The document discusses John Rawls' concept of reasonable and unreasonable persons and their role in political legitimacy. It raises several issues with Rawls' approach. Specifically, it argues that Rawls' criteria for reasonableness are not politically neutral and risk excluding groups from the legitimation pool based on questionable grounds. Additionally, the document questions whether Rawls' approach adequately addresses those with doctrines that promote social domination. Overall, the application of Rawls' view of reasonableness to real groups is inconsistent and the exclusion of the unreasonable from political legitimacy is problematic.

1. Political Coercion
The Unreasonable John Rawls

2. Difference between
Reasonable and Rational
• Reasonableness is public: our reasonalbeness is our
readiness to participate in the public world and therein
negotiate and abide the fair terms of social cooperation
• The distinctive moral power of reasonableness is a
sense of justice/ rationality: conception of the good
• Reason why the unreasonalbe should not count: the
opinions of unreasonable do not tell us anything
informative about whether a system is legitimate or not
• Focus point: unreasonableness: if the two criteria are
consistent?

3. Rawls on Reasonableness
and Rationality
• Ideal society: citizens are both reasonable and rational.
• Rational persons (1) adapt means to their given ends;
(2) adjust their ends in light their overall life plans
• Reasonable persons are willing to:
• propose and honor fair terms of cooperation
• recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept
their consequences
• burdens of judgment: the source of possible
limitation and error involved in the exercise of
human reason

4. Liberalism, Consent, and
Political Autonomy
• Why anyone’s consent matters to political
legitimacy?
• In liberal tradition, the legitimacy of state
power is linked to the value of the political
autonomy of citizens
• Liberal states treat their citizens as free and equal
• Free and equal citizens have political autonomy
• [THUS, what kind of cooperation that citizens decide
autonomously matters to liberal states.]

5. Practical Objection
• in reality, liberalism settles for the mere consent of the
governed to arrangements that have been worked out
by a very few among them
• in principle, these arrangements must still be
justifiable from the standpoint of each citizen
• However, in reality, only the consent of some persons
is a realistic possibility

6. Revision: Hypothetical
Consent
• Hypothetical consent is the consent someone would
give to a political order under appropriate, and
specified, conditions.
• For most modern liberals, hypothetical consent is
construed in terms of the reasons for accepting one
political arrangement rather than another.
• The rational reconstruction need only be devised
and endorsed by a few intellectuals who take the
liberty of determining on their own what an entire
citizenty would endorse

7. OB to H.C.
• the reasonableness of the actors in our hypothesis may
not match the reality of men and women in actual life
• This modified approach is not a matter of liberal
principle but rather a pramatic concession to the
practical limitation of our ability to test political
conceptions
• Why should people follow the regulation they do not
choose?
• One modification: it is truth
• OB: pluralistic modern liberalism

8. Liberal spirit
• Waldron: conception of political judgment will be
appealing only to those who hold their commitmets in a
certain “liberal” spirit.
• OB: Vicious circle liberal spirit ○ consent
• Liberal paradoxes (p.168)→ inconsistent with the liberal
goal of resting on the consent of all the governed
• In Rawls’s view, the legitimacy of a political system is
sufficiently established even if it is endorsed by only the
reasonable persons
• yet, how satisfactory is the consent of a citizenry if the
process of representing consent excludes the
unreasonable(they would say “NO” to what is agree upon
by the reasonable)

9. The Fate of
Unreasonable People
• Rawls distinguish
• the fact of pluralism as such
• the fact of reasonable pluralism: the diversity of reasonable
views about fundamental matters of religion, morality, and
philosophy.
• support “Doctrines that reject one or more democratic freedoms”:
treat unreasonable doctrines as “war and disease”-- contain them:
suppress the expression or enactment of the unreasonable doctrine.
• THUS, 2 ways to deny political autonomy of the unreasonable:
• exclude them from the legitimation pool
• deny the full protection of their basic rights and liberties,
particularly freedom of expression

10. Who are the Unreasonable?
• To evaluate Rawls’s theory, there is a useful initial strategy: try to
determine who the unreasonable persons are. There are two
possibilities:
• From the outset, a liberalism that ignores the political views of
certain groups among a citizenry. Ex. liberal democracies have
historically found specious grounds, such as race and sex, for
excluding various groups of adults from political participation. →
makes us wary of any seemingly principled reason for excluding
certain groups of persons (bad reasons)
• Some people who dominate others or impose a social order that
degrades or oppress others. (good reasons)
• We must make sure:
• excluding particular persons from the legitimation pool for good
reasons only.
• ensuring the application of those good reasons is not overinclusive

11. • Does Rawls’s exclusion of unreasonable persons mean that
woman’s voice once again count for little or nothing in the
search for liberal legitimacy?
• Part of the answer depends on the extent to which the
stereotypes of women as poor reasoner persist today. →
Compared to former decades, the public now widely
acknowledges a substantial level of female achievement
• Rawls’s two criteria for “reasonableness”:
• willingness to seek fair terms of social cooperation
• acknowledgment that reasonable people can disagree on
fundamental matters of religion, morality, and philosophy
• Does these criteria have anything to do with women?
• Yes: conventional gender stereotypes seem support the
idea that women are reasonable. Ex. sociable, less
conscience driven→ more capable of tolerating

12. real women show more widespread tendencies to eschew fair terms
of social cooperation than other social groups?
• NO. On Hegel’s view, women are incapable of impartial political
participation because they cannot rise above loyalty to their own
family members.
• But, based on Friedman’s personal observation, it shows that
women do not appear to do so with any more partiality then men.
• THUS, Rawls’s conception of reasonableness commit no gender bias.
Thus, the case of women does not give good reason to worry about
Rawls’s exclusion of unreasonable persons from the legitimate pool
• However, Economically poorer classes could be excluded by
Rawls’s criteria.
• economically poorer classes are so absorbed with their own
plights that they cannot be trusted to consider the wider public
good.
• assumption: the wealthier classes are able to surmount self-interest
and base their political decisions on the common good.
• this line of reasoning can be an excuse for excluding the poor from

13. • Thus, Rawls’s conception of unreasonableness has mixed results
when applied to real groups of people.
• At least one of the groups historically disenfranchised by liberal
democracies, namely, the poorest classes, might qualify as
unreasonable in Rawls’s sense.
• The other point to see if Rawls’s criteria is sound: if the criteria really
exclude those who dominate others. (p.174)
• what about people with comprehensive doctrines that devalue
women and subordinate them to men?
• According to Rawls’s criteria, the adherents of such doctrines
should be excluded
• However, Rawls himself does not spell out these implications.
• Susan Moller Okin argues that Rawls actually vacillates in
his reation to such groups
• Thus, Rawls appears willing to include the real-world adherents
of some of those doctrines in his legitimation pool.

14. Conclusion
• These thoughts about who the unreasonalbe persons
are yield mixed result
• persons committed social domination will be
excluded
• worrisome risk that Rawls’s principle would lead to
the exclusion of some group of persons who have
historically been unjustifiably disecfranchised by
liberalism
• It is not clear whether the impact of Rawls’s
exclusion of unreasonable people would be benign
of malign overall.
• the application problem do not settle the question of
whether or not any unreasonable persons should be
excluded from the legitimation pool.

15. The Main Problem
• The unreasonable persons are defined as ones who
reject basic conceptions and values that define a
liberal democratic tradition.
• reasonable persons are affected by the burden of
judgment and will therefore disagree over
fundamental comprehensive matters
• the concern to seek fair terms of social cooperation
• Problem: anyone lacking these ideas is not only
unreasonable, they are also illiberal

16. • political liberalism’s reason for their legitimate
social institution is question begging
• If Rawls is not to engage in the question begging,
he needs a conception of reasonableness that is
political neutral→ to find good but politically
independent reasons for eliminating
unreasonable people from the legitimation pool.
• Rawls fails to do this.

17. • the quest for fair terms of social cooperation rules out 2 things:
• unfair terms of social cooperation
• terms of social cooperation that give some persons
undeserved advantage while others are made to bear
undeserved burdens (p.175)
• However, matters of fairness and deservedness are themselves
political notions.
• the ground of fairness and deservedness is diverse→ few
people would admit that they wanted unfair social systems.
they only have different account of “what fair is”
• People find themselves manifesting not only moral or
religious diversity, but also political diversity. Many
religious, moral, philosophical doctrines harbor political
content

18. • the political-diversity-involved comprehensive doctrines
undermines the very legitimacy of Rawls’s criteria in 2 ways:
• Rawls’s conception of unreasonableness is question-
begging because it is already biased in favor of persons
with basic liberal values
• Rawls’s conception of unreasonableness is coercively
imposed on persons who reject it.
• In Rawls’s view, the public culture of a liberal democratic
society lacks any “public and shared basis of justification”
that could establish for all citizens the truth of any particular
comprehensive doctrine.→ No one can make the claim that
his comprehensive beliefs are true. → thus when someone
attempts to impose her belief on others in the public sphere,
he is thereby attempting to impose them on at least some
persons for whom those beliefs are not publicly justifiable
• That is, Rawls’s ideal society would impose its coercive
power consensually only on reasonable persons at best.