Collis Tahzib

Recently, there have been several defenses of self-other symmetry. On this view, we have the same rights against ourselves as we have against others. In this paper, I challenge this view by arguing that even if some rights (such as rights against serious harm) are symmetric, rights against minor harm are not plausibly symmetric. To this end, I present four pairs of cases involving accidental, negligent, drunken and intrinsically non-consentable minor harm in which self-other symmetry's implications are highly counterintuitive. Next I provide theoretical support for these intuitions by explaining how denying them threatens to eradicate the category of prudence. I then consider and reject two responses available to defenders of self-other symmetry: namely, that rights are self-other symmetric in content but not stringency, and that self-other symmetry's intuitive and theoretical costs are outweighed by the benefits of simplicity and parsimony. I conclude by proposing two novel and weakened self-other symmetry theses that are immune to the foregoing counterexamples and are worthy of further investigation.

Recently, Paul Schofield has developed a highly original and sophisticated case for the existence of duties to the self. The core idea is that since each of us occupies multiple perspectives from which our interests conflict, we can be said to relate to ourselves on recognizably moral and political terms. In this article, I argue that Schofield’s argument fails because it does not take seriously enough the key disanalogy between conflicting interpersonal perspectives and conflicting intrapersonal perspectives—namely, the fact of interpersonality itself. To show this, I first argue that interpersonality offers a simple explanation of the intuitive moral difference between otherwise similar actions, thus suggesting that interpersonality is morally relevant. I then consider and reject two responses: that there are alternative explanations of this moral difference and that there is no moral difference here in need of explanation. I conclude by suggesting that this argument provides independently interesting insights into the sometimes-obscure idea of the separateness of persons.

Rawlsian public reason liberalism holds that laws must be justified in terms of reasons that all reasonable citizens can accept. But who counts as a “reasonable” citizen? Rawlsians typically answer that reasonableness is conditional on acceptance of liberal values. But they do not typically defend this answer by explaining why the Rawlsian definition is superior to alternative possible definitions of reasonableness—for instance, libertarian reasonableness, perfectionist reasonableness, communitarian reasonableness, and so on. Once this full range of possibilities is set out in plain view, it creates a novel challenge which I call the which‐reasonableness challenge. This is the challenge of showing that the Rawlsian definition of reasonableness is superior to all the alternatives. In this paper, I set out this challenge (Section 1) and consider potential ways to overcome it: namely, by arguing that the Rawlsian definition of reasonableness is superior to the alternatives on grounds of its free‐standingness and stability (Section 2), its implicitness in the public political culture (Section 3), its anti‐sectarianism (Section 4), its fidelity to the underlying motivations of the public reason project (Section 5), and its avoidance of triviality, ad‐hocness, shoehorning and related perils (Section 6). I argue that while these considerations narrow the range of possible definitions of reasonableness, they do not do so by enough to uniquely pick out the Rawlsian definition. Rawlsian public reason liberals thus face a pressing challenge stemming from the simple question: Whose public reason? Which reasonableness?

Many liberal political philosophers hold that the state should not impose or even promote any particular conception of the good life or human flourishing. It should not, for instance, enact laws and policies designed to elevate citizens' tastes, to refine their sensibilities or to perfect their characters. Instead, the state should restrict itself to maintaining a fair framework of rights and opportunities within which all citizens can pursue their own beliefs about what constitutes a good life. Against this backdrop, Collis Tahzib develops a version of perfectionist political philosophy. Whereas previous perfectionists have argued that the promotion of flourishing ways of life is permissible or legitimate, Tahzib casts perfectionism as a doctrine of justice. On this view, the implementation of laws and policies designed to promote sound ideals of the good life--ideals such as moral, intellectual and artistic excellence--is not merely a legitimate complement to justice but an essential constituent of justice. Over the years, perfectionism has faced various objections: that it is premised on values and judgements that are controversial within modern pluralistic societies; that it is unduly restrictive of freedom or autonomy; that it treats citizens as if they are children, unable to run their own lives; that it expresses the meddlesome mentality of a village busybody; that it mistakenly assumes that there are objective truths about human flourishing; and that it risks the abuse of power by incompetent, overzealous or corrupt state officials. These ideas represent some of the deepest, most vibrant and most powerful strains in liberal thought. In defending perfectionism against these charges, the arguments in A Perfectionist Theory of Justice make a novel and important contribution to longstanding debates about the philosophical foundations of liberalism.

Public reason liberalism holds that laws and policies must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Recently, David Enoch has offered an impressive and influential argument against the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism on the grounds that they are ‘highly controversial’. After setting out this argument (Sections I and II), I show how its central claim is ambiguous between two senses of ‘controversial’. This gives rise to a dilemma: either Enoch's claim is that the relevant epistemological commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst actual people, in which case this is true but not troubling for public reason theorists; or the claim is that the relevant commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst reasonable people, in which case this simply begs the question against public reason theorists (Section III). I then defend each horn of the dilemma against objections (Sections IV and V). I conclude by generalizing this dilemma, showing how it defuses not just Enoch's argument but also a number of other arguments frequently made in the literature on public reason liberalism (Section VI).

According to public reason liberalism, the laws and institutions of society must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. But why care about justifiability to reasonable citizens? Recently, Gerald Gaus has developed a novel and sophisticated defence of public justification. Gaus argues that our everyday reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation presuppose public justification and that these reactive attitudes are essential to social life. In this article, I challenge the first premise by considering cases in which agents are liable to the reactive attitudes for violating moral rules that they had no sufficient reason to endorse, and I challenge the second premise by drawing on recent work on moral responsibility that suggests that social life would still be possible, and perhaps even improved, in the absence of the reactive attitudes. Finally, I question whether the reactive attitudes are even the kind of thing that could justify public reason.

Public reason liberals hold that laws and institutions must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Different public reason liberals have developed different accounts of the constituency of reasonable citizens to whom justification is owed. Recently, a number of theorists have suggested that public reason views with less “sectarian” accounts of reasonableness are in one way better than public reason views with more “sectarian” accounts of reasonableness. Yet, despite being used to tremendous effect to motivate particular theories of public reason, this anti-sectarianism desideratum has not received focused treatment, and hardly any detailed arguments have been offered for it. In this paper, I fill this gap by considering the case for the anti-sectarian desideratum. I find that there is no good reason to regard less sectarian public reason views as in one way better than more sectarian views.

It is a central tenet of much contemporary liberal theory that the state should remain as far as possible neutral between rival conceptions of the good life. By contrast, perfectionists hold that one function of the state is to encourage citizens to lead good or flourishing ways of life. But perfectionists have not generally been clear about whether they take perfectionist interventions to be permissible or mandatory. This chapter argues in favour of the stronger duty-based version of perfectionism. After introducing the distinction between duty-based and non-duty-based forms of perfectionism (Section 1), it makes a case for duty-based perfectionism by defending the idea of a right to the fair conditions of a flourishing life (Section 2). It then shows how the invocation of perfectionist duties can help perfectionists to rebut a number of powerful objections that have recently been levelled against their view (3). Finally, it defends duty-based perfectionism against the charge that it violates the public justification principle (Section 4).

According to public reason liberalism, the state must abide by a principle of public justification. This principle holds that the laws and institutions of society must be in some sense justifiable to, or acceptable to, all reasonable citizens. But why accept the public justification principle? Recently, Kevin Vallier has developed an interesting and empirically informed argument from social trust to public justification. Sustaining a system of social trust within diverse and large‐scale societies, argues Vallier, requires adherence to the public justification principle. After summarizing Vallier’s argument (Section 1), I argue that Vallier’s defence of public justification does not succeed because there are alternative conceptions of democratic discourse and decision‐making that lack a public justification principle yet that could still sustain social trust (Section 2). I then defend this argument against two objections: that alternatives to public justification would produce less social trust (Section 3) and that such alternatives would not produce social trust in the right way (Section 4).