Forthcoming
Here are a few of my forthcoming papers.
Liberalism, Religion and Integrity, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2011. (PDF)
Abstract: It is a commonplace that liberalism and religious belief conflict. Liberalism, its proponents and critics maintain, requires the privatization of religious belief since liberals often argue that citizens of faith must repress their fundamental commitments when participating in public life. Critics of liberalism complain that privatization is objectionable because it requires citizens of faith to violate their integrity. The liberal political tradition has always sought to carve out social space for individuals to live by their own lights. If liberalism requires citizens to violate their integrity, liberals have cause for concern. In this paper, I seek to rebut this integrity objection to liberalism. I focus on the dominant form of philosophical liberalism: public reason liberalism. I argue that the integrity objection undermines the mainstream conception of public reason liberalism, but not public reason liberalism itself. The paper opens by outlining the structure of public reason liberalism and the integrity objection (§§2 and 3). It then analyses two versions of the objection and argues that the second version is successful against the mainstream conception of public reason (§4). I argue in response that public reason liberalism need not endorse principles of restraint—the civic restrictions on religious expression typically associated with it. I then sketch a conception of public reason liberalism that eschews principles of restraint (§5). This alternative promises to reconcile public reason liberals and their faith friendly critics by putting the integrity objection to rest.
Can Liberal Perfectionism Justify Religious Toleration? Wall on Promoting and Respecting, Philosophical Studies, 2012. (PDF)
Abstract: Toleration is perhaps the core commitment of liberalism, but this seemingly simple feature of liberal societies creates tension for liberal perfectionists, who are committed to justifying religious toleration primarily in terms of the goods and flourishing it promotes. Perfectionists, so it seems, should recommend restricting harmful religious practices when feasible. If such restrictions would promote liberal perfectionist values like autonomy, it is unclear how the perfectionist can object. A contemporary liberal perfectionist, Steven Wall, has advanced an engaging defense of religious toleration that grounds perfectionist toleration in an innovative account of reasons of respect. He thus defends perfectionist toleration on two grounds: (i) the appropriate manner of responding to perfectionist goods like autonomy and membership is to respect the religious choices of others; (ii) citizens can acquire reasons to respect the religious choices of others through internalizing a value-promoting moral and political code. I argue that both defenses fail. The cornerstone of both arguments is the connection Wall draws between reasons to promote value and reasons to respect it. I claim that Wall’s conception of the relationship between promoting and respecting value is inadequate. I conclude that the failure of Wall’s defense of perfectionist toleration should motivate liberal perfectionists to develop more sophisticated accounts of normative reasons. The viability of a truly liberal perfectionism depends upon such developments.
Consensus and Convergence in Public Reason, Public Affairs Quarterly, forthcoming, 2012. (PDF)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the convergence conception of public reasons, despite its minority status, is truest to the ideal of public reason. In contrast to the more common consensus conception, convergence provides greater respect for reasonable pluralism, as it permits the full diversity of citizens’ reasons to play a justificatory role.I also maintain that convergence is truer to ideal of self-legislation at the heart of public reason. Selves are constituted by the totality of their reasons for action; for each person to self-legislate coercion on herself, she must therefore be able to appeal to her reasons as a whole. By restricting justificatory reasons to a subset, consensus theorists depart from this ideal. I address a number of objections to convergence as well, including on based on a Rawlsian model of public justification and two recent criticisms from Christopher Eberle and Stephen Macedo.