First, thanks for an increasingly rare thing in Medium, an informative article in the area of philosophy.

I'm convinced that we need more rationality. As I see it, Critical Theory and Postmodernism have both perpetuated a critical error committed by 'Enlightenment' thinkers: all have equated secular reasoning with rationality. Yet, secular beliefs, such as a belief in equality or a priori Rights (supposedly perceived, not conceived by people), are as 'extra-rational' (as a form of knowledge) as any sacral belief is. Anyone can reason rationally from any belief, but such a starting point renders whatever follows from it non-rational.

I have developed a strictly rational account of an ethic to govern governance: mutual respect in effecting choices. It follows from the observation that human beings have no choice but to effect choices (which I got from Warren J. Samuels). A society governed by it would not be a Utopia, but it would effectively be the ideal of a Liberal society.

Interestingly, it goes to the concept of 'recognition', from Honneth, for which Giles advocates (though Giles has never engaged with it, despite a couple of invitations from me). To respect one another's capacity to choose is to recognize one another as fellow humans. To act otherwise is to assert some non-rational claim that (unlike the starting point of this ethic) cannot be verified within material existence, but can only take the form of personal (extra-rational) knowledge. It is the material commonality of the ubiquity of effecting choices that gives this ethic its impelling force — or so it seems to me.

if curious: "Alright, Already" (here in Medium but not behind the paywall)