PARTICIONES

Collective political actions need to be taken in a common sphere wherein different moral arguments held by discrete moral agencies can be heard, criticized, and brought to accommodate each other. I believe that the Constitution, as a minimum reason shared by all Americans, rightly creates and reserves the common public sphere for such concurrent, deliberative, and collective political action. In the following

passages, I will illustrate why I think such a constitutional public reason is a necessary starting point for democratic deliberation.

Moral disagreement is a constant in our modern complex society and politics.

To rebut such disagreement for making a collective decision and taking political action, we need a space into which different political actors can participate and freely discuss with each other in order to search for a better argument that is based on reason and that can be justifiable everyone. This public reason as a base for political action is best reflected by John Rawls in POLITICAL LIBERALISM:²⁰

Our exercise of political power is proper and hence justified only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational. This is the liberal principle of legitimacy. And since the exercise of political power itself must be legitimate, the ideals of citizenship impose a moral, not a legal, duty — the duty of civility

— to be able to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason.

20 JOHN RAWLS,POLITICAL LIBERALISM 217 (1993).

Therefore, Rawls suggests that a constitution is a public reason consisting of shared principles by which citizens can practice their own reason publicly and persuade others in accordance with the content of those shared principles enshrined in the constitution. As such, in the example of the United States, the Constitution becomes the minimum reason of which American public and political lives constitute.

Moreover, Rawls suggests that all citizens have a moral duty to continuously interpret those publicly recognized principles such as basic liberties, equality, and freedom.²¹

But why in our political lives are we willing to accept a constitution as a reasonable entity, withhold our comprehensive reasons (e.g. our individual concerns and rationales), and commit to the interpretation of that constitution? I think this is because public reason is not a transcendental value. Public reason should be internal to our beliefs and agreements rather than an extrinsic value imposed by coercive power.

Hence, Rawls suggests that we have a burden of judgment limited by public reason, so that we can balance and assess different kinds of ends and value claims such that moral disagreements among us can become reasonable within a reflective

equilibrium.²² Such a non-transcendental public reason further suggests that a constitution is a starting point for deliberation because constitutional public reason could gain authority in a continuously reflective process. Public reason establishes itself within an endless practical process. Re-practical reasoning can reinforce, deconstruct, and reconstruct the content of public reason; thereby we are willing within our public lives to withhold our comprehensive reason and commit to an ongoing constitutional interpretation.

21 Rawls also specified a list of the content for this minimum public reason. These are abstract and primary concept of basic social structure, which includes “basic rights and liberties, institutional opportunities, and prerogatives of office and position, along with income and wealth.” The purpose of the introduction of these primary goods is to establish an intersubjective dialogue, or what Rawls calls an interpersonal comparison, within a reasonably pluralistic society. Id.

22 See JOHN RAWLS, supra note 22, at 54-5.

In this vein, the American Constitution can serve as a starting point for democratic deliberation not through coercive enforcement via governmental power, but rather via several practical reasoning processes--inter alia, reinterpretation of its text, critique of its inadequate power, and a built-in amendment process--all of which perpetually engender Constitutional authority. As such, the central tenet of

constitutional public reason becomes clear: the authority of public reason is internally established by a public criticism of external power; through this, public reason also acquires its legitimate power to enforce within this continuous reason-internalization process. Constitutional public reason can complement and stabilize the legitimacy of our collective decision through an ongoing process of moral-political construction.

Therefore, I argue that a constitution is by nature a public resolution of an

entrenchment of public reason that recognizes our history as value-plural, and thus the content of a constitution needs to be continuously interpreted and constructed by the public.

Nevertheless, even though I elucidate why a constitution can serve as a starting authority of minimum public reason for us to interpret, it does not address why a constitution can include non-deliberativists²³ into deliberative politics. I argue that this is because a constitution itself depicts a public space in which we are all implicated and from whose boundaries we cannot escape.²⁴ This is not because we are not free

23 By non-deliberativists, I indicate not only those traditionally religious fundamentalists, but also political actors who simple do not open to reflection or other identity groups.

24 I draw on this argument on Hannah Arendt’s illustration of the nature of constitution:

The outward reality of freedom, as distinguished from the human capacity itself, indicates the space in which we move freely and which must be limited and protected by boundaries like all space fit to be inhabited by men. Freedom is this space between men which binds them together and at the same time separates them from one another. . . . [Consequently,] authority will come into being automatically wherever men . . . have established a common world and organized a body politic. . . . with its laws and institutions, which confronts each of them in his individuality as the authority.

from deliberation, but rather because democratic deliberation recognizes that it is not a politics of neutrality. As long as we appear before this public space, we are heirs to the principles and rules demarcated by our predecessors.²⁵ I do not suggest that these principles and rules constitute an enduring providence in our political life. Rather, democratic deliberation urges us to recognize that those basic principles of

constitutional public reason therein are not neutral but are already incorporated among and into us.

Therefore, if we want to practice our private reason in the public sphere we have a moral duty to continuously transform those basic principles, including the principles of deliberative politics itself, by appealing to constitutional public reason simply because it is already here among us.²⁶ As such, deliberative theorists are always ready to say that non-deliberativists do not have an obligation to partake in the

See HANNAH ARENDT, What is Freedom, in BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 143 (1993).

25 As Hannah Arendt indicated, the arbitrariness of constitutional principle is the first thing we ought to recognize in our political lives:

What save the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself, or to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval. The absolute from which the beginning is to derive its own validity and which must save it, as it were, from its inherent arbitrariness is the principle which, together with it, makes its appearance in the world. The way the beginner starts whatever he intends to do lays down the law of action for those who have joined him in order to partake in the enterprise and to bring about its accomplishment. As such, the principle inspires the deeds that are to follow and remains apparent as long as the action lasts.

See HANNAH ARENDT,ON REVOLUTION 214 (2006).

26 In addressing overlapping consensus, John Rawls also argued that those basic social and political institutions are already given in the original position, and thus the subsequent process is not neutral, in the sense that it already includes reasonable pluralism and is not in favor of any comprehensive doctrine. However, political liberalism does not exclude the possibility of a dynamic political

conception of justice, that is, the wide-background political culture and the overlapping consensus are complementary. As a result, the neutrality doctrine of political liberalism suggests that it does not presuppose (and thus advance) any comprehensive doctrine other than overlapping consensus as a default or priority doctrine. It is an impartial doctrine in the sense that each citizen is regarded as being free and equally allowed to advance her concept of “good” to change the breadth and depth of the content of overlapping consensus. As such, Rawlsian neutrality still has its minimum moral value intrinsic in the public reason, which ensures social cooperation in a mutually respectful manner.

deliberative process. But for those who attempt to deny some basic principles of constitutional public reason, such as equality and basic liberty through passage of legislation, it is critical to understand that in the tradition of American politics, non-deliberativists are obligated to justify their private reason through constitutional public reason. In consequence, I think constitutional public reason not only is a starting point for democratic deliberation, but also serves as an indispensible standard for different political actors in the public sphere to interpret and make a collective decision.