Investigating Integrity in Public Reason Liberalism

Public reason liberalism has been challenged by religious critics who make the “Integrity Objection.” That is, they argue that public reason’s stringent limits on the kinds of reasons which can serve as justificatory prevent them from living lives of integrity wherein their political activity and personal commitments are in sync. Convergence forms of public reason liberalism adopt this critique and respond to it by rejecting the dominant model of public reason, consensus justification, replacing the Rawlsian standard of shared reasons with merely intelligible ones. In this paper I look at two formulations of the integrity objection and make brief rebuttals of both, ultimately arguing that convergence liberalism cannot claim to provide a more compelling response to religious critics than consensus liberalism.