The Fact of Unreasonable Pluralism

Abstract

Proponents of political liberalism standardly assume that the citizens of an ideal liberal society would be overwhelmingly reasonable. I argue that this assumption violates political liberalism's own constraints of realism—constraints that are necessary to frame the central problem that political liberalism aims to solve, that is, the problem of reasonable pluralism. To be consistent with these constraints, political liberalism must recognize that, as with reasonable pluralism, widespread support for unreasonable moral and political views is an inevitable feature of any liberal society. I call this the fact of unreasonable pluralism. This fact threatens Rawlsian political liberalism's account of stability because an overlapping consensus cannot stably order a society pervaded by unreasonable views. My argument also raises questions about the coherence of Rawls's conception of ideal theory.

Political irrationality, utopianism, and democratic theory

“…In other passages, Rawls also says that ‘logical errors’ (2005: 55) and ‘irrationality and stupidity’ (Rawls, 1999: 476) are incompatible with reasonableness. So, to have a democracy where reasonable citizens are ‘dominant and controlling’ (Rawls, 2005: 441, note 3), the vast majority of citizens must form and revise their political beliefs in ways that are generally free of prejudice, bias, blindness, willfulness, logical errors, irrationality, and stupidity (Ancell, in press). I take it that meeting that condition requires meeting Enlightened Citizens.…”

“… 19. I provide a more complete defense of the point, specifically as it pertains to political liberalism, in Ancell (in press). …”

Can Rawlsian Containment of Hateful Viewpoints Be Effective?

“…Only limited attention (Ancell 2019: 422-23;Lepoutre 2017: 880-83;Lepoutre 2019: 183-85;Howard 2021: 934-36), and rarely within the perimeter of political liberalism (Ancell 2019), has been paid to how (and on what grounds) justified harsh and soft 1 Rawls refers to the containment of unreasonable doctrines that reject one or more democratic freedoms. It is important to acknowledge that in Rawlsian political liberalism, to be reasonable means to accept a host of cognitive and moral commitments which, as several scholars have aptly noticed, are far from being uncontroversial.…”

“…It is important to acknowledge that in Rawlsian political liberalism, to be reasonable means to accept a host of cognitive and moral commitments which, as several scholars have aptly noticed, are far from being uncontroversial. On this issue, see, for instance, Enoch (2015) and Ancell (2019). To study the issue of containment, I focus on a subset of unreasonable citizens whose description roughly overlaps with that of haters in disputes about hate speech bans and the discursive approach to combatting hate speech.…”

Disagreement or Badmouthing? The Role of Expressive Discourse in Politics

“… See Ancell (2019a;2019b) for more discussion of how recent empirical evidence on political reasoning generates obstacles for public reason theorists.…”