1 Política y derecho

Raz attributes four characteristics to Rawls’ Neutralism.^ First, he claims that Rawls’ principles have ‘limited applicability’; they apply only to the basic structure of society. Second, he claims that Rawlsian justice has autonomy from ‘general moral theory’, which is the point I stressed in the last chapter: Neutralist justificatory values are supposed not to be rooted in a comprehensive moral doctrine. Third, Rawlsian justice has ‘shallow foundations’; that is, this conception of justice starts with the fact that— pluralism notwithstanding—certain beliefs and values are widespread in constitutional democracies, and utilises these beliefs and values in the construction of justification. Finally, Rawlsian justice requires a form of ‘epistemic abstinence’ which ‘lies in the fact that [Rawls] refrains from claiming that his doctrine of justice is true’.^ Raz claims that:

Never before has it been suggested that governments should be unconcerned with the truth of the very views (the doctrine of justice) which inform their policies and actions, and never before has it been argued that certain truths should not be taken into

2 J, Raz, ‘Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence’, pp. 6-9. Raz’s other target in this paper—which I will not discuss here—is Nagel.

account because, though true, they are of an epistemic class unsuited for public life /

The epistemic abstinence characteristic of Neutralism—the refusal to invoke controversial truth claims when engaged in political discourse— reflects a fundamental distinction between public and private reason/ Although Raz may be right to claim that governments have never before been enjoined to be unconcerned with the truth of the views which inform their policy making, I don’t think he is right in saying that the claim that some truths are epistemically unsuited for public life has never before been made. For consider Kant’s assertions, in An Answer to the Question: *What is Enlightenment?', that:

The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted, however, without undue hindrance to the progress of enlightenment. But by the public use of one’s own reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it

as a man of teaming addressing the entire reading public. What I

^ J. Raz, ‘Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence’, p. 4.

^ For a good discussion of two influential conceptions of public reason— those of F. D ’Agostino and G.F. Gaus—see C. Bertram, ‘Theories of Public Reason’, Imprints, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1997. See also G.F. Gaus Justificatory Liberalism and F. D’Agostino Free Public Reason: Making It Up As We Go (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996).

term a private use of reason is that which a person may make of it in a particular civil post or office with which he is entrusted.^

Kant goes on to use these definitions to make distinctions between an officer on duty and a military scholar off duty, the citizen as a tax payer and the citizen as a fiscal expert, a clergyman and a theologian. The former of each of these pairs has a specific public office which demands of them that they restrict their reasoning—in their capacity as holders of that office—in certain ways. On the other hand, the latter of each of these pairs has a freedom lacked by the former, for they can use their reason not in any public capacity but to address the ‘entire reading public’. Rather confusingly, it seems that by ‘private’ reason Kant intended something close to our ‘public’ reason, and vice versa. I am not claiming that Rawls’ account of epistemic abstinence neatly maps on to Kant’s public/private reason distinction. But it does seem that Kant had the idea that Raz claims is entirely new: that some truths are epistemically unsuitable as objects of appeal in public life. Kant thought that the public (read, for us, ‘private’) use of reason should be unrestricted so as to allow an individual ‘to speak in his own person’^ and offer ‘carefully considered, well-intentioned thoughts on the mistaken

^ I. Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Kant’s Political Writings ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970).

^ I. Kant, An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Kant’s Political Writings ed. H. Reiss, p. 57.

aspects o f ... doctrines’.* This sounds very like freedom to argue the truth of claims embedded in comprehensive moral doctrines, from which we are to epistemically abstain—in our roles as soldier, clergyman and taxpayer— when engaging in private (read, for us, ‘public’) discourse.

Putting questions concerning the accuracy of Raz’s claims about the pedigree of epistemic abstinence to one side, his deceptively simple objection to Rawlsian epistemic abstinence is this:

To recommend one [theory] as a theory of justice for our societies is to recommend it as a just theory of justice, that is, as a true, or reasonable, or valid theory of justice. ... There can be no justice without truth.^

Raz’s objection to Rawls is an example of how to get to the first stage of objection to Neutralism mentioned at the end of the last chapter. The idea is that one cannot coherently recommend T as a theory of justice— a theory according to which we should draw up a constitution—without (at least implicitly) relying on the claim that that theory is true (or reasonable, or valid). For what else can one say if pushed to give the reasons why T is a better theory than T'? Merely pointing out that most people around here

* I, Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Kant's Political Writings ed. H. Reiss, p. 56.

believe that T is true, and believe that T is better than T', will not convince someone who perhaps themselves believes in the superiority of T'. To win such a person to our view we must claim that it is true that our preferred theory T is better than T , and their belief to the contrary is wrong. If this powerful criticism cannot be met then epistemic abstinence is impossible for anyone who sincerely proposes their theory of justice as the theory of justice.

Raz’s criticism implies that the public/private reason distinction cannot be made in terms of epistemic abstinence or restraint, for such restraint robs public reason of all content. This suggests that the Perfectionist public/private reason distinction is made from within a particular comprehensive moral doctrine which specifies the values to which we can legitimately appeal in political discourse, and which yields an adequate set of such reasons. In the next section I want to outline a Neutralist strategy for meeting Raz’s challenge which relies on exploring the theory of the person with which Neutralist principles are in wide reflective equilibrium. If this strategy were to work then the prospects for a defence of Neutralist epistemic abstinence look brighter. But regardless of whether the strategy works, the value at its centre—self-respect—can also be given a Perfectionist defence from within a comprehensive moral doctrine which conforms to the liberal ideal of inclusiveness. So whether the strategy works or not, self-respect will emerge as an important liberal value.