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A knowledge problem for the civic friendship view of political liberalism

William Schumacher

Politics, Philosophy & Economics2025https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x251365689article
ABDC B
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

John Rawls and those sympathetic to his views defend a moral principle called the criterion of reciprocity. Some argue that the moral reasons for complying with the criterion of reciprocity are derived from civic friendship, a valuable relationship of collective agency that one can sustain with one's fellow citizens. In this article, I pose what I call the knowledge problem for civic friendship. I argue that citizens have only limited information about whether others are complying with the criterion of reciprocity. Furthermore, I argue that this fact means that citizens only have weak moral reasons to comply with the criterion of reciprocity.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x251365689

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@article{william2025,
  title        = {{A knowledge problem for the civic friendship view of political liberalism}},
  author       = {William Schumacher},
  journal      = {Politics, Philosophy & Economics},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x251365689},
}

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A knowledge problem for the civic friendship view of political liberalism

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.