We have seen that some contemporary liberals seek to exclude an important range of arguments from contemporary debate by requiring a form of liberal “neutrality” embodied in the concept of “public reason.” In this chapter, I want to turn to another way in which some contemporary liberals attempt to exclude important moral arguments from public debate. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue in their Democracy and Disagreement that appropriate conditions of public deliberation exclude certain forms of argument. The excluded forms of argument include some that are at the core of natural law arguments for public morality. For reasons similar to those we have seen in previous chapters, I want to argue that Gutmann and Thompson's arguments are not persuasive, and provide no legitimate grounds for putting natural law arguments in favor of public morality off-limits in a liberal democracy.

The Condition of Reciprocity

One of the requirements for democratic deliberation, according to Gutmann and Thompson, is reciprocity:

Deliberative reciprocity involves two requirements. First, there is the moral requirement that when citizens make moral claims “they appeal to reasons or principles that can be shared by fellow citizens” who share their commitment to finding fair terms of social cooperation.