Reasonableness recognises other evaluators

To be reasonable is to have the capacity to recognise that we aren’t the only ones making judgments of value; other people, too, are evaluators, and their claims on the world also have weight. A master of hardball negotiation might be a rational man, but he is unreasonable if he refuses to recognise the needs and perspectives of others when negotiating. To be reasonable, Lawlor thinks, is to see your point of view as one of many—while avoiding the slide into pliancy, the endless perspective-taking of the pushover.

—Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker (27 April 2026)