Giulia Bistagnino

One of the most promising developments in public reason liberalism lies in demonstrating that theories of public reason not only can accommodate but may in fact require political parties to fulfill their purposes. This line of inquiry parallels a broader revival of interest in the normative role of political parties within contemporary political theory. Among the most systematic contributions to this debate is Matteo Bonotti’s Rawlsian account of partisanship. This paper focuses on a central feature of Bonotti’s view: his accessibility conception of public reason, and his use of scientific evaluative standards as concrete illustrations of it. The aim is twofold: first, to highlight a potential difficulty in Bonotti’s optimistic defense of accessibility; second, to show how this challenge is particularly acute in the context of contemporary politics, marked by polarization not only over political values but also over scientific claims, where parties often advance positions at odds with established science.

This article aims to contribute to the debate on democratic representa-tion by critically engaging with Niko Kolodny’s The Pecking Order, particularly his jus-tification of democracy through the principle of Equal Influence. While Kolodny argues that representative democracy can avoid relations of inferiority if citizens retain suffi-cient control over decision-making, this analysis questions whether his model adequate-ly captures the dynamic, interactive, and relational nature of representation. Moreover, it is argued that Kolodny’s framework overlooks the democratic value of diverse forms of political representation that go beyond strictly promissory conception, such as antici-patory, gyroscopic, and surrogate representation. By drawing on deliberative democratic theory, this article highlights a tension between Kolodny’s egalitarian justification of democracy and richer conceptions of representation, calling for a broader appreciation of the complexity and normative potential of representative practices.

L’interruzione volontaria di gravidanza è ammissibile? Il matrimonio tra persone dello stesso sesso è sbagliato? L’uguaglianza economica è più importante della libertà? È giusto utilizzare animali non-umani per fini scientifici e di ricerca? La prostituzione dovrebbe essere legale? La pena di morte è giusta? Esiste un diritto alla proprietà intellettuale? La libertà di espressione dovrebbe essere limitata? Non è certo un mistero che le società democratiche siano caratterizzate da disaccordi profondi e persistenti, capaci di fomentare divisioni e conflitti. È più complesso, invece, capire come tali disaccordi, che vertono su questioni che richiedono una decisione collettiva, debbano essere trattati a livello pubblico. Nel dibattito filosofico contemporaneo, le teorie della ragione pubblica e del modus vivendi tentano di risolvere il problema rinunciando alla ricerca della verità oggettiva, sostenendo che il disaccordo in politica possa essere superato, e così perdere la sua carica conflittuale, solo se viene tralasciata la ricerca di chi ha ragione. Contrariamente a tale convinzione, l’autrice difende una prospettiva che riconosce la ricerca della verità come fondamentale alla risoluzione del disaccordo e propone l’idea di compromesso di principio, ovvero di un accordo non ideale, ma stabilito per ragioni di principio, di natura epistemica, perché fondato sul riconoscimento reciproco della razionalità delle parti.

In their book Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Matteo Bonotti and Anne Barnhill defend a conception of public reason centred on the notion of accessibility and advance an ethical toolkit public health policy makers can use to ensure they are reasoning publicly when designing healthy eating policies. Finally, they propose to institutionalise the process of public reasoning informed by their ethics framework by designing certain procedures of consultation and deliberation. This article focuses on their institutionalisation and raises some doubts and concerns by arguing that the procedures designed by Bonotti and Barnhill may be counterproductive to some of their aims, in particular with respect to citizens’ control, epistemic injustice, and the conception of citizens as free and equal.

This paper addresses the problem of pluralism in democratic societies, by exploiting some insights from the debate about the epistemology of disagreement. First, by focusing on the permissibility of experiments on nonhuman animals for research purposes, we provide an epistemic analysis of deep normative disagreements. We understand that to mean disagreements in which epistemic peers disagree about both the substantive content of an ethical issue and the correct justificatory reasons for their contrary claims. Second, we argue for a compromise solution in which the reasons for reaching it are not prudential but grounded on the recognition of epistemic peerhood.

In Th e Order of Public Reason, Gerald Gaus defends an innovative and sophisticated convergence version of public reason liberalism. Th e crucial concept of his argumentative framework is that of “social morality”, intended as the set of rules apt to organize how individuals can make moral demands over each other. I claim that Gaus’s characterization of social morality and its rules is unstable because it rests on a rejection of the distinction between the normative and the descriptive. I argue that such rejection is motivated by certain practical aims Gaus wishes his theory to achieve. His method and his idea that morality needs to be understood both as the dictate of impartial reasoning and as a social and historical fact come from the need for his theory to perform the task of settling the problem of order. I discuss Gaus’s philosophical attitude and, finally, distinguishing between “therapeutic” and “evaluative” approaches, I present some points of discussion for understanding the role and scope of political philosophy in general.

In The Order of Public Reason, Gerald Gaus defends an innovative and sophisticated convergence version of public reason liberalism. The crucial concept of his argumentative framework is that of “social morality”, intended as the set of rules apt to organize how individuals can make moral demands over each other. I claim that Gaus’s characterization of social morality and its rules is unstable because it rests on a rejection of the distinction between the normative and the descriptive. I argue that such rejection is motivated by certain practical aims Gaus wishes his theory to achieve. His method and his idea that morality needs to be understood both as the dictate of impartial reasoning and as a social and historical fact come from the need for his theory to perform the task of settling the problem of order. I discuss Gaus’s philosophical attitude and, finally, distinguishing between “therapeutic” and “evaluative” approaches, I present some points of discussion for understanding the role and scope of political philosophy in general.