Reactive Attitudes, Moral Autonomy, and Rationalized Evil in Gerald Gaus’s Theory of Public Justification

Abstract What justifies the demand for public justification? Recent critics – Anthony Taylor and Collis Tahzib – read Gerald Gaus as grounding public justification in Strawsonian reactive attitudes, and they argue this reading renders Gaus’s sufficient reason test either replaceable or counterintuitive. I offer a charitable, reconstructive reading that draws a different conclusion. On my interpretation, reactive attitudes supply the descriptive context of interpersonal moral life, but the normative warrant for converting affect into second-personal demands rests on a proto-Kantian principle of moral autonomy in Gaus’s account. I show how this bridge justifies Gaus’s sufficient reason condition, explain why Wallace/Taylor’s susceptibility to reason alternative either conflicts with moral autonomy or collapses into Gaus’s test under a moderate reading, and answer Tahzib’s “rationalized evil” charge (Goebbels’s case) by showing the example fails Gaus’s capacity requirements. This paper thus clarifies and salvages the normative core of Gaus’s public justification project.