The conversation to which my dissertation belongs is that which preoccupied John Rawls in Political Liberalism, namely: (1) how it is possible that a religiously and morally pluralistic culture like ours lives cooperatively from one generation to the next, and (2) The extent to which religious or moral convictions are appropriate bases for political action. My three-essay dissertation is about aspects of this investigation that affect minority or non-mainstream religious and cultural groups, since legal institutions, and theoretical models of them (such as Rawls’s and Ronald Dworkin’s) are in many ways ill-suited to accommodate their ways of life. In the first essay, I consider Rawlsian obstacles to developing a religiously impartial conception of “substantial burdens” on religious free exercise within First Amendment jurisprudence. I apply this question to federal cases in which Native American tribes sought to prevent government uses of land that would be, they claimed, catastrophic to their cultural survival and all citizens’ safety. I propose a jurisprudential model that places a heavier burden on judges to listen and perhaps translate such views, counting non-mainstream forms of reasoning as legally cognizable and sufficient to create a prima facie constitutional case, where current models would not. In the second essay, because few conceptions of justice require that law be cognizable and justifiable to everyone, I review liberal conceptions of what makes a cultural group or person “irrational” or “unreasonable.” With a focus on public education, and cases like Wisconsin v. Yoder and Mozert v. Hawkins in mind, I argue that approaches to “unreasonableness” from the likes of Rawls, Charles Larmore, Jonathan Quong, and Stephen Macedo are well-intentioned but unduly restrictive, insofar as they tend to, by definitional fiat, exclude citizens who embody widely recognized civic virtues, or who at least pose no threat to a stable democracy. In doing so, I argue that they instantiate the sort of social circumstance that Herbert Marcuse calls one-dimensionality. In the third essay, I consider whether a meaningful and practical model for “group rights,” which would include the right of peoples to preserve their cultures, can be developed within American jurisprudence. This argument is largely inspired by a paper from political scientist Vernon van Dyke, and considers overcoming challenges to this notion wrought by contemporary forms of liberalism and vehement public disagreement over recent, pertinent Supreme Court decisions involving associational rights, like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Citizens United v. FEC.

We can best understand the moral obligations of citizens and officials concerning public reason as set out by John Rawls when two differing standards latent in his body of work are made explicit. The weaker standard, which I call Public Representation (or PR), is exegetically supported primarily by the proviso found in his “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. PR allows that citizens may deliberate over serious political matters, both internally and with others, according to whatever perspective and using whatever reasons they please, so long as they believe the positions they advocate are adequately just and adequately justifiable with public reasons. I present PR as establishing a moral minimum citizens and officials bear an obligation to satisfy on pain of failing to garner an adequate degree of justice, respect, legitimacy, and stability. The more demanding standard, which I call Public Judgment (or PJ), is exegetically supported by quotes found throughout Rawls’s work, but especially in Political Liberalism, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. PJ requires that citizens deliberate over serious political matters, both internally and with others, according to a public perspective with public reasons, that they only advocate positions and offer justifications they consider most reasonable, and that they share their thought processes in public. PR is nonobligatory, but achieves significant gains according to each of the four key political values mentioned above, which gives dedicated citizens good reason to embrace it. Chapter one lays out and explores the big picture concepts framing the project; chapter two sets out Rawls’s view on public reason according to the primary texts; chapter three presents four contemporary liberal theorists’ views on public reason – Nicholas Wolterstorff, Robert Audi, David Reidy, and Micah Schwartzman; chapter four uses the lessons of chapter three to help fully unpack and compare Public Representation and Public Judgment; and chapter five considers three potential objections to my view and offers corresponding replies.

Liberals claim that the exercise of state power must be justified on terms that all citizens can reasonably accept. They also support democracy. The challenge is to bring these two desideratum in line-- to ensure that democratic deliberations are somehow predicated on claims that all citizens can reasonably accept. Put differently, the challenge is to set the terms of public reason. Liberal philosophers advance grand theories of political justice towards this end. They claim that a reasonable argument in the political sphere is one that conforms to theory x. The difficulty is that there will be those who reasonably reject theory x, preferring theory y or z, or eschewing theory altogether. Pessimism at the prospect of agreement on higher-order theories of justice leads some to advocate simple majority rule. The thesis argues that convergence on higher order theory is not essential to public reason. The Supreme Court of Canada’s method of adjudication under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is used as a model. Where basic rights are engaged, or are alleged to be engaged, the Court examines the reasonableness of law and policy using a series of open-ended tests. These tests discipline their deliberations by focusing attention on generally accepted facts and values (notably, the values expressed by the Charter). The thesis contends that the Court’s open-ended, contextual approach can serve as a model for broader public reasoning. The thesis then explores the role of religious arguments within this model. In a polity committed above all to Charter values, what is the place of religion in the justification of law? It is argued that religion is understood to be private and inscrutable under the Charter. This is what justifies the Court’s generous reading of the right to religious freedom. It also justifies our forbidding state coercion in the name of religion. With the preceding ideas in mind, the thesis examines Canadian law and public discourse on the issues of therapeutic cloning (ch.4) and same sex marriage (ch.5).

Liberals claim that the exercise of state power must be justified on terms that all citizens can reasonably accept. They also support democracy. The challenge is to bring these two desideratum in line-- to ensure that democratic deliberations are somehow predicated on claims that all citizens can reasonably accept. Put differently, the challenge is to set the terms of public reason. Liberal philosophers advance grand theories of political justice towards this end. They claim that a reasonable argument in the political sphere is one that conforms to theory x. The difficulty is that there will be those who reasonably reject theory x, preferring theory y or z, or eschewing theory altogether. Pessimism at the prospect of agreement on higher-order theories of justice leads some to advocate simple majority rule. The thesis argues that convergence on higher order theory is not essential to public reason. The Supreme Court of Canada’s method of adjudication under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is used as a model. Where basic rights are engaged, or are alleged to be engaged, the Court examines the reasonableness of law and policy using a series of open-ended tests. These tests discipline their deliberations by focusing attention on generally accepted facts and values (notably, the values expressed by the Charter). The thesis contends that the Court’s open-ended, contextual approach can serve as a model for broader public reasoning. The thesis then explores the role of religious arguments within this model. In a polity committed above all to Charter values, what is the place of religion in the justification of law? It is argued that religion is understood to be private and inscrutable under the Charter. This is what justifies the Court’s generous reading of the right to religious freedom. It also justifies our forbidding state coercion in the name of religion. With the preceding ideas in mind, the thesis examines Canadian law and public discourse on the issues of therapeutic cloning (ch.4) and same sex marriage (ch.5).

In this thesis, I defend John Rawls’s assertion that political liberalism does not use the concept of truth. I respond to objections from Joshua Cohen and David Estlund. I argue that Cohen fails to show that public reason needs a minimalist conception of truth, since individuals with a range of conceptions of moral truth can meet the requirements of public reason. I dispute Estlund’s argument that the liberal principle of legitimacy is merely insular. Estlund assumes that the claim that the liberal principle of legitimacy is reasonable is no different than the claim that the principle is acceptable to reasonable persons. I argue that this assumption is incorrect, and that therefore the liberal principle of legitimacy is justifiable on the grounds that it is reasonable. I argue that political liberals need not worry that doing without the concept of truth will undermine the semantic coherence or objectivity of political liberalism.

<p>In this dissertation, I develop a political liberal ethics of citizenship that reconciles conflicting religious and civic obligations concerning political participation and deliberation--a liberal-democratic ethics of citizenship that is compatible with religious integrity. I begin by canvassing the current state of the debate between political liberals and their religious critics, engaging Rawls's Political Liberalism and the various religious objections Nicholas Wolterstorff, Christopher Eberle, Robert George, John Finnis, Paul Weithman, Jeffrey Stout, and Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier develop (Chapter One). I then critically evaluate political liberalism's requirements of citizens in light of the religious objections and the religious objections in light of political liberal norms of reciprocity, concluding that some religious citizens have legitimate complaints against citizenship requirements that forbid citizens from offering religious arguments alone in public political discussions (Chapter Two). Next, I propose an alternative set of guidelines for public political discussions in constitutional democracies, the phased account of democratic decision-making, that, I argue, addresses the religious citizens' legitimate complaints without undermining a constitutional democracy's legitimacy or commitment to public justification (Chapter Three). Then, I argue that a religious practice of political engagement I call prophetic witnessing is compatible with the phased account, can serve as a canonical model to guide religious citizens' political participation, and can help religious citizens navigate the substantive conflicts between their religious and civic obligations that remain possible even in a society that follows the phased account (Chapter Four). Finally, I conclude by imagining three different democracies, each adhering to a different set of guidelines for public political discussions, in order to argue for the benefit of adopting norms that balance citizens' obligations to govern themselves legitimately with citizens' ability to integrate their deepest moral and religious commitments and their public, political argument and advocacy.</p> / Dissertation

A common conceptual framework depicts morality as an alien force commanding us from on high; in contrast, this dissertation presents a picture of morality that is deeply social. It is not an abstract morality that commands us, but we who place demands on each other. On this picture, we are equal participants in morality, rather than mere subjects of morality. This participation has fundamentally important implications for the shape and structure of morality; or so this dissertation argues. By way of introducing the work as a whole, I will here note some of the key facets of the social nature of morality that the dissertation develops. Our participation is primarily as enforcers, rather than followers, of morality. We hold people accountable to moral requirements through emotional responses like resentment, as well as actions and relations that follow from that attitude. As I argue, these emotions carry an important representational content, displaying the other person as having shown ill will. This ill will can be best understood as a disregard for relevant moral considerations that are available to the resented agent. Despite the negative tone of resentment, it is an aspect of being in community with each other. Someone who can be resented is a co-member of a community with us upon whom we can make demands and who can make demands upon us. We may not share community with some people regarding some issues, such as across religious divides, while still seeing them as people with whom we share at least some form of community, as within the system of basic liberal rights. There are people, as I discuss, who fail to be eligible for responsibility to even basic demands. With such people we have no community; they are to us like forces of nature, and the most dangerous of them are for us monsters. Though many endorse conceptions of community focused on shared experiences or values, I argue that such a notion of community is not appropriate for modern, diverse societies. In modern, particularly liberal, societies, we cannot expect to share religion, occupation, views of the good life, or the like, so these cannot constitute community among the members of society. A shared moral framework, however, provides a promising conception of community for diverse societies like our own. Our shared morality may thus be among the most important forms of community we can have on the large scale of modern society. That same diversity, however, raises problems for a shared morality. As I argue, our interpersonal moral demands will have to be justified to each other, given our different perspectives, and such justification may be difficult. I address both the nature of this interpersonal justification, as well as the difficulties of achieving it, within this dissertation. This dissertation shows that morality is social in yet another way. Focusing on justice, as a central part of the morality, I argue that the content of the principles to which we hold each other accountable itself emerges from our social institutions as those develop over time through our interactions. The diverse members of society must be able to share an understanding of their mutual expectations, but such members tend to disagree about how to interpret and apply moral values and principles. Social institutions, such as legal systems with courts to interpret law, can provide a common interpretation of expectations. If the rules that emerge from these institutions are justified to the members, then those rules may constitute justice within that society. This dissertation, then, presents a picture of morality that is social through and through. Morality is constructed within our social institutions, enforced interpersonally, restricted to what is mutually justified to society’s members, and ultimately constitutes one of our primary forms of community.

This paper takes as its starting point the fact of reasonable pluralism and defends political liberalism as the best means of accommodating diversity and a plurality of different conceptions of the good. I then ask what is needed for a social order characterized by diversity and a multiplicity of different ways of life to come into existence and perpetuate itself over time. First, I defend political liberalism and argue that the creation of a society that is accommodating of diversity requires that the state be mindful of the spillover effects between public institutions and the private lives of citizens. Second, I argue that the individuals living in such a society must adopt certain virtues, both publicly as well as privately. I achieve this by presenting an account of the virtues of citizens in a political liberal society. Third, I draw out the implications of having a society characterized by reasonable pluralism and many different conceptions of the good, by arguing that such a society should avoid adopting too expansive a role, since an overly ambitious conception of social justice risks stifling the diversity a political liberal society is trying to protect. I conclude with some general remarks about the current state of liberal theorizing and the need for liberal theorists to provide an account of liberalism that includes more than one’s conception of distributive justice and legitimate state coercion. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-22 21:48:39.206

In this essay, I argue that the institution of journalism plays a vital role in informing citizens of a deliberative democratic society, and that to effectively fulfill this role, journalists must report the news objectively. I first examine the historical evolution of objectivity as it pertains to journalism. Then, I elaborate on some of the philosophical concepts that provide the foundation for objectivity. Next, I introduce John Rawls’ idea of public reason, which provides an improved understanding of the role of journalism within a democratic society. I claim from this that journalism must re-envision its role as guardian of the public political forum. Finally, I bring these various discussions together by drawing in the requirements that Stephen Ward lays out in his theory of pragmatic objectivity, and argue that these are necessary to help journalism legitimize its authority to safeguard this forum. In doing so, journalism can ensure both that citizens are objectively informed and that the public forum offers them a sphere in which they can effectively participate in the governance of their democracy.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Richard Rorty’s arguments in favour of a limited role for religion in the public sphere, both with regard to their practical value and their consistency with Rorty’s other philosophical commitments. A brief description of Rorty’s various philosophical commitments is followed by a detailed analysis of the negative practical consequences that can be foreseen resulting from Rorty’s approach to the topic of religion and any attempt to enforce his proposed treatment of religion. After looking at the practical problems with Rorty’s position, a closer look was taken at Rorty’s consistency across his philosophical writings. With a particular focus on Rorty’s pragmatism and his epistemic relativism the author concludes that Rorty’s arguments for reducing the influence of religion in the public sphere remain of questionable practicality and, furthermore, are at odds with his epistemological commitments. Rorty’s commitment to liberal democracy entails a commitment to protecting citizens’ rights to voice their opinions in hopes of influencing public policy. Despite his controversial writings with regards to the role of religion in society, authors such as Jeffrey Stout and Nicholas Wolterstorff provide alternative approaches to the appropriate treatment of religion in society that remain consistent with an anti-foundational commitment to liberal democracy and can expect to produce more favourable practical outcomes. / Graduate