Kevin Vallier
Biographic Data
| ID | 462407 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin Vallier |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin |
| FAMILY NAME | Vallier |
| SIGNATURE | VALLIER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bowling Green State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9407-6716 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Three Problems for Political Perfectionism: Sectarianism, Overinclusion, and Instability
Human rights and divine holiness
Theists commonly hold that God endows humans with rights. Standard explanations draw on natural law theory or divine command theory. However, the natural law account does not give God a central role in explaining our rights, and the divine command account does not assign human nature a significant explanatory role. A successful theistic explanation of human rights must meet three conditions: (1) God must directly explain human rights; (2) human n…
The Social Philosophy of Gerald Gaus: Moral Relations Amid Control, Contestation, and Complexity
Gerald Gaus was one of the leading liberal theorists of the early twenty-first century. He defended liberal order based on its unique capacity to handle deep disagreement and pressed liberals toward a principled openness to pluralism and diversity. Yet, almost everything written about Gaus's work is evaluative: determining whether his arguments succeed or fail. This essay breaks from the pack by outlining underlying themes in his work. I argue th…
All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism
According to a common narrative, the twentieth century spelled the end of faith-infused political movements. Their ideologies, like Catholic integralism, would soon be forgotten. Humans were finally learning to keep religion out of politics. Or were we? In the twenty-first century, nations as diverse as Russia, India, Poland, and Turkey have seen a revival of religious politics, and many religious movements in other countries have proved similarl…
Trust in a polarized age: A reply to critics
In this piece, Vallier responds to critiques of his 2020 book, Trust in a Polarized Age, offered by Mutz, Méon, Kukathas, and Weithman. He first restates the main argument of the book. Mutz and Méon offer criticisms to some of his empirical claims about polarization and trust; in response, Vallier concedes while stressing that one aim of the book is to develop an approach to defending liberal order that updates as these empirical literatures expa…
Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side
Sustaining Democracy is Robert Talisse’s well-argued follow-up to his previous book, Overdoing Democracy. Talisse has argued that American political polarization endangers democracy. The problem occurs when Americans allow their politics to become their identity and, in doing so, lose crosscutting identities, religious, familial, and civic. We not only lose the intrinsic value of those identities; we overdo democracy, and make it worse.In Sustain…
The Justice Argument Against Catholic Integralism
Catholic integralism claims that governments must secure the earthly and heavenly common good. God authorizes two powers to do so. The state governs in matters temporal, the Catholic Church in matters spiritual. Since the church has the nobler end of salvation, it may direct the state to help enforce church law. The integralist adopts two seemingly conflicting norms of justice: (a) coercion into the faith is always unjust, but (b) coercion to kee…
Christian Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason
Christian political theologians have usually taken one of two approaches to the purpose of political order: agonist or perfectionist. Either political order should seek a civic peace between opposing forces or advance the full human good. Both approaches face difficulties, so I propose a middle-way: Christian reconciliationism. This political theology holds that political order should seek reconciliation between diverse moral perspectives. With p…
The Fairness Argument Against Catholic Integralism
Political philosophers are overwhelmingly liberal: freedom and equality are the fundamental political values. Yet, in much of the world, people adopt religious anti-liberalisms. States must bring people into harmony with the cosmic moral order, not protect their autonomy. In this essay, I argue against Catholic integralism, the most intellectually sophisticated and long-standing Christian anti-liberalism. Most people believe that we should treat …
Social Trust
What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one answer: the trustworthiness of science is based in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, wishes and interests of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific method would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. This “idiosyncrasy-free ideal” (IFI) for science has …
In Defense of Idealization in Public Reason
Liberal Socialism Is Not Stable for the Right Reasons
This essay provides an internal critique of John Rawls’s case for liberal socialism. A liberal socialist regime combines liberal rights with public ownership of the means of production. The state deliberately manages capital to promote both economic and moral ends. I argue that liberal socialism cannot satisfy Rawls’s own criterion for a well-ordered and legitimate regime: stability for the right reasons. Liberal socialism cannot be stable much a…
Equal Citizenship and Convergence
I argue against Lori Watson and Christie Hartley's recent criticisms of convergence approaches to public justification. In particular, I argue that convergence approaches can capture what is distinctive about democratic decision‐making and provide an attractive account of stability for the right reasons
Trust in a Polarized Age
Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic instituti…
In Public Reason, Diversity Trumps Coherence
Associations in Social Contract Theory: Toward a Pluralist Contractarianism
Liberals can be distinguished from one another in a number of ways, including by what they regard as the greatest threats to liberty. According to Jacob T. Levy, “rationalist” liberals think that nonpolitical institutions are the chief threats to freedom and that democratic governance can free people from these private tyrannies. By contrast, “pluralist” liberals think that governments are the chief threats to liberty, and civil associations are …
Pluralistic Partisanship
Social contracts for real moral agents: A synthesis of public reason and public choice approaches to constitutional design
Rawls, Piketty, and the Critique of Welfare-State Capitalism
Political philosophers have renewed their attempts to justify John Rawls’s preferred economic regime, property-owning democracy. They have followed Rawls in criticizing welfare-state capitalism because it permits unjustifiably large economic inequalities. Simultaneously, Thomas Piketty has argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to create very high degrees of wealth and income inequality. I argue that introducing Piketty’s work into a Raw…
Political Stability in the Open Society
We argue that the Rawlsian description of a just liberal society, the well‐ordered society, fails to accommodate deep disagreement and is insufficiently dynamic. In response, we formulate an alternative model that we call the open society, organized around a new account of dynamic stability. In the open society, constitutional rules must be stable enough to preserve social conditions that foster experimentation, while leaving room in legal and in…
Exit, Voice, and Public Reason
Public reason liberals appeal to public deliberation to ensure that a legal order can be publicly justified to its citizens. I argue that thisvoicemechanism should be supplemented byexitmechanisms. By allowing citizens to exit legal orders they believe cannot be publicly justified, citizens can pressure states to change their laws. This exit pressure is sometimes more effective than deliberation. I explore federalism as an exit mechanism that can…
Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates
Political theory, from antiquity to the present, has been divided on the relationship between the requirements of justice and the limitations of persons and institutions to meet those requirements. Some theorists hold that a theory of justice should be utopian or idealistic—that the derivation of the correct principles of justice should not take into account human and institutional limitations. Others insist on a realist or non-utopian view, acco…
In Defence of Intelligible Reasons in Public Justification
Mainstream political liberalism holds that legal coercion is permissible only if it is based on reasons that all can share, access or accept. But these requirements are subject to well-known problems. I articulate and defend an intelligible reasons requirement as an alternative. An intelligible reason is one that all suitably idealized members of the public can see as a reason for the person who offers it according to that person's own evaluative…
Public justification versus public deliberation: The case for divorce
I drive a wedge between public deliberation and public justification, concepts tightly associated in public reason liberalism. Properly understood, the ideal of public justification imposes no restraint on citizen deliberation but requires that those who have a substantial impact on the use of coercive power, political officials, advance proposals each person has sufficient reason to accept. I formulate this idea as the Principle of Convergent Re…
The Fragility of Consensus: Public Reason, Diversity and Stability
J ohn R awls's transition from A T heory of J ustice to P olitical L iberalism was driven by his rejection of T heory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see R awls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that R awls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public…
Political Stability in the Open Society
We argue that the Rawlsian description of a just liberal society, the well‐ordered society, fails to accommodate deep disagreement and is insufficiently dynamic. In response, we formulate an alternative model that we call the open society, organized around a new account of dynamic stability. In the open society, constitutional rules must be stable enough to preserve social conditions that foster experimentation, while leaving room in legal and in…
The roles of religious conviction in a publicly justified polity: The implications of convergence, asymmetry and political institutions
We discuss whether religious reasons may be appealed to in justification and political debate in a polity whose laws must be justified to those subject to them in terms of reasons that are accessible to one and all. We argue that, properly understood, a commitment to public justification provides no grounds for the exclusion of religious reasons from politics. We trace the view that religious reasons are excluded from public reason to three basic…
In Public Reason, Diversity Trumps Coherence
Rawls, Piketty, and the Critique of Welfare-State Capitalism
Political philosophers have renewed their attempts to justify John Rawls’s preferred economic regime, property-owning democracy. They have followed Rawls in criticizing welfare-state capitalism because it permits unjustifiably large economic inequalities. Simultaneously, Thomas Piketty has argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to create very high degrees of wealth and income inequality. I argue that introducing Piketty’s work into a Raw…
In Defence of Intelligible Reasons in Public Justification
Mainstream political liberalism holds that legal coercion is permissible only if it is based on reasons that all can share, access or accept. But these requirements are subject to well-known problems. I articulate and defend an intelligible reasons requirement as an alternative. An intelligible reason is one that all suitably idealized members of the public can see as a reason for the person who offers it according to that person's own evaluative…
Exit, Voice, and Public Reason
Public reason liberals appeal to public deliberation to ensure that a legal order can be publicly justified to its citizens. I argue that thisvoicemechanism should be supplemented byexitmechanisms. By allowing citizens to exit legal orders they believe cannot be publicly justified, citizens can pressure states to change their laws. This exit pressure is sometimes more effective than deliberation. I explore federalism as an exit mechanism that can…
Social Trust
What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one answer: the trustworthiness of science is based in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, wishes and interests of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific method would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. This “idiosyncrasy-free ideal” (IFI) for science has …
Associations in Social Contract Theory: Toward a Pluralist Contractarianism
Liberals can be distinguished from one another in a number of ways, including by what they regard as the greatest threats to liberty. According to Jacob T. Levy, “rationalist” liberals think that nonpolitical institutions are the chief threats to freedom and that democratic governance can free people from these private tyrannies. By contrast, “pluralist” liberals think that governments are the chief threats to liberty, and civil associations are …
The roles of religious conviction in a publicly justified polity: The implications of convergence, asymmetry and political institutions
We discuss whether religious reasons may be appealed to in justification and political debate in a polity whose laws must be justified to those subject to them in terms of reasons that are accessible to one and all. We argue that, properly understood, a commitment to public justification provides no grounds for the exclusion of religious reasons from politics. We trace the view that religious reasons are excluded from public reason to three basic…
Convergence and Consensus in Public Reason
Against Public Reason Liberalism's Accessibility Requirement
Public reason liberals typically defend an accessibility requirement for reasons offered in public political dialog. The accessibility requirement holds that public reasons must be amenable to criticism, evaluable by reasonable persons, and the like. Public reason liberals are therefore hostile to the public use of reasons that appear inaccessible, especially religious reasons. This hostility has provoked strong reactions from public reason liber…
Liberalism, Religion And Integrity
It is a commonplace that liberalism and religious belief conflict. Liberalism, its proponents and critics maintain, requires the privatization of religious belief, since liberals often argue that citizens of faith must repress their fundamental commitments when participating in public life. Critics of liberalism complain that privatization is objectionable because it requires citizens of faith to violate their integrity. The liberal political tra…
The Normative Significance of Conscience
Despite the increasing amount of literature on the legal and political questions triggered by a commitment to liberty of conscience, an explanation of the normative significance of conscience remains elusive. We argue that the few attempts to address this fail to capture the reasons people have to respect the consciences of others. We offer an alternative account that utilizes the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy to e…
Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation
In the eyes of many, liberalism requires the aggressive secularization of social institutions, especially public media and public schools. The unfortunate result is that many Americans have become alienated from the liberal tradition because they believe it threatens their most sacred forms of life. This was not always the case: in American history, the relation between liberalism and religion has often been one of mutual respect and support. In …
Public justification versus public deliberation: The case for divorce
I drive a wedge between public deliberation and public justification, concepts tightly associated in public reason liberalism. Properly understood, the ideal of public justification imposes no restraint on citizen deliberation but requires that those who have a substantial impact on the use of coercive power, political officials, advance proposals each person has sufficient reason to accept. I formulate this idea as the Principle of Convergent Re…
The Fragility of Consensus: Public Reason, Diversity and Stability
J ohn R awls's transition from A T heory of J ustice to P olitical L iberalism was driven by his rejection of T heory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see R awls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that R awls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public…
A moral and economic critique of the new property-owning democrats: On behalf of a Rawlsian welfare state
On Distinguishing Publicly Justified Polities from Modus Vivendi Regimes
Second Person Rules: An Alternative Approach to Second-Personal Normativity
In Defence of Intelligible Reasons in Public Justification
Mainstream political liberalism holds that legal coercion is permissible only if it is based on reasons that all can share, access or accept. But these requirements are subject to well-known problems. I articulate and defend an intelligible reasons requirement as an alternative. An intelligible reason is one that all suitably idealized members of the public can see as a reason for the person who offers it according to that person's own evaluative…
Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates
Political theory, from antiquity to the present, has been divided on the relationship between the requirements of justice and the limitations of persons and institutions to meet those requirements. Some theorists hold that a theory of justice should be utopian or idealistic—that the derivation of the correct principles of justice should not take into account human and institutional limitations. Others insist on a realist or non-utopian view, acco…
Social contracts for real moral agents: A synthesis of public reason and public choice approaches to constitutional design
Rawls, Piketty, and the Critique of Welfare-State Capitalism
Political philosophers have renewed their attempts to justify John Rawls’s preferred economic regime, property-owning democracy. They have followed Rawls in criticizing welfare-state capitalism because it permits unjustifiably large economic inequalities. Simultaneously, Thomas Piketty has argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to create very high degrees of wealth and income inequality. I argue that introducing Piketty’s work into a Raw…
Political Stability in the Open Society
We argue that the Rawlsian description of a just liberal society, the well‐ordered society, fails to accommodate deep disagreement and is insufficiently dynamic. In response, we formulate an alternative model that we call the open society, organized around a new account of dynamic stability. In the open society, constitutional rules must be stable enough to preserve social conditions that foster experimentation, while leaving room in legal and in…
Exit, Voice, and Public Reason
Public reason liberals appeal to public deliberation to ensure that a legal order can be publicly justified to its citizens. I argue that thisvoicemechanism should be supplemented byexitmechanisms. By allowing citizens to exit legal orders they believe cannot be publicly justified, citizens can pressure states to change their laws. This exit pressure is sometimes more effective than deliberation. I explore federalism as an exit mechanism that can…
Pluralistic Partisanship
In Defense of Idealization in Public Reason
Liberal Socialism Is Not Stable for the Right Reasons
This essay provides an internal critique of John Rawls’s case for liberal socialism. A liberal socialist regime combines liberal rights with public ownership of the means of production. The state deliberately manages capital to promote both economic and moral ends. I argue that liberal socialism cannot satisfy Rawls’s own criterion for a well-ordered and legitimate regime: stability for the right reasons. Liberal socialism cannot be stable much a…
Equal Citizenship and Convergence
I argue against Lori Watson and Christie Hartley's recent criticisms of convergence approaches to public justification. In particular, I argue that convergence approaches can capture what is distinctive about democratic decision‐making and provide an attractive account of stability for the right reasons
Trust in a Polarized Age
Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic instituti…
In Public Reason, Diversity Trumps Coherence
Associations in Social Contract Theory: Toward a Pluralist Contractarianism
Liberals can be distinguished from one another in a number of ways, including by what they regard as the greatest threats to liberty. According to Jacob T. Levy, “rationalist” liberals think that nonpolitical institutions are the chief threats to freedom and that democratic governance can free people from these private tyrannies. By contrast, “pluralist” liberals think that governments are the chief threats to liberty, and civil associations are …
Christian Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason
Christian political theologians have usually taken one of two approaches to the purpose of political order: agonist or perfectionist. Either political order should seek a civic peace between opposing forces or advance the full human good. Both approaches face difficulties, so I propose a middle-way: Christian reconciliationism. This political theology holds that political order should seek reconciliation between diverse moral perspectives. With p…
Political science (32 works) · Law (30 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (27 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law and economics (22 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Democracy (12 works) · Economics (12 works)