Blain Neufeld, "Public Reason and Political Autonomy: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People" (Routledge, 2022)
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What is the central thesis of Neufeld’s “Public Reason and Political Autonomy”?
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Hello, and thanks for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talese. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figder, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Blaine Neufeld. Blaine is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research is centrally in political philosophy with an emphasis on political liberalism and public reason. His new book has just been published with Routledge. It's titled Public Reason and Political Autonomy, Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People. Now, according to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals.
This means that citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it's often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens' status as democratic equals. Now, on a dominant interpretation of this idea, this acknowledgment comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts, including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. Now, this raises the issue of the kinds of reasons that one might bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy need to distinguish between properly public reasons, that is, the kinds of reasons that are appropriate for public decision-making contexts, and reasons that might be morally weighty but nonetheless are not appropriate for public decision-making.
Now, of course, that distinction is fraught. In Public Reason and Political Autonomy, Blaine Neufeld defends a novel view of the nature and role of public reason in a democratic society. Now, as usual, there is a lot to talk about, but we'll begin, as we usually do, with our guest, the author. Hello, Blaine. Hi, Bob. How are you today? I'm good. How are you? Hanging in. It's the end of an academic year, so things are always a little bit hectic. We usually begin these interviews with a little bit about the author. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. I grew up in London, Ontario, and I went to the University of Toronto for my undergraduate degree. And there I studied political science. And I took some political theory courses, but they tended to be of a more history of political thought in nature. So courses on Plato, Aristotle, Locke, and so forth. And I thought I was interested more in the international relations side of political science. But I was also, you know, I liked political theory. And then I went to Oxford for an MPhil in politics.
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