Under Pressure: Political Liberalism, the Rise of Unreasonableness, and the Complexity of Containment

Badano, Gabriele; Nuti, Alasia

doi:10.1111/jopp.12134

Cited by 43 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Yet it seems perfectly clear that while the state may be forbidden to engage in such comprehensive persuasion efforts, ordinary citizens are permitted to, perhaps even required to. Happily, normative theorists are beginning to attend to this question (e.g., Schwartzman 2012, Clayton & Stevens 2014, Badano & Nuti 2018. Future normative scholarship on free speech would do well to focus on the issue of counter-speech, both offline and online.…”

Section: Enforcing Dutiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Speech and Hate Speech

Howard

2019

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Should hate speech be banned? This article contends that the debate on this question must be disaggregated into discrete analytical stages, lest its participants continue to talk past one another. The first concerns the scope of the moral right to freedom of expression, and whether hate speech falls within the right's protective ambit. If it does, hate speech bans are necessarily unjust. If not, we turn to the second stage, which assesses whether speakers have moral duties to refrain from hate speech. The article canvasses several possible duties from which such a duty could be derived, including duties not to threaten, harass, offend, defame, or incite. If there is a duty to refrain from hate speech, it is yet a further question whether the duty should actually be enforced. This third stage depends on pragmatic concerns involving epistemic fallibility, the abuse of state power, and the benefits of counter-speech over coercion.

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Section: Enforcing Dutiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Speech and Hate Speech

Howard

2019

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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“…The criterion of formal equality rejected here by welfare populists is more demanding than these statist positions as it can permit any immigration policy that entails no significant benefits, as well as no unreasonable burdens, to all social assistance claimants, both nationals and EU immigrants. 24 This application of double standards might be taken as evidence of a rise in unreasonableness due to the rise of rightwing populism, see Badano & Nuti (2018). 25 On the role of inegalitarian attitudes in voting for right-wing populist parties, see Cornelis & Van Hiel (2015).…”

Section: Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

EU immigration, Welfare Rights and Populism: A Normative Appraisal of Welfare Populism

Efthymiou¹

2020

GJN

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Populists in the EU often call for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights. These calls are often demagogic and parochial. This paper aims to show what exactly is both distinct and problematic with these populist calls from a normative point of view while not necessarily reducible to demagogy and parochialism. The overall aim of the paper is not to argue that all populists call for such restrictions nor to claim that all calls for such restrictions are populist. The purpose of the paper is rather humble. It only aims to show that populist calls for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are characterised by two normatively problematic arguments that target two different subsets of the citizenry: what I dub for the purpose of this paper the moralists and the immoralists. It is the way populists address these two subsets of the citizenry, as well as the fact that they could simultaneously appeal to the concerns of both groups, that makes populist approaches to welfare rights both conceptually distinct to other approaches as well as potentially politically appealing to a more diverse population of voters.

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“…First, as Quong acknowledges, even when state intervention is justified in principle, the potential for the abuse of state power to suppress political opposition or oppress unpopular minorities should lead us to adopt ‘a strong presumption in favor of non-interference’ (2011: 305; see also Badano and Nuti 2018: 153–55). Second, relying on the state to contain unreasonable views seems to presuppose that control of the state is firmly in the hands of reasonable citizens, and thus that unreasonable views are already largely contained.…”

Section: Stability and Containmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Leon Festinger and his colleagues observed in their pathbreaking study of religious fundamentalism, ‘even when presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong … the individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before’ (1956: 3). Furthermore, efforts to persuade people by other means, such as calling their views ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ (Badano and Nuti 2018: 160) may simply provoke defensiveness, retrenchment, and feelings of victimization rather than positive changes in people's beliefs. This is not to suggest that all efforts to persuade people to adopt more reasonable views are bound to fail, nor that we should give up trying.…”

Section: Stability and Containmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I emphasize that my point is not just that reasonable people can hold irrational or unwarranted beliefs—as argued by Joseph Raz (1998) and Gerald Gaus (1999). The key point here is that otherwise reasonable people can hold beliefs that are not only epistemically problematic, but also politically unreasonable in the sense that they are at odds with any reasonable conception of justice (see Badano and Nuti 2018 for a similar point).…”

Section: Sources Of Unreason and Types Of Unreasonablenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Fact of Unreasonable Pluralism

Ancell¹

2019

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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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.

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Under Pressure: Political Liberalism, the Rise of Unreasonableness, and the Complexity of Containment

Cited by 43 publications

References 8 publications

Free Speech and Hate Speech

Free Speech and Hate Speech

EU immigration, Welfare Rights and Populism: A Normative Appraisal of Welfare Populism

The Fact of Unreasonable Pluralism

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