power over one another. The problem I
raise in this paper is that it is very likely that in well-ordered society
there will be a group of citizens that will not accord full deliberative
priority to political values, especially not at all levels of political
deliberation. On certain issues they will like to see their particular values
being realized through common political institutions. If our political theory
excludes this group from justificatory constituency on this particular issue
or categorize them as unreasonable it can easily undermine their general
adherence to liberal conception of justice and endanger stability of
well-ordered society. Thus, my point is that we need a further development of
political liberalism to solve such problems not as a part of non-ideal theory
but as a part of its ideal of well-ordered society.
nema