“What Nonperfectionist Integralists Can Offer the Political Liberal Polity”

This paper argues that although nonperfectionist integralists cannot be political liberal constituents, the political liberal polity still can and should accommodate them. I argue that although nonperfectionist integralists and political liberals do not share a common allegiance to public reason, they might still be friends, in Aristotle’s sense of “reciprocated goodwill.” Moreover, nonperfectionist integralists can still serve their political liberal neighbors and states in ways that are consistent with their commitments. 

Meanwhile, the political liberal polity is motivated to reciprocate the goodwill and service of nonperfectionist integralists because they comply with political liberalism’s restraints. In so doing, nonperfectionist integralists force the political liberal state to show its cards: does it or does it not go further than requiring restraint and also claim its citizens’ highest allegiance? This is a productive and healthy form of pressure for the state to face, since a state that does not implausibly claim entitlement to its citizens’ highest allegiance demonstrates a healthy self-awareness that bolsters its legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. A political liberal regime is also motivated to accommodate integralism, if only in its nonperfectionist form, because nonperfectionist integralists uphold values, such as freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, that together form the basis for Rawls’s political liberal theory. Indeed, by reciprocating the goodwill of nonperfectionist integralists, a political liberal polity might achieve something thicker than a stability of rights: a stability of friendship and goodwill. 

“Is My Vote an Act of Allegiance?”

Some citizens believe that to maintain integrity to their religious, moral, or philosophical commitments, they must abstain from voting in state elections. This sentiment is especially prominent among nonviolent religious groups such as the Mennonites and Amish, who are known to argue that “if you vote, you have to fight.” This is, of course, not necessarily true: many states allow citizens to conscientiously object to military service without giving up their right to vote. Still, the Amish might be onto something, and this paper seeks to understand and evaluate this political behavior in the context of political theory.

Citizens who abstain from voting as an act of integrity may be expressing a number of sentiments. One is a nonperfectionist concern to avoid imposing a commitment on those who have no reason to follow its requirements. Another is a self-protective concern: that by voting, citizens endorse a system that does not guarantee their right to conscientious objection. But “if you vote, you have to fight” might also express a more nuanced worry: that conscientious objectors somehow abuse the democratic process by voting. The logic of this concern is that citizens who vote should be prepared to treat the result of the vote as dispositive – so if they already know that they will reject certain outcomes that conflict with a higher allegiance, it is disingenuous for them to vote. I argue that the premise of this argument is false – but that unpacking why it is false raises important questions about democratic authority and its limits. 

“Could Nonperfectionism Replace Political Liberalism?”

Since perfectionists advocate for laws that they cannot justify to citizens with opposing religious, moral, or philosophical commitments, they tend to alienate other citizens, corrode public culture, and dissolve politics into a zero-sum war between rival factions. To forestall the oppressive consequences of perfectionism, political liberalism requires citizens to abstain from advocating for laws that they cannot justify to those who do not share their commitments. Political liberals insist, however, that this requirement does not rival citizens’ commitments. Rather, the vision of political liberals since Rawls has been that reasonable citizens exercise restraint not because political liberalism tells them to but because their own commitments tell them to – i.e., because they find grounds for doing so within their own commitments. Meanwhile, unreasonable citizens violate political liberalism’s restraints for the same reason – because their commitments unfortunately require them to do so. 

But this political liberal perspective on what political liberalism is doing introduces a dilemma: political liberalism is either redundant with the commitments of reasonable citizens or impotent to restrain unreasonable citizens. When reasonable citizens exercise restraint on the basis of their commitments, there is no work left for political liberalism to do. Meanwhile, unreasonable citizens cannot endorse political liberalism without abandoning commitments that require them to violate political liberalism’s restraints. The result is that political liberalism is either powerless or unnecessary – either a hopeless rival to citizens’ commitments or redundant with those commitments – but obsolete either way. 

The ironic upshot of this result is that endorsing political liberalism is not what even political liberals really want. Rather, if they seriously hope to avoid rivaling citizens commitments, then instead of wanting citizens to endorse political liberalism, political liberals fundamentally want citizens to make nonperfectionist commitments, i.e., commitments that are compatible with restraint. So instead of focusing their efforts on political liberalism, political theorists should direct their attention to citizens’ commitments and their compatibility with restraint. 

“Could a Polity of Nonperfectionist Integralists Disenfranchise Perfectionists?”

Political liberalism requires citizens to exercise restraint by abstaining from political actions that they cannot justify using public reasons. But political liberals also agree that unreasonable citizens must be legally permitted to advocate politically without restraint. Restraint is a moral requirement, political liberals insist, not a requirement that a political liberal democracy could tangibly (i.e., legally) enforce. In this way, the reasonable, restrained citizens of political liberal democracies always occupy a vulnerable and unstable position – liable to be politically vanquished by citizens who simply disregard political liberalism’s restraints. 

Yet even as the unrestrained political advocacy of the unreasonable clearly violates the spirit of democracy, it is easy to see why political liberals balk at legally prohibiting such advocacy. Critics such as Eberle and Wolterstorff already portray political liberalism as an opponent of religion and conscience; legally disenfranchising the illiberal would only seem to confirm their worst suspicions. Yet it is interesting to note that a polity of nonperfectionist integralists might not face this problem. Since its first priority is preserving the integrity of commitments that are compatible with restraint, a polity of nonperfectionist integralists might unapologetically reject the political advocacy of unreasonable, perfectionist citizens by explicitly deauthorizing them from voting – without facing questions about its dedication to constituents’ freedom of religion or conscience. This firmness is only possible, however, because a nonperfectionist integralist polity prioritizes the commitments of nonperfectionist citizens rather than requiring them to subordinate those commitments to a publicly conditioned consensus. 

“How the Structure of Commitment Motivates Nonperfectionism”

Unless citizens believe that their religious, moral, or philosophical commitments are sources of distinctive value – value that those with other commitments or no commitments miss – it is difficult to see why they would make these commitments in the first place. Yet the same points of distinctive value that draw citizens to their commitments also generate a political problem: when citizens advocate for laws that they can only justify by appealing to distinctive features of their commitments, they legally impose their commitments on nonadherents by definition. Political liberals conclude from this that a civil, just, and stable democracy must require citizens to profess a political allegiance to a consensus of publicly conditioned perspectives. But many citizens do not need to endorse political liberalism to secure the outcome that political liberalism seeks – because the restraint required by political liberalism is implicit in the structure of commitment as such. 

To see this, consider the following dilemma faced by citizens who advocate politically on the basis of points of distinctiveness in their commitments. These citizens can either accept that their political advocacy imposes their commitments on neighbors who do not accept them or resist this conclusion. If citizens choose the first horn of this dilemma and forthrightly acknowledge that they are advocating for laws that nonadherents have no reason of their own to follow, they face a number of problems. For one thing, rather than persuading citizens to adopt and comply with their commitments, their political advocacy only generates ill will toward them and their commitments. For another, these citizens concede that their commitments are weak – not compelling enough to inspire compliance on their own merits and without the threat of state coercion. Finally, these citizens’ political advocacy might be worthless on their own commitments’ terms: state coercion might force citizens to comply with laws that are justified by their commitments, but it is not competent to generate the adherence or faithfulness to these commitments that could be valuable on those commitments’ terms. 

In an attempt to avoid these problems, citizens may choose the other horn of the dilemma. But to resist the conclusion that they are uncivilly imposing their commitments on their neighbors, citizens must insist that their political advocacy does not really depend on their commitments, since it can always be justified by public reasons that any citizen can accept. But by thus conceding that their commitments are redundant with what is already contained in the perspectives of an uncommitted public, these citizens admit that their commitments contain no distinctive value, leaving it unclear why they would make their commitments in the first place. 

So both horns of the dilemma undermine the coherence of citizens’ commitments. But citizens can avoid the dilemma altogether by simply abstaining from efforts to politically impose their commitments on others. In this way, the structure of commitment as such motivates citizens to exercise restraint. The upshot is that citizens who exercise restraint do not need to endorse political liberalism. Rather, just as commitments’ points of distinctiveness cause the problem that political liberalism exists to solve, the dilemma they generate offers a solution to that problem that is internal to those commitments and therefore more robust than any external solution imposed by political liberalism.