The promise of the Enlightenment is that reason can help to find common ground among people who differ in their values and goals but are motivated to live together in mutual advantageous cooperation. Public reason is thus directed at overcoming the divisiveness of traditional and religious beliefs and promises to offer a common viewpoint.Maria Paola Ferretti, The Public Perspective: Public Justification and the Ethics of Belief (Rowman & Littlefield 2019) 2; Maria Paola Ferretti, ‘Fake News and the Responsibilities of Citizens’ (2023) 49 (1) Social Theory and Practice 29.²⁾ However, the risk is that a focus on public reason may alienate some citizens from politics by asking them to renounce their deep-seated beliefs (those that are most intimately linked, for example, to their religious identity) in order to be in a position to offer other reasons that they can find acceptable. Even more worrying is the idea that public reason does not take the power of asymmetry seriously among different groups and their unequal contributions to processes of public reasoning and justification. These power asymmetries are such that some groups are the object of negative emotions, such as contempt, suspicion of hatred, and members of some groups experience shame or embarrassment as a reaction to the way they are treated in society. Sylvie Bláhová invites us to consider whether an appropriately respectful society is compatible with those negative emotions and what should be done about it.

In this article, I will discuss what the place of those political emotions is or should be in political liberalism. Following Bláhová, in Section 2, I discuss the requirement of reciprocity in relations to the values of respect for citizens as free and equals and civic friendship. Section 3 turns to the impact of such conceptions of respect and civic friendship visa a vis the fact of pluralism in contemporary society. Section 4 focuses on political emotions. I criticize the idea that political liberalism is about overcoming negative emotions and replacing them with positive emotions based on respect. I propose that empathic understanding of political emotion is a more modest demand on public justification and, nonetheless, a very promising step towards a more inclusive idea of democratic deliberation. Finally, Section 5 concludes.

1. Reciprocity: Respect and Civic Friendship

The very project of public reason is premised on the idea that the authority of laws and institutions rests on the fact that all citizens subject to them have good reasons to accept them. In this context, public reason liberals argue that the idea of reciprocity is of fundamental value in grounding constructivist approaches based on public justification, and Bláhováagrees with this reconstruction.Sylvie Bláhová, Pluralism and Diversity. For the Sake of Equal Respect (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) 32–33.³⁾

For Rawls, reciprocity requires that individuals in public reasoning offer principles for fair cooperation that they reasonably believe others can share as “free and equal citizens, and not as dominated or manipulated, or under the pressure of an inferior political or social position”John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press 1996) xliv; see also 49 and 54.⁴⁾. In other words, it is the value of persons as free and equal that requires treating them as morally autonomous and with equal dignity, rather than as subject to rules imposed by others.Thomas Scanlon, ‘Rawls on Justification’ in Samuel Freeman (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge University Press 2002).⁵⁾ Even more prominent is the role of reciprocity in the work of Rainer Forst, where reciprocity is the mark of non-domination. Domination here “means being disrespected in one’s basic claim to be a free and equal normative authority [of justification] within the order one is subject to, and that implies the basic right to co-determine the structure of that society”Rainer Forst, ‘The Point and Ground of Human Rights: A Kantian Constructivist View’ in David Held and Pietro Maffettone (eds), Global Political Theory (Polity Press 2016) 23; and Rainer Forst, Normativity and Power (Oxford University Press 2017).⁶⁾.

So, the idea of reciprocity is defended on grounds of equality among citizens. This is a default position, considering the absence of reasons to grant to some citizens greater moral authority than others. The fact that none of them should be in a position to impose rules on others demands public justification. Showing that rules are non-negotiable from the point of view of the others is an expression of the consideration we have for them as morally authoritative. Other authors, including Charles Larmore, James Boettcher, and Stefan Gosepath,Charles Larmore, ‘The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism’ (1999) 96 (9) The Journal of Philosophy 599, 599–625; Stefan Gosepath, ‘On the (Re)Construction and Basic Concepts of the Morality of Equal Respect’ in Uwe Steinhoff (ed), Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth? On ‘Basic Equality’ and Equal Respect and Concern (Oxford University Press 2014) 133; James W. Boettcher, ‘The Moral Status of Public Reason’ (2012) 20 (2) Journal of Political Philosophy 156, 156–177.⁷⁾ stress that reciprocity is at the basis of political legitimacy rooted in the value of persons as free and equal moral agents.

Forst explains that reciprocity concerns both the content of normative claims and the reasons offered in their support: “Reciprocity means that no one may make a normative claim (…) he or she denies to others (call that reciprocity of content) and that no one may simply project one’s own perspective, values, interests, or needs onto others such that one claims to speak in their ‘true’ interests or in the name of some truth beyond mutual justification (reciprocity of reasons).”Rainer Forst, ‘The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification: A Reflexive Approach’ in Claudio Corradetti (ed), Philosophical Dimensions of Human Rights (Springer 2012); and Rainer Forst, The Right to Justification (Columbia University Press 2012).⁸⁾ The idea here is that if we are equally authoritative, I cannot ask you to respect, say, my life and property without respecting your life and property. The discussion remains open on whether all normative claims work in this way, but the principle is clear. The second aspect – the reciprocity of reasons – is more problematic. Reciprocity, so understood, offers support of certain rules by defining the terms in which the agreement takes place, the kind of reasons that can be offered in support of those rules. The principle of reciprocity suggests that shared, accessible reasons can ensure fair cooperation and thus promote stability. In this vein, reciprocity “lies between the idea of impartiality, which is altruistic (being moved by the general good) and the idea of mutual advantage”John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press 2005) 16.⁹⁾.

Bláhová appropriately remarks that reciprocity is connected on the one hand to the idea of respect, and to the other to the idea of civic friendship.Bláhová (n 3) 37–38.¹⁰⁾ Regarding the idea of respect, public reason liberalism honors what Stephen Darwall has called a “third-personal respect”, which involves valuing people as autonomous agents with equal moral status and rights, grounded in principles that apply universally and reciprocally.Stephen L. Darwall, ‘Two Kinds of Respect’ (1977) 88 (1) Ethics 36; and Stephen L. Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard University Press 2006).¹¹⁾ This third-personal kind of respect is procedural in the sense that it displays respect for individuals through rules of justice, without addressing them directly. In a liberal democratic society, respect is owed to individuals as citizens, not based on private relationships or personal sentiments, but through public recognition. Following Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Bláhová remarks that public reason liberalism supporting a procedural model of respect does not have the theoretical resources to secure respect at the structural level (or in the social relations among citizens), which requires second-personal respect. Second-personal respect requires us to see the other person as equal, with claims on us. It is thus a relational form of respect but is relevantly public (in the sense that is not simply a private attitude of respect, or esteem, or positive evaluation). Equal respect in political life must be about reciprocal recognition—public acknowledgment as legitimate claimants within the democratic community. To wit, the appropriate respect that is due to citizens is declined both in the third-personal (procedural) way and as respect that we owe to each other as individualized citizens.Bláhová (n 3) 51–52.¹²⁾ Galeotti explains this two-faced idea of respect by pointing out that democracies owe to their citizens protection of individual rights, but also recognition of cultural and identity-based differences. In this vein, equal respect entails public recognition of diversity, especially for historically marginalized or culturally minoritarian groups. Without such recognition, formal legal equality can coexist with symbolic inequality or de facto exclusion, undermining the very idea of respect as equal moral consideration. So understood the universal principle of respect sets very demanding standards for political and social institutions. Liberal and democratic institutions must not only avoid and prevent discrimination, but also actively affirm the equal moral status of all persons, when necessary, through inclusive laws, practices, and cultural narratives. To wit respect, in Galeotti’s interpretation of Darwall’s theory, should be understood as a pro-attitude: in terms of “the disposition to give appropriate consideration to the object of respect in moral consideration and action”Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Toleration as Recognition (Cambridge University Press 2002) and Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, ‘Multicultural Claims and Equal Respect’ (2010) 36 (3–4) Philosophy & Social Criticism 441, 88.¹³⁾.

Whether public reason liberalism has the resources to meet such criteria for respect is at the core of an important academic discussion. Some authors, such as Jeffrey Stout, have pointed out that public reason liberals, Rawls and Habermas, as egregious examples, support a certain elitism which undermines the possibility of actual democratic debate understood as an ongoing society practice.Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton University Press 2004).¹⁴⁾ Stout questions whether treating others as co-authors of law by requiring reciprocal reasons is compatible with recognizing others’ equal political status and still allowing them to express and act from their deepest convictions. The objection here is that respect, if understood procedurally, cannot support a political community that pays attention to the needs, preferences, values, and history of different citizens. In this perspective, respect is better captured by inclusion and willingness to listen, rather than reciprocal justification. In this vein, also feminist and race-critical perspectives, as represented for example by Catharine MacKinnon and Charles Mills, point out that the reciprocity requirement can hide important structural inequalities, since what counts as reasonable or acceptable to others often reflects the perspectives of socially dominant groups.Catharine MacKinnon, ‘Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimination’ in Anne Phillips (ed), Feminism And Politics: Oxford Readings In Feminism (Oxford 1998; online edn, Oxford Academic, 31 Oct. 2023) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198782063.003.0015> accessed 27 Aug. 2025; Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press 1997) and Charles Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs (Oxford University Press 2017).¹⁵⁾ Ignoring history and assuming a cooperative social starting point, while Western societies were in fact built on slavery, colonialism, genocide, obscures the fact of racial domination.Mills, Black Rights… (n 15).¹⁶⁾ Similarly, historical gender inequality cannot be ignored when considering structures of power in society and formal equality under conditions of systemic dominance reproduces inequality.MacKinnon (n 15).¹⁷⁾ Insisting on reciprocal justification, so goes the critique, often results in marginalizing oppressed groups, whose reasons are excluded from the public debate as “unreasonable”. Therefore, it is not enough to aim at respect in theory, but it is necessary to look at sociological evidence of what are the reasons that are actually considered mutually acceptable in society and ask whether asymmetries of power and influence undermine respect. To sum up, the first objection to the idea of reciprocity as essential for respect is that a society of free and equal demands recognition and respect. Recognition necessarily exceeds the requirements that coercive laws must be mutually justified but demands actual practices of public debate and acknowledging the equal worth of others and their practices, even when they differ from the majority.

A second explanation of why reciprocity is a key criterion in public justification is based on an idea of civic friendship. Some theorists, such as Andrew Lister, J. R. Leland, and Han van Wietmarschen, argue that reciprocity is not a way to explain (mutual) coercion through laws, but rather focuses on the reasons behind the rules, and in this sense, it is a moral demand characterizing the relations among citizens.R. J. Leland and Han van Weitmarschen, ‘Political liberalism and political community’ (2017) 14 (2) Journal of Moral Philosophy 142, 142–147; R. J. Leland, ‘Civic friendship, public reason’ (2019) 47 (1) Philosophy & Public Affairs 72, 72–103; Han Van Wietmarschen, ‘Political Liberalism and Respect’ (2020) 29 (3) Journal of Political Philosophy 353, 353–374; Andrew Lister, ‘Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity’ (2011) 33 (1) Analyse & Kritik 91.¹⁸⁾ This interpretation of reciprocity can be traced back to Rawls when he stresses that reciprocity serves the goal “to specify the nature of the political relation in a constitutional democratic regime as one of civic friendship”Rawls (n 9) 447.¹⁹⁾. Facing the fact of pluralism, the reciprocity requirement makes possible the adherence to shared rules and civic friendship by a commitment to political decisions making based on reasons that are appropriately public. The reciprocity approach highlights common interests rather than divergent preferences and ideological positions. Citizens demonstrate reciprocity when they refrain from imposing laws justified solely by their own comprehensive doctrines (e.g., purely religious reasons). Instead, they justify laws by appealing to shared political values. In other terms, when declined in terms of civic friendship, reciprocity requires not only that reasons justifying public rules are reasons that can be recognized by others as such. It also requires recognition of the perspectives of others and some form of care and concern for their fellow citizens. In this specific sense, deliberation, informed by reciprocity criteria, allows for the emergence of a robust sense of shared deliberation and joint rule.Bláhová (n 3) 70.²⁰⁾

Our life as citizens is profoundly affected by the basic political institutions and by our general collective life. But collective life is also profoundly influenced by the relations and interrelations with other citizens. We are affected by the way they live and the way they relate to us. So, an interpretation of reciprocity that accounts for respect cannot ignore the importance of civic life that supports and motivates respectful interactions among citizens. In the double value of the principle of reciprocity, linked both to respect and civic friendship, Bláhová reads the importance of the liberal value of liberty – entailing respect for others as autonomous agents – and the democratic value of political community, which requires political friendship. In this way, reciprocity is for Bláhová the sign of what has called the co-originality of liberal and democratic ideas in political liberalism.Bláhová (n 3) 77; Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Polity Press 1996) and Jürgen Habermas, ‘Constitutional democracy: A paradoxical union of contradictory principles’ (2001) 29 (6) Political Theory 766.²¹⁾ To wit, being respected within a political community requires reciprocity based on civic friendship. This approach presupposes presumes the second-person form of respect so as to ensure that people are respected both not only as citizens but also recognized as full members of the political community.

2. Pluralism and Public Justification

In the previous section, we discussed how public reason theorists argue that there are strong grounds for holding that the use of public reason must, in some respect, be conditioned by reciprocity. Reciprocity is defended both as an expression of respect and a sign of civic friendship.

But what does it mean to live up to the reciprocity criteria in the context of a pluralist society? As already mentioned in the previous question, the stress on shared reasons and reciprocity may lead to overseeing important differences among citizens, but also to deny to some of their deep-seated beliefs the moral relevance they deserve.

So, one worry is that the fact of pluralism is hard to reconcile with the idea of the Rawlsian “burdens of judgment” and reasonable pluralism that is the premise for reciprocity.Rawls defines the burdens of judgment as follows: “The sources, then, of reasonable disagreement – what I call the burdens of judgment – include the following: (a) the evidence – empirical and scientific – bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate; (b) even where we agree on kinds of considerations to be relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at different judgments; (c) to some extent all our concepts, not only moral and political concepts, are vague and subject to hard cases; (d) to some extent the way we assess evidence and weigh moral and political values is shaped by our total experience, our whole course of life up to now; and our total experiences must always differ; (e) often there are different kinds of normative considerations of different force on both sides of an issue and it is difficult to make an overall assessment; (f) any system of social institutions is limited in the values it can admit so that some set must be left out, and it is not easy to balance or to eliminate all values so as to fit together into one coherent view.” See Rawls (n 9) 56–57.²²⁾ As Bláhová points out: “First, some critique the assumption that for the sake of respect people must be willing to retreat from their particularities if the arguments based on them are not reasonably acceptable to all.”Bláhová (n 3) 63.²³⁾ In other terms, the issue of public justification emerges when citizens offer reasons that they believe to be sound and politically relevant, but that others could reasonably reject. The principle of public reason requires citizens to set aside such reasons, even if they take them to be true. John Finnis, for one, objects that the requirement of reciprocity ends up artificially excluding valid and rational arguments from the public square, particularly those grounded in religious or natural law reasoning.John Finnis, Religion and Public Reasons: Collected Essays Volume V (Oxford University Press 2011).²⁴⁾ Finnis worries that public reason marginalizes religious voices and creates a distorted “public-private” divide: faith and comprehensive doctrines may be deeply rational but are treated as irrational or irrelevant in public policy. This, Finnis argues, leads to a false pluralism where only liberal secular views can influence politics. For Finnis, insisting that arguments be stripped of their theological or philosophical premises narrows rational discourse rather than enhancing it. From the standpoint of citizens’ comprehensive doctrines, the demands of “the reasonable” impose a moral burden. But, Finnis points out, it is not clear why religious arguments cannot be publicly reasoned as long as they appeal to intelligible goods. For example, citing human dignity from a religious perspective is rationally defensible because it corresponds to a basic good, not just a "sectarian” claim. Finnis’s framework thus bridges moral pluralism with objective rationality. Instead, the exclusion of certain doctrines as unreasonable is no marginal concern if we consider that many doctrines of the good have a religious ground and or recognize natural law. Finnis argues that Rawls’s notion of public reason pretends to be neutral but smuggles in liberal moral commitments such as a constructivist approach to morality, autonomy, fairness, and individual rights. This means that public reasons do not provide a fair or universal basis for dialogue – it simply privileges liberal secular assumptions over other traditions, which are defined as unreasonable. However, religious and natural law arguments can be shown to be reasonable and should have a place in public debate. By excluding such reasoning, public reason wrongly implies that only secular liberal arguments are reasonable, while religious or natural law reasoning is by definition “sectarian” or “private”. This exclusion is not only problematic as it influences the contents of public debate, but even more importantly, reduces legitimacy to consensus within liberal terms. Instead, Finnis argues, legitimacy flows from conformity with practical reasonableness (a central idea in his approach based on natural law theory) – that is, whether laws align with basic human goods and moral principles, not whether they are acceptable to Rawlsian “reasonable citizens”.

A second line of criticism against public reason liberalism concerns the way it is tied too closely to the idea of procedural respect, while neglecting the equally important political value of civic friendship.“Second, critics object that explaining the criterion of reciprocity only by means of the imperative of respect insufficiently takes into account the role of the political community.” Bláhová (n 3) 63.²⁵⁾ The worry here is that if public reason is understood only in terms of mutual respect, the social and political bonds that sustain democratic life – those of civic friendship, solidarity, and shared membership – risk being overlooked or undervalued.

As seen, the duty of refraining from appealing to reasons grounded solely in their own comprehensive doctrines is based on reciprocity. From one perspective, it might seem unreasonable to expect citizens to hold back their deepest convictions if they must do so unilaterally, while others are free to disregard public reason. Yet the principle is not conditional in this way. Its justification does not depend on how many people actually comply. Rather, the idea is that in determining which reasons count as publicly acceptable, only those perspectives that themselves acknowledge a duty of restraint can be treated as qualified. So, the aim of this principle is not merely fairness in negotiation but the preservation of civic friendship – a relationship of mutual recognition and regard among citizens who continue to disagree about ultimate values. Such a relationship, public reason liberal argue, is impossible with those who reject the very idea of public justification.

The question follows: Is this restraint fair to religious citizens, who must refrain from appealing to convictions that are often central to their identity? One response is that the burdens are distributed equally. Since all citizens are bound by the same restraint (they are not asked to restrain specifically because of their doctrine of the good), religious citizens are not unfairly disadvantaged. Moreover, those who reject public reason still benefit from others’ compliance, even if they refuse to pay the cost themselves. Yet Andrew Lister argues that this reasoning is misleading.Lister (n 18) 60.²⁶⁾ The relevant consideration is not whether individuals gain or lose relative advantages, but whether they are included as equals in the practice of public justification itself. The stakes are not material or strategic but moral. All citizens should be in a position to participate in political life without giving up their deepest convictions. This is because a liberal-democratic society does not only need procedural respect but is sustained by civic friendship among its citizens. Civic friendship requires that all who are subject to collective decisions should be in a position to regard those decisions as the outcome of a fair and reciprocal practice.Andrew Lister, ‘Public Reason and Reciprocity’ (2017) 25 (2) The Journal of Political Philosophy 155.²⁷⁾ The problem, once again, is to what extent public reason is compatible with pluralism. It seems that once focusing on civic friendship the idea of formal respect is no longer sufficient, but recognizing citizens as equally valuable members of the society requires second-personal respect that addresses them as individual with particular values and histories.

Bláhová agrees that the importance of public justification stems from the inevitability of reasonable disagreement: since reasonable citizens hold incompatible beliefs, they are entitled to do so both epistemically and politically. Yet Bláhová cautions against restricting the idea of respect to the level of basic political institutions alone. Respect, she argues, must be extended to the broader structural level of the political community. A genuinely civic conception of public reason should therefore target all forms of systemic disrespect that shape social and political life – ranging from exclusionary practices, to unequal opportunities for participation, to subtle but persistent patterns of stigmatization.Sylvie Bláhová, ‘Civic Friendship in Public Reason Liberalism: The Path to a More Respectful Political Community’ (2023) 39 (150) Notizie di Politeia 5, 5–7.²⁸⁾ Concrete examples illustrate what she has in mind. Structural disrespect can take the form of racial hierarchies that systematically disadvantage minority groups, gender inequalities embedded in workplace and family arrangements, or socio-economic barriers that restrict equal access to education and political participation. Lack of respect is apparent in the persistent lack of representation of certain communities in political decision-making. These are not just private injustices or unfortunate outcomes, but manifestations of a public culture that undermines civic friendship by denying some citizens the standing of equals. Extending respect to this structural level means that public justification must aim not only to regulate the “basic structure” of society in Rawls’s sense, but also to transform the social environment in ways that sustain citizens’ ability to see one another as co-authors of their common political life. This transformation – which, as we will see in the next sections, goes through the acknowledgement of the importance of political emotions – is Bláhová’s answer to criticism to the limits of public justification, such as those of Finnis and Lister.

3. Emotions and Public Deliberation

The debate on the scope of public reason has long been centered on rational argumentation, justificatory reciprocity, and the duty of restraint in political deliberation. Yet Bláhová argues that this picture, centered on reasonable justification, leaves out an essential dimension of political and social life: the emotional registers through which citizens actually encounter one another.Bláhová (n 3) 115–116.²⁹⁾ If Rawls emphasizes third-personal respect as the guiding virtue of public justification, Bláhová pushes further by foregrounding the role of political emotions in enabling or undermining relations of respect at the structural level of society. If respect and civic friendship are the basis of a just society, Bláhová suggests that positive emotions towards one’s co-citizens are necessary to bind citizens together and ensure their contribution to a respectful society. The motivation to uphold public reason depends to a great extent on the political emotions characterizing society.

Bláhová develops this claim through an engagement with Darwall’s account of reactive attitudes. According to Darwall, the response to disrespect is itself a reactive attitude – a form of anger, resentment, or indignation – that demands recognition of one’s moral standing.Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint… (n 11) 60.³⁰⁾ Disrespect thus generates emotional responses that are inherently normative: they call for acknowledgment, redress, or reconciliation. Bláhová takes this insight and argues that to adequately address disrespect in political life, we must pay greater attention to the political emotions of our co-citizens. Recognizing the anger of marginalized groups, the shame experienced by excluded communities, or the compassion expressed in solidarity movements, for example, is a duty of respect as a way of taking seriously the moral claims embedded in those emotions. In this way, political emotions can be vehicles for restoring respect and rebuilding civic friendship in societies marked by deep disagreement and structural inequalities.Bláhová (n 28).³¹⁾

To systematize this account, Bláhová turns to Jonathan Haidt’s influential classification of emotions into four “families”: (1) the other-condemning family, which includes anger, disgust, and contempt; (2) the self-conscious family, including shame, embarrassment, and guilt; (3) the other-suffering family, centered on compassion; and (4) the other-praising family, which includes gratitude and elevation.Jonathan Haidt, ‘The Moral Emotions’ in Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer and Hill H. Goldsmith (eds), Handbook of Affective Sciences (Oxford University Press 2003) 853–854.³²⁾ Each family of emotions, Bláhová argues, plays a role in shaping political interactions. Anger and contempt may be destructive when left unchecked, but they also alert us to experiences of injustice and exclusion. Shame and guilt, while painful, can generate acknowledgment of wrongdoing and motivate reparative action. Compassion (from part of citizens seeing other suffering) and gratitude (from part of suffering citizens who receive compassion), finally, open possibilities for solidarity and mutual recognition that extend beyond strict duties of reciprocity.Bláhová (n 3) 122.³³⁾ If Rawls’s public reason tends to idealize citizens as purely rational reasoners, Bláhová insists that we should instead take seriously the emotional dynamics through which political respect is actually mediated and how the motivation to honor public reason is generated and sustained in society.

Bláhová’s intervention is especially powerful when read against the backdrop of empirical studies on political deliberation and polarization. A growing body of research suggests that political discussion often fails to improve our epistemic position; instead, it can exacerbate biases and reinforce identity-protective cognition. For example, Kahan and colleagues demonstrate that citizens engaged in political argumentation are prone to “motivated reasoning”: the tendency to selectively interpret evidence in ways that confirm preexisting beliefs and protect group identity.Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson and Paul Slovic, ‘Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government’ (2011) 1 (1) Behavioral Public Policy 54; see also Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton University Press 2016). For a discussion see Ferretti, Fake News… (n 2).³⁴⁾ Studies on affective polarization show that rather than facilitating the exchange of reasons, deliberation often becomes a site for strategic justification, where individuals marshal evidence not to test their own beliefs but to defend them against perceived threats.

This epistemic regression reveals a tension at the heart of public reason liberalism. While the ideal of deliberation assumes that rational argument can move us toward convergence or at least mutual intelligibility, the reality of political psychology suggests otherwise and unless citizens can be effectively motivated to public reasoning the theory of public justification has no practical bite. Citizens do not simply trade reasons in a neutral marketplace of ideas; they defend partisan commitments, seek affirmation from like-minded peers, and interpret opposing arguments through lenses of distrust and moral condemnation.Cass R. Sunstein, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford University Press 2009).³⁵⁾ As a result, deliberation often produces polarization, cynicism, and contempt rather than understanding or respect, and insisting on the burdens of judgement may appear a disingenuous attempt to present strategic arguments as they had public qualities that they in fact lack.

To wit, Rawlsian public reason, if interpreted solely as the exchange of rational arguments subject to reciprocity, risks being overly idealized if not deceiving. Public reason assumes levels of cognitive openness and impartiality that do not correspond to the actual dynamics of political interaction. More importantly, it overlooks the psychological and emotional processes that shape how reasons are heard, interpreted, or dismissed. If citizens are to treat one another as equals, the challenge is not merely to frame arguments in publicly accessible terms but to cultivate the dispositions – emotional as well as cognitive – that make recognition possible in the first place. Listening is as important as talking in a democratic society.

Bláhová suggests that in a society in which procedural respect is established, it is also easier to address structural injustice that gives rise to negative emotions. For example, misrecognition generates anger in groups who are the object of misrecognition, but also contempt and disgust on the part of the majority society. Bláhová offers vivid examples of how these negative emotions display in the public arena – for example, with reference to black Americans or groups of second-generation migrants in France. The optimistic suggestion, however, is that these bad emotions can be fixed with an exercise of compassion and gratitude among differently situated citizens in a society. In a political community where there are premises of respect it is also possible to instore a positive circle of emotions.Michael Hannon, ‘Empathetic Understanding and Deliberative Democracy’ (2019) 101 (3) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 591.³⁶⁾ The question, however, remains if this is wishful thinking (with little practical bite), or a project for socially engineering emotions, which may be go beyond the justifiable requirements in a liberal perspective.

My suggestion is that we cannot be asked to fix the emotions in society. Even if this may be an indirect goal, the primary goal must be that of understanding emotions and their significance in public life. Michael Hannon has recently suggested that the concept of “verstehen” can be useful in bringing into focus the relevance of emotions in public deliberation. Drawing on traditions of hermeneutics and social theory, Hannon emphasizes the role of empathetic understanding in political discourse. Verstehen refers to the attempt to grasp the meaning of another’s perspective from within, to imaginatively enter into their point of view without necessarily endorsing it. Crucially, empathetic understanding does not require shared reasons or agreement, nor does it presuppose that one must give in to unreasonable or illiberal demands. Instead, it reorients toward the practice of mutual recognition through empathic understanding.

This approach acknowledges that emotions are central to how people articulate and experience political claims. To understand the anger of a marginalized group, for example, is not simply to register their arguments about injustice but to grasp the affective experience of exclusion that animates those arguments. Second, verstehen directly addresses the risks of polarization and motivated reasoning by shifting the focus of deliberation from argumentative victory to empathetic listening. So public deliberation is not simply the display of the force of the best argument, as Habermas has suggested, but rather an exercise of mutual understanding. Where the aim is to understand why co-citizens feel the way they do, the defensive mechanisms of motivated reasoning are less likely to be triggered.

I agree with Bláhová that recognizing political emotions is essential for achieving full respect. My argument, however, is that recognition requires more than acknowledgment and less than “healing” bad emotions. Rather, it requires an effort to genuinely understand the perspective of the other. Misunderstandings are not trivial in politics – they are a central source of polarization. When citizens interpret the anger of their opponents as irrational hostility or the shame of marginalized communities as oversensitivity, they miss the moral significance embedded in those emotions. On the practical level, such failures of understanding fuel cynicism, contempt, and ultimately the erosion of civic friendship.

Here, “verstehen” provides the interpretive framework through which political emotions can be engaged constructively rather than dismissed. To exercise empathetic understanding is to resist the instinct of condemnation, the tendency to view one’s opponents with moral or epistemic superiority. It is to treat their emotions not as mere obstacles to rational discourse but as windows into experiences of injustice, vulnerability, or solidarity. In this way, “verstehen” contributes to the cultivation of civic friendship, understood as the capacity of citizens to live together respectfully despite profound disagreement. However, it does not aim at suppressing emotion or finding easy ways to transform them into positive emotions. One of the most important implications of Hannon’s “verstehen” is that not all political interactions must aim at agreement or that public dialogues should be aimed at getting rid of negative emotions. Instead, the idea is of having a richer idea of the function of deliberation. Traditional notions of deliberation tend to assume that the purpose of public reasoning is to produce consensus, or at least convergence on principles that can be shared by all reasonable citizens. Yet this assumption often backfires, especially in contexts of deep pluralism, as discussed in the previous section. The pursuit of agreement can entrench existing beliefs, as citizens interpret disagreement as a threat to identity and thus mobilize defensive reasoning. By contrast, an orientation toward understanding allows citizens to engage productively even in contexts in which finding rational agreement is unattainable and justification inconclusive.

Hannon suggests that the transformative moment in deliberation sometimes is not agreement but recognition – the realization that one’s co-citizens are reasoning and feeling beings whose perspectives, though different, are intelligible and worthy of respect. Plain acts of understanding can shift the moral terrain of interaction. For example, Jose Medina has shown how avoiding dismissive reading of the protest of certain groups, understanding where anger comes from beyond the literal message of slogans is a duty of justice because it offers a respectful hear to the complaints of some co-citizens.José Medina, The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance (Oxford University Press 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Mar. 2023) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197660904.001.0001> accessed 15 Aug. 2025.³⁷⁾ My suggestion is thus that by prioritizing civic empathy over argumentation, an account of public deliberation based on verstehen emphasizes empathetic reciprocity at the level of practice. It acknowledges that respect is not only about offering reasons others can accept but also about listening, recognizing, and understanding the emotions through which those reasons are embedded, including sometimes the historical and structural factors that may trigger those emotions.

Recognizing the value of “verstehen” in public deliberation has two main advantages. First, it corrects for the epistemic limitations of public reason approach revealed by studies of motivated reasoning and polarization, which show that citizens rarely approach deliberation as impartial reasoners.Kahan et al. (n 34); Sunstein (n 35).³⁸⁾ By focusing on understanding rather than persuasion, “verstehen” reduces defensive reasoning and creates space for genuine exchange. Second, it expands the scope of respect beyond the formal structure of political institutions to the lived experiences of citizens within society. Structural disrespect – manifested in racism, sexism, economic exclusion, or cultural stigmatization – cannot be addressed by rational argument alone. It requires attentiveness to the emotions of anger, shame, compassion, and gratitude that arise from these structures, and a willingness to engage with them empathetically.

Ultimately, this supplemented account strengthens the possibility of civic friendship in pluralist societies. As we already discuss civic friendship requires that citizens can regard political decisions as the product of a fair and reciprocal practice. By integrating emotional recognition and empathetic understanding into public deliberation, citizens are better able to sustain such practice. They can disagree deeply while still acknowledging one another as equal participants in the shared project of democratic self-government.

Conclusion

Sylvie Bláhová’s book offers a fresh discussion of pluralism and respect, introducing challenging ideas into the debate on deliberation in liberal-democratic societies marked by deep ethical and moral diversity. Central to her account is the recognition that pluralism is inseparable from structural inequality and injustice that cannot be ignored in deliberative practices. On this basis, she develops a conception of civic respect that emphasizes political emotions, highlighting how reactive attitudes and affective experiences shape relations of respect. I challenged Bláhová’s claim that a just political community is one in which negative reactive emotions are overcome and replaced by positive ones. Such a society of purely positive emotions seems utopian, making the ideal of public deliberation too remote to inspire real citizens. Instead, drawing on Hannon’s idea of “verstehen” in deliberation, I suggest that an empathetic understanding of negative emotions can enrich deliberative practices. Without this interpretive lens, political emotions risk being dismissed or misread, thereby intensifying polarization or even hostility rather than fostering civic friendship. By shifting the goal of deliberation from reasoning to understanding, civic empathy enables citizens to engage more productively across divides, resist the distortions of motivated reasoning, and cultivate civic friendship in contexts of profound pluralism. Taken together, these perspectives move us toward a conception of public reason that is at once more realistic about human psychology and more inclusive in sustaining democratic life.