What does characterise a hyper-pluralist society is that not everyone accepts the burden of judgement resulting in the idea of tolerance (Rawls 1999: 177) and therefore not everyone agrees with the reasonable pluralism that is at the source of both the need for, and the possibility of, a political justification of principles of justice. Indeed, if hyper-pluralism is a realistic initial condition, the point is not to fix the conditions under which a society can consist of individuals who diverge on religious and moral matters, but are prepared to recognize one another as free and equal. Rather, it is to determine how individuals who are not prepared to take the last step can coexist and cooperate (Ferrara 2014: 71). Here the challenge faced by liberal democracies concerns, firstly, the justification of pluralism, because political liberalism cannot be applied to those who are not prepared to restrict the justification of political institutions only to principles that can be shared by those who do not share the same comprehensive concepts of goodness. Secondly, it concerns the manner in which liberal political institutions can be accepted by the representatives of unreasonable comprehensive doctrines. In other words hyper-pluralist societies must be stable in the absence of an overlapping consensus achievable between reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Ferrara’s view is that none of the ways proposed to confront pluralism in contemporary political philosophy look promising in this respect.

The objection to Rawls’ proposal is that it presupposes a “linear and one-directional” process from conflict to a modus vivendi, to the point of political convergence on constitutional principles and finally to an overlapping consensus on their interpretation. The point is that there is no reason to believe that there is a linear, irreversible process in which the use of public reason necessarily generates liberal institutions. Believing in the process’ irreversibility rather reveals a progressive, quasi-teleological concept of history and moral learning in Rawls’ political liberalism. There is no principled reason to exclude that “[….] constitutional provisions, public values and orientations, as well as interpretations of rights that were previously ‘political’ and thus part and parcel of the overlapping consensus, may over time cross the border in the opposite direction and return to be controversial.” (Ferrara 2013: 96). According to this reading the public use of reason may possibly generate constitutional principles and interpretations of rights that contradict the received liberal view.

If this is excluded by Rawls, however, it is because the political concept of justice as fairness is not the result but the premise for overlapping consensus. Communities can come to an overlapping consensus on the interpretation of justice through the use of public reason, but this is not what justifies the principles of justice. Justification in fact depends only on exercising two moral powers, rationality and reasonableness, which allow individuals to converge on political principles also when diverging on the truth of their respective comprehensive doctrines. In other words, justification does not depend on consensus; it rather explains why consensus can be expected as long as reasonable people engage in the public use of reason. The “irreversibility” of the process conducing from conflict to overlapping consensus therefore follows from two premises: (a) the standards against which moral progress is assessed are fixed ex ante and (b) rationality and reasonableness as moral powers are conceived as universal capabilities of individuals that enable players to converge on principles of justice such as fairness, once they are put in the condition to make a public use of reason – hence, as long as they participate in a democratic political culture. This interpretation perhaps minimises the deliberative aspects of public reason, but explains what otherwise looks like a “blind spot” in Political liberalism (Ferrara 2014: 96). In this interpretation, in fact, the political concept of justice simply moves the justification of political obligation from epistemology to practical reason (Salvatore 1996). Therefore, the development from conflict to a modus vivendi and finally to an overlapping consensus, can be seen as a progressive convergence because there is an independent justification of justice as fairness, in the light of which it is possible to assess the process of reaching a consensus over principles of justice (Rawls 1993: 134).

In this perspective, one also understands the objections raised by the supporters of an agonistic perspective of democracy. It is true that being reasonable does not amount to endorsing political liberalism, as both the acceptance of the burdens of judgement and the readiness to cooperate in acceptable terms with others can characterize many comprehensive doctrines, if not all (Ferrara 2014: 94). Nonetheless, rationality and reasonableness do outline a concept of a moral person, which is a crucial presupposition for political liberalism. In this sense, Mouffe just revives a Hegelian criticism of contractualism; stating that the principles of freedom and equality can only be extracted as outcomes of the social contract as long as one presupposes that all human beings are free and equal. While it is not necessary to be a liberal in order to be reasonable, reasonability is precisely what allows one to expect that, in appropriate conditions, individuals will converge on the liberal political concept of justice as fairness.

This is not intended to support to Mouffe’s positive proposal, however. On the contrary, I agree that the agonistic view of democracy is ultimately self-defeating, as it cannot provide a rational basis for social criticism (Ferrara 2014: 94). As long as one rejects the very idea of a public sphere, in which controversies can be settled through the “non-coercive” force of arguments, there is no escaping the performative contradiction that Habermas (1985: 121-22) blames on Adorno and Horkheimer. Rejecting the idea of a rational public sphere just dissolves the possibility of taking critiques to be based on reason. Indeed, as long as arguments are not discriminated from power, one can hardly  make sense of public debates as deliberative processes. In this sense, the agonistic reading of democracy seems to be marked by an interesting ambiguity concerning how democratic conflicts are understood. In a deliberative view of politics, conflicts acquire a political significance only to the extent to which they can be formulated as critiques, hence as opposing the reasons that count for or against certain public choices, to the mere exercising of power displayed by political institutions. This, however, implies that the “non-coercive” force of arguments plays a crucial role in making a conflict political. Moreover, as long as one takes “differences” to pre-empt the very possibility of rational arguments, all one can do is take note of expressed interests and preferences. Thus the only way conflicts can be democratically addressed is to resort to majority rule. Quite ironically, the agonistic view of democracy favours an aggregative, not deliberative concept of the democratic process.

What is interesting in this context is that Ferrara ultimately also rejects the third option, which is the possibility of conjectural reasoning. In a conjectural argument one does not place comprehensive doctrines between brackets. One rather exploits the resources of a specific comprehensive doctrine to argue from within it for or against certain principles of justice. Hence these principles turn out to be justified in the substantive vocabulary of the relevant comprehensive doctrine – these are, for instance, the kind of arguments promoted by Michael Walzer (1994). Here the hermeneutic assumption that there are no incommensurable cultures, and therefore understanding amounts at least to a certain extent to justification, plays in favour of this option. As Gadamer observes, understanding others requires treating their reasons as potentially binding and therefore being disposed to revise one’s own prejudices as they are proved to be inadequate. According to this view, understanding tends to naturally turn into a dialogue in which no one can establish in advance who is to learn from whom (Habermas 1983: 31). If this is true, however, the results provided by a conjectural strategy can be expected to be similar to those promised by the Habermasian view of deliberative politics, in which the possibility to reach legitimate consensus neither depends on avoiding any controversial issues, nor does it rest on the idea that some general principles are so fundamental they can be found in any religious or moral culture, which is the limit of conjectural “passe-partout” strategies (Ferrara 2014: 102-103). The power of conjecture in this case is rather part of the hermeneutic practice in which participants are reciprocally engaged in thematising and discussing moral principles, cultural prejudice, and theoretical assumptions. A conjectural strategy in this sense always begins in the middle, like reparations on Neurath’s boat. Unlike overlapping consensus, rational convergence can here be achieved on principles not included in the comprehensive doctrines of participants, as they are literally produced by the deliberative process. In fact, the acceptability of political principles is connected in this case to the epistemic function of discourses, which does not impose restrictions of any kind on the substantive considerations that count in favour of or against a specific principle or public choice (Habermas 1996, Sen 2009). This is why deliberation generates public reason rather than just amounting to the public use of private ones (Habermas 1996: 114). This may seem to downsize pluralism’s role only if one takes disagreement to be so extensive that no convergence is allowed. In this case, however, it is hard to say how to understand pluralism, not to mention reasonable pluralism. Pluralism is only possible when parties share the idea that there is something about which they disagree, for instance that some principles of justice do in fact exist. Yet where this is the initial situation, different concepts cannot be taken to be incommensurable, since they at least share the conceptual resources to recognize the issue at stake. If this is conceded, however, there is no principled reason not to expect that a suitably articulated discourse can generate convergence on shared principles, at least in the long run.

Why does Ferrara reject this view, which is clearly congruent with the way he addresses pluralism (Ferrara 2014: 67 ss.)? One gets the impression that the problem is pragmatic. Public debates, and conjectural arguments in particular, may require more time and more cultural resources than allowed by actual politics. Convergence in the long run may not be enough when faced with the disruption to which a political community can turn out to be exposed, here and now, by moral and religious conflicts. One may have no doubts that in the long run a number of shared principles can be found in principle even with those adhering to prima facie unreasonable comprehensive doctrines. But we know we may have not enough time and resources to bring this about. Ferrara’s proposal is that in such cases order may be guaranteed by a “multi-varied” agreement in which some adhere to constitutional principles on the basis of an overlapping consensus, while others submit on the basis of prudential considerations dictated by the need for a modus vivendi. In such a “multi-varied” democracy, one would thus have citizens endorse the comprehensive doctrine implemented by the constitutional essentials – the liberals – while others will adhere to the same principles for reasons which are rooted in their own comprehensive doctrines, and others still will submit for reasons of prudence.

Now, one can share the idea that in politics time is essential, and therefore such a consideration matters more than in other contexts – more than in epistemology, for instance. Yet one may ask why in a hyper-pluralist society liberal principles should enjoy the privilege of making for the “constitutional essentials” to which non-liberals should adhere to out of either reasonability or prudence. It is clear that this is not an issue that can be decided by the basic fact that a majority of people share a liberal-democratic culture in a specific society. This would, at best, generate a society that is stable for the wrong reasons, since the reasonable majority would de facto impose its own ideas on “unreasonable” minorities, and therefore be doomed to fall back into an unstable condition (Ferrara 2014: 91). Moreover, we should expect the interpretation of the constitutional essential to change as the composition of the population and the prevailing political culture change. One may wonder to what extent political liberalism would be preserved in this case. And what would be the right thing to do should unreasonable moral and religious cultures turn out to  prevail in the end. Here the initial problem seems to resurface. One should decide whether to confide in Rawls’ “progressive” option, to live with the paradoxes of an agonistic idea of democracy, or to resort to the hermeneutic strategy of conjecture.

Translated by Francesca Simmons

References

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– (1993), Political Liberalism, New York, Columbia University Press (tr. it., Liberalismo politico, Edizioni di Comunità, Turin 1994).

Salvatore, I. (2003), “Giustizia e liberalismo politico in John Rawls”, in Rivista di Filosofia (XCIV) 3, pp. 404-438.

Sen, A. (2009), The Idea of Justice, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press (tr. it. L’idea di giustizia, Mondadori, Milan 2010).

Walzer, M. (1994), Thick and Thin, Notre Dame (IN): Notre Dame University Press