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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 10
Lesson 14: Public reasonPublic reason
In this Wireless Philosophy video, Geoff Pynn (Elgin Community College) examines the idea of public reason in relation to the legitimacy of state authority. A legitimate state is based on “the consent of the governed,” but what counts as consent? And how can it be obtained in a large complex society? One idea is that hypothetical consent can be obtained through the development of public justifications for laws that all reasonable people could accept. The "public reason" standard is promising. But can it really work? Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Video transcript
Hi. I’m Geoff Pynn, and I teach philosophy
at Elgin Community College. In this video, I’m going to talk
about the idea of public reason in discussions
of political legitimacy. What gives the state
the moral authority to rule through the use of force?
How is the state’s rule different from the rule of
a violent gang? In other words, what makes a
state’s authority legitimate? According to the social contract
theory, legitimacy rests on an agreement between each member of society
to respect the state’s authority for the sake of the common good. In other
words, legitimate states are based, as the US Declaration of Independence
puts it, on the consent of the governed. But few of us have ever
explicitly given consent. For this reason, social
contract theories often talk about tacit or
implicit consent. But the idea of tacit or implicit consent
can be difficult to make sense of. A different way of
developing a social contract idea is to move away
from the idea of actual consent, whether explicit or implicit, and
towards what’s called hypothetical consent. Hypothetical consent, in essence,
means that you would give your consent, if you were given
the right sort of opportunity to do so. Somebody is generally
entitled to treat you in ways they know you would consent to,
even if you haven’t actually done so. Suppose you’re ordering
sandwiches for everybody in the office. You know your friend
Alexia always gets a cucumber sandwich on pumpernickel. So
you don’t bother asking her what she wants -- you just order for
her. And when the sandwiches arrive, she thanks you for
getting her just what she wanted. If you had asked her before
putting in the order, she would have consented. So we
can say that she hypothetically consented to the sandwich
order you made on her behalf. If there were a way for the state to
know exactly what laws we would consent to if given the right opportunity to do so,
then maybe those laws have legitimate authority over us on the basis of
our hypothetical consent. Of course, different
people like different sandwiches, and some
people like salads instead. But everybody has to live
under the same laws. So for a law to be legitimate on this
picture, the state would need the hypothetical consent of everybody.
How might that work? One route is to consider what a
reasonable person would consent to. Consider a rule like “Don’t contradict
yourself.” Even if you’ve never thought about it before, I’m
confident that you accept this rule. If someone
points out to you that you’ve just contradicted yourself, you’ll
accept that as a legitimate criticism in need of a response. And I’m sure you’d
criticize other people on the same basis. Why am I so confident
about this? Because, intelligent viewer that
you are, I assume that you’re reasonable -- and avoiding
self-contradiction is just part of being reasonable. Reasonable people can disagree
about a lot of things. You might reasonably
think pickled beets are preferable to cucumber
sandwiches, while your friend Alexia reasonably
thinks the opposite. Still, despite this disagreement, each
of you can see that the other’s opinion is reasonable, even if you also think
it’s ultimately wrong or deeply wrong. And you'd both
agree that nobody should be forced to eat cucumbers or
beets if they dislike them. Underneath many disagreements are
shared assumptions about what’s reasonable. Public reason is the standard
a policy meets when it’s justifiable to all of the reasonable people
it affects, despite their disagreements. For example, take
the idea that no one may be punished until they
have been proven guilty in a court of law.
That’s something every reasonable person will accept,
whatever else they may disagree with about each other. If somebody wasn’t sure, there
are a lot of reasons that might be given that
could make them sure. It’s thoroughly justifiable
through public reason. Now, let’s put the pieces together.
Here’s the idea: 1: Hypothetical consent is
sufficient to meet the requirement that a legitimate law requires
the consent of the governed. 2: If a law is justifiable through public reason, then it has the hypothetical
consent of all those affected by it. 3: So, if a law is justifiable
through public reason, that means it has the consent
required for legitimacy. Of course, you might take
issue with the second premise, and wonder whether our hypothetical consent
really is enough for legitimate authority. After all, even if somebody knows what
sandwich you would prefer, it still seems like you have a right to complain
if they don’t even bother to ask you. Plus, the idea of a standard
of reason that applies across deep moral and
religious disagreements may not withstand scrutiny. What if, for example,
someone’s religion teaches that all other religions
are unreasonable? Still, on its face,
public reason seems a promising basis for
justifying state authority. If all reasonable people
really would agree to something, how could
you reasonably disagree? What do you think?