The Duty to Transform Public Reason

Abstract

Abstract Normative theorists of liberal democratic self-defence rarely discuss the role of partisans as agents of containment of illiberal and anti-democratic views. In particular, they overlook partisans’ creative ability to reshape society’s public opinion, stressed instead by the burgeoning literature in political theory on ethical partisanship. However, this literature is similarly silent about how partisans should contribute to liberal democratic self-defence. This chapter argues that under conditions of liberal democratic deconsolidation, reasonable partisans should employ their creative abilities to transform the visions for society each of their parties campaigns on (or, in Rawlsian language, transform society’s public reason). They must never adopt unreasonable messages, therefore rejecting any compromise with popular illiberal and anti-democratic beliefs. Partisans have a moral duty to transform society’s public reason in a strategic way, working towards renewed political conceptions of justice that, while staying within the limits of reasonableness, have a chance of winning back the support lost to unreasonable competitors. Rawls’s appreciation of the pluralism of reasonable conceptions of justice allows us to assign a role to reasonable partisans of various parties on the left–right spectrum, potentially tapping into different electorates of unreasonable competitors. Moreover, Rawls’s distinctive account of sincerity in democratic deliberation turns out to be especially well-suited to justify this strategic behaviour as ethical. The case of right-wing populism is used across the chapter to illustrate in detail how this duty to transform public reason might work in practice.