Justificatory Liberalism (1) - The Theory - A First Attempt

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The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution.

Rousseau, The Social Contract

This is a broad-stroke account of justificatory liberalism, a theory of freedom developed by Gerald Gaus.

Justificatory liberalism takes its clues from Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, who reflect on the state of nature as an argumentative stage on their way to a theory of the good society.

For the present purpose the state of nature may be thought of as a contrast medium (Kontrastmittel) meant to help us see the differences between a world

• without government (the state of nature), and 

• one in which there are state-forming arrangements, like a social contract.

Writes Gerald Gaus:

Indeed, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant all maintain that the chief inconveniences of the state of nature arise from individuals relying on their individual, controversial judgements about natural rights and natural law.

The basic problems are two, one moral and one practical.

The moral flaw of the state of nature ruled by individual judgement is that we act without justification.

(Gaus, G. (1996), Justificatory Liberalism. An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory, Oxford University Press. p. 187.)

As for the practical problem,

... a state of nature ... would be characterized by uncertainty and conflict, undermining the basis of cooperation. Inconsistent interpretations of each other's rights and responsibilities would lead to conflict and thwart the development of settled expectations. 

(Ibid. p. 183)

Justificatory Liberalism tends to emphasis the moral problem, as its very name reaffirms. Its core assumption is as follows:

To make genuine moral demands on others, and not browbeat them or simply insist that they do or believe what you want, you must show that, somehow, their system yields reasons to embrace your demand. Morality, then, requires that we reason publicly, from the standpoint of others.

Of course, if the rational standpoints of everyone were identical -- if fully rational people always had identical systems of reasons and beliefs -- the requirement to reason publicly would easily met. To reason from one's own justified perspective and to reason publicly would be the same. But ... justified belief systems may diverge significantly, and from there arises the distinction between what is personally and what is publicly justified.

If our relations with others are to be morally informed, we must reason publicly.

Ibid. p. 129

Even more fundamentally, justificatory liberalism assumes that certain traits common to all human beings make it sensible and possible for them to (endeavour to) concur on a number of basic rules guarding their inalienable requirements for agency ( = human autonomy, or my "anthropocentric freedom" or "A-Freedom").

As all human beings are affected - in a certain sense equally - by the enforcement or non-enforcement of these basic rules, justificatory liberalism demands and defends an egalitarian public in the sense that

Agency is so basic to our understanding of the self that ... we describe those without a sense of their own agency as having personality disorders.

G. Gaus, The Order of Public Reasons, 2011, p. 338

Therefore, it is reasonable to organise public life around

The Presumption in Favor of Liberty: (1) agents are under no standing moral obligation ... to justify their choices to others [which is the meaning of the term blameless liberty used below]; (2) it is wrong to exercise one's liberty so as to interfere with, block, or thwart the agency of another without justification.

Ibid., 341

This establishes a public of free and equal human beings. And it this public that justificatory liberalism addresses itself to. The intent is to promote mutual respect and consideration among the "Members of  the Public," as Gaus chooses to call them.

To treat one another as free and equal is ... to lay no claim to moral authority over him - except that which he himself (as a Member of the Public) endorses. This implies that blameless liberty is the default: a person must have reason to endorse the authority of a moral rule ... Fundamental to seeing others as free and equal is to refrain from asserting moral authority over them without justification.

(Ibid. p. 319)

What makes a person the subject of freedom, i.e. an agent empowered to operate as is apt for her in a free society,  is her immunisation from arbitrary acts. The immunisation is accomplished by protecting her from any impositions that are unjustified to her.

In the end, what is important about showing that all Members of Public endorse the rules of social morality? The importance is the distinction between justified authority and authoritarianism: justified authority is not "browbeating," whereas unjustified authority is.

If I claim simply that you must φ, because my use of reason leads me to conclude that φ is required though you do not have access to reasons that show why it is required, I am simply insisting that you must believe what I believe, or you must act as I would have you act. Even on my own view, the demand has no normative authority accessible to you. Because, as far as you can see, my demand has no normative authority - you cannot see reasons to comply - doing as I say must be simply giving in to me. If, on the other hand, my demand is rooted in your reasons as a free and equal person - reasons that are accessible to you ... - the normative authority to which I appeal, even when you disagree, is rooted in your own evaluative point of view.

Although I am insisting that you have made an error, your error is in failing to see the normative authority that your own view - your own normative commitments - grants to my demand ... [T]hink of a promise. In demanding that you keep your word I appeal to the authority you have granted me, even if you are now refusing to comply. I am not browbeating you when I insist on your performance.

(Ibid. p.30)

In his extensive work, Gaus tries to show that Public Reason (the working out of moral demands that free and equal persons have been able to concurrently justify and therefore are entitled to make on one another) ought to and can practically be the guiding principle for political comportment and decision making in a free society. He tries to demonstrate that public justification is what gives cohesion to a free society, from the most basic convictions on which it is based to concrete legal and political decision-making.

I shall refrain from any evaluation at this point. In fact, I shall have another go at outlining Gaus' theory in another blog post.

Continued in Justificatory Liberalism (2) - The Theory - A Second Attempt

Footnote on "free and equal"

Incidentally, keeping my own theory of liberty in mind, I think, only when we add the imperative of equality to the fact of anthropocentric freedom (man's ability to act of his own volition) that sociogenic freedom (the enhancement of personal autonomy by general restrictions on anthropocentric freedom) - freedom in the modern and the liberal understanding - is achieved.