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tude hardly engenders trust from the minority. By forsaking the goal of a
principled accommodation, it betrays the ideal of toleration altogether.
The practices of public reason
Seen in this way, considerations of trust do not seem to help us resolve the
complex problems that are raised in issues like homosexual marriage. At
first glance, both sides appear to be equally guilty of undermining trust:
the demands of homosexuals for marriage are simply too far beyond the
pale for traditionalists, but the traditionalists demand that their view of
proper sexuality have the force of law is too intransigent for the promoters
of gay rights. This case looks like one in which no resolution is possible
and in which the approach I have offered fails. We must, it seems, simply
hope for the conversion of one side or the other and consider ourselves
fortunate that the battlefield is one of political rhetoric and the ballot box
rather than the muskets and pikes of the sixteenth century.
Trust and the demands of civility
However, consideration of trust can, I think, offer something more at
least in a society like ours which is committed to the ideals of democracy,
human rights, and toleration. Trust is a reciprocal relationship. Insofar as
both sides accept toleration as an ideal, it must apply to everyone. To
132 Trust and practices of public reason
sustain trust, both sides must act with good will and assume that others
act with good will as well. Both sides must view society as a joint enter-
prise, which is shared by all sides in the dispute and to which everyone
must contribute. A group that insists that its view of reality including
what counts as a harm must be sanctioned by law without regard to
anyone else s views ceases to respect the inclusive character of the society.
In effect, the group no longer claims that the society is a joint enterprise;
instead, they claim that society is an enterprise only of the right-thinking
peoples in which the presence of others is, at best, respectfully forborne.
To insist on such a view fundamentally violates public trust by destroying
the reciprocity that lies at the heart of any relationship of trust.
To see society as a joint enterprise, however, we need not think that we
must accept the demands of others or that every principle we hold dear
must be compromised if others disagree. However, it does mean that we
should treat everyone with respect, whatever we feel about them person-
ally. The obligation to treat everyone with respect, of course, requires a
context in which every person no matter what their birth, gender, or
race is seen as a full member of society; such a requirement is only pos-
sible in a society that is already committed to liberal principles. For that
reason, the kinds of practices I advocate here would make no sense to, say,
the French of the sixteenth century or the English of the seventeenth. They
do, however, have an appeal to people who are already committed to
living in a liberal society. At this point, the kind of arguments offered by
T.M. Scanlon (1998) and John Rawls (1993) can have some traction.
In such a society, opponents in a debate are asked to show respect
towards one another. Respect requires, above all, civility. The duties of
civility require us to show that we understand and consider the views of
others (Calhoun 2000). As such, civility incurs two kinds of obligations on
individuals and groups. First and most importantly, it requires us to justify
our actions to others (Rawls 1993: 217; Scanlon 1998: ch. 5). To treat
others with the respect they deserve as partners in society, we must try to
address others when we take actions that may affect them. Such a require-
ment is not simply that we offer reasons to others that we think are suffi-
cient to warrant the public action that we take. Those reasons may justify
the action, but not necessarily to them. To meet the latter requirement, we
must offer them reasons that they could, in principle, accept. So tradition-
alists cannot condemn homosexuality through public law based on their
interpretation of the Bible, but equally, homosexuals cannot defend it
based on the superior value of individual autonomy. Instead, both sides
must appeal to values that are acceptable to all. We should, then, adopt
something like the concept of public reason that Rawls develops:
[T]he content of public reason is given by the principles and values of
the family of liberal political conceptions of justice. . . . To engage in
public reason is to appeal to one of these political conceptions to
Trust and practices of public reason 133
their ideals and principles, standards and values when debating fun-
damental political questions.
(Rawls 1997: 776)6
Rawls argues that matters of public law and fundamental public laws in
particular should be decided by an appeal to reasons that are part of the
public conception of justice. In other words, laws should not be based on
reasons that are compelling only within a set of values defined by only one
group in society; in Rawls s terms, they cannot be dictated by one  reason-
able comprehensive doctrine (Rawls 1993: 59). Christians, Jews, atheists,
Marxists, Kantians, and Millians all represent comprehensive doctrines
whose content should not be allowed to dictate public policy. Each must
appeal to the common view that forms the core values of a liberal society.
Indeed, even a commitment to a set of procedures is not possible without
an agreement about the fundamental values and principles that shape the
procedures (Rawls 1993: lec. V). The core idea of such a society is that a
just society should be comprised of free and equal citizens engaged in
cooperation over time. Such a society will be committed to a set of basic
rights and liberties that ensures that these freedoms are meaningful to
everyone in that society (Rawls 1997: 773 80). Each individual embraces,
more or less, the political conception of justice for her own reasons.
Insofar as she does, she can appeal to the values within the public concep-
tion that she herself wholeheartedly embraces. And when she does so, she
is also appealing to reasons that she knows everyone has reason to accept.
By affirming a common ground, she can recognize clearly the areas in
which we can trust one another (Macedo 1995a: 492 3).
This position is both stronger and weaker than that offered by Robert
Audi (2000). First, the position is stronger than the two principles of civic
virtue for which Audi argues: the principle of  public comprehensibility,
which requires that the reasons we offer can be understood by others
(Audi 2000: 156 7), and the  principle of civilly adequate reasons, which
requires us to present civic reasons that adequately support the proposed
law (Audi 2000: 158). The principle of public reason permits us to appeal
only to values within the public conception, which is a much narrower set
than those that people can be expected to understand, and it requires the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]