Civic Respect, Political Liberalism, and Non-Liberal Societies

politics, philosophy & economics article
© SAGE Publications Ltd

London
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi
1470-594X
200510 4(3) 275–299
Civic respect, political

liberalism, and non-liberal
societies
Blain Neufeld
Stanford University, USA
abstract One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats
certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’,
as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these
non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic
societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of
democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of
liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of critics
have claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies is
symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its
reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against this view, I argue
that the principle of toleration should not be understood as political
liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This is revealed through a consideration
of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the ‘Liberal Principle of
Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of political liberalism’s ‘fundamental
principle’, which I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens,
shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a
misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I
explain that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic
respect for citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political
relations of citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical
societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental
principle as that of equal civic respect for citizens helps to render political
liberalism, in both the domestic and international domains, a more coherent
and compelling approach to thinking about fundamental political issues.
keywords civic respect, international relations, justice, political liberalism, Rawls,

toleration
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X05056603
Blain Neufeld is at the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
[email: blain.neufeld@gmail.com] 275
Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

politics, philosophy & economics 4(3)
In The Law of Peoples (hereafter referred to as LP), John Rawls advances a set
of normative principles to govern the political relations of different societies, or
‘peoples’, with each other.1 Rawls understands his attempt to formulate these
principles, which together comprise the ‘Law of Peoples’, to be an extension to
the international domain of his earlier attempt to formulate a political conception
of justice for the domestic political institutions of liberal societies (see LP: 9).
Hence The Law of Peoples can be understood as a ‘political liberal’ theory of
international justice, that is, an attempt to apply the view known as ‘political
liberalism’ to global society.2
Both Rawls’s theory of political liberalism and his application of that theory to
the international domain have been criticized. Rawls claims that the theory of
political liberalism ‘applies the principle of toleration to philosophy itself’.3 This
has led many commentators to criticize political liberalism for being ‘based
upon’ the principle of toleration. The problem with basing liberalism on the
principle of toleration, according to many of these commentators, is that the
principle provides an inadequate philosophical foundation for liberalism’s
various normative commitments.4
One criticism of Rawls’s application of the theory of political liberalism to the
international domain in The Law of Peoples that has been advanced in recent
years concerns his claim that certain non-liberal societies, which Rawls calls
‘decent hierarchical societies’ (DHSs), should be included as equal participants
in a just international order. Despite not granting their citizens the basic rights
and liberties of democratic citizenship, these non-liberal societies are sufficiently
‘decent’, according to Rawls, to be respected as equals in the global domain
by liberal democratic societies.5 This position concerning the status of DHSs is
presented by Rawls as a consequence of political liberalism’s commitment to the
principle of toleration. A number of commentators on Rawls’s Law of Peoples
are quite critical of this position concerning the status of DHSs.6 Hence the
role of the principle of toleration in Rawlsian political liberalism, in both the
domestic and international domains, has been the focus of considerable criticism
in recent years.
I agree with critics of The Law of Peoples that Rawls’s claim that DHSs should
be considered equal participants in a just international order is something that
liberals should reject. (This does not mean that liberal societies should not
tolerate or cooperate with such societies for pragmatic reasons, or in order to
assist them in reforming themselves along liberal and democratic lines; I address
the latter possibility briefly in the conclusion of this article.) I do not think, how-
ever, that this feature of Rawls’s Law of Peoples reveals an intrinsic problem
with political liberalism.7 This is because careful consideration of some of the
key normative ideas of political liberalism, in particular the ‘Liberal Principle
of Legitimacy’ and the ‘full political autonomy’ of citizens, reveals that the
principle of toleration cannot be political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’.
A better account of political liberalism’s fundamental principle, which I
276

Neufeld: Civic respect, political liberalism, and non-liberal societies
suggest should be understood as a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens

when deciding fundamental political matters, shows that Rawls’s principled
toleration for DHSs is in fact a misapplication of political liberalism to the
global domain. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle as a
principle of equal civic respect for citizens, rather than the principle of toleration,
can, I think, yield a revised and more consistent Law of Peoples, one that insists
that the basic rights of democratic citizenship be realized by all pluralist societies
or peoples ‘in good standing’ within a just international system.
In amending the Law of Peoples in this way, however, political liberals must
not only maintain that political liberalism’s fundamental principle should be
understood as something like the principle of equal civic respect for citizens,
rather than the principle of toleration. They must also clarify the status of this
principle. That is, in asserting political liberalism’s commitment to something
like the principle of equal civic respect for citizens, political liberals must also
acknowledge that, with respect to the ‘truth’ or ‘correctness’ of this principle,
political liberalism cannot be ‘neutral’ or agnostic. This follows, I maintain, from
a consideration of the main normative ideas of political liberalism, and especially
from Rawls’s ‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. In order for political liberalism
to be a coherent view, in both the domestic and international domains, political
liberalism must assert the ‘truth’ of its fundamental principle. More specifically,
political liberalism must assert that something like the principle of equal civic
respect for citizens is the right or correct principle to govern the public political
relations of citizens in all pluralist societies capable of supporting adequately just
political institutions. Most DHSs, I maintain, are likely characterized by some
degree of moral and religious pluralism, and consequently are societies in which
the principle of equal civic respect is applicable.
Thus, I have three aims in this article. First, I argue that something like the
principle of equal civic respect for citizens, rather than the principle of toleration,
should be understood as political liberalism’s fundamental principle. (This can, I
think, render political liberalism a more plausible and attractive view overall,
independent of its role in revising Rawls’s Law of Peoples.) Second, I suggest
that a more consistent Law of Peoples, one that does not compromise political
liberalism’s commitment to the ideal of democratic self-government by free and
equal citizens, would naturally result from understanding political liberalism’s
fundamental principle as the principle of equal civic respect for citizens. Third,
I explain that political liberalism cannot avoid affirming the ‘truth’ of the
principle of equal civic respect for citizens, even though it can and, in order to
satisfy the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, should refrain from asserting the truth
of the various political ideas and values that comprise legitimate conceptions of
justice.
277

I
In The Law of Peoples, Rawls states that his primary motivation for developing
principles of global justice is the need for such principles to help guide the
foreign policies of liberal societies (LP: 9–10). Roughly speaking, liberal
societies are pluralist in character, that is, they are societies in which citizens
endorse a variety of different ‘comprehensive doctrines’ (religious, moral, and
philosophical world-views). In order to accommodate this pluralism, the ‘basic
structures’ (main political and economic institutions) of liberal societies are
governed by ‘political conceptions of justice’. A ‘political conception of justice’
satisfies what might be called the ‘basic structure restriction’ and the ‘free-
standing condition’. The ‘basic structure restriction’ maintains that a political
conception of justice should apply only to the basic structure of society (its main
political and economic institutions), and not to social, philosophical, or moral
concerns that lie beyond this domain. The ‘free-standing condition’ maintains
that a political conception of justice should be formulated in terms of ‘purely
political’ ideas and values, that is, political ideas and values that are compatible
with the many different reasonable religious and philosophical doctrines
endorsed by that society’s citizens.8
A political conception of justice, by satisfying the basic structure restriction
and the free-standing condition, is capable of securing the support of all
adequately reasonable citizens in contemporary pluralist societies, irrespective of
their broader religious or philosophical convictions. Consequently, a political
conception of justice can satisfy what Rawls calls ‘The Liberal Principle of
Legitimacy’. As Rawls explains, ‘our exercise of political power is fully proper
only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which
all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light
of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason’.9 Such a
society can be ‘well ordered’ in nature, that is, its basic political and economic
institutions can be freely supported by all reasonable citizens.10 In addition,
different well-ordered liberal societies can choose to adopt somewhat different
political conceptions of justice (see LP: 14).
Since Rawls is primarily concerned with formulating normative principles to
help guide the foreign policies of liberal societies, the first stage in determining
what principles will comprise a Law of Peoples involves determining what set
of principles all reasonable liberal societies would agree upon. That is, after
developing principles of justice for their domestic political arrangements, liberal
societies, or peoples, go on to determine which set of normative principles should
govern their political relations with each other in the global domain.11 Rawls
claims that liberal peoples would arrive at the following eight principles, which
together would comprise a just Law of Peoples.
1. Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to
be respected by other peoples.
278

2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings.

3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them.
4. Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention.
5. Peoples have the right of self-defence, but no right to instigate war for reasons
other than self-defence.
6. Peoples are to honour human rights.
7. Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war.
8. Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavourable condi-
tions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime (LP:
37).
Although there may be disagreements over how precisely to interpret each of

these principles, Rawls maintains that all reasonable liberal peoples (that is, all
societies adequately well ordered by a political conception of justice that satisfies
the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy) would endorse these eight principles.
Consequently, all liberal peoples would be members ‘in good standing’ in a just
‘Society of Peoples’.
After determining that all reasonable liberal peoples would agree upon the
eight principles of the Law of Peoples, Rawls considers whether certain non-
liberal societies could also endorse and support them. He acknowledges that
many non-liberal societies, or peoples, would not be able to endorse these
principles. Examples of such societies include what Rawls calls ‘outlaw states’,
‘societies burdened by unfavourable conditions’ (or simply ‘burdened societies’),
and ‘benevolent absolutisms’.12 Nonetheless, Rawls thinks that there are, at least
potentially, some non-liberal societies that have sufficiently ‘decent’ political
institutions and practices to be considered equal members in a just Society of
Peoples.13 In particular, he maintains that ‘decent hierarchical societies’, or
DHSs, could also support the eight principles that comprise the Law of Peoples.
Rawls explains that DHSs meet three important criteria: they are peaceful in
their relations with other societies; their main political and social institutions are
organized in accordance with a ‘common good’ conception of justice, and there-
fore are considered legitimate in the eyes of most of their respective populations;
and they respect a set of basic human rights (LP: 65–7). However, while DHSs
must respect certain basic human rights, these rights are considerably less exten-
sive than those that all reasonable liberal societies must respect. For example,
DHSs need not accord to all their citizens an equal liberty of conscience or an
equal right to participate in the society’s main political institutions and processes
(LP: 65–6). Though not liberal in nature, Rawls argues that DHSs could nonethe-
less endorse the eight principles of the Law of Peoples summarized above, and
thereby be members ‘in good standing’ in a just global order or Society of
Peoples.14
Moreover, Rawls maintains that an acceptable Law of Peoples must be one
that DHSs could endorse. This is necessary, he claims, because of liberalism’s
279

commitment to the principle of toleration. ‘If all societies [in a just ‘Society of
Peoples’] . . . were required to be liberal’, Rawls explains, ‘then the idea of politi-
cal liberalism would fail to express due toleration for other acceptable ways (if
such as there are, as I assume) of ordering society’ (LP: 59. See also LP: 122).15
In other words, toleration for DHSs in the global context (which requires that any
acceptable Law of Peoples be one that the representatives of DHSs could
endorse) is a natural extension of liberalism’s principle of toleration in the
domestic context. Hence, Rawls’s argument for tolerating DHSs rests on an
analogy between non-liberal but reasonable comprehensive doctrines in the
domestic case, and non-liberal but decent peoples in the international case.16
However, Rawls’s analogy between non-liberal but reasonable comprehensive
doctrines in the domestic case and non-liberal but decent peoples in the inter-
national case is deeply flawed for two reasons. The first reason is that all
reasonable comprehensive doctrines within a liberal society are constrained in
that they must not violate, or act in ways that conflict with, the free and equal
status of all persons qua citizens. All reasonable comprehensive doctrines, then,
must acknowledge the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy.17 Hence politically
illiberal or anti-democratic doctrines are not tolerated in the domestic context by
political liberalism. In contrast, within the international domain, Rawls holds that
non-liberal political societies must be tolerated.18 A different standard of tolera-
tion, then, is employed at the international level. The international standard of
toleration accommodates political communities, namely DHSs, that would not be
accommodated in the domestic context.
A second important difference between reasonable but non-liberal com-
prehensive doctrines in liberal democratic societies and DHSs in international
society concerns the options that persons have with respect to their communities.
Members of liberal democratic societies always have the viable option, as free
and equal citizens, to leave any non-liberal communities or associations to which
they belong. In contrast, most citizens of DHSs lack this option. In other words,
non-liberal communities and associations within liberal societies must respect an
enforceable ‘right of exit’ on the part of their members. Members of DHSs,
though, typically do not have any such enforceable ‘right of exit’.19
It is important to note here that Rawls is not entirely unaware of this feature of
DHSs, and thus insists that the citizens of such societies have a right of emigra-
tion (LP: 74). However, this right is not matched by any corresponding duty on
the part of other societies or peoples to accept immigrants from DHSs. In
response to the objection that this renders such a right of emigration ‘pointless’,
Rawls asserts that not all meaningful rights, such as the right to marry or make
promises, can be assured of being exercised by their holders (LP: 74, note 15).
This concession, though, merely shows that the right of emigration, if not
matched by a corresponding duty on the part of other peoples or societies to
accept citizens leaving DHSs, fails entirely to overcome the difference between
citizens of liberal democratic societies and citizens of DHSs. The former have an
280

enforceable right to reject non-liberal comprehensive doctrines, or leave non-

liberal communities or associations, should they choose to do so, whereas
citizens of DHSs do not have any such enforceable right. It is in this respect, then,
that non-liberal communities and associations within liberal societies are com-
patible with the individual liberties of citizens whereas non-liberal political
societies such as DHSs are not.
Thus communities and associations organized in accordance with non-liberal,
but reasonable comprehensive doctrines within liberal societies have two
features. First, they respect the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, and consequently
do not attempt to deploy the political institutions and resources of the state in
order to realize or enforce their particular beliefs and values. Second, communi-
ties and associations organized in accordance with non-liberal, but reasonable
comprehensive doctrines respect the right of citizens to cease being members of
them, should they choose to do so. By contrast, non-liberal political societies or
peoples, including DHSs, lack both of these features.
On the basis of these two significant differences between non-liberal but
reasonable comprehensive doctrines in the domestic context, and non-liberal but
decent peoples in the international context, one critic of Rawls’s Law of Peoples,
Kok-Chor Tan, notes that ‘The idea of tolerating nonliberal regimes is . . . objec-
tionable from a liberal view point’.20 Tan then goes on to ask the following
question:
Is this a problem of application, that is, a problem arising from a mistaken application
of basically sound ideas to the international case, in which case what is to be done
is not to reject the teachings of political liberalism but reapply them correctly?
Or does this in fact highlight a fundamental flaw with political liberalism itself, in
which case what we are required to do is to jettison the theory and seek out alterna-
tives?21
Given that Tan identifies the two important ways in which tolerating non-
liberal comprehensive doctrines within liberal political societies differs from
tolerating non-liberal political societies within the international system outlined
above, one might think that the natural conclusion is the former: the Law of
Peoples’ toleration of DHSs reflects a problem in the application of political
liberalism. A consistent political liberal should not extend the scope of reason-
able pluralism to the political domain in either the domestic context or the inter-
national context.
Yet Tan does not draw this conclusion. Instead, he claims that Rawls’s
willingness to accommodate DHSs within the Law of Peoples constitutes ‘an
accentuation of a problem inherent in political liberalism itself’.22 Tan’s argu-
ment for this conclusion appears to be that, in the domestic case, political
liberalism is simply fortunate: its commitment to toleration as its fundamental
principle does not require it to sacrifice its commitment to individual liberty
because of contingent social circumstances. One such contingent social circum-
281

stance is the fact that persons in liberal democratic societies are considered free
and equal citizens, and consequently always have the right to leave non-liberal
communities or associations.23 Tan claims that, because political liberalism
‘grants toleration a fundamental rather than derivative status’, potential conflicts
between, on the one hand, the toleration of non-liberal communities and, on
the other hand, the protection of individual liberties are avoided only by this
fortuitous, but contingent feature of the political cultures of liberal democratic
societies.24 In other words, it is political liberalism’s good fortune that it can
generally avoid conflicts between the political values of toleration and liberty in
the domestic context.
Political liberalism is less fortunate, though, in the international context, where
such conflicts are manifest, and political liberalism’s fundamental commitment
to toleration requires it to sacrifice its commitment to liberty. Tan maintains
that ‘a sound political theory cannot wait to be saved from internal tensions by
fortuitous and contingent social circumstances’.25 Hence the fact that Rawls’s
Law of Peoples is willing to treat DHSs as members in good standing within a
just Society of Peoples, Tan concludes, shows that there is an intrinsic problem
with political liberalism’s basis on the principle of toleration.26
Against Tan, I do not think that this is a correct interpretation of the nature of
political liberalism’s commitment to toleration in the domestic case. Although, as
noted at the beginning of this article, Rawls does state that ‘political liberalism
applies the principle of toleration to philosophy itself’,27 at no point in his
writings on political liberalism does he assert that toleration is the ‘fundamental
principle’ of political liberalism. Moreover, toleration cannot be political liberal-
ism’s fundamental principle. Indeed, Tan appears implicitly to recognize this in
his discussion of the way in which political liberalism constrains the scope of
toleration in the domestic case. As he states: ‘it is only in this qualified sense that
political liberalism can be said to take toleration as the fundamental liberal value
– toleration is overriding (or fundamental) only after the ideal of autonomy as a
political conception is secured’.28 The ideal of ‘political autonomy’ in political
liberalism, then, must have priority over the principle of toleration if it can con-
strain the scope of toleration.
‘Full political autonomy’, according to Rawls, ‘is realised in public life by
affirming the political principles of justice and enjoying the protections of the
basic rights and liberties; it is also realised by participating in society’s public
affairs and sharing in its collective self-determination over time’.29 Communities
and associations that are organized on the basis of non-liberal comprehensive
doctrines are constrained in their activities: they must respect the rights and
liberties, or full political autonomy, that persons have qua citizens. Since the
ideal of full political autonomy for citizens constrains the scope of toleration in
the domestic case, the problem with the Law of Peoples, and especially its treat-
ment of DHSs as ‘members in good standing’ within a just Society of Peoples,
would appear to be that the scope of toleration is not similarly constrained in the
282

international case. The failure to constrain the principle of toleration in order to

ensure the realization of political autonomy for all persons in the international
case looks like a failure to extend properly political liberalism to the international
domain, rather than a demonstration of any intrinsic problem with political
liberalism’s normative basis.
Protecting the full political autonomy of citizens, then, requires that both
society’s political institutions and its various associations and communities
respect the decisions made by citizens about how to live their lives, whether
those decisions involve becoming, remaining, or ceasing to be members of non-
liberal communities or associations (such as religious organizations or cultural
communities). Given that the principle of toleration must be limited by the
full political autonomy of citizens, what then is the ‘fundamental principle’ of
political liberalism? It cannot be the idea of full political autonomy itself. This is
because the claim that persons qua citizens should be accorded full political
autonomy must be based on some principle concerning the status of persons in
political society. More specifically, it is because persons in political society
should be understood as having a certain normative status that they should be
secured the full political autonomy of citizens. The question for political liberal-
ism, then, is what normative principle is it that requires that persons qua citizens
be accorded full political autonomy?
In order to ascertain what political liberalism’s fundamental principle consists
in, we need to consider the nature of the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy.
According to Rawls, ‘the idea of political legitimacy based on the criterion of
reciprocity says . . . [that] Our exercise of political power is proper only when we
sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions . . . are
sufficient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably
accept those reasons’.30 The Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, which distinguishes
between acceptable political conceptions of justice and unacceptable ones,
follows from political liberalism’s commitment to realizing the ‘criterion of
reciprocity’ under conditions of reasonable pluralism. Furthermore, the criterion
of reciprocity (which, according to Rawls, is political liberalism’s ‘intrinsic
normative and moral ideal’31) holds that citizens must offer terms of social co-
operation, and in particular principles of justice, that they think other citizens
might reasonably accept. The criterion of reciprocity, then, is an expression of the
idea that the principles that are to govern the main social and political institutions
of society, its basic structure, should be ones that respect the equal status of
persons qua citizens. Respecting the equal status of persons qua citizens means,
roughly, justifying principles of justice in ways that are acceptable, at least poten-
tially, to all adequately reasonable persons in the society that is to be governed
by those principles. In short, consideration of the criterion of reciprocity, and the
Liberal Principle of Legitimacy that follows from it, shows that political liberal-
ism’s ‘fundamental principle’ is not toleration, but rather something like what
Charles Larmore has called a ‘principle of respect for persons’.32 The criterion of
283

reciprocity is an expression of this principle, and it justifies the Liberal Principle

of Legitimacy.
II
My aim in this section is to outline the main features of the kind of ‘principle of
respect’ that I think should be understood as political liberalism’s fundamental
principle. Because of the distinctly political nature of this principle, I will refer
to it as a principle of ‘civic respect’. Before I outline the main features of civic
respect, however, it will be useful to note a general distinction, made by Stephen
Darwall, between two different kinds of respect.33 The first, ‘recognition respect’,
is the kind of respect owed to a thing in one’s deliberations about what to do in
virtue of some characteristic that that thing possesses. To have recognition
respect for a thing means giving appropriate consideration to that thing, in light
of its possession of a certain characteristic or set of characteristics, in one’s
actions. An example of recognition respect can be found in Kant’s moral theory.
The ‘Formula of Humanity’ asserts, roughly, that because persons as rational
agents have a ‘dignity’ and not a ‘price’, they cannot be treated as ‘mere means’,
but always as ‘ends-in-themselves’.34 Kantian respect for persons, then, is a kind
of recognition respect: it is a form of respect owed to persons in virtue of their
possessing a characteristic that gives them a certain standing or dignity (namely,
their capacity for rational agency) and that shows itself in taking this standing
into account in how one acts towards them.
The other kind of respect identified by Darwall is ‘appraisal respect’. This kind
of respect, Darwall explains, ‘consists in a positive appraisal of a person or his
qualities . . . Appraisal respect is the positive appraisal itself’.35 In other words,
appraisal respect is the form of respect that we might have for a person because
she manifests certain qualities or virtues that we regard as valuable or praise-
worthy. Therefore, appraisal respect can be a matter of degree: we might have a
moderate amount of respect for a person who displays a virtue or skill to a
moderate degree and a great amount of respect for a person who displays a virtue
or skill to a great degree. Moreover, if a person displays a number of virtues and
skills, or manifests a kind of excellence in exercizing a capacity that we take to
be of central importance to personhood, then we might have a kind of appraisal
respect for that person qua person (that is, we might judge that person to be an
excellent or virtuous person).36 Thus, appraisal respect is expressed whenever a
person positively appraises another person as, for example, an excellent athlete,
an accomplished politician, a virtuous individual, or simply a superb human
being. Lastly, appraisal respect can be distinguished from recognition respect in
that we might think that some kind of recognition respect is owed to a person for
whom we have very little appraisal respect. For example, following Kant, we
might think that certain persons as rational agents should be accorded a certain
kind of recognition respect (namely, to be treated as ‘ends-in-themselves’)
284

despite thinking that those same persons lack any skills or virtues worthy of our
positive appraisal.
Civic respect can be understood to have four features. First, it is a kind of
recognition respect, and not appraisal respect, that is owed to persons qua
citizens, where the class of citizens is understood to include all adequately
rational and reasonable persons in a given political society.37 Second, because
civic respect is owed to persons qua citizens, it is limited in its scope of applica-
tion to relations among citizens within the basic structure of society. Civic
respect, then, does not violate political liberalism’s basic structure restriction, and
can thus be distinguished from other, more ‘comprehensive’ forms of recognition
respect, such as that required by Kant’s ‘Formula of Humanity’.
Third, civic respect requires that citizens, when taking part in the institutions
and practices of the basic structure, act as though they are ‘reasonable persons’.
Two main features characterize reasonable persons in political liberalism. The
first feature of reasonable persons is that they insist that the criterion of recipro-
city govern the public social relations of citizens, as expressed in the various
institutions and practices that make up the basic structure. (As mentioned earlier,
the criterion of reciprocity requires that citizens offer terms of social cooperation
that they think other citizens might reasonably accept.)
The second feature of reasonable persons is that they are defined by a ‘will-
ingness to recognise the burdens of judgement and to accept their consequences
for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power
in a constitutional regime’.38 Rawls introduces the idea of the ‘burdens of judge-
ment’ in order to help explain the fact of reasonable pluralism.39 The conse-
quences of acknowledging the burdens of judgement, according to Rawls,
include the affirmation of the liberty of conscience and freedom of thought of all
citizens and a willingness to justify decisions concerning the exercise of political
power, at least with respect to a certain range of fundamental issues, in a manner
that respects the fact of reasonable pluralism. More precisely, the latter conse-
quence of acknowledging the burdens of judgement is that arguments regarding
the basic structure that have to do with fundamental political questions (questions
regarding what Rawls calls ‘constitutional essentials’ and ‘matters of basic
justice’40) should satisfy the free-standing condition of political liberalism.
Satisfying this condition means justifying decisions concerning the exercise of
political power vis-a-vis fundamental political issues in a way that is compatible
with the views of all reasonable doctrines, that is, in a way that satisfies the
Liberal Principle of Legitimacy.
The fourth feature of civic respect follows from the third: civic respect requires
that citizens realize what Rawls calls the ‘duty of civility’ when deciding funda-
mental political questions (understood to be, as explained above, questions
regarding ‘constitutional essentials’ and ‘matters of basic justice’) within public
political forums. Roughly, citizens realize the duty of civility by deciding funda-
mental political questions in accordance with the ‘idea of public reason’.41 Public
285

reason is the kind of reason appropriate for all public political discussions
concerning fundamental political questions, as it manifests an acceptance of the
consequences of the burdens of judgement.42 This means that public reason
endeavours to operate independently of particular comprehensive doctrines, rely-
ing exclusively upon the ideas and concepts found in the political conception of
justice, or family of such conceptions if more than one is advocated in society.43
In realizing their duty of civility by deciding fundamental political questions in
accordance with the idea of public reason, citizens express their respect for each
other as equal members of society, despite their adherence to different compre-
hensive doctrines.
To summarize, the conception of civic respect that political liberals should
insist ought to govern the public political relations of citizens in pluralist
societies has the following four features.
1. Civic respect is a form of recognition respect.
2. Civic respect is limited in scope to the basic structure of society, that is, it is
intended to govern relations among persons qua citizens.
3. Civic respect requires that citizens, when participating within the basic
structure, act as though they are reasonable persons. (Reasonable persons
acknowledge the fact of reasonable pluralism and endorse the criterion of
reciprocity.)
4. On the basis of the third feature, civic respect requires that citizens realize
their duty of civility when engaging in public political debate to decide
fundamental political questions.
This conception of civic respect, I maintain, should be understood as political
liberalism’s fundamental principle, rather than the principle of toleration. It
specifies a version of Larmore’s principle of ‘respect for persons’ that acknow-
ledges the fact of reasonable pluralism, justifies Rawls’s Liberal Principle of
Legitimacy, and is fully compatible with Rawls’s emphasis on the equal political
autonomy of citizens. As explained earlier, realizing the full political autonomy
of citizens requires that a society’s political institutions, as well as its various
communities and associations, respect the decisions made by citizens concerning
how to live their lives, whether those decisions involve electing to join or remain
members of non-liberal associations or whether they involve leaving non-liberal
associations in preference for other ones. Given that the principle of toleration
must be limited by the full political autonomy of citizens, toleration cannot be
understood to be political liberalism’s fundamental principle. The principle of
civic respect, unlike the principle of toleration, is fully compatible with political
liberalism’s commitment to the full political autonomy of citizens; there is no
need to ‘constrain’ civic respect in order to protect citizens’ political autonomy.
Indeed, the principle of civic respect can help explain why it is important that all
citizens enjoy full political autonomy: the rights and liberties of equal democratic
citizenship are both necessary for, and an expression of, mutual civic respect
286

among citizens.44 In addition, the principle of civic respect, by requiring that

citizens realize the duty of civility in their public political deliberations with each
other, can also help explain how politically autonomous citizens can participate
in a pluralist society’s public affairs and share in its collective self-determination
over time.
III
One important question concerning the principle of civic respect has to do with
its status, that is, whether this principle itself must satisfy the free-standing con-
dition of political liberalism. In other words, can political liberalism refrain from
asserting the correctness or truth of the principle of civic respect, as it avers to do
with the various ideas and values that comprise legitimate conceptions of justice,
and consequently the terms of public reason?45 In answer to this question, I think
that the principle of civic respect should be affirmed as the ‘true’ or ‘correct’ one
to govern the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies capable
of supporting adequately just political institutions. Political liberalism cannot
avoid affirming the correctness or truth of this principle (or some similar norma-
tive principle), even if it can succeed in being neutral or agnostic with respect to
the various ideas and values that can be employed by legitimate conceptions of
justice and public reason. Indeed, civic respect must be affirmed as true or
correct in order to justify political liberalism’s claim that legitimate conceptions
of justice need only be reasonable, and not necessarily true or correct, in order
for them to govern the social and political institutions of the basic structure.46
Thus I maintain that not only should the principle of civic respect be under-
stood as political liberalism’s fundamental principle, it should also be understood
as the true or correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens
in pluralist societies. The features that comprise the principle of civic respect
explain why the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy is the correct or right criterion
for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable conceptions of justice.
Hence the principle of civic respect can explain why a conception of justice can
be realized by the basic social and political institutions of society, irrespective of
whether it is ‘true’, so long as it is ‘reasonable’ in character (that is, so long as all
reasonable citizens could potentially endorse it). This account of the principle of
civic respect, then, supports a point made by David Estlund, namely, that the
Liberal Principle of Legitimacy itself cannot be justified only on the basis of its
acceptability to reasonable citizens.47 Rather, as a direct consequence of the
principle of civic respect, understood as the correct principle to govern the
public political relations of citizens in pluralist societies, the Liberal Principle of
Legitimacy can be understood as the correct criterion for conceptions of justice
(and political arguments, as part of public reason, based on such conceptions)
intended to govern the basic structure of pluralist societies.
Hence political liberalism cannot entirely avoid making foundational claims.48
287

Political liberalism must acknowledge that it cannot be thoroughly agnostic about

the truth or free-standing in nature. Nonetheless, this is not a problematic
concession for political liberalism, as it does not show that liberal political
theory cannot avoid being ‘comprehensive’ in nature. This is because political
liberalism need assert only that its fundamental principle is true or correct.
Acknowledging the truth of political liberalism’s fundamental principle, then,
does not necessarily detract from its ecumenical character. The reason for this is
that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens does not express or pre-
suppose a comprehensive moral view and is compatible with any comprehensive
doctrine that accepts the Liberal Principle of Legitimacy.49 This is especially
clear when we realize that the principle of equal civic respect is meant to regu-
late only the public political relations of citizens. As a principle with a limited
scope of application, it can be endorsed by all reasonable persons, despite their
commitment to different comprehensive doctrines.
The reason why the principle of equal civic respect for citizens is the correct
principle to govern the relations of citizens within pluralist societies is that such
a principle is necessary in order for such societies to be well ordered in nature.
According to Rawls, a ‘well-ordered society’ is one in which basic political and
economic institutions can be freely supported by all reasonable citizens.50
Because a pluralist society is one in which there exists reasonable disagreement
among citizens as to which (if any) comprehensive doctrine is the true or correct
one, the basic political and economic institutions of that society cannot be justi-
fied on the basis of any particular comprehensive doctrine. The principle of civic
respect is thus necessary for a pluralist society to be well ordered.
In addition, my claim that the principle of civic respect should apply to all
pluralist societies is not a rejection of Rawls’s position that ‘peoples’ should be
understood as corporate moral agents, and the appropriate subjects of a global
theory of justice. That is, I am not advocating some form of ‘liberal cosmo-
politanism’ with respect to global justice,51 or at least not a form of ‘liberal
cosmopolitanism’ that denies that ‘peoples’ should be understood as the main
subjects of global justice.52 Rather, my claim is that in order for a people
characterized by reasonable pluralism to be a corporate moral agent worthy of
full standing in a just Society of Peoples, it must be a well-ordered society, and
thus a society that extends to its members the basic rights and liberties of demo-
cratic citizenship (as these rights and liberties are necessary in order to ensure
that that society’s main institutions are freely supported by its reasonable
citizens). In other words, in order for a pluralist society to be a corporate moral
agent ‘in good standing’ within a just Society of Peoples, that society must be one
that respects the principle of equal civic respect.
While I hope it is now clear why the principle of civic respect should govern
the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies capable of
supporting adequately just political institutions, its application to the citizens of
DHSs may not yet appear to be justified. This is because DHSs might be inter-
288

preted as non-pluralistic in nature, that is, as societies in which the vast majority
of citizens share the same comprehensive doctrine, and hence societies in which
political justifications may legitimately be based on a particular comprehensive
doctrine.53 One significant reason why DHSs might be interpreted as non-
pluralist in nature is that, according to Rawls, the basic structure of a DHS is
organized in accordance with a ‘common good idea of justice’ (see LP: 65–6,
71). A ‘common good idea of justice’ that can govern the basic structure of a
DHS differs from a political conception of justice in that it can be based upon a
particular comprehensive doctrine (typically, a religious doctrine).
Furthermore, one of the main consequences of organizing a DHS’s basic struc-
ture in accordance with a particular comprehensive doctrine, according to Rawls,
is that people in that DHS will normally not be viewed as equal citizens, as they
are in a liberal society. Rather, citizens in a DHS will be viewed as members of
different groups, each of which has some kind of representation, though typically
not equal representation, in a ‘decent consultation hierarchy’ (LP: 64). Given that
DHSs are organized in accordance with a ‘common good idea of justice’ that is
based on a particular comprehensive doctrine and that citizens’ representation in
that society’s legal and political institutions is determined by their broader social
identities, which are also determined by the comprehensive doctrine in question,
it consequently seems reasonable to conclude that DHSs are not necessarily
characterized by significant moral or religious pluralism. If DHSs are not plural-
ist in nature, it follows that the principle of civic respect need not apply to the
public political relations of their citizens.
However, Rawls’s discussion of DHSs indicates that he does not think that
DHSs are necessarily non-pluralist in nature. Rather, he acknowledges that DHSs
will often have groups of citizens who do not endorse their society’s dominant
comprehensive doctrine (the one that determines the ‘common good idea of
justice’ that governs that society’s basic structure). In his discussion of a
hypothetical DHS called ‘Kazanistan’, for instance, Rawls notes that while Islam
is the dominant and official religion of the society, members of religious
minority groups have rights and interests that must be protected. Kazanistan,
Rawls explains, ‘is an enlightened society in its treatment of religious minorities’
(LP: 78). Furthermore, ‘these minorities have been loyal subjects of society, and
they are not subjected to arbitrary discrimination, or treated as inferior by
Muslims in public or social relations’ (LP: 76).54 In so far as DHSs such as
Kazanistan are characterized by some degree of religious or moral pluralism,
then, I maintain that there is no normative reason why something like the
principle of equal civic respect for citizens should not apply to them.55
Moreover, Rawls acknowledges that in DHSs such as Kazanistan there will be
dissent, and thus such societies, in order to be ‘decent’, must accord to its
members a right to dissent (see LP: 72 f.).56 Perhaps this right to dissent would
suffice to accommodate and respect the kinds of pluralism likely to be found in
DHSs? More precisely, even if DHSs are pluralist societies, it might be argued
289

that the limited right to dissent and the unequal ‘liberty of conscience’ enjoyed
by citizens, and the toleration (though unequal status) of religious minorities,
taken together, are sufficient to ensure that DHSs are adequately ‘well ordered’
in nature. If the limited rights and liberties that DHSs do respect suffice to ensure
that the main economic and political institutions of DHSs are freely supported
and recognized as legitimate by their reasonable citizens, then it seems plausible
to think that DHSs should be regarded as ‘members in good standing’ within a
just Society of Peoples. There are, however, two important reasons to reject an
argument of this sort.
First, the right to dissent that Rawls insists must be protected by DHSs is
unlikely to accommodate the fact of reasonable pluralism over time. According
to Rawls, ‘Dissent expresses a form of public protest and is permissible provided
it stays within the basic framework of the common good idea of justice’ (LP: 72).
The problem with this characterization of the right to dissent is that it fails to
address the likelihood that dissent might be expressed by reasonable citizens
against the common good idea of justice itself. For example, non-Muslim
citizens of Kazanistan might, as reasonable citizens, seek to express their
opposition to the Islamic-based common good idea of justice that governs their
society’s basic structure. Now, if citizens in a DHS do have the right to express
dissent in a manner that is not constrained by the common good idea of justice
(or the comprehensive doctrine that underlies that common good idea of justice)
and public officials have an obligation to take such dissent seriously (that is, they
must attempt to address the bases for the dissent in question), then we have a
society that, in effect, respects the principle of civic respect (or at the very least
is close to respecting this principle in certain fundamental cases). Rawls wants to
deny this, of course, but it is not clear how a DHS could eliminate reasonable
dissent against its common good idea of justice without being unacceptably
oppressive, and thus no longer well ordered. But if a DHS such as Kazanistan
allows dissent against its common good idea of justice and public officials have
an obligation to take such dissent seriously, then we have a society that looks
markedly liberal in nature. In short, a meaningful right to dissent requires liberal
democratic institutions of some sort: Rawls’s limited right of dissent cannot be
squared with his principled opposition to political oppression.
This leads to my second reason why DHSs cannot be considered well-ordered
societies, and thus equal members of a just Society of Peoples. One of the main
reasons why Rawls thinks that liberal societies should respect DHSs is the idea
that respecting the self-determination and self-government of peoples includes
respecting the right of peoples, as corporate moral agents, to choose not to adopt
liberal political institutions. Non-liberal, but decent societies, Rawls maintains,
‘should have the opportunity to decide their future for themselves’ (LP: 85).57
Not to respect such self-governing decisions by non-liberal but decent peoples
would be unacceptably intolerant.
The problem with this view, though, is that unless the members of a given
290

society have the basic rights and liberties of democratic citizenship, it is not clear
how they as a people could be judged to be self-directing and self-governing in a
morally meaningful way. More precisely, if a common good idea of justice (and
its underlying comprehensive doctrine) limits the views that can be expressed in
society and if citizens do not have an enforceable right of emigration (as an
ultimate means to express their rejection of the common good idea of justice),
then we simply have no good reason to think that the common good idea of
justice is, in any meaningful sense, freely supported and judged legitimate by the
reasonable members of the DHS in question. In short, the failure of DHSs to
grant all their members the basic rights and liberties of democratic citizenship
prevent them from being well-ordered, self-governing peoples. The only way to
ensure that a common good idea of justice can be freely supported by all reason-
able citizens in a DHS is to grant those citizens the right to criticize that idea of
justice itself (and this cannot be done without granting all citizens the basic rights
and liberties of democratic citizenship).
Thus I maintain that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens, as the
‘fundamental principle’ of political liberalism, should be understood as the
correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in all plural-
ist societies capable of supporting adequately just political institutions. (Of
course, how the principle of equal civic respect will be realized in practice will
likely vary somewhat from society to society.) Furthermore, most DHSs should
be understood to be pluralist societies. Consequently, most DHSs (at least at the
level of ideal theory) should be required to extend to their citizens the basic rights
and liberties of democratic citizenship. There is no reason to exempt any plural-
ist society from including the rights and liberties of equal democratic citizenship
among the human rights that they must respect in order to qualify as a ‘member
in good standing’ within a just Society of Peoples.58 This is because only
societies that grant their members the basic rights and liberties of democratic
citizenship can be considered legitimate self-governing peoples.
IV
Since the principle of equal civic respect should apply to all pluralist societies, it
follows that the basic rights and liberties of liberal democratic citizenship (the
rights and liberties necessary for ‘full political autonomy’) should be among the
set of human rights that would be included in a consistent political liberal Law of
Peoples. This modification, however, raises the following question: how should
this improved, more consistently liberal Law of Peoples view DHSs? My sug-
gestion is that DHSs, as well as most other non-liberal societies, be considered
‘societies burdened by unfavourable conditions’ (or, more simply, as ‘burdened
societies’). Liberal peoples, according to Rawls, have a ‘duty of assistance’ with
respect to burdened societies, which can include assisting such societies in
changing their political cultures (see LP: 108–10). My suggestion, then, is an
291

extension of Rawls’s own views concerning burdened societies. Rawls has no

difficulty in thinking that societies that lack political traditions and cultures
capable of supporting the basic human rights that he thinks are universal are
burdened societies. In addition, he notes the difficulties involved with, but also
the great importance of, changing the political cultures of those societies so that
they can adequately support these rights. This is one of the ‘duties of assistance’
that well-ordered societies have vis-a-vis burdened societies, according to Rawls.
My suggestion, then, is that we should think of DHSs with respect to basic
liberal democratic rights in the same way. That is, all non-liberal pluralist
societies lacking political traditions and cultures capable of sustaining institu-
tions and practices that respect basic liberal democratic rights should be con-
sidered burdened societies. Of course, what precise strategies or policies should
be deployed by liberal societies in realizing their duty of assistance with respect
to burdened societies is a difficult and complex question, and one that I cannot
answer in this article.
I have argued in this article that the principle of civic respect helps to address
a widespread criticism of Rawls’s attempt to formulate political liberal principles
of global justice in The Law of Peoples. One of the main criticisms of Rawls’s
Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies as morally equal
participants in a just international system, or Society of Peoples, despite their
failure to grant their citizens the basic rights and liberties of democratic citizen-
ship. Rawls claims that treating certain non-liberal societies as morally equal
participants in a just international system is required by political liberalism’s
commitment to the principle of toleration. This has prompted some critics of
political liberalism, such as Kok-Chor Tan, who understand political liberalism’s
fundamental principle to be the principle of toleration, to argue that political
liberalism lacks the necessary philosophical resources to justify and realize an
adequate account of liberal justice, both within nation-states and, even more
noticeably, on a global scale.
I think liberals have good reason to reject the part of Rawls’s conception of
global justice that treats certain non-liberal societies as morally equal participants
within a just international system. A liberal Law of Peoples should require all
member societies, or peoples, in good standing to extend to their respective
populations the basic rights and liberties of democratic citizenship. But I also
think that understanding political liberalism’s fundamental principle to be a
principle of equal civic respect for citizens when deciding fundamental political
questions (and not a principle of toleration) helps to show that this problem in
Rawls’s Law of Peoples does not reflect an intrinsic problem with political
liberalism. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle to be civic
respect, in addition to clarifying political liberalism’s normative basis, yields a
more consistent Law of Peoples, one not willing to compromise political liberal-
ism’s commitment to the ideal of democratic self-government by free and equal
citizens. Understanding the status of the principle of civic respect as the ‘true’ or
292

correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in pluralist

societies helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and inter-
national domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about
fundamental political issues.
notes
Thanks to David Hills, David Miller, Debra Satz, and two anonymous referees for their
comments on an earlier version of this article. Section III, in particular, benefited from
their helpful criticisms. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Anderson, Stephen Darwall, Mika
LaVaque-Manty, and David Velleman for their invaluable assistance in helping me to
formulate my conception of ‘civic respect’ in earlier work. Lastly, I would like to thank
Jean Coleno and Evan Kirchhoff for helping me to render the current version of the
article considerably more readable (or at least less unreadable) than the earlier version.
1. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1999). For Rawls’s use of the term ‘peoples’, rather than ‘states’, see ibid.,
pp. 23–30. Roughly, the former term is employed to ‘highlight their moral nature
and the reasonably just, or decent, nature of their regimes’. See ibid., p. 27. Whereas
states, as traditionally conceived, are simply ‘rational’ (in the sense that they
primarily seek to maximize their own self-interest), ‘peoples’, in Rawls’s use of the
term, are both ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ (in that they are willing to abide by fair
terms of cooperation with other peoples, even when doing so does not maximize
their own self-interest). The distinction between the ‘rational’ and the ‘reasonable’
is explained by Rawls in John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993), pp. 48–54. These ideas are also discussed in Burton
Dreben, ‘On Rawls and Political Liberalism’, in The Cambridge Companion to
Rawls, edited by S. Freeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
pp. 316–46, especially pp. 322, 340. For further discussion of the different roles of
the idea of ‘the reasonable’ in Rawls’s work, see Jon Mandle, ‘The Reasonable in
Justice as Fairness’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1999): 75–108.
2. Rawls has attempted to recast his conception of justice as fairness (most famously
presented in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999)) as a purely ‘political’ conception in the following works:
John Rawls, ‘Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical’, Philosophy and
Public Affairs 14 (1985): 223–52; Rawls, Political Liberalism; John Rawls, ‘Reply
to Habermas’, Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 132–80; John Rawls, ‘Introduction
to the Paperback Edition’, in Political Liberalism, paperback edn. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. xxxvii–lxii; John Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public
Reason Revisited’, in The Collected Papers of John Rawls, edited by S. Freeman
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 573–615; John Rawls,
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001).
3. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 10 (see also p. 154).
4. For example, see Will Kymlicka, ‘Two Models of Pluralism’, in Toleration: An
Elusive Virtue, edited by D. Heyd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996),
pp. 81–105; Kok-Chor Tan, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). A different objection that some
293

critics have levelled against political liberalism is that the principle of toleration is
no less controversial than the various principles that are a part of the comprehensive
doctrines (religious, moral, or philosophical views) that Rawlsian political
liberalism endeavours to avoid. For example, see Thomas Christiano, ‘Is There Any
Basis for Rawls’s Duty of Civility?’ Modern Schoolman 78 (2001): 151–61. As I
note later in the article, at no point in his writings on political liberalism does Rawls
in fact assert that toleration is the basis or ‘fundamental principle’ of political
liberalism.
5. The idea of ‘decency’ is meant to be similar to, but less demanding than, the idea of
‘the reasonable’ in political liberalism. For Rawls’s discussion of the idea of
‘decency’ and ‘decent societies’, see Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 67, 88. Rawls
notes that DHSs are less reasonable than liberal societies. See ibid., p. 83.
6. For example, see Charles R. Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, Ethics 110 (2000):
669–96; Stanley Hoffman, ‘Dreams of a Just World’, New York Review of Books, 2
November 1995: 52–7; Martha Nussbaum, ‘Women and the Law of Peoples’,
Politics, Philosophy and Economics 1 (2002): 283–306; Thomas Pogge, ‘Rawls on
International Justice’, Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2001): 246–53; Tan, Toleration,
Diversity, and Global Justice; Fernando Teson, ‘The Rawlsian Theory of
International Law’, Ethics and International Affairs 9 (1995): 79–99.
7. This claim is also defended by Allen Buchanan. See Allen Buchanan, ‘Justice,
Legitimacy, and Human Rights’, in The Idea of a Political Liberalism, edited by V.
Davion and C. Wolf (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 73–89.
According to Buchanan, Rawls is wrong to think that political liberalism’s
commitment to the ‘primacy of legitimacy’ (ibid., p. 73) when formulating
principles of justice requires a political liberal Law of Peoples to tolerate DHSs, or
to refrain from including liberal democratic rights among the set of human rights
that all societies ‘in good standing’ must respect. Rather, Buchanan holds that key
features of political liberalism, namely, Rawls’s account of reasonable cooperation
and his idea of the ‘burdens of judgement’, suggest that in fact all societies ‘in good
standing’ within a just international system should respect liberal democratic rights.
As will become clear in my discussion, I share this conclusion with Buchanan. My
own strategy for defending this conclusion, however, is to identify the normative
principle that underlies political liberalism’s commitment to the ‘primacy of
legitimacy’ (which I claim should be understood as a principle of equal civic respect
for citizens) and explain that a commitment to this principle is incompatible with
the toleration of most DHSs in Rawls’s Law of Peoples.
8. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 11–14, 15; Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas’,
pp. 134–5; Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 584.
9. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 137. See also ibid., pp. 216–7; Rawls, ‘Reply to
Habermas’, p. 148; Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 578.
10. It is important to keep in mind that Rawls’s characterization of well-ordered liberal
societies, DHSs, and a just ‘Society of Peoples’ are all part of what he calls ‘ideal’
or ‘full compliance’ theory – roughly, normative accounts of what the political
principles and institutions of such societies would look like under the ‘best possible’
circumstances. Accounts of political institutions and arrangements formulated at the
level of ideal theory are meant to serve as guides or models for criticizing and
reforming existing political institutions and arrangements. Alternatively, Rawls
294

describes his work in political philosophy as an attempt to sketch what a ‘realistic

utopia’ might look like. A well-ordered liberal society, for example, is ‘realistic’ in
taking certain natural, social, and psychological facts about the world as given, but
‘utopian’ in imagining what, given these facts, a fully legitimate and just political
society would look like. For Rawls’s discussion of ‘ideal theory’, see Rawls, A
Theory of Justice, pp. 7–8, 215–6, 308–9; Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 285;
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, pp. 13, 65–6; Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 4–5.
Rawls explains the idea of a ‘realistic utopia’ in Rawls, Justice as Fairness, pp. 4,
13; Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 4–8, 11–12, 16, 29–30, 44–5.
11. Rawls employs the philosophical device of the ‘original position’ to determine these
normative principles. See Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 30–43. The details of
Rawls’s justificatory strategy are not relevant for my discussion in this section.
12. ‘Outlaw states’ are states with regimes that ‘refuse to comply with a reasonable Law
of Peoples’, according to Rawls. See Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p.5. ‘Benevolent
absolutisms’ are states that honour basic human rights, but deny their members ‘a
meaningful role in making political decisions’ (ibid., p. 4). ‘Societies burdened by
unfavourable conditions’, or simply ‘burdened societies’, are societies ‘whose
historical, social, and economic circumstances make their achieving a well-ordered
regime, whether liberal or decent, difficult if not impossible’ (ibid., p. 5). With
respect to burdened societies, well-ordered societies ‘owe a duty of assistance . . . so
that . . . [burdened societies] may establish their own reasonably just or decent
institutions’ (ibid., p. 5). I briefly discuss the idea that liberal societies may have a
‘duty of assistance’ with respect to non-liberal societies in the conclusion of this
article.
13. On Rawls’s idea of ‘decency’, see note 5. Also, Rawls acknowledges that DHSs
may not even potentially exist. Whereas actual democratic peoples might
approximate or realize the features of a well-ordered society to varying degrees,
‘The case of decent hierarchical peoples is even less clear’. See Rawls, The Law of
Peoples, p. 75. Lastly, Rawls acknowledges the possibility that, as an empirical fact,
protecting the human rights required by the Law of Peoples might necessitate
political institutions that realize full liberal democratic rights. ‘I do not argue with
this contention’, Rawls states, ‘and indeed it may be true’ (ibid., p. 75, note 16).
Still, Rawls claims that political liberals must ask ‘whether we can imagine such a
society; and, should it exist, whether we would judge that it should be tolerated
politically’ (ibid., p. 75, note 16). Rawls thinks that political liberals should tolerate
such societies, as a matter of principle, whereas my claim in this article is that
political liberals should not tolerate such societies, except for pragmatic or
instrumental reasons (for example, in order more effectively to encourage such
societies to reform themselves along liberal and democratic lines).
14. Rawls’s argument for this claim involves a third original position. As noted earlier,
this aspect of Rawls’s justificatory strategy is not relevant for my discussion.
15. Another reason for ensuring that DHSs could endorse the Law of Peoples
mentioned by Rawls involves the importance of maintaining the self-respect of all
peoples. See Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 61–2, 122 f. I do not discuss this
reason here.
16. See Beitz, ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, p. 671; Michael Blake, ‘Toleration and
Reciprocity: Commentary on Martha Nussbaum and Henry Shue’, Politics,
295

Philosophy and Economics 1 (2002): 326 f.; Nussbaum, ‘Women and the Law of
Peoples’, pp. 289–90; Tan, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice, pp. 27 f.
17. As Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 574 states: ‘a reasonable
doctrine accepts a constitutional democratic regime and its companion idea of
legitimate law’.
18. On this matter, Kok-Chor Tan observes: ‘so nonliberal politics, unreasonable in the
domestic context, becomes reasonable in the international context’. See Tan,
Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice, p. 30. This difference is also noted by
Blake. See Blake, ‘Toleration and Reciprocity’, pp. 327–9.
19. See Nussbaum, ‘Women and the Law of Peoples’, p. 294; Tan, Toleration,
Diversity, and Global Justice, pp. 39–44.
20. Tan, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice, p. 38.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 40. Tan mentions another reason, namely, the indirect liberalizing effect
that the broader liberal society will have on non-liberal communities within it. I do
not discuss this reason in this article, since it is not relevant to my argument.
24. Ibid., p. 51.
25. Ibid., p. 45.
26. A number of other political philosophers criticize political liberalism for its basis on
toleration without reference to The Law of Peoples. See, for example, Christiano, ‘Is
There Any Basis for Rawls’s Duty of Civility?’; Kymlicka, ‘Two Models of
Pluralism’. What I say in the next few paragraphs will, I hope, show that any
interpretation of Rawlsian political liberalism that holds that the principle of
toleration is its ‘fundamental principle’ should be rejected.
27. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 10. See also p. 154.
28. Tan, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice, p. 4. See also p. 52.
29. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 77–8. See also Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas’,
pp. 154–5; Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 586.
30. Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 578.
31. Rawls, ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’, p. xliv.
32. Charles Larmore, ‘The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism’, The Journal of
Philosophy 96 (1999): 607.
33. Stephen Darwall, ‘Two Kinds of Respect’, in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect,
edited by R.S. Dillon (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 181–97.
34. For example, see I. Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. J.W.
Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1981), especially the second section.
35. Darwall, ‘Two Kinds of Respect’, p. 184.
36. As Darwall notes: ‘Appraisal respect is an attitude of positive appraisal of a person
either judged as a person or as engaged in some more specific pursuit’. See ibid.,
p. 190.
37. Because my discussion in this article is limited to ‘ideal theory’, in which societies
are treated as ‘closed’ systems of social cooperation across generations, I will not
attempt here to address questions concerning the status of resident non-nationals.
38. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 54. See also ibid., pp. 49–50, 54–62; Rawls, ‘Reply
to Habermas’, p. 134; Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 613.
39. These burdens help to show how disagreements can persist among rational and
296

reasonable persons, despite their best efforts, over which particular comprehensive
doctrine found in society, if any, is the true or correct one. See Rawls, Political
Liberalism, pp. 54–7.
40. For Rawls’s description of these fundamental political matters, see Rawls, Political
Liberalism, pp. 214–5, 227–30, 235; Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’,
p. 575, note 7. For a defence of Rawls’s distinction between political questions
concerning ‘constitutional essentials’ and ‘matters of basic justice’, on the one hand,
and other kinds of political questions, on the other, see T.M. Scanlon, ‘Rawls on
Justification’, in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by S. Freeman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 139–67, especially pp. 162–3. For
the purposes of this article, I will assume that this distinction is defensible.
41. See Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 576; Rawls, Political
Liberalism, pp. 224, 253.
42. As Rawls explains, ‘it neither criticises nor attacks any comprehensive doctrine . . .
except insofar as that doctrine is incompatible with the essentials of public reason
and a democratic polity’. See Rawls, ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, p. 574.
43. On this matter, Rawls states: ‘the content of public reason is given by a family of
political conceptions [of justice]’ and that public reason ‘proceeds entirely within a
political conception of justice’. See ibid., pp. 581, 584.
44. In a similar vein, Rawls states: ‘By publicly affirming the basic liberties citizens in
a well-ordered society express their mutual respect for one another as reasonable
and trustworthy, as well as their recognition of the worth all citizens attach to their
way of life’. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 319.
45. The terms of public reason are given by the reasonable conceptions of justice
advanced by citizens (see note 43).
46. I see my claim here as compatible with a recent argument advanced by Charles
Larmore. According to Larmore, political liberalism’s commitment to the liberal
principle of legitimacy means that it must endorse the truth or correctness of
something like a ‘principle of respect for persons’. This is necessary, Larmore
argues, in order to ‘make clear why it is that the validity of coercive principles
should depend upon reasonable agreement’. See Larmore, ‘The Moral Basis of
Political Liberalism’, p. 607. In other words, Larmore maintains that something like
a principle of respect for persons must be affirmed as true or correct in order to
explain why only conceptions of justice that satisfy the Liberal Principle of
Legitimacy can be realized in the political and economic institutions of the basic
structure. A broadly similar argument is also advanced by David Estlund in D.
Estlund, ‘The Insularity of the Reasonable: Why Political Liberalism Must Admit
the Truth’, Ethics 108 (1998): 252–75.
47. Ibid., p. 253 f.
48. As Tan states: ‘Rawls[’s] ambition and hope to the contrary, political liberalism
cannot avoid appealing to comprehensive philosophical claims and so cannot avoid
making contentious foundational claims of some sort’. See Tan, Toleration,
Diversity, and Global Justice, p. 56. For a well-known earlier presentation of this
argument, see Joseph Raz, ‘Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence’,
Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990): 3–46.
49. Likewise, Larmore notes that ‘the principle of respect does not express or entail a
comprehensive moral philosophy’. Rather, ‘It has its place in a great many
297

otherwise disparate ideas of the human good.’ See Larmore, ‘The Moral Basis of
Political Liberalism’, p. 623. In a similar vein, Estlund states, ‘This [concession]
grants little to [critics of political liberalism such as] Raz, since it allows that a
conception of justice might be legitimate even though it is false.’ See Estlund, ‘The
Insularity of the Reasonable’, p. 275.
50. More precisely, according to Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 199, a society is ‘well
ordered’ if it can be characterized by the following three features:
(1) . . . it is a society in which all citizens accept, and acknowledge before one
another that they accept the same principles of justice; (2) . . . its basic structure,
its main political and social institutions and the way they hang together as one
system of cooperation, is publicly known, or with good reason believed, to satisfy
those principles; and (3) . . . [its] citizens have a normally effective sense of
justice, that is, one that enables them to understand and to apply the principles of
justice, and for the most part to act from them as their circumstances require.
Given that there may be more than one reasonable conception of justice advocated
in a well-ordered society, the first feature of a well-ordered society should perhaps
be modified to read: all citizens accept, and acknowledge before one another that
they accept, a legitimate conception of justice (that is, a conception that satisfies the
Liberal Principle of Legitimacy).
51. For two prominent ‘liberal cosmopolitan’ accounts of global justice, see Charles R.
Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999); Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002). Tan in Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice
also defends a ‘liberal cosmopolitan’ account of global justice.
52. This is compatible, I think, with viewing individual human beings as the
fundamental units of moral concern in any theory of justice. Indeed, the principle of
civic respect assumes this to be the case. Thus a revised version of the Law of
Peoples that recognizes the principle of equal civic respect for citizens as political
liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’ could be considered a form of ‘liberal
cosmopolitanism’, despite regarding ‘peoples’ as the main subjects of global justice.
(Thanks to an anonymous referee for bringing this point to my attention.)
53. Thanks to David Miller for bringing this question to my attention.
54. Rawls also states that ‘other [non-Islamic] religions are tolerated and may be
practised without fear or loss of most civic rights, except the right to hold the higher
political or judicial offices’. See Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 76. How members
of religious minorities can be barred from higher political or judicial offices, but not
be ‘treated as inferior by Muslims in public or social relations’ is not explained by
Rawls.
55. One might argue that the religious minorities in any DHS make up a sufficiently
small portion of the total population that the ‘common good idea of justice’ that
governs the basic structure of the DHS in question need not be justified in terms
that they can accept (though Rawls himself does not suggest this and does not
indicate that the religious minorities of DHSs, including Kazanistan, make up only a
small portion of the total population). But if this argument is made, no normative
reason seems available to explain why is it acceptable for DHSs to ignore the
298

fundamental interests of its religious minorities in this way, but it is unacceptable

for liberal societies to do so.
56. Thanks to an anonymous referee for emphasizing the importance of this point.
57. This feature of Rawls’s Law of Peoples is the basis for Stephen Macedo’s defence
of Rawls’s treatment of DHSs in S. Macedo, ‘What Self-Governing Peoples Owe to
One Another: Universalism, Diversity, and The Law of Peoples’, Fordham Law
Review, Special Symposium on Rawls and the Law 72 (2004): 1721–38.
58. I concede, though, that there may exist some DHSs in which almost all citizens do
endorse the same comprehensive doctrine and in which this endorsement does not
require the use of political oppression by the state. In so far as the comprehensive
doctrine that justifies the political institutions of such a society is in fact freely
endorsed by all the reasonable citizens of that society, liberals have no cause for
complaint. However, I also think that such societies, if they should exist, would be
exceedingly rare. Even at the level of ideal theory, societies with adequately free
political and social institutions will tend to become pluralist over time. See Rawls,
Political Liberalism, pp. xxiv, 4, 36–7. In short, I hold that almost all societies
capable of supporting adequately just political institutions in the contemporary
world will be pluralist in character and that the principle of equal civic respect
should be understood as the correct principle to govern the public political relations
of all reasonable citizens in those societies.
299

Civic Respect, Political Liberalism, and Non-Liberal Societies

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Civic Respect, Political Liberalism, and Non-Liberal Societies

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

politics, philosophy & economics article

© SAGE Publications Ltd

Civic respect, political

keywords civic respect, international relations, justice, political liberalism, Rawls,

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

suggest should be understood as a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings.

Although there may be disagreements over how precisely to interpret each of

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

enforceable right to reject non-liberal comprehensive doctrines, or leave non-

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

international case. The failure to constrain the principle of toleration in order to

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

reciprocity is an expression of this principle, and it justifies the Liberal Principle

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

among citizens.44 In addition, the principle of civic respect, by requiring that

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Political liberalism must acknowledge that it cannot be thoroughly agnostic about

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

extension of Rawls’s own views concerning burdened societies. Rawls has no

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in pluralist

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

describes his work in political philosophy as an attempt to sketch what a ‘realistic

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

fundamental interests of its religious minorities in this way, but it is unacceptable

Downloaded from ppe.sagepub.com at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 3, 2015

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen