Reasonable: you know it when you see it?
Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue by Krista Lawlor (Harvard University Press, 2026)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Stice
If you’ve watched any amount of news in the last ten years, you’ve probably thought that some of the people on the screen were being unreasonable. Perhaps at some point you’ve felt that your workplace has unreasonable expectations. Maybe you’ve even been accused of being unreasonable by a friend or family member. But what does it mean to be reasonable? And how important is it?
In Being Reasonable, Stanford philosopher Krista Lawlor offers a straightforward philosophical exploration of reasonableness. The book is written for the general public and uses real examples, including court cases, alongside thought experiments, walking us through concepts like justified belief. The first chapters outline her own views and the later chapters address the role of being reasonable in social life. Along the way, she considers opposing views and identifies some thinkers relevant to the conversation, including John Rawls in the conversation about life with others.
We all kind of know what it means to be reasonable, but we may not quite be able to define it. Lawlor distinguishes between being rational and reasonable and she dismisses a Bayesian approach. Her reasonable involves a whole person—it involves mapping value well, engages emotions, and includes caring about others. That does not mean reasonable equates to easy-going or conflict avoidant. Lawlor argues that being concerned with getting things right is key to being reasonable. This means “a reasonable person is both open-minded and critically minded. Why? At bottom, because a reasonable person wants to get it right about what really matters” (49). As a result, a reasonable person “engages in socially minded decision-making, recognizes the needs and interests of others, and is willing to modify their own goals in considering those needs” (30).
A significant aspect of Lawlor’s idea of being reasonable is caring about others and acting cooperatively. A reasonable person is capable of seeing things from someone else’s point of view and taking that view seriously. A reasonable person is willing to consider other possibilities after first impressions. This relates to how Lawlor interprets reasonable actions and emotions and beliefs. To have reasonable actions, “one must think about how one’s actions look from the point of view of others” (42). “The reasonableness of an emotion depends on how well it tracks value and disvalue cooperatively” (111). Reasonableness in political life involves mapping value cooperatively.
When it comes to a definition for “reasonable,” the stakes are quite high. That’s not just because we all claim to want to be around reasonable people. “Reasonable” is everywhere in U.S. (and English) law. As Lawlor writes, “reasonableness is used as a standard (of behavior, judgment, feeling), and not as a rule” (36). Our legal system demands that we exercise good judgment in our actions and that we can use a “reasonable” person as a guideline when we are acting as jurors. Of course, our life together relies on reasonableness even when a legal standard is not being applied to our actions. Lawlor says, “It is no exaggeration to say that what is at stake in our being reasonable is life as we know it—or at least life as we want it to be” (6).
As Lawlor points out, we spend far more time talking about what it means to be rational than we do what it means to be reasonable. So many of our laws involve the “reasonable” rather than the “rational.” It should seem strange to us that it is not easy to offer a quick, satisfying definition for what it means to be reasonable. Lawlor is hoping, “optimistically,” that “if we think concertedly about what it means to be reasonable, that can help us grow our reasonableness and manifest it more regularly” (177).
We may have many pessimists about our political system and society, but Lawlor thinks that, despite hiccups, we can be reasonable people. She believes we can even have polarized beliefs and still function as a society (165). She leans heavily on Rawls in her chapter on reasonableness in political life, but Lawlor is offering more than a defense of Rawls. She writes: “Whatever our political persuasion, and whatever we think of Rawls’s particular claims about principles of justice, exploring his theory reveals the power of reasonableness to serve as a positive force that brings people to agreement, despite their deep differences” (139). And this matters, because, “Liberal democracy needs lots of support, and Rawls invites hope that our reasonableness provides that support, by helping to keep our conflicting worldviews from tearing us apart” (139). Some readers may find the book over-egged with Rawls toward the end, but ultimately Lawlor is pointing us to reasonableness.
Whether or not readers align with Lawlor on what it means to be reasonable, this short book can prompt worthwhile reflection. An understanding of reasonableness is important for how we judge the actions of others and ourselves, in culture and in courtrooms. We ought to be concerned about getting it right. Anything less would seem unreasonable.
While so many people of various political stripes and professions are somewhere on the spectrum of distraught about our American liberal democracy, so many people are not just wringing their hands. Many have ideas to help improve things. Just as Lawlor argues that we can take the importance of reasonableness from Rawls even if we dismiss other aspects of Rawls, we can take the importance of reasonableness from Lawlor, even if we debate some of its components. That in itself can be exercise in cooperative value mapping. There may well be more grounds for cooperation and for hope than we sometimes recognize.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history and assistant director of the honors program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023) and she is a contributing editor and associate books editor at Front Porch Republic.
