A Companion to Rawls by Mandle Jon; Reidy David A.; Reidy David A. & David A. Reidy

Author:Mandle, Jon; Reidy, David A.; Reidy, David A. & David A. Reidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

2.1 Main Themes of Constitutional Consensus

In a mere modus vivendi, certain principles and practices are accepted as a way for people to live together without constant fighting and disruption. Rawls's own example of accepting religious toleration (in a time of deep intolerance) is one important instance. Both Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth and to some extent the seventeenth century “held that it was the duty of the ruler to uphold the true religion and to repress the spread of heresy and false doctrine; [here] the acceptance of the principle of toleration would indeed be a mere modus vivendi, because if either faith becomes dominant, the principle of toleration would no longer be followed” (PL, 148).

The agreement that exists in such a case is not wide (it covers only a fairly narrow range of rights – for example, the right of religious toleration – and institutions). It is not deep (in that the reasons offered for the desirability of these accepted arrangements do not go beyond the idea of establishing a modus vivendi). And it lacks a distinctive political focus: fellow co-inhabitants have no shared conception of a public political life – no animating reasons, widely accepted, that would take them beyond the status quo, beyond the modus vivendi itself; they have accepted that status quo simply out of fear of a worse alternative.

There is nothing in a mere modus vivendi that goes beyond the horizon set by the co-inhabitants' own morality or their own religion or their own philosophical view of the world (though such reasons are often coupled with considerations of prudence and of strategy). No constituency has been created for a shared public political conception and there is no principled commitment to it (PL, 392).

A constitutional consensus comes about, then, as the agreed-upon area of rights and practices widens; it comes about as the ground under that area deepens (as convincing political reasons for having such arrangements, reasons that go beyond the mere utility of a modus vivendi, gain acceptance and are taken on board). And it comes about as a conception of public principles of justice, with greater focus and definition, gains widespread support. These moves away from a mere modus vivendi allow a space to be created for citizenship. This new dimension creates the availability of a new role for political co-inhabitants, that of fellow citizens. (Rawls's main discussion of constitutional consensus is found in PL, Lecture IV, §§3, 5–7.)

The story told in Political Liberalism (respecting constitutional consensus) largely em­­phasizes a vigorous version of generic liberalism (as found in PL, Lecture VI, §5). It is, presumably, where democratic political culture is at today. (i) Here the consensus has become wide enough to embrace most of the well-known constitutional rights, liberties, and opportunities and to cover the main contemporary democratic political institutions – universal franchise, contested voting, and majority rule decision making. And it is wide enough to embrace such further basic structure institutions as an open and competitive market (but ultimately subject to political overview) and a system of free state-supported schooling.

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