Are There Secular Reasons?
I have been meaning for a while now to link to this post of Eve Tushnet’s, which you really ought to read in its entirety:
The upshot: 1) "It’s the right thing to do" is not a neutral statement. All virtue-words are given content by a religious tradition, a philosophical tradition, or (this is almost always the case nowadays) both. And since philosophy at its best takes part in the same eros as religion, suggesting that only the "non-religious" philosophy is valid in the public square will only make our discourse banal.
2) "Civil religion" which changes no minds and touches no hearts = stupid and useless. It’s tapioca. Spit it out therefore, and seek sublime religious rhetoric of the kind which can awaken undiscovered longings even in the breast of a hardcore secularist.
3) To combine both of the above points: Neutral is boring. Neutral is banal. Neutral is also impossible, since even if you and I agree on the most efficient means of securing physical satisfaction (good luck with that!) we disagree on when, how, and whether justice, liberty, mercy, loyalty (which loyalties?), family, or sublimity should trump efficient satisfaction of wants.
In short, "You need to use secular arguments!" is bad philosophy and we should stop saying it. Show me pictures so I understand what your words mean. Don’t pretend we share compatible traditions of justice or freedom or equality or happiness. And I’d rather be accommodated than implicitly excluded… but I’d rather be wooed than accommodated.
(Again: the whole thing, I said.)
After a fair amount of what I’ll admit is has been largely undetailed reflection on the question, it seems to me to be possible to show, in a rigorously philosophical fashion, that a range of inescapable facts about human (un)reason and the nature of our ethical and otherwise normative concepts make the concept of an essentially irreligious moral discourse a philosophical non-starter. Please wait patiently for a decade while I finish my dissertation and then prepare a more detailed argument re: same. In the meantime, here is Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail on how to decide which laws demand obedience:
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Soul! God! Sin! Aquinas! Thank God, say I, that Dr. King had not had the opportunity to read his Rawls. I’ve put a couple of other choice, but rather off-topic, excerpts from tLfaBJ below the fold.
On the accusation of “extremism”:
… the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
And on the failure of Christians to stand for justice:
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Filed under: morality, philosophy, politics, religion
At the end of the day, there are essentially only 2 philosophical positions: Might Makes Right and The Golden Rule. Both, as Dr. King noted, find ample support in the Bible.
Slavery? The first. Civil Rights laws? The second.
Secular arguments have a much broader sweep. What is the appropriate allocation of risk vs. reward? How much oversight is appropriate? Can oversight be effective? Is disclosure to the govt adequate (a process approach) or are there actual limitations on the way one does business (a substance approach).
By contrast, when you take something on faith (whose faith, btw?), you’ve already left your forebrain at the door. We tried that approach for the last 8 years and it didn’t work so well.
You mentioned Aquinas. How would you categorize the reasons he gives in the Summa contra Gentiles? Granted it’s not Rawls (!), but I’m interested to hear what you think about that. Of course, even if there are “secular reasons” of some sort that are available in principle, it might be nearly impossible to do all the work necessary to discover them and get people to take them seriously. So one might still be on board with the pragmatic implications of the post.
“Thank God, say I, that Dr. King had not had the opportunity to read his Rawls.”
*sigh* I wish that the C11 crowd would stop mis-reading their Rawls so badly. Look, there is just nothing wrong, in Rawls’ terms, with MLK using full-blown religious argumentation to give reasons to his (broadly speaking) co-religionists. Nothing at all. Everyone, for Rawls, is still _of course_ going to have a comprehensive doctrine, and to use that doctrine in discussions with others who share it. There’s only a Rawlsian problem when we try to adopt a given public policy that can _only_ be justified on the grounds of some specific comprehensive doctrine. And the sorts of things that MLK is arguing for here are not of that sort.
Francis:
Now THAT is most certainly false.
I think that these are all very important questions to ask, but note that such concerns are clearly insufficient to answer all of our moral/political questions, and not only because determining what you’re going to do with factual information about, e.g., the efficacy of oversight demands an essentially non-empirical conception of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Joseph: Good questions, and not ones that I (who haven’t read SCG for years) am in the best position to answer. But my quick take is threefold: (1) Aquinas’s conception of natural reason is not one that most modern secularists would recognize as sufficiently secular; (2) Aquinas’s conception of natural reason relies on an outmoded biology with no obvious counterpart in our present-day conception of the world; and (3) Aquinas’s conception of reason suffers from similar sorts of essentialist/universalist defects that are, I think, endemic to the Modern project. Now disagree away.
JW: I’m not misreading Rawls. It’s just that I’d disagree with your claim that MLK’s views on justice really are justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive doctrine, and I imagine that MLK would have felt similarly. There is, by the way, at least one substantial and well-informed book (by a former student of Rawls who is politically liberal and very sympathetic to his project) making the case that (as I recall) Rawls’s project fails on exactly these grounds.
I think that attitude is only possible to hold until you meet someone from a different sect or religion and realize how dumb it is. America was founded on the modern liberal ideals of not delegitimizing entry points into the public debate, so to appoint yourself the determinor of what starting points are too “banal” to count isn’t just illiberal but anti-American in the most essential way. There’s no difference in the justifications used here than in the justifications used to marginalize any religious group, including the Puritans(like, soooo banal!)
To be clear, I have no problem with the introduction of “banalities” into the public square. I just think that (1) they’re unlikely to convince many people, and (2) the obligation against preemptive delegitimation of points of view is one that holds when the viewpoints in question are religious, too.
“the concept of an essentially irreligious moral discourse a philosophical non-starter”
You don’t really think this, do you?
“All virtue-words are given content by a religious tradition, a philosophical tradition, or (this is almost always the case nowadays) both. ”
? Virtue words are given content by the decisions of language users, I guess. But once we’ve decided to use the word ‘justice’ to refer to justice, there’s nothing more for us to do. Now we have to inquire as to what justice IS. And the correct definition of justice transcends the perspectives different cultures and religions take on it.
In any case, I agree, and so I think does Rawls, that there is no way to present arguments are are totally neutral, that all parties will accept. And I think Rawls was wrong in any case. But there is something to the idea that one should not use arguments that rely of some sort of special revelation, since those by definition will have no sway with the people who are not party to the special revelation, which will likely be the people you are trying to convince.
In any case, the important point is that one some issues - abortion is one of them - an extremely good case can be made for the “traditional Christian” position using what would be largely be regarded as secular premises. But people don’t often give those arguments, since it requires a certain amount of philosophical sophistication, and many of the philosophically sophisticated pro-lifers have come under the spell of MacIntyre and believe that such arguments don’t exist, that it is impossible to teach ethics, etc.
ToJ: Wait, are you calling me philosophically sophisticated?
(I’ll weigh in on more of this later.)
A useful place to start on these matters it to distinguish between the question
“Are there secular reasons?”
and the question
“Are there reasons that any rational agent, regardless of their comprehensive doctrine, would have to accept?”
I think the answer to the former question is clearly yes and the answer to the second question is, though not quite so clearly, no. Exaggerated claims about the superiority of secular reasons to religious reasons often rely on confusing secular reasons with reasons that any well-informed, rational person should accept. That’s not to say that there might not be a variety of good reasons to prefer secular reasons to religious ones in our public debates. We just shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that this contrast is between moral parochialism and the deliverances of universal reason.
James is right that Rawls nowhere says that we cannot appeal to religious reasons when trying to persuade our co-religionists, but Martin Luther King, Jr. also used unabashedly religious rhetoric when trying to persuade people who weren’t his co-religionists. In addition to Paul Weithman’s work, Jeffrey Stout’s Democracy and Tradition has some trenchant criticism of Rawls on this point.
If there are pro-Lifers who have been convinced by MacIntyre that the case against abortion can only be made to those within their own tradition or who share their religious outlook then they have misread MacIntyre. The Catholic Church teaches that the wrongness of abortion can be recognized by human reason without the assistance of revelation and without appeal to theological premises. Nothing MacIntyre says contradicts that claim.
Does that mean that there is a knock-down argument against abortion that everyone would have to accept or be guilty of irrationality? No, and if it seems like there’s a contradiction here that’s probably because the two questions that I distinguished above are being conflated.
” the concept of an essentially irreligious moral discourse a philosophical non-starter. Please wait patiently for a decade while I finish my dissertation and then prepare a more detailed argument re: same.”
That’s a pretty big claim that you can’t actually justify for at least a decade. I’ll take the opportunity to pass on the conclusion until I can see the argument.
I’d argue that morality only makes sense within a given community. If America wants more coherent, or even just more moral discourse we should be allowed to separate into different communities (Federalism). Communities of such divergent characteristics of course can only work cooperatively on a limited number of projects. And it is only where there is agreement that the Federal Government should act.
Oh hey, thanks so much for this! I’ve done a long-winded followup thingy here, and also quoted and replied to a couple of comments. I hope I have made a very sloppy post at least “sloppy in a different way.”
“I’m not misreading Rawls. It’s just that I’d disagree with your claim that MLK’s views on justice really are justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive doctrine” This is simply confused as you’ve written it; you seem to have in mind some truly bizarre misreading of Rawls in which the presence of a premise in a comprehensive doctrine is a disqualifying condition, and we can somehow only appeal to premises that don’t appeal in any comprehensive doctrine whatsoever. This is, to put it mildly, a very badly tortured reading of Rawls.
On Rawls’s account, every citizen who puts an argument into play to justify a policy is doing so on the basis of their own comprehensive doctrine. It’s just that they can’t appeal to any & all aspects of their own comprehensive doctrines, but only the parts that are broadly shared with the rest of the polity.
“I imagine that MLK would have felt similarly.” Really? You think he would have thought that he should have no interest in offering arguments that could be found reasonable by Jews, or Hindus, or secular humanists? That sure isn’t my read of the man’s actions & discourse.
“…Martin Luther King, Jr. also used unabashedly religious rhetoric when trying to persuade people who weren’t his co-religionists.” Again, not a problem for Rawls. First of all, Rawls is putting constraints on justifications, not on rhetoric. Second, the idea of the overlapping consensus suggests that core moral ideas that might be framed one way in one religion, might well find a parallel expression in another religion (and, for that matter, in non-religious comprehensive doctrines). For example, I find myself having no trouble mapping the much of argument in the quoted text from the Letter into my own moral sensibilities, even though I am not a Christian. Again: the problem arises only when one needs to justify a policy on grounds that do not find their echo in the other participants in the overlapping consensus.
No, it’s a very badly tortured reading of me. What I said was that being “justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive [by which I sloppily meant: broadly shared] doctrine” shouldn’t be a requirement on an argument’s being acceptably put forward. Which is exactly what you go on to describe Rawls as advocating:
And my claim is that, yes, they can make such appeals.
No, but that’s not what I said: I think he’d have wanted his arguments to be able to be perceived in this way, but that he didn’t think such a possibility was a requirement on his offering them.
“What I said was that being “justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive [by which I sloppily meant: broadly shared] doctrine” shouldn’t be a requirement on an argument’s being acceptably put forward.” That may be your overall conclusion, but as a matter of fact, no, that is not what you said _at the point of the exchange in question_. Remember, our particular debate here concerns whether a proper reading of Rawls would preclude discourse like that of MLK in the Letter. And you wrote: “It’s just that I’d disagree with your claim that MLK’s views on justice really are justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive doctrine….” Even taking “non-comprehensive” as you gloss it here, the earlier claim becomes the claim that one _can’t_ successfully justify MLK’s views on broadly shared grounds. But what you just said in your last post is the claim that one _need not_ justify MLK’s views on broadly shared grounds. It’s the difference between ~p and ~p. But it’s only the former that would raise trouble for Rawls: if it turned out that fairly basic civil rights policies _could not_ be secured on the basis of the overlapping consensus, then I think he’d agree that this would be a negative result for his philosophy.
“…but that he didn’t think such a possibility was a requirement on his offering them.” As I already said, nothing _at all_ in Rawls would preclude that. All that is precluded is that King’s arguments could be legitimately justificatory of fundamental policy decisions, if they could not find their parallel form in the other comprehensive doctrines. I think that they do find such parallel, and moreover that _King_ thought that that they do, in that he took himself on the whole to be directing his arguments at the country on the whole. But even if they don’t, then there’s still just nothing in Rawls that would preclude such discourse.
If you want to disagree with Rawls, and argue that non-overlapping premises should be legitimately deployable in the justification of policy, then, sure, fine, disagree with Rawls. I have no problem with that. Heck, there’s a whole industry in philosophy dedicated to disagreeing with Rawls! But I’m objecting specifically to your saddling him with the commitment that somehow a proper understanding of his views should have somehow precluded Rev. King from writing that Letter. That’s just not correct, certainly as a matter of Rawls exegesis, and I think more generally distorts the political philosophy issues in this neighborhood.
Ack — I (moronically) used corner-brackets to try to make the diamond modal operator, and of course they got html’ed into non-visibility. The relevant bit should read: “It’s the difference between ~(possibly)p and (possibly)~p.”
Okay, so obviously it’s not worth getting all hung up on logic, but look: the fact is that I didn’t “say” much at all in the original post; I mostly just quoted. But there seems to me to be no reasonable way to read the claim that “being ‘justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive [by which I sloppily meant: broadly shared] doctrine’ shouldn’t be a requirement on an argument’s being acceptably put forward” saying simply that the argument in question needn’t be so justified, since otherwise I’d have written “justified” instead of “justifiable“. What I think is that (1) there’s no principled way to guarantee that claims like MLK’s even could find justification in a broadly shared consensus in any given society, but that (2) they’d nevertheless be appropriate claims to make. (That’s not immediately to say that America in the civil rights era was or wasn’t a society where such a consensus could be found, though I have my doubts.) Hence the propriety of an argument (in a society) does not require its justifiability according to the terms of an overlapping consensus (in that society). And that is a genuine disagreement, no?
Peter: I agree that Rawls is overly optimistic about what rational people “have” to accept. I’m not interested in arguing that our premises should be restricted to that paltry bunch. But I do think it is important that there are good arguments against abortion and gay-marriage (just to mention two hot button issues) that are no more closely tied to any particular religious outlook than the arguments about whether Pluto is a planet are. John and D. Larison have both explicitly claimed that using such arguments is (always, usually?) counterproductive, since those arguments are just the eviscerated shadows of religious arguments. I’m very confident that this claim is false, and if it is, it is very important for influential public intellectuals to see that it is.
To be clear, John, here’s what I think (I think):
1. Many arguments that masquerade as appealing only to universal principles really have comprehensive and quasi-religious worldviews in the background, and that’s okay.
2. Many arguments that eschew religious or otherwise sacralized vocabulary aren’t, in fact, as widely convincing as the arguments that don’t do this.
3. There is no duty to present (or: be able to present) one’s moral arguments in ways that aren’t “tied to any particular religious outlook”, and that explicitly or tacitly conceding that there is such a duty is an unwise thing to do.
Do we still disagree?
” But there seems to me to be no reasonable way to read the claim that “being ‘justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive [by which I sloppily meant: broadly shared] doctrine’ shouldn’t be a requirement on an argument’s being acceptably put forward” saying simply that the argument in question needn’t be so justified, since otherwise I’d have written “justified” instead of “justifiable“.”
*sigh* You’re missing the point still, I’m afraid. The question isn’t what was meant when you wrote about what “shouldn’t be a requirement”. The question is what you meant when you wrote, as you did, “It’s just that I’d disagree with your claim that MLK’s views on justice really are justifiable on the grounds of a non-comprehensive doctrine.” You didn’t write “could permissible be justifiable”. You wrote “justifiable”, period.
This also misses the larger dialectical point I was making in my last comment, which is that the logically weaker claim is not one that _makes_ trouble for Rawls. The logically weaker claim is simply a disagreement with Rawls, and one that could of course be argued for. But the logically stronger claim — the one that you were making in the bit I just quoted — while it looks like the raw materials for such an argument, seems to me nonetheless a non-starter, for the reasons offered above.
Here’s another way of looking at it: I think we can take it as a condition of success, for Rawls, that he be able to make room for discourse like MLK’s. I’ve suggested two ways he might plausibly do so. First, the discourse in question really might meet the conditions of membership in the overlapping consensus. Second, it might be appropriately _culturally persuasive_ but not _politically justificatory_. Both of these seem highly plausible options to me. But if it turned out, at the end of the day, that nothing like that could work out, and so Rawls’ theory says that MLK should have shut up, then it would be a reason to reject Rawls, and moreover a reason that Rawls himself would have acknowledged as such. But that is only an at-the-end-of-day result. It would be a _failure_ of Rawls’ project. Your initial line — the one that I have been objecting so strenuously to — is that it is a _part_ of Rawls’ project that MLK should have shut up. And that, again, strikes me as not just a mistake, but a deep mistake.
Turning to the argument in your latest comment, I would _almost_ agree that if your (1) is right, then that would pose a problem the Rawlsian would have to take very seriously. But that “in any given society” is inappropriate, given the nature of Rawls’ project, and the background conditions that he thinks need to be in place for his arguments to make sense. What you need is that _even in a society in which those background conditions obtain_, MLK’s discourse would be rendered verboten. You’re offering a kind of “least common denominator” argument here, and I think that those are generally fallacious. That an action is ethically appropriate under a wide range of circumstances doesn’t mean that it has the _same_ ethical basis in all those circumstances. It is ethically appropriate for you to take a bottle of milk from my store if you have paid for it; it is also ethically appropriate (imo) for you to take a bottle of milk from my store without paying, if your baby will starve without it and other potential remedies have been exhausted. That Rev. King’s discourse would be legitimate in a society in which Rawls’ background conditions do not obtain, does not automatically mean that the legitimacy of that discourse has the same basis in a society in which they do.
Just to emphasize my main point here: even if, _pace_ my previous paragraph, the most recent argument of yours were to succeed in making an objection to Rawls, that still would not vindicate your initial implication that it is _part & parcel_ of Rawls’ theory that MLK’s discourse would be illegitimate. It’s just good philosophical methodology to make as clear a distinction as we can between the affirmed & endorsed contents of a philosopher’s theory, and whatever unfortunate (to that philosopher) & unforeseen (by that philosopher) consequences we might want to argue that that theory would lead to.
“There is no duty to present (or: be able to present) one’s moral arguments in ways that aren’t “tied to any particular religious outlook”, and that explicitly or tacitly conceding that there is such a duty is an unwise thing to do.”
If I am right in my earlier claims about looking for appropriate parallels in the comprehensive doctrines of others, then actually the Rawlsian doesn’t need to disagree with this. Rather, one has the twin duties of (1) looking for such parallels in one’s own cd when confronted with another’s arguments, and (2) accepting that a sincere & considered reply by another reasonable member of the society that there just is no such parallel in their cd, is in fact a good reason for you to no longer offer that particular argument in the context of justifying a particular policy. One should not at all disqualify another’s arguments framed in Christian (or Hindu, or Kantian, or…) language _on the front end_, but one should be prepared to accept one’s own locally-framed argument as disqualified _at the back end_ if after due consideration & discussion it fails to find a place in the overlapping consensus.
I still don’t see how I’m missing the point. “Justifiable” has an explicitly modal content, no? To say that something isn’t justifiable (in a certain way) is to say that it’s not possible to justify it (in that way). I certainly didn’t, however, mean to say that “it is a _part_ of Rawls’ project that MLK should have shut up” - I’m happy to make the distinction you do between “affirmed and endorsed contents” and “unfortunate and unforeseen consequences”, and my claim is that the inadmissibility of MLK’s views would fall in the latter category. Apologies if I wasn’t sufficiently clear on that.
But this is exactly what I disagree with: I simply don’t think that failure to find justification in an overlapping consensus is sufficient to disqualify a political argument.
As long as I’m getting all bandwidth-hoggy: this is why I think it is a mistake to assimilate the Rawlsian approach to a lot of the “neutrality” arguments. I take neutrality to involve premises that are _denuded_ of any comprehensive doctrine content. An analogy: the full-blown neutrality line seems to demand that we present our arguments in no language at all, which is indeed impossible; but the Rawlsian position just demands that we present our arguments, ultimately, in language that can be successfully translated in the many languages of our fellow citizens.
“To say that something isn’t justifiable (in a certain way) is to say that it’s not possible to justify it (in that way).” Right, it has a modal structure, but a different modal structure than the other claim that you’ve been using. “p isn’t justifiable on basis B” is a stronger claim than “p is possibly justifiable on the basis of something other than B.” Let’s put the two claims next to each other, with paraphrases that I hope you’ll agree are accurate:
(Strong) It is not the case that MLK’s arguments on justice are justifiable on the grounds of a broadly shared doctrine.
(Weak) It is not a requirement on MLK’s arguments on justice being justifiable that they are so justifiable on the grounds of a broadly-shared doctrine.
Let “M” be MLK’s arguments, and “B” be the range of premises allowable in the broadly shared doctrine. (Strong) means “M is not justifiable on the basis of B”. (Weak) means “M is justifiable on the basis of something other than B.” Assuming — as we both are — that M is indeed justifiable, then (Strong) entails (Weak), but not vice-versa.
“I certainly didn’t, however, mean to say that “it is a _part_ of Rawls’ project that MLK should have shut up”…” Ok. But I really do hope you can see, though, how your initial jab at Rawls in the main post really does sound like what you are here disowning. The implication in your text was that merely reading (and endorsing) Rawls should have let MLK not to write the Letter.
“But this is exactly what I disagree with: I simply don’t think that failure to find justification in an overlapping consensus is sufficient to disqualify a political argument.” My point was that the way you stated that point in your 12:41pm comment was not, in fact, one that a Rawlsian ought disagree with. I think it’s worth getting persnicketedly careful here. Much of what has annoyed me by the many of the recent postings on this general topic here at C11 has been the blurring of a lot of important distinctions. There are weaker and stronger formulations, and some arguments that are good for rejecting stronger ones fail as arguments against the weaker ones. Going back to the main post, you stake out the claim that “a range of inescapable facts about human (un)reason and the nature of our ethical and otherwise normative concepts make the concept of an essentially irreligious moral discourse a philosophical non-starter.” If I weaken the claim slightly by changing “irreligious” into “not participating in any cd”, then I think that your claim is one that a Rawlsian could accept! And that this is so, in no small part, because that sort of claim does not, in fact, entail the claim of yours that I quoted at the beginning of this paragraph.
1. Many arguments that masquerade as appealing only to universal principles really have comprehensive and quasi-religious worldviews in the background, and that’s okay.
I think I agree with this, but I’m not sure what “universal principles” is supposed to refer to. You and I agree on this important point (I think): there isn’t an interesting neutral moral/political theory which we can appeal to so as not to beg any questions against our opponents.
2. Many arguments that eschew religious or otherwise sacralized vocabulary aren’t, in fact, as widely convincing as the arguments that don’t do this.
This is probably true, but I do think we disagree here: I THINK you’ve indicated in the past that you think religious believers are putting too much effort into coming up with “secular” arguments. I don’t know how much effort they’re putting in, but I think they’re doing a crappy job and public discourse would be greatly improved if more believers spent more time advancing good “secular” arguments concerning, say, gay marriage and abortion.
3. There is no duty to present (or: be able to present) one’s moral arguments in ways that aren’t “tied to any particular religious outlook”, and that explicitly or tacitly conceding that there is such a duty is an unwise thing to do.
First, I think it depends if we’re talking about a “religious outlook” or something that appeals to (specially) revealed premises. I do think there’s something amiss with arguing about public policy with the argument “because the Bible says it is wrong”, even though, from the standpoint of a believer, that is a pretty darn compelling argument. But I think the duty language is distracting here: surely it would be good if we could, as much as possible, provide universally compelling arguments for our coercive public policy decisions. Sometimes things break down - the world is fallen - but I think often arguments about these matters are needlessly inflamed because people want to claim not just that “public justification” in Rawls’s sense is a pipe dream, but that there’s really nothing special about such public justification anyhow. Rather, I think we should admit that the dream is a sweet one - where people are coerced only insofar as they are irrational - but strongly insist that it is just a dream.
James: Okay, so I think we’re making progress here, and that’s a good thing. But I’m not sure why you say:
At least as I read it, what the (Weak) schema would give you is just that it is not a requirement on M being justified that it be justified on the basis of B; it wouldn’t entail anything about whether it had other sorts of justification. I do agree, though, that if we assume that MLK’s views are justifiable somehow then (Strong) entails (Weak) and not v/v.
I also agree that the last statement in my 12:41 comment - that there’s “no duty” to present one’s arguments in a Febreezed form - isn’t one that a Rawlsian would have to disagree with. Rather, my disagreement with the Rawlsian is over this claim:
(*) The only admissible positions are the ones that CAN (in principle) be presented in such a form.
And this is something that the Rawlsian thinks, no?
John:
I agree that there is something amiss with that, though in fact I don’t think that many believers actually find those sorts of arguments especially compelling! My point has more to do with the fact that, as you put it, “there isn’t an interesting neutral moral/political theory which we can appeal to so as not to beg any questions against our opponents”: because of this, I think that the desire to have one’s beliefs achieve such expression or justification is a misguided one.
Again, I agree with this! But what Eve and I are arguing is that in many cases the desire to be compelling to the largest number of people is exactly the reason why drawing on religious or quasi-religious language is the right thing to do. I’m not really disagreeing, then, that there’s something “special” about “public justification”, but only that the particular way in which Rawls conceives this specialness (as in (*) above) is mistaken.
Ahh, the feeling of progress, like sunshine warming the skin…the reason this is my favorite blog to comment on. Thanks. We probably still have some small things to quibble about, but nothing worth doing in front of the entire world at this point.
I think you’ve understood my intentions exactly on the relationship between (Strong) and (Weak) — considered by themselves, and in particular without the further proposition that M is somehow-or-other justifiable, then there’s no entailment, since M might just not be justifiable at all. But we share here the background commitment that M’s justifiability is a well-entrenched datum, such that a political philosophy that cannot make sense of it is in rather bad shape.
However, I do indeed disagree with you regarding (*), in that I think it is _not_ something that a Rawlsian would have to endorse. (N.B. I’ve switched over to intentionally hedgy “Rawlsian” here, because I am less sure of this as a point of literal Rawls exegesis than I am of the earlier point we were discussing. But it seems to me entirely in keeping with the overall nature of his claims & arguments.) This is my point about other cds finding “parallels” to MLK’s arguments, which I have deployed several times upthread. It might be that many moral claims that are absolutely essential to properly organizing the basic structure of society cannot be meaningfully expressed, let alone defended, in a _form_ that partakes of no cd whatsoever. There may be no such splendidly, ascetically, antiseptically cd-free form of moral discourse available that can do the trick. I think we agree, in fact, that there just plain is no such usable cd-free form of moral discourse! What matters for the Rawlsian, though, is _not_ that the premises of public justification be cd-free. What matters is that they be ones endorsable by all the relevant cds. That was the intended import of my 1:26pm comment (which you may well have missed in our repeated cross-postings).
James: Thanks for the clarification. But even the modified claim:
(**) The only admissible positions are the ones that CAN (in principle) be endorsed according to the terms of any (or: any of the “relevant”) comprehensive doctrines.
… is one that I’d still dispute. But at least we’re clearer on where the disagreement lies.
That’s totally fine. Like I said, I’m mostly trying to get people to be more careful about the really very subtle issues in here, in the philosophy in general and in particular (as a special bugaboo of mine) in understanding Rawls. I’m sure you’d agree that an argument against (*) will not necessarily succeed as an argument against (**); and it seems to me that most of what I’ve seen in the recent discussions here at C11 have really only been relevant to (*). And, to return to where we started, only convicting Rawls of a particularly strong version of (*) could justify taking his philosophy to be in conflict with MLK’s discourse.