Cette thèse porte sur le rôle du raisonnement fondé sur des croyances religieuses dans la discussion politique, et plus précisément sur la compatibilité des arguments religieux publics avec les postulats libéraux et démocratiques concernant la justification de décisions politiques, c’est-à-dire prises au nom de l’État. La justification publique est gage de légitimité en démocratie libérale : mais dans quelles conditions une décision est-elle publiquement justifiée ? Tous les arguments sont-ils valables ? Les arguments religieux sont souvent considérés avec méfiance : ils sont particuliers, ne sont convaincants que pour certains citoyens et sont rejetés par d’autres. Il semblerait donc injuste, pour ceux qui ne partagent pas ces croyances religieuses, de les utiliser pour justifier des décisions politiques. La même chose, cependant, vaut pour de nombreux autres arguments, non religieux, comme les arguments utilitaristes et les arguments libéraux eux-mêmes. L’objectif de la thèse est d’examiner différentes stratégies visant à justifier l’exclusion de certains arguments, puis de proposer un nouveau modèle de discussion politique. La thèse défendue est que les arguments absolutistes, c’est-à-dire les arguments fondés sur la reconnaissance de l’existence d’une source extra-sociale de validité normative, ne respectent pas les exigences de la justification publique et doivent donc être exclus de la discussion politique. Mais la distinction entre arguments absolutistes et non absolutistes ne recoupe pas celle entre arguments religieux et séculiers : on ne peut donc pas dire que tous les arguments religieux doivent être exclus, ni qu’ils peuvent toujours être inclus. / This dissertation focuses on the role of faith-based reasoning in political discussion, and more specifically on the compatibility of public religious arguments with liberal and democratic premises regarding the justification of political decisions, i.e. decisions made in the name of the state. Public justification is a requirement of legitimacy in liberal democracy: but under which conditions is a decision publicly justified? Are all arguments valid? Religious arguments are often considered with suspicion: they are particular, therefore convincing for only some citizens and rejected by others. It seems unfair, for those who do not share religious beliefs, to use these arguments to justify political decisions. The same objection, however, is also true for many other non-religious arguments, like utilitarian arguments or liberal arguments themselves.The purpose of the dissertation is to examine different strategies aiming to justify the exclusion of certain arguments, and then to offer a new model of political discussion. The claim defended is that absolutist arguments, meaning arguments that are based on the recognition of the existence of an extra-social source of normative validity, do not respect the requirements of public justification and consequently should be excluded from political discussion. The distinction between absolutist and non-absolutist arguments does not overlap with the distinction between religious and secular arguments: it thus cannot be argued that all religious arguments should always be excluded, or that they could always be included.

Political philosophers widely assume that public reason liberalism is hostile to religious contributions to liberal politics. My dissertation argues that this assumption is a mistake. Properly understood, public reason liberalism does not privilege religious or secular reasoning; a compelling conception of public reason liberalism can balance the claims of secular citizens and citizens of faith. I develop a framework that can resolve the tensions between liberalism and faith not only at a theoretical level but in the practical matters of dialogue, public policy, institutional design and constitutional law.

This thesis is a critique of the prominent strand of contemporary liberal political theory which maintains that liberal political authority must, in some sense, rest on the free consent of those subjected to it, and that such a consensus is achieved if a polity’s basic structure can be publicly justified to its citizenry, or to a relevant subset of it. Call that the liberal legitimacy view. I argue that the liberal legitimacy view cannot provide viable normative foundations for political authority, for the hypothetical consensus it envisages cannot be achieved and sustained without either arbitrarily excluding conspicuous sectors of the citizenry or commanding a consent that is less than free. That is because the liberal legitimacy view’s structure is one that requires a form of consent that carries free-standing normative force (i.e. normative force generated by voluntariness), yet the particular form of hypothetical consent through public justification envisaged by the view does not possess such force, because of its built-in bias in favour of liberalism. I also argue that the liberal legitimacy view is the most recent instantiation of one of two main strands of liberal theory, namely the nowadays dominant contract-based liberalism, which seeks to ground liberal political authority in a hypothetical agreement between the citizens. My case against the liberal legitimacy view, then, contributes to the revitalisation of the other main approach to the normative foundations of liberalism, namely the substantivist one, which legitimates liberal political authority through an appeal to the substantive values and virtues safeguarded and promoted by liberal polities.

In this essay, I aim to elucidate a concept of public justification. I outline several challenges faced by political philosophers, including a desire to secure stability and treat people respectfully against a background of reasonable pluralism. I suggest that John Rawls‟ account of public reason provides a helpful starting point for accomplishing these goals. But critics have been both persistent and persuasive in their objections to public reason‟s central element of reasons all can accept. I explicate three dominant criticisms: incomprehensibility, attenuation and exclusion. First, some critics have argued that the very idea of reasons all can accept cannot be plausibly articulated. Second, critics maintain that the set of reasons all can accept is insufficiently robust to solve constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Third, critics note that if public justification is constrained by reasons all can accept, then many informative and effective arguments must be excluded from the public sphere. In response to these criticisms, I argue for an interpretation of reasons all can accept which is sensitive to critics‟ reasonable demand for an explicit account of each element of the doctrine. My interpretation demonstrates the superfluity of what I call the sharability constraint—the thesis that only reasons acceptable to all can function as justifications in the public sphere. Once the sharability constraint is rejected, I argue that the problem of exclusion dissipates, but that substantive restrictions on acceptable reasons are still possible. I am optimistic that this approach is less attenuating than one constrained by sharability and that, at least under favourable empirical conditions, more problems can be resolved by this approach than by standard Rawlsian theory. I draw on actual convergence in the international realm to bolster this optimism. Finally, I relate this approach to the widespread influence of deliberative democracy. I argue that procedural apparatuses are insufficient for political legitimacy, but that deliberation may be an invaluable tool for uncovering reasons required by substantive justification. / Graduate

This study investigates the subject of Muslims’ citizenship in contemporary Western European societies from the viewpoint of John Rawls’s political liberalism, in particular in light of the ‘idea of public reason’ [see John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) and the 1997 essay “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” originally published in University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997), 765-807 and now included in Political Liberalism, expanded edition, 440-490]. By its very nature, political liberalism does not prescribe a single model for being Muslim in contemporary Europe. Thus, one may wonder if it is too vague as a point of departure for the analysis. On the other hand, however, here I argue that political liberalism specifies a peculiar evaluative framework that allows citizens to answer questions such as “What is politically at stake when citizens of Muslim faith are publicly presented as permanent aliens in contemporary European societies?”, “On what grounds is such exclusion based?”, and “What requirements can European citizens be reasonably expected to meet?” in a distinctively political way and, ideally, to solve the political and social problems from which those questions spring. In this research, I claim that public reason provides a common discursive platform that establishes the ground for a public political identity and for shared standards for social and political criticism. Together, these two elements solve the two dimensions of the problem of ‘stability for the right reasons’ (in Rawls’s terms) in contemporary European societies, because they secure both the political inclusion of Muslims on an equal footing as citizens and civic assurance that they will remain committed to fair terms of social cooperation. A joint solution of these two apparently conflicting demands of stability for the right reasons (i.e. inclusion and mutual assurance) requires an effort in political reconciliation. After having compared public reason citizenship with two prominent normative alternatives, I will conclude that the former is an adequate ideal conception of citizenship for European societies. Finally, I will apply the justificatory evaluative methodological framework (whose requirements I will specify starting from the idea of public reason itself) to a conception of citizenship elaborated by one of the most renowned Muslim public intellectuals in Europe: Tariq Ramadan. (I justify the choice of this author in sections 2.3 and 6.1). Such an evaluation sheds light on one of the main insights of this research, that is, the idea that public reason makes a decompression of the public space possible: it frees the public space from those forces that would prevent citizens from the possibility of exercising effectively their two moral powers (once more in Rawls’s words, the ‘capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good’) as free equals. In this sense, public reason tries to reconcile ideal political consensus and the fact of reasonable pluralism on a public political ground. I believe that this is the deepest meaning of what Rawls calls ‘reconciliation through public reason’: its aspiration is to reabsorb reasonable pluralism politically without annihilating it.This research is structured in three parts: the first is methodological, the second is reconstructive, and the third is evaluative. Each part is composed of two chapters.In chapter one (“General Framework”), I begin from some empirical observations about the role of perceptions and identities in relation to the issue of Muslims’ citizenship in contemporary Europe. I claim that from this point of view Islam seems to “make problem” in a very specific sense. This does not mean that Islam is a problem, but that Islam is frequently publicly presented and perceived as a problem. This is the background problem from which my work starts. Thus, I explore some dimensions of such a problem (see 1.1). Subsequently, I provide a more specific formulation of the research problem and questions and of the aims of this study. Then, the main research question (Q) is stated in these terms: Which ideal conception of citizenship should provide the common normative perspective in contemporary Western European societies, which are characterised by both demands of inclusion of Muslims and the need for solving a ‘problem of mutual assurance’ [on which, see in particular Paul Weithman, Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)] concerning citizens’ commitment to shared terms of social cooperation, so that those societies can be stable for the right reasons? In order to answer this question, I also specify three sub-questions that I call respectively Q1, Q2, and Q3 (see 1.2).In chapter two (“Toward a Justificatory Evaluative Political Theory”), I firstly try to frame the problem of public justification within Rawls’s political liberalism (see 2.1). I then consider a specific approach to the question of Muslim citizenship in liberal democracies which can be adopted from a Rawlsian perspective: namely, reasoning from conjecture (see 2.2). Finally, I explain my own approach (which I call justificatory evaluative political theory) by means of comparison with the method of reasoning from conjecture (see 2.3). In presenting the evaluative framework specified from a political liberal standpoint, I point out three political liberal evaluative requirements: the reciprocity requirement (RR), the consistency requirement (CR), and the civility requirement (CiR).Chapter three (“What is Public Reason?”) deals with the history of the notion of public reason from Kant to Rawls and its enunciation within Rawls’s work (see 3.1 and 3.2 respectively). In doing so, I also identify three specifications for the three political liberal evaluative requirements considered in the second chapter. Furthermore, in chapter three I also unpack CR in three different dimensions (PR1, PR2, and PR3).Chapter four (“Public Reason and Religion. Reinterpreting the Duty of Civility”) completes the reconstructive stage by analysing Rawls’s ‘wide view’ of public reason and two major lines of objection to it (see 4.1). After having discussed such criticisms, I then introduce my own interpretation of the ‘proviso,’ which is structured around a two-level (or bifurcate) model of the ‘duty of civility’ (see 4.2).Chapter five (“Reconciliation through Public Reason: Justificatory Evaluative Political Theory between Modelling and Application”) bridges the second and the third part, that is, the reconstructive and the evaluative stage respectively. In the first section of the chapter, I summarise the political liberal evaluative requirements developed in the second part. In doing this, my purpose is to present my justificatory evaluative model of public reason citizenship (see 5.1). In the second section, I firstly argue that a conception of citizenship grounded in public reason is not only possible in existing European societies, but also preferable if compared with alternative conceptions (I consider liberal multiculturalism and Cécile Laborde’s critical republicanism [Cécile Laborde, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)]) with reference to the problem under scrutiny in this research. In conclusion, I show that public reason citizenship is able to solve the theoretical problem and the main research question mentioned above: Which ideal conception of citizenship should provide the common normative perspective in contemporary Western European societies, which are characterised by both demands of inclusion of Muslims and the need for solving a problem of mutual assurance concerning citizens’ commitment to shared terms of social cooperation, so that those societies can be stable for the right reasons? In the final part of chapter five, I try to demonstrate that public reason citizenship can both include Muslim citizens and solve the assurance problem because it provides both shared standards for political criticism and a common political identity on the basis of which citizens politically recognise one another as free equals. If my argument succeeds, then public reason citizenship not only could but also should be adopted as the ideal conception of citizenship in European societies (see 5.2).In the sixth chapter (“Tariq Ramadan’s European Muslims and Public Reason”) I apply the evaluative framework based on public reason to the conception of citizenship for Muslims in Europe developed by Tariq Ramadan. (According to a principle introduced in chapter two which I call the “plausibility principle” PP, I argue that Ramadan’s theory of citizenship can be plausibly presented as a “European Muslim” approach to the issue of citizenship, see 6.1). The purpose of such an evaluative work is twofold. Firstly, it aims at examining whether and how the idea of public reason accounts for a version of European citizenship for Muslims coming from Muslims themselves. Secondly, it aims at disclosing whether what such a Muslim conception of citizenship in Europe says about the two dimensions of ‘stability for the right reasons’ of the system of social cooperation (namely, inclusion and ‘mutual assurance’) is consistent with the provisions of public reason citizenship (see 6.2-6.5). / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / N.B. 1) Le lieu de défense de la thèse en cotutelle est ROME (Luiss Guido Carli)2) L'affiliation du co-promoteur de la thèse en cotutelle (Sebastiano Maffettone) est: LUISS Guido Carli / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

羅爾斯於一九九三年發表《政治自由主義》，試圖為多元社會的整合提供一套哲學基礎。羅爾斯認為價值的差異與分歧是當代社會的重要特徵，多元的宗教觀、哲學觀、道德觀、人生觀是一個既存的事實，然而合理的公民能夠形成「交疊共識」，支持一套政治性正義觀，作為規範社會基本結構的基礎。尤其在面對憲政核心爭議與基本正義問題時，合理的公民能夠擱置具爭議性的整全性學說，遵循公共理性的理念，根據同一套政治性正義觀所提供的政治價值與正義原則來解決爭議、凝聚共識、證成決策。不過，羅爾斯的公共理性論受到許多批評，其至少面臨「公共理性無法證成政治共識」、「公共理性不公平地排除整全性學說」、「公共理性是多種而非一種」、「公共理性將淪為膚淺的大眾理性」四種挑戰，此四種挑戰分別是對於公共理性之「完備性」、「公平性」、「單一性」、「公共性」的質疑。針對這些挑戰，羅爾斯對其理論進行了三項主要修正：第一，以「寬觀點公共理性」與「包含式公共理性」補充「排除式公共理性」。第二，公共理性的內容是由一整套「自由主義政治性正義觀之族系」所給定，「正義即公平」也只是諸多合理的政治性正義觀之一。第三，羅爾斯承認公共理性的侷限，然而在必要時，得以「基於公共理性的投票」做出決策。根據這些修正，筆者認為羅爾斯的公共理性論能夠回應「完備性」、「公平性」、「單一性」三方面的挑戰，但是仍無法完全解決「完備性」的問題。因此在本文中，筆者試圖以「寬觀點公共理性」與「廣泛的反思均衡」證成「羅爾斯式的審議理論」，以突破公共理性的限制。尤其是筆者認為，「羅爾斯式審議理論」具有「公共證成的審議模式」、「尊重民主文化」、「兼顧程序正義與實質正義」、「滿足『真誠要求』」、「強化公民意識」、「重視公共理由」等特質，體現了一種自由主義式的審議式民主理論。因此，當我們思索「多元社會的政治共識如何可能？」時，「羅爾斯式審議理論」是一項較合理的方案。 / This dissertation intends to explore John Rawls’s idea of public reason. Public reason is the core conception of Rawls’s political liberalism. Its subject is the public good concerning questions of fundamental political justice. Rawls argues that, though value diversity is the fact of a modern democratic society, reasonable citizens will follow a political conception of justice endorsed by the overlapping consensus between different kinds of comprehensive doctrines in order to resolve the deep conflicts. Especially, when the problems about constitutional essentials and basic justice occur, reasonable citizens will abide by the idea of public reason to deal with the problems. The idea of public reason is helpful for us to justify political consensus in a pluralistic society. However, some philosophers challenge the idea of public reason. They criticize that the idea of public reason cannot deal with the hard issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and affirmative action. Faced with these criticisms, Rawls revises his theory in three aspects. First, he revises the exclusive view of public reason by the inclusive view of public reason and the wide view of public reason. Secondly, he argues that the content of public reason is given by a family of reasonable political conceptions of justice. Thirdly, he asserts that we can make a political decision by voting in accordance with the idea of public reason if it is necessary. But, these revisions seems cannot completely overcome the shortcoming of the theory of public reason. Therefore, I want to justify Rawlsian deliberative theory based on the wide view of public reason and the wide reflective equilibrium to overcome the shortcoming of the idea of public reason. Owing to Rawlsian deliberative theory can reconcile liberalism and deliberative democracy, strengthen our civic friendship, and urge us to value public reasons more, I think it is a more plausible theory to justify political consensus in a modern pluralistic society.