The Epistemology of Liberalism and the Liberalization of Nonliberal Societies

Liberalism is a political tradition that arose in early modern Europe and evolved into the doctrine that grounds state legitimacy in the protection of individual freedom and equality. For the past two decades, it has faced mounting global challenges and renewed doubts about its very identity. A prominent charge is that it is merely another sectarian ideology, despite its self-conception as neutral among rival conceptions of the good life. Since the mid-20th century, scholarship has largely emphasized its moral commitments such as liberty, equality, and toleration. Its epistemic dimensions, however, have been ignored, downplayed, or rejected, mainly because epistemic commitments have been considered more controversial or sectarian than moral ones. Yet, properly formulated, epistemic commitments need not be divisive, and ignoring them has yielded an incomplete picture of liberalism.

This dissertation develops a nonsectarian account of the epistemology of liberalism and uses this account to propose a model of ‘philosophical liberalization’ for nonliberal—particularly Muslim-majority—societies. I focus on public reason liberalism—according to which, roughly, political decisions must be “publicly justifiable” to citizens—since it represents the dominant strand in contemporary liberal theory. The dissertation consists of three chapters: the first articulates the conceptual epistemic content of liberalism, the second its character-epistemic content, and the third advances a model of philosophical liberalization.

Chapter 1 addresses the charge that political liberalism is epistemically sectarian. I argue that the epistemic commitment of political liberalism is best understood as the underdetermination thesis—the claim that available evidence may be insufficient to uniquely determine what beliefs to hold. Much political disagreement in liberal societies can be explained by the fact that citizens’ political views are underdetermined by evidence. The underdetermination thesis, long familiar in science, thus offers a nonsectarian framework that preserves liberal neutrality in the face of reasonable political disagreement among citizens.

Chapter 2 turns to the character-theoretic epistemic content of liberalism, namely, epistemic virtues. I argue that a liberal polity needs not only liberal institutions but also an epistemically virtuous citizenry because the public justification of political decisions—a requirement of public reason liberalism—is possible only if citizens possess epistemic virtues to a requisite degree.

Building upon the first two chapters, Chapter 3 proposes a model of liberalization for nonliberal societies. It introduces “philosophical liberalization” as a novel form of liberalization distinct from the political and economic forms studied in social sciences. Philosophical liberalization is the transformation of unreasonable comprehensive doctrines (belief systems) into reasonable ones. On this model, a nonliberal society can transition to a liberal order if its dominant doctrines are revised into reasonable versions of themselves. For instance, a society where citizens adhere to nationalism, Islam, or Confucianism can build a liberal order if these doctrines are reasonable versions of themselves. I illustrate this model with case studies on Islam and Turkey.

In sum, liberalism inevitably has epistemic commitments, but these can be given a nonsectarian formulation. The epistemology of liberalism I articulate has both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it offers a fuller account of what liberalism is. Practically, it provides novel tools for sustaining liberal polities and grounds the model of philosophical liberalization that I propose for nonliberal societies to expand liberalism’s global reach.

Committee members: Robert Talisse (chair), Lenn Goodman, Scott Aikin, Jacob Barrett, David Thorstad