Podcasts about public reason

Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the process of articulation of religious beliefs and political concerns that takes place in religious organizing and activism. Focusing on the example of Latin American liberation theology and the work of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Zegarra shows how liberation theology advocates have been able to produce a new balance between faith and politics that advances an agenda of progressive social change without reducing politics to faith or faith to politics. Drawing from theologian David Tracy's method of critical correlation, the book focuses on key historical, philosophical, and theological shifts that have allowed liberation theologians to produce a new interpretation of the relationship between faith and politics in the Christian tradition, especially when issues of social justice are at stake. The book further approaches liberation theology's contributions to theorizing social justice through an unconventional path: a critical dialogue with the work of philosopher John Rawls. This dialogue, as Zegarra contends, allows us to see more clearly the contributions of liberation theology to the cause of progressive social change. Ultimately the book stands between "public religion" and "public reason," offering something of a blueprint for theological innovation and for how to remain committed to one's faith while respecting and defending the core values of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the process of articulation of religious beliefs and political concerns that takes place in religious organizing and activism. Focusing on the example of Latin American liberation theology and the work of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Zegarra shows how liberation theology advocates have been able to produce a new balance between faith and politics that advances an agenda of progressive social change without reducing politics to faith or faith to politics. Drawing from theologian David Tracy's method of critical correlation, the book focuses on key historical, philosophical, and theological shifts that have allowed liberation theologians to produce a new interpretation of the relationship between faith and politics in the Christian tradition, especially when issues of social justice are at stake. The book further approaches liberation theology's contributions to theorizing social justice through an unconventional path: a critical dialogue with the work of philosopher John Rawls. This dialogue, as Zegarra contends, allows us to see more clearly the contributions of liberation theology to the cause of progressive social change. Ultimately the book stands between "public religion" and "public reason," offering something of a blueprint for theological innovation and for how to remain committed to one's faith while respecting and defending the core values of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the process of articulation of religious beliefs and political concerns that takes place in religious organizing and activism. Focusing on the example of Latin American liberation theology and the work of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Zegarra shows how liberation theology advocates have been able to produce a new balance between faith and politics that advances an agenda of progressive social change without reducing politics to faith or faith to politics. Drawing from theologian David Tracy's method of critical correlation, the book focuses on key historical, philosophical, and theological shifts that have allowed liberation theologians to produce a new interpretation of the relationship between faith and politics in the Christian tradition, especially when issues of social justice are at stake. The book further approaches liberation theology's contributions to theorizing social justice through an unconventional path: a critical dialogue with the work of philosopher John Rawls. This dialogue, as Zegarra contends, allows us to see more clearly the contributions of liberation theology to the cause of progressive social change. Ultimately the book stands between "public religion" and "public reason," offering something of a blueprint for theological innovation and for how to remain committed to one's faith while respecting and defending the core values of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the process of articulation of religious beliefs and political concerns that takes place in religious organizing and activism. Focusing on the example of Latin American liberation theology and the work of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Zegarra shows how liberation theology advocates have been able to produce a new balance between faith and politics that advances an agenda of progressive social change without reducing politics to faith or faith to politics. Drawing from theologian David Tracy's method of critical correlation, the book focuses on key historical, philosophical, and theological shifts that have allowed liberation theologians to produce a new interpretation of the relationship between faith and politics in the Christian tradition, especially when issues of social justice are at stake. The book further approaches liberation theology's contributions to theorizing social justice through an unconventional path: a critical dialogue with the work of philosopher John Rawls. This dialogue, as Zegarra contends, allows us to see more clearly the contributions of liberation theology to the cause of progressive social change. Ultimately the book stands between "public religion" and "public reason," offering something of a blueprint for theological innovation and for how to remain committed to one's faith while respecting and defending the core values of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the process of articulation of religious beliefs and political concerns that takes place in religious organizing and activism. Focusing on the example of Latin American liberation theology and the work of Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Zegarra shows how liberation theology advocates have been able to produce a new balance between faith and politics that advances an agenda of progressive social change without reducing politics to faith or faith to politics. Drawing from theologian David Tracy's method of critical correlation, the book focuses on key historical, philosophical, and theological shifts that have allowed liberation theologians to produce a new interpretation of the relationship between faith and politics in the Christian tradition, especially when issues of social justice are at stake. The book further approaches liberation theology's contributions to theorizing social justice through an unconventional path: a critical dialogue with the work of philosopher John Rawls. This dialogue, as Zegarra contends, allows us to see more clearly the contributions of liberation theology to the cause of progressive social change. Ultimately the book stands between "public religion" and "public reason," offering something of a blueprint for theological innovation and for how to remain committed to one's faith while respecting and defending the core values of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals. This means that democratic citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it is often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens' status as democratic equals. On a dominant interpretation, this acknowledgement comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts -- including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. This raises the issue of the kind of reasons that one may bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy must distinguish between properly public reasons and reasons that are nonpublic. Of course, the distinction is fraught. In his new book, Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People (Routledge, 2022), Blain Neufeld defends a novel view of public reason in a democratic society. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

According to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals. This means that democratic citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it is often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens' status as democratic equals. On a dominant interpretation, this acknowledgement comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts -- including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. This raises the issue of the kind of reasons that one may bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy must distinguish between properly public reasons and reasons that are nonpublic. Of course, the distinction is fraught. In his new book, Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People (Routledge, 2022), Blain Neufeld defends a novel view of public reason in a democratic society. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

According to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals. This means that democratic citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it is often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens' status as democratic equals. On a dominant interpretation, this acknowledgement comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts -- including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. This raises the issue of the kind of reasons that one may bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy must distinguish between properly public reasons and reasons that are nonpublic. Of course, the distinction is fraught. In his new book, Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People (Routledge, 2022), Blain Neufeld defends a novel view of public reason in a democratic society. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

According to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals. This means that democratic citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it is often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens' status as democratic equals. On a dominant interpretation, this acknowledgement comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts -- including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. This raises the issue of the kind of reasons that one may bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy must distinguish between properly public reasons and reasons that are nonpublic. Of course, the distinction is fraught. In his new book, Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People (Routledge, 2022), Blain Neufeld defends a novel view of public reason in a democratic society. Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Sheila Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is a pioneer in the field of STS. That acronym can be unpacked as either ‘science and technology studies' or ‘science, technology and society.' Jasanoff -- who describes herself as a sociologist of knowledge and a constructivist, trained in law, working in the tradition of the interpretive social sciences – is content with either use. “I think that represents two phases of the same field,” she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “First of all, it's the field that looks in detail at the institutions of science and technology and asks, ‘What are they like?' ‘What does it feel like to be doing them?' ‘What do they operate like as social institutions, as cultures, as formations in society?' The other face of STS – science, technology and society – is more about how science and technology function when they get out into the world at large.” Amid that expansive view, some areas, of course, particularly interest Jasanoff. “The more interesting turn,” she details, “was the turn that tried to occupy the territory previously given to philosophy of science, and started asking sociological and political questions about it.” One such question is the eternal “What is truth?” STS, a brash newcomer, took on the inquiry with gusto. “It took a kind of arrogance, if you will, certainly a bravery, in the 1970s, to say that, ‘Hey, truth isn't just out there. It's not just a Platonic thing and we try to approximate it. We can actually study truth as if it was a social production.' That,” she explains, “was the heartland of science and technology studies.” In the interview, Jasanoff outlines how science is often presented as a capital-T repository of Truth even in an age where the ‘death of the expert' has become a common trope. Citing the pandemic and how scientific advice changed on mask wearing, Jasanoff argues that “people should not be surprised that in crisis mode the way we know things changes and therefore the advice may change. Science has been sold as a bill of goods for so long that it is the Truth, it is reliable, a fact is always fact the moment we assert it, that these sorts of commonsensical things that we ought to understand have become difficult for people to grasp.” (Jasanoff's own research often looks at cross-national differences in her research, and after looking at mask-wearing in 16 nations she reports that “only in America has it become an article of faith – are you for science or against science” – based on your mask usage.) Remember, she continues, “The expert is not an embodiment of scientific fact. An expert is a particular kind of person who is qualified in particular ways, and every time we say ‘qualification,' something about the English language or about language in general, forces us to look at the skills that allow one to be considered qualified. “In fact, we should look at the external periphery of the qualification; a qualification sets boundaries on what you know, but it also sets boundaries on what you don't know.” Expertise is this double edged-thing.” Jasanoff is the founder and director of Harvard's Program on Science, Technology and Society. She's the author of several books aimed at both the academy and the public, such as 1990's The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as Policymakers, 2012's Science and Public Reason, and Can Science Make Sense of Life? in 2019. The University of Bergen, acting for the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, awarded her the Holberg Prize in March. That was the latest in a slew of honors for her research, including the University of Ghent Sarton Chair and the Reimar Lüst Award from the Alexander von Humboldt and Fritz Thyssen Foundations, a Guggenheim fellowship in 2010, and in 2018 the Albert O. Hirschman Prize from the Social Science Research Council. She is an elected foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she served on the board of directors.

Jordan and Brandon talk with Kevin Vallier about public reason liberalism and Catholic Integralism. They cover topics like what it looks like to have a well ordered society, trust, polarization, why Catholic integralism is anti-liberal, and more.Find more info about the London Lyceum or contact us at our website.Resources:1) Kevin Vallier's website2) The Order of Public Reason, Gerald Gaus3) Liberal Politics and Public Faith, Kevin Vallier4) Must Politics Be War?, Kevin VallierSupport the show

Examining the challenges posed by the present-day global order—-including political instability, the rise of authoritarianism, the epidemic of fake news and subversion of democracy through the weaponization of social media, the backlash against the rights of caste, ethnic, or racial minorities, and climate change—the dialogue in this episode between Author & Associate Professor of Communication, Santa Clara University Rohit Chopra and Writer & Journalist Salil Tripathi will address what the Gita may offer in helping us respond to such demands and where it may fall silent. How, for instance, might we reconcile the endorsement of patriarchy and a hierarchical caste order in the Gita with modern day notions of rights, justice, and dignity? The discussion also speaks to the urgent need for evaluating the Gita on the basis of a framework of public reason rather than of religious authority. This episode is adapted from a BIC Streams session originally broadcast on 1st October, 2021

In this episode, Dr. Bulzacchelli, Dr. Smith, and Jason discuss the current crises we are experiencing in the world, the Church, and seemingly everywhere we turn. We take a 30,000 foot view of the current culture underlying the crises. We cover: - Diagnosing the problem - We cannot think rationally - Reactionary thinking - Public reasoning for public reasoning - Decline of public reasoning - Truncation of reason to scientism - Atheism – the view of the person - Human suffering - A New Dogmatism and a new magisterium

Trust plays a central role in democratic societies. If we can’t rely upon fellow community members to act in accordance with generally accepted norms, then we’re going to be in a really bad way. Social trust in the US has fallen dramatically. In the early 1970s, around half of Americans said that most people can be trusted. Today, less than a third of Americans feel that way. Similarly, political trust—our faith in political institutions and processes to function properly—has declined as well. In the 1960s, more than 70 percent of Americans said that they trusted the federal government always or most of the time. Today, that figure hovers around 17 percent. In an idealized liberal democracy, a healthy dose of skepticism toward politicians and government officials is vital for assuring fruitful outcomes. However, we must be careful so that that accountability mechanism doesn’t turn into a cynicism that corrodes democratic norms. Rampant distrust prevents us from solving problems with our neighbors and broader communities. Alternatively, trust helps to grease the wheels of democracy. This enables us to better overcome inherited differences and to arrive at more pluralistic perspectives on the problems we face. Instead, we find ourselves in an increasingly polarized age, where we seem less and less to share common realities or notions of truth. Distrust breeds polarization, and polarization begets more distrust. When we no longer hold the same media or news sources in common or we maintain a thoroughgoing distrust of media institutions, what will prevent us from further polarization? Jeffrey Howard speaks with Kevin Vallier, a political philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, where he directs their program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. In his new book Trust in a Polarized Age (2020), Vallier advocates for public reason liberalism as a way of revitalizing social and political trust. He draws on empirical trust literature to argue a way forward for reducing polarization. He proposes that we reinvest in liberal democratic political and economic institutions: high-quality governance, procedural fairness, markets, social welfare programs, and freedom of association. Vallier believes that if we can educate ourselves on how elections and political parties take advantage of mistrust and polarization, we can protect American democracy against new authoritarian threats.  This raises some questions. What relationship is there between the scope of government and the degree of political trust in the broader society? Rather than view our political opponents as essentially evil, what might happen instead if we primarily acted as if they were misguided or ill-informed? How much more trust would be fostered if we focused locally rather than turning our eyes toward Washington DC or to the headquarters of multinational firms? What can we do to restore trust in the media? And what hope do we have of breaking the distrust-divergence feedback loop? Show Notes Trust in a Polarized Age by Kevin Vallier (2020) “Trust in a Age of Reactionaries and Revolutionaries” by Matthew Downhour (2021) “We’re Overdoing Democracy. But Why?” by Kevin Vallier (2019) “Suspending Politics to Save Democracy” by Lawrence Torcello (2020) The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard (1996) The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard (1998) Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman (1990) Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (2002) The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (1759) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776) A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1971) Political Liberalism by John Rawls (1993) The Constitution of Liberty by F.A. Hayek (1960) Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol I.: Rules and Order by F. A. Hayek (1973) The Order of Public Reason by Gerald Gaus (2010)

Successful societies run on trust, but trust in America's institutions and electoral system is in the pits. Partisans distrust each other and polarization has turned politics into war. Kevin Vallier's new book Trust in a Polarized Age applies empirical research on the causes and consequences social and political trust to develop a distinctive conception of liberalism. He offers a novel argument for a number of core liberal rights, free markets, the welfare state, and democratic institutions on the basis of their contribution to trust and its benefits. I'd like to say Kevin and I discussed his book in detail, giving you a clear overview of his argument, but that's not really what happened. Kevin and I are old philosophy buddies, our thinking has developed quite a bit over the decade or so we've known each other, and we're both pretty digressive. So what we ended up doing here is sort of catching up through a meandering conversation that always hovers near the themes of his excellent book, but leaves the exact contours of its original, rigorous argument a bit vague. Personally, I prefer to listening to smart people think out loud over a book report, so maybe it's for the best. This one's pretty long and and it's hard to summarize. But if you'd like to listen to a pro-life Christian political philosopher and a pro-choice atheist policy wonk speculate about what would happen if Roe v. Wade were struck down while agreeing that our acrimonious politics owes something to the anti-democratic nature of the Supreme Court, you'll have to stick around for awhile. We also take a bit of time to remember the great political philosopher Jerry Gaus, who recently passed away and meant a lot to both of us. Kevin Vallier is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University and the director of Bowling Green's program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. Trust in a Polarized Age by Kevin VallierThe Order of Public Reason by Gerald GausThe Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society by Gerald GausHost: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)Audio engineer: Ray IngegneriMusic: Dig Deep by RW SmithModel Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center  (@niskanencenter)To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate

Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989-2010. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University. As director of the center, he helps maintain the Witherspoon Institute’s relationships with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Religious Freedom Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Religious Freedom Project of Georgetown University. Franck earned his B.A. in political science (magna cum laude) from Virginia Wesleyan College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Northern Illinois University. He was a Henry J. Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 1993-95, J. William Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, 1998, and a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, 2008-09. He is the author of Against the Imperial Judiciary (1996), coeditor of Sober as a Judge (1999), and a contributor to History of American Political Thought (2003), The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2005, 2012), and The George W. Bush Presidency: A Rhetorical Perspective (2012). His writing regularly appears peer-reviewed sources such as The Review of Politics, American Political Thought, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy. He is also a regular blogger for National Review Online’s “Bench Memo’s” page and the “First Thoughts” page at First Things. Twitter: @MatthewJFranck Website: winst.org/about/staff/matthew-j-franck-phd

Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, where he taught constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy from 1989-2010. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University. As director ...

In this episode I talk to Reuben Binns. Reuben is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Computer Science in Oxford University. His research focuses on both the technical, ethical and legal aspects of privacy, machine learning and algorithmic decision-making. We have a detailed and informative discussion (for me at any rate!) about recent debates about algorithmic bias and discrimination, and how they could be informed by the philosophy of egalitarianism.You can download the episode here or listen below. You can also subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes (the RSS feed is here). Show notes0:00 - Introduction 1:46 - What is algorithmic decision-making? 4:20 - Isn't all decision-making algorithmic? 6:10 - Examples of unfairness in algorithmic decision-making: The COMPAS debate 12:02 - Limitations of the COMPAS debate 15:22 - Other examples of unfairness in algorithmic decision-making 17:00 - What is discrimination in decision-making? 19:45 - The mental state theory of discrimination 25:20 - Statistical discrimination and the problem of generalisation 29:10 - Defending algorithmic decision-making from the charge of statistical discrimination 34:40 - Algorithmic typecasting: Could we all end up like William Shatner? 39:02 - Egalitarianism and algorithmic decision-making 43:07 - The role that luck and desert play in our understanding of fairness 49:38 - Deontic justice and historical discrimination in algorithmic decision-making 53:36 - Fair distribution vs Fair recognition 59:03 - Should we be enthusiastic about the fairness of future algorithmic decision-making?  Relevant LinksReuben's homepage Reuben's institutional page  'Fairness in Machine Learning: Lessons from Political Philosophy' by Reuben Binns 'Algorithmic Accountability and Public Reason' by Reuben Binns 'It's Reducing a Human Being to a Percentage: Perceptions of Justice in Algorithmic Decision-Making' by Binns et al 'Machine Bias' - the ProPublica story on unfairness in the COMPAS recidivism algorithm 'Inherent Tradeoffs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores' by Kleinberg et al -- an impossibility proof showing that you cannot minimise false positive rates and equalise accuracy rates across two populations at the same time (except in the rare case that the base rate for both populations is the same) #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to the newsletter

From 15 to 17 September 2014, the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge held a major international conference on Public Law. It was intended to be the first of what will become a biennial series of conferences. The theme for the inaugural Public Law Conference was "Process and Substance in Public Law". The conference brought together academics, judges and practitioners from a range of Public Law fields and a variety of common law jurisdictions. The intention was that the Public Law series should become a pre-eminent forum for the discussion of Public Law matters in the common law world. In this video, Yale's Professor Jerry Mashaw gives the first keynote, entitled 'Public Reason as Process and Substance'. The talk is followed by a short question and answer session. For more information about the Public Law Conference, please refer to the conference website at: http://www.publiclawconference.law.cam.ac.uk/ This entry provides an audio source for iTunes U.

From 15 to 17 September 2014, the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge held a major international conference on Public Law. It was intended to be the first of what will become a biennial series of conferences. The theme for the inaugural Public Law Conference was "Process and Substance in Public Law". The conference brought together academics, judges and practitioners from a range of Public Law fields and a variety of common law jurisdictions. The intention was that the Public Law series should become a pre-eminent forum for the discussion of Public Law matters in the common law world. In this video, Yale's Professor Jerry Mashaw gives the first keynote, entitled 'Public Reason as Process and Substance'. The talk is followed by a short question and answer session. For more information about the Public Law Conference, please refer to the conference website at: http://www.publiclawconference.law.cam.ac.uk/

Over four days, our 20 plus speakers – philosophers and theologians, historians and writers, believers and non-believers – will consider what it means to be religious, and what role the voice of faith may legitimately have in the conversations of citizens in a multicultural, democratic state and the community of nations. Launching our four-day weekend, series curator and acclaimed philosopher Raimond Gaita will deliver the opening keynote address. Throughout the series, after each keynote, we will be offering an opportunity for discussion and exchange, with many sessions accompanied by panels and rebuttals from other thinkers and speakers. Following his agenda-setting lecture ‘The Voice of Faith and Public Reason’, Gaita will be joined on the stage by Scott Stephens, Asma Barlas, Susan Neiman, and Bernadette Tobin to tease out his ideas, opening up the debate more widely. For the full text of this lecture plus transcripts and recordings of the series, visit our Faith and Culture archive.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School, discusses his opposition to the public reason position.

If we are to have a society at all, it seems that we must recognize and abide by certain rules concerning our interactions with others. And in recognizing such rules, we must take ourselves to sometimes be authorized to hold others accountable to them. Perhaps it is also the case that we must recognize that states have the authority to enforce the rules. It has long been the aim of liberal democratic political theory to show that there is a form of social authority which is consistent with the intrinsic freedom and moral equality of all persons. Of course, there is plenty of room for skepticism. In fact, the skepticism goes back at least to Plato's Republic: Maybe all social norms, all moral prescriptions, and all political rules are simply cases of some (the powerful, the clever, or the experts) pushing others around? In his new book, The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Gerald Gaus attempts to dispel the skepticism. Drawing upon empirical and conceptual considerations from a wide range of disciplines, Gaus argues that social rules and the authority to enforce them emerge out of everyday social interactions and are supported by healthy emotional and dispositional states. We treat each other as free and equal moral persons when we recognize only those social rules which each individual has reason to accept and internalize. In this way, authority is consistent with the freedom and equality of all because properly exercised authority is always aimed at reminding individuals what they already have moral reasons to do. If Gaus is right, The Order of Public Reason solves a long-standing and fundamental problem of moral and political philosophy.

If we are to have a society at all, it seems that we must recognize and abide by certain rules concerning our interactions with others. And in recognizing such rules, we must take ourselves to sometimes be authorized to hold others accountable to them. Perhaps it is also the case that we must recognize that states have the authority to enforce the rules. It has long been the aim of liberal democratic political theory to show that there is a form of social authority which is consistent with the intrinsic freedom and moral equality of all persons. Of course, there is plenty of room for skepticism. In fact, the skepticism goes back at least to Plato’s Republic: Maybe all social norms, all moral prescriptions, and all political rules are simply cases of some (the powerful, the clever, or the experts) pushing others around? In his new book, The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Gerald Gaus attempts to dispel the skepticism. Drawing upon empirical and conceptual considerations from a wide range of disciplines, Gaus argues that social rules and the authority to enforce them emerge out of everyday social interactions and are supported by healthy emotional and dispositional states. We treat each other as free and equal moral persons when we recognize only those social rules which each individual has reason to accept and internalize. In this way, authority is consistent with the freedom and equality of all because properly exercised authority is always aimed at reminding individuals what they already have moral reasons to do. If Gaus is right, The Order of Public Reason solves a long-standing and fundamental problem of moral and political philosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeanne Hoffman talks with Gerald Gaus about his new book, The Order of Public Reason. Dr. Gaus is a professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona and was a founding editor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics.