Fr. 959

This leaves the second family of discursive instances in the public political culture, namely, the person acting in her capacity as citizen. Again, the gulf separating unconstrained discourse from public reason narrows somewhat on closer examination. Whereas Rawls allows for the introduction of nonpublic reasons into the public political discourse subject to the proviso, Stout adheres to the view that the person acting as citizen may introduce any of the reasons motivating her position on a given institution, statute or policy independently of any proviso. Much turns on the proviso. Insofar as the person acting as citizen does not advance nonpublic reasons for or advocate institutions, statutes and policies which are manifestly in conflict with the family of liberal political conceptions, her commitment to a political conception of justice may never fall under doubt and it may never transpire that others request her public reasons. To take an example, if others find that the religious believer’s non-public reasons for and advocacy of public funding for religious schools may plausibly derive from a political conception, there may be no compelling reason to request her public reasons. In the end, from different normative commitments, public reason and unconstrained discourse may strongly resemble one another or even overlap in practice.

Nevertheless, Stout attempts to drive a wedge between them by highlighting two issues on which they do not coincide (DT 68-70). First, the Rawlsian proviso accords nonpublic reasons a lesser justificatory and evidentiary status as reasons. Indeed, Stoutian unconstrained discourse makes no distinction between public and nonpublic reasons as such. Second, the Rawlsian proviso fits ill with our intuitions about salient cases of nonpublic reasons in the public political culture (e.g. the Abolitionists, Martin Luther King Jr., amongst others). More precisely, Stout suggests that we are unlikely to find fault with these speakers even though they were unlikely to express or to formulate public reasons for their positions on certain institutions, statutes and policies. Thus, any overlap between public reason and unconstrained discourse on this count owes to a discursive instance’s accidental features, not the positions’ conceptual or structural similarities.

I leave aside the second issue in order to focus for a moment on the first. Stout’s objection amounts to the claim that a nonpublic reason is justificatorily weightless until such a time as a public reason has been appended to it. It follows that nonpublic reasons have only a contributive – as opposed to a determinative – role to play in the justification of particular institutions, statutes and policies. Moreover, this holds not only for those cases where the person acting as citizen fulfils the proviso by putting forward her explicit public reasons. Even in those cases where the person qua citizen is not called upon to give those reasons, the justificatory work is done by the tacit connection between the person’s reasons and her implicit, presumed political conception of justice to which her explicit reasons may plausibly be related. In short, even in the most permissive circumstances, the mere existence of the proviso means that – or so Stout would argue – nonpublic reasons acquire justificatory status only indirectly through their presumed link with a political conception. Outward appearances could not be more deceiving.

Furthermore, and relating to the second issue raised by Stout, we may lack any compelling reasons to accord only indirect justificatory status to nonpublic reasons. More pointedly, we would tend to think that reasons justifying a particular institution, statute or policy are justificatory irrespective of their plausible connection to a political conception of justice. Stout might press the matter by asking how it is that one and the same nonpublic reason might be considered justificatorily weighty in one case but unweighty in another if it proves difficult for the person’s interlocutors to tell a plausible story about the connection between that reason and the family of liberal political conceptions of justice. This concern indirectly raises questions about the divide between political reasons and comprehensive (or all-things-considered) reasons. Rawls is adamant that showing others respect qua free and equal persons having two moral powers requires giving political reasons; Stout judges comprehensive reasons to be no less worthy of consideration when showing respect towards other citizens as bearers of a cognitive context and conceptual economy. Accordingly, it remains an open question whether the proviso, even in its most permissive form, should apply to persons acting in their capacity as citizens in the public political forum.

If I am right in thinking that political liberalism is a form of the view from anywhere no less than pragmatist expressivism, Rawls’s reply will likely point to the flexibility which the person has in determining not just the make-up of a particular member of the family of liberal political conceptions of justice (under the umbrella of which Stout’s envisaged democratic society and practices undoubtedly fall) but also which members fall under the range of that family. Suppose that the class of political reasons is wider in scope and evolution than Stout imagines. Rawls might then push back against Stout’s objections to the proviso by underlining that many compelling comprehensive reasons, properly reformulated, can play the role of political reasons. In a word, the division of justificatory weight between public and nonpublic reasons is far from an open-and-shut case.