Public Reason and the Cultural Moment

Movement progressivism has arrived at a critical juncture. “Latinx” is out, pronouns are being removed from social media accounts, and dissent from what was once an untouchable progressive dogma—the full and equal participation of transgender-identifying athletes in women’s sports—is on the rise. Progressive leaders who championed (or at least appeared open to) ultraliberal immigration policies just a few years ago—including moratoriums on deportations, the abolition of immigration enforcement, and the decriminalization of unauthorized entry into the United States—now agree that illegal immigrants with criminal records should be deported, and quibble only with the far-reaching extent of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation efforts. Similar attempts from within American progressivism to rebrand have occurred on a variety of other cultural issues: from crime and policing to wokeness and cancel culture. High-minded moralizing is out; plaid shirts, profanities, and direct-to-camera explainers are in.

Certainly, political reality is motivating many of these shifts. Questioning the extent to which any supposed self-critical reflection is the result of an authentic crisis of conscience—or simply a calculated adjustment in the quest for electoral success—is completely legitimate. Still, if now does truly constitute a moment of reckoning for progressivism (at least for some), it’s important—both for our republic’s continued well-being and for the health of our cultural climate—that political actors make good use of this opportunity.

Here, I want to draw on some insights from contemporary liberal political philosophy to illustrate for progressives where the political rhetoric and cultural developments they championed over the past several years have fallen short of what a democratic society’s public discourse requires. Specifically, I will argue that two key principles found in modern liberal philosophy—public justification and mutual respect—mean that movement progressives owe their fellow citizens much more in the way of non-dogmatic public reasons, and of substantive (i.e., non-superficial) respect, than they have given in recent years. 

Public Justification and Political Argument

Modern theories of political morality take almost for granted that, for political action to be morally legitimate, it must be publicly justifiable—that is, articulable with reasons that all citizens can be reasonably expected to understand, even if some of those citizens might disagree with the precise action being taken. Of course, the normative content that makes political action and political arguments publicly justifiable is a subject of perennial debate. The magisterial liberal philosopher John Rawls, for example, maintains that publicly justifiable reasons for political action—public reasons—must not be derived from sectarian and incommensurable comprehensive doctrines that all reasonable citizens cannot be expected to endorse. (Such doctrines might include Islam, Marxism, Catholicism, utilitarianism, or even an ideologically normative liberalism—i.e., a liberalism that is derived from a comprehensive account of human goods and flourishing.) Given the empirical fact of reasonable pluralism that persists in contemporary democratic societies, Rawls argues that political actors have a moral duty to ensure that their arguments and activities be articulable in a currency of basic principles of justice and basic political values—which themselves are meant to transcend the incommensurable components of (at least a plurality of) comprehensive doctrines. 

Skeptics (myself included) would be quick to point out that the constitutions and orderings of political values and principles of justice that Rawls undertakes throughout his work are impermissibly normatively infused—and that, in any case, some kind of normative infusion seems inescapable when applying his theory of political morality to concrete situations and specific political issues. But the many problematic aspects of his methodology and his conclusions aside, the man who “looms over contemporary political thought, particularly on the left, in a way rivaled by no other scholar” was right that participation in the norms, strictures, and requirements of public justification, as well as the giving of public reasons—even if the specific parameters of such reasons are disputed—constitute crucial moral responsibilities of political actors. Publicly unjustifiable political action is immoral to undertake, and unjustified political arguments are insufficient for the public square, particularly in a democratic society in which citizens of fundamentally incommensurable commitments must live and work alongside one another. 

Rawls’s liberal critics—both those of more traditional perfectionist schools of political morality, and those who wish to push his theory’s bounds further—agree on the moral imperative of public justification. Jonathan Quong, a prominent proponent of an expansive anti-perfectionist theory of political morality, writes that “the general aim of public justification” provides “no good grounds to resist the view that the requirements of public reason must regulate all our political decisions.” Bruce Ackerman says public justification is “the organizing principle of liberal thought.” These liberal philosophers—whose theories aim to provide the moral-philosophical basis for much of modern progressivism—agree: The public justification of political arguments demands, and the legitimacy of political action requires, the giving of universally accessible reasons for action. 

Movement progressives should recover this understanding of public justification, and ground future efforts to advocate their social and cultural agenda in an acknowledgment that citizens must be allowed to freely and sincerely weigh progressive positions—and not be coerced or manipulated into accepting reasonably contestable views. Political actors—from legislators and government officials to outside advocates and interest groups—need to be able to provide substantive reasons, arguments, and evidence for their positions; they must not simply demand that skeptics fall in line or else be punished (whether through moralizing opprobrium, social ostracism, or more insidious means, such as politically motivated persecution). Non-justified—or unjustifiable—political action will provoke a reaction: the political pendulum will swing back when enough citizens have finally had enough of their due’s being denied to them. If public justification is, as the liberal theorist Stephen Macedo puts it, “the moral lodestar of liberalism,” progressives have a crucial moral duty not to shirk the responsibilities of public justification in order to realize a fleeting political high by immoral or morally questionable methods.  

The Importance of Mutual Respect

For liberal theorists, the duty of public justification is often intertwined with a duty of mutual respect between citizens of differing commitments and beliefs. For Rawls, a constitutive element of his framework of public reason is a “readiness to honor the (moral) duty of civility, which as [a virtue] of citizenship help[s] to make possible reasoned public discussion of political questions.” He writes the following in Political Liberalism:

[S]ince the exercise of political power itself must be legitimate, the ideal of citizenship imposes 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. This duty also involves a willingness to listen to others and a fairmindedness in deciding when accommodations to their views should reasonably be made.

To be sure, the political non-liberal finds much to object to in Rawls’s full account—most prominently, his effort to integrate acceptance of anti-perfectionist moral norms with his conception of reasonable citizenship and mutual respect. Nevertheless, some of his broader observations about mutual respect and civility are valuable—and are especially important for contemporary progressives to remember. 

Because democracy implies “an equal share in the coercive political power that citizens exercise over one another by voting and in other ways,” Rawls writes, “understanding how to conduct oneself as a democratic citizen includes understanding an ideal of public reason.” Other political liberals—Charles Larmore, for instance—acknowledge that mutual respect (as manifested through civility, a commitment to reasonable disagreement, and respecting persons by acknowledging their equal moral worth) constitutes “the moral core of liberal thought,” whose “validity must be understood as antecedent to the democratic will.” In other words: No political agenda, no deeply desired policy preference, and no other end—even one favored by the popular majority—may override the first-order moral requirements of mutual respect. 

As Larmore puts it, liberal political theory “owes a lot to Kant’s views about respect and treating persons as ends, never as merely means.” Some might regard that statement as inapplicable philosophizing. But if political liberalism requires as a rule that persons never be instrumentalized—indeed, if it requires respecting your fellow citizens and providing them with their due (e.g., publicly justifiable arguments, and continued respect even if they disagree with you) prior to any political considerations—then there are plentiful practices of modern progressives that need to be reevaluated. For one, many illiberal means of realizing policy victories are ruled out. The contemporary trend in movement progressivism of substituting, for arguments and evidence, insults and attempts to demonize or delegitimize one’s fellow citizens—for example, dismissing those who offer reason-based criticisms of progressive doctrines as bigots, sexists, transphobes, or racists—constitutes a profound violation of the moral norms that exist prior to political participation and democratic deliberation. So too does the use of allegations of “hate speech” to censor and deplatform the opposition. And so too does the ideological weaponization of the judiciary to curtail ongoing debate about controversial and reasonably contestable questions. 

When movement progressives have transgressed the moral limits that mutual respect and the duty of civility establish, they have in a very real sense failed in their duties to their fellow citizens vis-à-vis the rights and duties that equal citizenship confers. Attempts to justify such behavior that are rooted in, for example, identity status or in-group membership are insufficient under the politically liberal framework. The demands of mutual respect set a higher standard for the public square—one that, again, subsists antecedent to any political considerations, and cannot legitimately be put on hold or cast aside. 

Why? Because citizens with commitments and beliefs that are incommensurable with movement progressivism’s comprehensive commitments—even about fundamental questions of ethics, anthropology, identity, and the good life—share in the same political equality that citizenship confers on their progressive neighbors. Political liberalism recognizes this. For liberals, one must engage citizens whose deeply held commitments and beliefs challenge one’s own by using reasons—and even if certain political arguments or commitments are, in the eyes of some liberals, supposedly “unreasonable,” the citizens who hold them are nevertheless owed respect. 

Political actors of all stripes fail to honor this principle when they try to shame, bully, or force their opponents out of the public square. Movement progressives ought to remember this, and ensure that their political activities uphold norms of mutual respect—even for those whose views they might find profoundly objectionable or immoral.

Now is a unique moment for movement progressivism. It is not often that a socio-political movement finds itself with the opportunity to undertake a relatively consequence-free examination of conscience (given that progressives are presently shut out of political power at the federal level and, according to some surveys, their institutions command historically low levels of popular support). As movement progressives reflect on their rapid and dramatic fall from power after what had seemed—just a few years ago—to be a pinnacle of progressive social, cultural, and political dominance, they would be well served to reexamine and recover these concepts that sit at the core of modern liberal political philosophy.

Image by Ashley and licensed via Adobe Stock.