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reasonable persons whom she addresses in public reason to have reasons for
supporting certain principles of justice that are identical to her own: a reason-
able person will only support principles of justice which she genuinely and
sincerely believes could be accepted by other reasonable people who may,
consistent with their being reasonable, differ from her on the big questions.
The specific upshot of this for toleration is that a reasonable person does not
treat other reasonable persons disagreement with her on the big questions as
TOLERATION FROM REASONABLENESS 73
evidence that these others are wilful, obstructive, stupid, or misinformed, even
though she retains her opposition to them in virtue of believing them to have
false beliefs with respect to the issue over which they disagree, given that for her
to believe something is for her to believe it to be true. In a Rawlsian society of
reasonable people, pluralism is not competitive and hostile in a Razian sense,
even though people remain opposed to one another in their religious etc.
outlooks. In a society characterised by reasonable disagreement, a reasonable
person realises that, however convinced she is of her own views, to insist that
political principles be justified by reference to these views in virtue of their
truth appears to other people, with equally reasonable views, to be an insistence
that her views have this importance simply because they are her views.28 So a
reasonable person will refrain from using state power to impose her preferred
political principles on others with equally reasonable views across the range of
issues forming the focus of an overlapping consensus: reasonable people who
accept the consequences of the burdens of judgement endorse political princi-
ples of toleration.29
To put this in terms of the problem of toleration as stated at the end of
chapter 2, what Rawls is claiming is that insofar as a person is reasonable in the
two senses specified, she will reject the imposition on others of commitments
she genuinely takes to be justified, because she accepts that others can reason-
ably disagree with her with respect to these commitments, and is committed to
the use of public reason to solve problems of justice. Rawls justification of prin-
ciples of toleration turns on the acceptability of his characterisation of the
operation of human reason as it addresses problems of justice in conditions of
freedom. If he is right about this then any person who takes to be justified the
imposition on others of her commitments simply in virtue of the fact that she
herself genuinely takes these commitments to be justified engages in flawed
practical reasoning.
Rawls reasonableness defence of toleration forms a part of his overall
constructivist project of justifying a political liberalism; I shall say nothing by
way of criticism of this project here.30 Instead, I shall focus (in the next section)
on the avoidance of three common but misplaced criticisms of the reasonable-
ness defence; the penultimate section addresses a more serious and worrying
attack.
Clarifications
Two common criticisms of the reasonableness defence of toleration interpret
Rawls claims about the burdens of judgement as sceptical or pluralistic claims.
If the reasonableness defence collapses into either of these approaches then it
shares their limitations with respect to the justification of toleration. However,
the interpretations of the reasonableness defence upon which these criticisms
rest are flawed.
To address the scepticism reading first, Rawls explicitly denies all the
following claims:31 (1) that there is no truth of the matter with respect to
74 TOLERATION
disagreements involving judgement; (2) that the truth of the matter with
respect to disagreements involving judgement can never be known; and (3) that
persons ought to have a sceptical attitude towards their own beliefs in virtue of
the fact that they cannot convince others to share them.32 That is, Rawls
rejects metaphysical and epistemological scepticism.33 The burdens of judge-
ment only explain why reasonable people cannot be expected to agree in all
matters of judgement, and have no implication for the fact of the matter if
there is one with respect to these disagreements, or for the attitudes that
persons ought to have towards their own beliefs.
Once we accept that reasonable pluralism is the outcome of the exercise of
human reason in conditions of freedom, we must accept, thinks Rawls, that this
fact of human life is not to be regretted.34 One way of disagreeing with Rawls
would be to claim that although reasonable pluralism is indeed the inevitable
outcome of the free exercise of reason, this is because human beings are flawed
and prone to error, and this fact is to be regretted. This suggestion is made by
David Estlund when he claims that [in] order to avoid relying on the strong scep-
tical views either that there is no truth on [matters of judgement] or that even if
there is truth there is no knowledge of it, one must explain disagreement as an
epistemic failure of at least some people to know things that may be knowable .35
Estlund s argument is this: if commitment to the burdens of judgement is to
avoid the implication (1) that there is no truth of the matter with respect to
disagreements involving judgement, or (2) that the truth of these matters can never
be known, then commitment to the burdens of judgement must imply (1´) that
there are truths of the matter with respect to disagreements involving judgement, or
(2´) that the truth of these matters can be known. But this argument is flawed. Rawls
claim is not that the burdens of judgement do not entail scepticism because they
entail non-scepticism; rather, Rawls claim is that the burdens of judgement have no
implications for scepticism, or any other position on the existence of truths and
their knowability. In which case, we need not view the disagreement made
inevitable by the burdens of judgement in terms of regrettable epistemic failure.36
Another way in which to dispute Rawls claim that the reasonable pluralism
made inevitable by the burdens of judgement is not to be regretted is to inter-
pret this claim in terms of the incommensurability theses. As we saw in the last
chapter, the truth of the incommensurability theses means that human life is
punctuated by tragic choice between incomparable and incompatible goods:
human beings experience the world of value in terms of loss. In which case, if
the burdens thesis is a thesis of incommensurability, then the reasonable
pluralism it makes inevitable is surely to be regretted because it would be better
for us to live in a world where tragic choice was not endemic.
In Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical a paper which is an
important prelude to Political Liberalism, and which is recast in large part in that
book Rawls appears to endorse this view.37 On the account offered there,
reason has limits with respect to adjudicating conflicts between competing
accounts of what is good, true, just, and beautiful, and, once these limits have
been reached, pluralism is permanent because all beliefs sets within pluralism
TOLERATION FROM REASONABLENESS 75
are consistent with reason, although none of them is uniquely demanded by
reason. The truth of the incommensurability theses means that reason underde-
termines beliefs about value because there comes a point at which reason can
specify no value according to which other values can be ranked, and neither
can it guide comparisons of values in the absence of a master-value.
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical appears in Political Liberalism
as lecture 1; however, in this work all references to incommensurability as an
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