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DRAFT
Making Reason Public: Necessary Conditions for Dialogue and
Discourse1
Conceptions of public reason are among the big, bold legacies of the
European Enlightenment that regained prominence in political thought
in the late twentieth century. Yet there is little agreement about what
public reason is, or about its importance. Here I shall try to distinguish
some possible ways of thinking about public reason, and to sketch some
of their differing implications and limitations. Jűrgen Habermas and John
Rawls set out two of the best known contemporary discussions of public
reason, so I begin with reminders of their views. 2 However, my aim is
not exegesis or criticism of their positions, but to distinguish a few
conceptions of public reason and to understand some of the differing
purposes they may serve.
1. Reasoning among Publics
Many contemporary accounts of public reasoning emphasise one or
another conception of the public, but say little about reason. Public
reason is often seen as debate and discussion—discourse— that takes
place between and among the members of the public, variously
conceived, hence in the public sphere. Here the focus is less on the
distinctive features of various conceptions of reason, or their
constitutive norms, than on various conceptions of the participants among
whom reasoning, very generally conceived, takes place.
Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere 3
offered an account of the emergence during the European enlightenment
of a public sphere not dominated, although often harassed, by the power
of Church or state. From the late C17, communication could take place
with relative freedom in salons and coffee houses, in conversation and
correspondence, in newspapers and in periodicals. This public sphere
was not democratic, and participation presupposed both education and
means, but was nevertheless politically significant because its swirling
discourses were not tightly subordinated to Church, state or other
1
Thanks to audiences at CHCI, Wits Oslo, ; Tim Chappell, Axel Gelfert, Sasha
Mudd, Dagfinn FØllesdal
2
For an extended comparison see Thomas McCarthy, "Kantian Constructivism and
Reconstructivism: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue," Ethics 105 (October 1994): 4463
3
Habermas, Jürgen (1962 trans 1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society, Polity, Cambridge
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authorities. Questions of many sorts could be raised and debated by
more people in more ways. Habermas saw this Enlightenment world
as precursor to a world that supports participation in debate by all
competent persons within (perhaps beyond) states, so as precursor to an
increasingly democratic (perhaps global) conception of public reason
in which reasoning is free from coercion. Although he did not think that
deliberative democracy could supersede the constitutions and institutions
of representative democracy, his account of public reasoning articulates
an ideal that can guide the practice of actual democracies.
In later writings Habermas presents an account of a dialogical form of
practical reasoning, embodied in inclusive, uncoerced rational
discourse among free and equal participants.4 The dialogue among such
participants counts as reasoned, provided each competent subject is free
both internally and externally to take part in discourse, to question
others’ assertions, to introduce their own assertions and to express their
attitudes, desires, and needs. In short, Habermas’ account of public
reason focuses mainly on the conditions for reasoners to participate
rather than on any norms of reasoning they are to follow. This focus
underpins the close links he forges between reason and deliberative
conceptions of democracy, in which citizens exchange views and seek
agreement. Any agreement they reach will count as legitimated by their
agreement, but given the lack of an account of reasoning it is less clear
whether it counts as justified.
By contrast, in his later work John Rawls begins with a narrower and
specifically political conception of public reason that articulates some
substantive norms of reason. In Political Liberalism he wrote:
Public reason, then, is public in three ways: as the reason of
citizens as such, it is the reason of the public; its subject is the good
of the public and matters of fundamental justice; and its nature and
content is public, being given by the ideals and principles
expressed by society’s conception of political justice, and
conducted open to view on 5
Like Habermas, Rawls does not envisage public reason as superseding
the constitutional and institutional structures of representative democracy;
his conception of public reason on in fact builds on an account of
4
"Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls's Political
Liberalism," Journal of Philosophy (XCII:3 [March, 1995] 117-8
5
Political Liberalism 213. See also The Idea of Public Reason Revisited in John Rawls,
Collected Papers, and 574ff.
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democracy and its institutional embodiment. He sees public reason as
taking place among the citizens of a bounded, liberal and democratic
political society, who “enter by birth and leave by death” and are
willing to accept constraints if others too will accept and abide by them. 6
Rawls thinks of public reasoning not as subordinated to the outlook or
ideology of a homogeneous community, but as deployed by fellow
citizens with varying comprehensive ethical and political views. Public
reason, understood in this way, is not defined or bounded by social or
religious categories or beliefs that are accepted by some but not by other
citizens: rather it is reasoning that “addresses the public world of
others”.7 Nor is this diversity to be overcome at some future time,
when processes of public reasoning have led all to a shared outlook:
Rawls sees persisting pluralism of outlooks and ideologies within each
society as the natural outcome of the free public use of reason, and sets
aside aspirations to justify a comprehensive moral outlook. 8 That is
why he characterises his liberalism specifically as political liberalism,
and why his conception of public reason provides not merely a process
of legitimation but a coherentist justification, that is internal to the
political sphere in which it takes place.
On Rawls’s view, other stretches of reasoning will have more restricted
contexts and assumptions, so will not count as public reasoning. He
notes that
Not all reasons are public reasons, as there are the non-public
reasons of Churches and universities and of many other
associations in society. 9
A natural way to read these passages is to think that reasoning may have
a range of audiences, and that when addressed only to limited audiences it
can reason within more specific frameworks which that audience
accepts (for examples those defined by specific
moral, theological
or nationalist doctrines), but which other members of the public may not
accept. Non-public reasoning, on this account, is not defective as
reasoning—it is not unreasoned— but it is unfit to persuade the public at
6
Rawls denied emphatically that this bounded society is a state. However, the fact
that it has and defends its boundaries suggests otherwise. For chapters and verses
see OON Political Liberalism and Public Reason: A Critical Notice of John Rawls,
Political Liberalism in The Philosophical Review, 106, 1998, 411-428.
7
PL. 53
PL xv; TIPRR 578
8
9
Ref
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large, many of whom will (at best) see it as conditional on premises they
reject.
In his later works, Rawls increasingly emphasised both the geographical
bounds and the political context of his conception of public reason,
and its close links with the institutions of democracy. Towards the
end of his life, in The Idea of Public Reason Revisited he wrote
The idea of public reason, as I understand it, belongs to a
conception of a well ordered constitutional democratic society. The
form and content of this reason is part of the idea of democracy
itself. 10
2. Public Reason and Deliberative Democracy
These two accounts of public reason say very little about norms of
reasoning, as opposed to the context and focus of reasoning. Each has
been influential in contemporary discussions of ideals of democracy, and
in particular of deliberative democracy, because it focuses on the
discourse of participants (or specifically of citizens), and on the
(potential) inclusion of all within processes of debate.
One way in which to develop this account of public reason would
propose an account of deliberative democracy in which policy and
decisions are shaped by deliberative processes. Deliberative democrats
see public reasoning as specifying a superior process and context for
democratic governance, which achieves its full realisation through wider
and deeper deliberation among citizens about public affairs.
This may be a difficult, perhaps an impossible goal. Citizens have
limited time and energy, and many demands on both. Constant
deliberation about “the good of the public and matters of fundamental
justice” demands too much. The trouble with deliberative democracy, as
with many forms of socialism, is that it takes too many evenings,11 even
if extended only to limited or local decision making.
Deliberation,
even dialogue may offer an attractive, even compelling, model for
organising the affairs of small associations, but does not look as if it can
10
11
The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, 573-615. The quip is variously ascribed to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or George
Orwell.
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be extended to political life. Deliberative democracy is not feasible at
great, or even at medium scale. 12
There are optimists who argue that as new communications technologies
become more available and affordable, they will provide ways to extend
deliberation among members of the public and so make a deliberative
democracy feasible.
I think this is implausible, for many reasons.
First, the rapid expansion of access to these technologies in the richer
parts of the world is not likely to be matched on a global scale any time
soon. Second, even within the rich world there is a deep digital divide,
and assumptions that recent rates of expansion in the use of two-way
communication technologies can continue and will provide the technical
basis for a world in which inclusive deliberation takes place are
deeply implausible.13 Third, the problems created by dearth of evenings
and the other uses people have for them has not been overcome,
especially for those who do not work at desks. Even those who can
devote many hours of the week to communicating with many others
across great distances may prefer to spend that time on social, cultural,
educational, professional or business communication, and not on political
communication.
All of these might be seen as problems to be overcome, but I think there
are even deeper problems with the very idea of a technological solution
to the limitations of deliberation among large publics.
3. Mediated Communication
These problems arise simply from the fact that so much of the
communication needed for there to be any deliberation among a large
public must be mediated communication. Mediation runs the gamut
from traditional publishing, including print journalism, to broadcasting
and films, through the internet and the search engines, the blogs and the
social websites, to the linguistic, social and other conventions and genres
by which two-way communication between individuals is formatted,
supported and interpreted. The fact that specific content can, and
sometimes does, reach others who are thousands of miles away, and that
some of them can follow that content, and may respond to it, does not
mean that inclusive (let alone global) public deliberation is feasible.
12
Russell Hardin xxxx Andrew Kuper Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and
Representation in Global Institutions , OUP 2006
13
A recent Ofcom poll found that in the UK Some 43% of adults who currently do not
have internet access would remain disconnected even if they were given a free PC and
broadband connection. Those with literacy, numeracy and sensory difficulties face
barriers that are more formidable than lack of technology.
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Technologies that bridge distances are not automatically inclusive, and
democracy fails when some are excluded from basic political activities.
By contrast, non-inclusive deliberation among selected members of large
publics is feasible. Various structured deliberative activities, ranging
from consultations to deliberative polling, from
focus groups to
citizens’ juries, are quite widely used to secure limited and focused
public communication and ‘engagement’. These exercises in deliberation
typically ask a limited sample of the public to take a limited time to
address limited issues in the light of information provided and formatted
by the organisers. The results can be informative and sometimes
useful, both for those who organise and for those who take part. They are
most used and probably most useful in addressing fairly specific
questions, for example about consumer preferences, or about policy
matters such as local environmental or recreational priorities. However,
these deliberative exercises exclude most citizens, and usually pass
unnoticed by those excluded. They do not offer a working model for
inclusive democratic governance, because their results do not and
cannot reach a wide, let alone an inclusive, public, and those who are
excluded probably find their views little affected by others’
participation in deliberative exercises.
Communication technologies, old and new, of course make it possible to
offer material or content more widely. This has been possible since the
invention of printing, and has been extended by film, broadcasting and
the internet, and more broadly by the digital revolution. But global
technologies do not and cannot secure global communication or dialogue,
because they cannot ensure that audiences grasp or even notice what
others try to communicate, so secure universal or even widespread
actual participation in discussions of public affairs, even within bounded
societies. Communication remains, as it always has been, a two way
affair and many of these technologies permit at best limited
communication between individuals and institutions (letters to the
editor; complaints; on-line payments; responses to electronic and other
polls), 14 while others allow two-way communication between relatively
small numbers (telephone, e mail, Skype). Yet communication is
achieved only where speakers and writers, producers and editors actually
reach listeners, readers and viewers, and the content of their speech acts
(spoken or written, direct or mediated) is grasped by actual audiences.
3. Quasi Communication and Present Communication
14
Letters to the editor; complaints; on-line payments.
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These points may seem so obvious that they should not need making.
And yet they do. I believe that we live in a public culture in which we all
too often speak of speech acts as communicating, even when they
either do not reach or are not grasped by some or many (intended)
audiences, so do not communicate. When we try to detach
communication from audiences, we are likely to think either (at best)
about one-sided quasi communication, or (at worst) merely about
information processing. In either case, we are likely to overlook the
necessary conditions for effective communication, deliberation or
dialogue, including norms of reasoning.
A selective focus on production that ignores the conditions for the
reception of speech acts, and for interaction and communication between
participants, is evident in all too many contemporary discussions of
ethical requirements on speech acts. Some discussion, and quite a lot of
legislation and regulation, focuses on speech acts that need not reach
anybody, such as self expression, dissemination or disclosure, or argues
for standards that do not require any communication, such as
transparency or openness.15 Some does not focus on speech acts
at all, but rather on requirements for handling (‘processing’)
information, such as data protection. In such discussions, questions
about the norms that must be observed for effective communication with
specific let alone broad audiences, among them norms of reasoning, will
be marginalised.
Discussions of press and media freedom that identify it with freedom of
expression, bracket the reality that the media aim to communicate with
readers, listeners and viewers, and not merely to express opinions or
attitudes (this can be a convenient fiction for champions of the media
who advocate the same configuration of free speech for the media as
may be justifiable for individuals).16 Mediated communication is likely
to observe norms of intelligibility (failure to do so often carries
commercial and reputational penalties), but often does not respect other
epistemic or ethical norms that are essential for effective
communication, such as standards of intelligibility or accuracy, or
standards and conventions that provide readers, listeners and viewers
15
Transparency limits secrecy, but does not require communication. See Archon
Fung, Mary Graham and David Weil, Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of
Transparency , Cambridge 2007; David Heald and Christopher Hood, eds.,
Transparency: The Key to Better Governance, ., (Proceedings of the British
Academy 135), Oxford University Press, 2006.
Onora O’Neill, Rethinking Freedom of the Press, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin,
May, 2004 (free-standing short work)
16
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with clues to assess what they read, hear and are shown. This
matters less for mediated communication that is designed primarily for
entertainment or ideological consolation, but may matter greatly in the
contested area of reporting news or supposed news or other matters that
bear on decision making in democracies.
These developments in the way we think about information and
communication—or rather quasi communication— are inhospitable to
deliberative democracy. The episodes of deliberation undertaken in
public life in the name of deliberative democracy are small islands of
communication (or attempted communication) in an ocean of quasicommunication and information processing. Very often their use is of
most value to organised groups, whether commercial, political or
partisan in some other way, and is of less use to the ordinary citizen.
New communication technologies provide means of communicating with
many others across great distances, but genuine and effective
communication with others remains demanding and time consuming
because it has to be responsive to its audiences. 17
4. Present Communication
We have, it seems, entered a world that often marginalises a more
complete view of communication. Perhaps this is for good reasons. A
fuller conception of communication may be politically impossible and
useless. Consider for example the ideal of communication invoked by
John Henry, Cardinal Newman in his discussion on university teaching:
…when [men] aim at something precise, something refined,
something really luminous, something really large, something
choice, they avail themselves, … of … the ancient method, of oral
instruction, of present communication between man and man 18
Newman’s position is one we all recognise, and it is worth spelling out
some reasons for taking it seriously and some of its limitations.
Present communication works as well as it does, not because of there is
always magic in face-to-face relationships—they can be poisonous19—
but because it is more readily provides accessible evidence for each
party to judge the other’s truthfulness and trustworthiness, and thereby
the reliability of their
claims and commitments. Face-to-face
17
Fax machines after Tiananmen, twitter and Iranian opposition.
18
Newman Rise and Progress of Universities
19
A locus for bullying, browbeating, deception, manipulation, for example
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communication can offer means by which , ambiguities and
misunderstandings can be addressed and resolved. Evidence of the other
party’s truthfulness or trustworthiness can be acquired by relatively
simple methods including observation, questioning, checking and
challenging, and discovering what third parties with direct contact with
an interlocutor think about their honesty, competence and reliability.
By contrast, where communication is mediated, a further judgment of
the truthfulness or trustworthiness of those who report is needed if
readers, listeners and viewers are to judge the content. Readers,
listeners and viewers have to judge messengers as well as messages, but
where can dispense with any messenger, the task of understanding and
assessing content can be easier.
4 The Necessary Conditions of Public Reason
So present communication is not a useful model for communication for
political life.
Neither present communication nor dialogue and
deliberation are feasible at great scale. Public reasoning, as conceived
by Habermas or Rawls, and with it deliberative democracy is not
feasible except in the smallest polities—and perhaps not always there. To
press on towards deliberative democracy in the face of these realities
looks like fruitless nostalgia for small communities and times past.
Deliberative procedures may play a useful role for limited purposes and
in local contexts, but no more; real world democracies cannot rest
much on public reason. Or so it seems.
5. A Kantian Alternative
However these conclusions may apply only to specific, recent views
of public reason that link it closely to democratic governance, and there
are alternatives. Both Habermas and Rawls draw in part on Kant’s
account of public reason. Their central demand that “the public use of
one’s reason must always be free” echoes, indeed quotes, one of Kant’s
central claims. 20 However, Kant’s account of public reason is very
different from those offered by Habermas and Rawls. Rather than
equating public reason with actual participation in communication and
dialogue by members of the public, Kant equates its central principle
with a commitment not to proceed in ways that preclude the possibility of
reasoning with others or of including them in communication and
dialogue. Public reasoning, on Kant’s account, is a matter of thinking,
20
What is Enlightenment, in Gregor Kant on Practical Reason, CUP 1996, , 8:37
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speaking and acting in ways that others can follow. His conception of
public reasoning is both modal and normative.
Kant supports his view by pointing out that many uses of reason
cannot be fully public because they presuppose the views of some
specific, narrow audience. He characterises uses of reason that appeal
to assumptions for which they offer no reason, such as the civilly
constituted authority of Church or state, not as public but as private. In
What is Enlightenment? he notably describes the reasoning of officials
as private, because they derive their authority from their office,
and their official communication is assumes but does not justify the
authority of their office (his examples are military officers, pastors of
the established Church, civil servants). As Kant sees it, official
reasoning is cannot be reach the world at large, so cannot be fully
public reasoning, because it assumes but does not justify that authority
and its legitimacy.21 By the same token, he would classify
contemporary exercises in deliberative democracy as private, and in
any case not fully public, uses of reason because they tacitly assume
rather than justify the authority of various civilly and socially constituted
institutions and practices without offering reasons.
Kant contrasts such ‘private’ uses of reason with “the public use of
one’s reason … which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire
public of the world of readers”22. A scholar “regards himself as a
member of the whole commonwealth, even of the society of citizens of
the world…who by his writings addresses a public in the proper sense of
the word”.23 The thought of scholarly communication as a paradigm of
fully reasoned communication is self-flattering—to us as well as to
Kant—but provides a suggestive metaphor for the idea of reasoning that
is committed to the possibility of reaching an unrestricted audience.
Kant’s modal account of public reason sees it not as reasoning in
which all actually participate, but as reasoning that is structured in
ways that do not preclude the possibility of all participating. This focus
on what is possible rather than what is actually done has profound
implications. It allows Kant to offer an account of public reason focuses
not on the context and conditions of actual discourse, but on the
normative conditions for discourse to reach an unrestricted audiences.
His picture is that reasoning takes place among a pluralities of agents
who can offer and accept, revise or refuse one another’s reasoning, and
“the private use of reason is that which one may make of it in a certain civil post or
office with which he is entrusted” WE 8:37
22
WE 8:37
23
WE 8:38
21
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must fail if the conditions of for others to receive, reject , accept and
exchange reasons are lacking or flouted (it may of course fail for
countless other reasons: but if these necessary conditions are not met it is
bound to fail). Reasoned discourse must be structured so that others can
in principle follow it in thought—although of course they may decide to
reject the reasons offer to them. Practical reasoning must be structured
so that others can in principle follow its recommendations – although
of course they may decide to reject or not to act on reasons they have
grasped.
It is a curious feature of both Rawls’s and Habermas’s approaches that
both say so little about why freely entered into dialogue and engagement
among citizens should automatically count as reasoned. An alternative
way of thinking about public reason would focus on the norms required
for reason giving, rather than the contexts in which reasoning is done. It
would look at the conditions needed for reasoning to be work, rather
than the characteristics of audiences for specific bits of reasoning .
6. What Makes Reasoning Accessible?
We can hardly think of public reasoning merely as discourse that is
free from restrictions, so includes all speech acts regardless of their
intelligibility or availability to any, let alone every, audience. It may not
be feasible to ensure that attempted reasoning actually reaches a wholly
unrestricted audience, but it may be possible to structure it so that it could
potentially reach an unrestricted audience. Intelligibility is, of course
not the only norm relevant to good communication, but it is a more
elementary24 and fundamental requirement than, say, accuracy (which is
relevant to truth claims) or trustworthiness (which is most relevant to
commitments).
Kant does not see public reason merely as freedom to participate in
dialogue. He depicts those who make public use of their reason not
merely as free from constraint, but as maintaining adequate cognitive
discipline and control, as judging carefully, as displaying intellectual
maturity and independence, rather than indulging in self expression that
may be fit to reach no or few audiences. Public reason on Kant’s
account is needs more than a cacophony or
babble of utterances
So while Kant’s liberal followers of the late C20 agree with him that
wise rulers will leave subjects free to make use of their reason, they
often miss his views on norms of reasoning, and his insistence that
24
Indeed follow ability which is the core of intelligibility, it is quite commonly
achieved in communication with small infants who may follow and repeat a gesture,
or in interspecies communication,
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unconstrained discourse cannot automatically qualify as public reason.
Kant developed the implications of distinguishing between acceptable
and unacceptable uses of freedom to reason further in What Does it
Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?, written and published soon after
What is Enlightenment?. While the earlier essay focuses on reasons why
rulers should accord freedom to speak and to communicate to their
subjects, the later seeks to articulate the proper use of this freedom, and
argues that absence of constraint is not enough for discourse to count
as reasoned.
Here Kant is quite explicit that discourse that lacks the structure and
discipline necessary for others to follow will not count as reasoned., and
that communication may fail if norms of reasoning are flouted. He
first mounts an attack, by challenging sceptics about reason, who think
that freedom from constraint is all that is needed for discourse to count as
reasoning, by asking them “have you thought about ... where your attacks
on reason will lead?”25. He argues against those who hold that reason
requires no more than free, unconstrained discourse, and suggests that
acceptance of this position undermines the very freedom its advocates
prize because it undermines communication with others: we cannot
communicate our thoughts or offer one another reasons for belief or
action without imposing sufficient structure or discipline on our
discourse to enable audiences to follow it:
...freedom to think is opposed first of all to civil compulsion.
Of course it is said that the freedom to speak or write could
be taken from us by a superior power, but the freedom to
think cannot be. Yet how much and how correctly would we
think if we did not think as it were in community with others
to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who
communicate theirs with us! 26
The option of thinking and reasoning that is indifferent to possible
audiences is not in the end a real one, in Kant’s view. Even a ‘private’
use of reason must assume at least some possible plurality of reasoners,
and tailor discourse to allow them to follow it; a fully public use of
reason must assume an unrestricted plurality of reasoners, and tailor
discourse to allow them to follow it
25
26
WOT 8:144
WOT 8:144
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Kant uses fiercely sarcastic language 27 to lampoon those who imagine
that freedom from coercion is enough and that reasoning could do
without structure or discipline, or that this could be liberating. He
had clear contemporary targets in mind, including purveyors of religious
enthusiasm, superstition and exaggerated views of the powers of genius.
Today his targets might include post-modernists, sceptics and
deconstructionists. Then and now sceptics about reason simply fail to
see where unstructured ‘liberation’ of thought and action by itself will
ultimately lead:
...if reason will not subject itself to the laws it gives itself, it has
to bow under the yoke of laws given by another; for without
law, nothing—not even nonsense—can play its game for long.
Thus the unavoidable consequence of declared lawlessness in
thinking (of liberation from the limitations of reason) is that the
freedom to think will ultimately be forfeited and—because it is
not misfortune but arrogance which is to blame for it— ... will
be trifled away...28
Kant sees the hubris that expresses itself in this sort of ‘lawless’
thinking as leading not just to confusion but to cognitive catastrophe:
First genius is very pleased with its bold flight, since it has cast
off the thread by which reason used to steer it. Soon it
enchants others with its triumphant pronouncements and great
expectations and now seems to have set itself on a throne
which was so badly graced by slow and ponderous reason.
Then its maxim is that reason’s superior law-giving is
invalid—v we common human beings call this enthusiasm,
while those favoured by beneficent nature call it illumination.
Since reason alone can command validly for everyone, a
confusion of language must soon arise among them; each one
now follows his own inspiration...29
Such anarchic, ‘lawless’ thinking yields mere babble, so is defenceless in
the face of the claims of dogma, rabble rousing and public relations, spin
and superstition.
27
A reasoned rebuttal of deniers of reason is not possible— as those who tried to
engage reasonably with post-modernists often discovered.
28
WOT 8:145
29
Ibid.; see also CPR A707/B735
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These rhetorical claims demand that when we seek to reason publicly in
Kant’s sense of the term we repudiate ways of thinking and acting that
defer to the categories and norms of particular political, social, cultural
or religious authorities, institutions and practices, or to the sayings of one
or another guru or celebrity. All of these can (at best) claim limited,
conditional authority and normative force, and can ground no more than
partial, ‘private’ uses of reason, which can reach and be followed only by
others who as it happens accept the same categories and norms. By
contrast, anything that is to count as a fully public use of reason, in
Kant’s sense of the term, cannot assume existing ideologies or
practices.
But this negative claim does not show what provides the internal
discipline for norms for fully public reasoning. We need to grasp what it
takes to make speech intelligible to others, including others who start
with different beliefs. In What is Orientation Kant sets out two claims
about the norms needed for intelligible communication.
The first demand is that public reason be followable by others. Purported
reasoning that cannot be followed by its audiences leads, as Kant sees it,
to ‘lawless’ ways of thinking and acting. A complete absence of
structure stultifies and frustrates attempts to communicate or reason
with others:
Freedom in thinking signifies the subjection of reason to no
laws expect those which it gives itself; and its opposite is the
maxim of a lawless use of reason 30
Kant adds a second claim about the necessary conditions for discourse
to be fit to reach unrestricted audiences. Public reasoning is not just a
matter of rejecting lawless thinking, but of refraining from deriving or
assuming laws or principles ‘from elsewhere’. Here it seems Kant
must face difficulties: where are norms of reasoning themselves to be
derived from, if they are not to defer to the norms of one or another
political, social or religious authority?
At the end of What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? Kant
addresses this issue by combining his
claims about the law-like form
public reasoning requires with claims about the universal scope it
requires. Fully public reasoning is a matter of thinking, acting and
communicating on principles that both have the form of law and can be
adopted by all.
30
WOT 8:145
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To make use of one’s own reason means no more than to ask
oneself, whenever one is supposed to assume something,
whether one could find it feasible to make the ground or the
rule on which one assumes it into a universal principle for the
use of reason. 31
Reasoning, as Kant conceives it, is not just a matter of ‘lawless’ freedom
in thinking, doing or communicating, let alone of adopting whatever
law-like principles are held by some restricted authority or group.
Thinking, discourse and action are fully reasoned only if they are done
principles that could be followed not merely by some, but by all others.
Fully public reasoning is a matter of adopting norms for discourse and
action that could be followed by all.
As is well known, one version of this thought provides the supreme
principle of Kant’s ethics, the Categorical Imperative, whose strictest
(doubly modal!) formulation runs act only on that principle through
which you can at the same time will that it be a universal law. 32 The
general principle for discourse to count as reasoned is as relevant to
offering others reasons for belief as it is to offering them reasons for
action. In both cases would-be reasoning will fail if what it offers is
inaccessible to its audiences, and be arbitrary if it is accessible only
because it depends on some happenstantial shared assumption. The
fundamental norm of reasoning combines reliance on principles that can
be followed by others with refusal to rely on social, religious or
ideological commitments that happen to be shared with others. It
provides the basis for other more specific norms of reason that are
important in the domains of thought and action, or in parts of those
domains. Communication and discourse are fully reasoned only if and
to the extent that they follow principles that could be principles for all,
rather than principles fit only for limited audiences as defined by some
civil or other power, authority or ideology.
Kant’s concept of public reason combines requirements on the scope and
form of reasoned thought, discourse and action, demanding that they be
done on principles that others too can follow. If we aspire to reach only
local and like-minded audiences, there will be shared assumptions enough
from which to reason. But the result will then be no more than
‘private’ uses of reason, comprehensible and convincing at most among
the like minded. If we seek to reach beyond restricted circles to wider
31
WOT 8: 146n
G 421
32
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publics, with which we may share fewer assumptions or authorities, we
need to rely on structures of ways of reasoning that the diverse
members of that wider plurality can follow.
By approaching the nature and authority of reason in this way Kant
takes a view of certain elementary normative requirements for reasoned
thought, action and discourse. Anything that is reasoned must offer
reasons to others. Private uses of reason are directed to restricted
audiences; public uses of reason to unrestricted audiences. So public
reasoning, in Kant’s sense of the term, must meet the norms of
accessibility to unrestricted.
It would, however, be misleading to label Kant’s conception of public
reason dialogical, because he does not (unlike Rawls and Habermas and
contemporary deliberative democrats) identify public reasoning with any
real time, actual dialogue that depends on actual sharing of beliefs or
norms. His arguments are about the necessary conditions for anything to
count as a reason giving, and his most basic thought might be put quite
crudely as the thought that we do not give others reasons unless they can
follow what we address to them. If we offer them considerations that
they cannot follow, or can follow only by adopting assumptions for which
they can see no rhyme nor reason, we do not reason with them. 33
5 Public Reason for the C21
Kant’s modal conception of public reason is ostensibly less directly
political than its C20 successors. However, we have seen that those
successors who see public reason as by definition embedded in the public
and political process of democracies advocate processes that are not
feasible at great, or even at moderate scale. Could a modal conception of
public reason – a more direct descendant of Kant’s line of thought—be
more relevant to public life today? To test this thought, we need to ask
what can be done to achieve communication that works, even when it is
not direct, let alone face-to-face. What should we actually do and avoid if
we aim to secure the possibility of reasoning with others in a world that
is awash with mediated communication?
33
Kant’s account of public reason is neither individualistic nor anchored to a
philosophy of consciousness, and is
discourse.
equally relevant to thought, action and
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Broadly speaking, I think that in C21 this requires the shaping of
communicative practices so that mediated communication too provides
audiences with ways of discerning and testing what others, including
institutions, claim and which commitments others, including institutions,
are likely to live up to. This agenda is not wholly absent in the current
practice of governments, companies and other institutions, but it is neither
well nor fully implemented. Too often a diagnosis that we need more
and better communication in some area in life is followed by proposing
one or another remedy that is known to fail. Providing simplified, let
alone dumbed-down, streams of information formatted for the wider
public ‘consumption’ may neither communicate realties nor offer genuine
opportunities for response and interaction, for check or challenge, for
assessing the truthfulness or trustworthiness of interlocutors. This is
why so many current examples of attempts by government and other
institutions to communicate better with various publics fail. Often
they oversimplify and so distort; sometimes their glossy presentations
raise suspicions that realities and prospects are not as they are depicted;
sometimes the consultations they undertake are seen more as public
relations than as genuine inquiry. A very short list of problematic types of
quasi communication that are offered to wider publics might include
league tables (for schools or hospitals), company reports, promotional
literature, press releases, the creative use of small print, and much more
besides.
But there are also examples of effective communication that provides
some usable evidence of truthfulness and trustworthiness in mediated
communication. Again a very short list of important aspects of mediated
but followable communication that meets the conditions for audiences to
follow and to assess what is communicated, might include: plain English,
upfront reporting of shortcomings and delays, providing remedies such
as returning unwanted goods without charge or creating opportunities to
communicate or interact with those responsible rather than with their
‘communications officers’ or recorded messages. On the whole, I think
that unreasoned communication and quasi communication now
dominate a lot of public discourse, but that this is not inevitable and we
could take many steps to articulate and respect norms of public
reasoning more effectively
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