Laborde’s religion

ABSTRACT

Cécile Laborde’s Liberalism’s Religion proposes liberal principles to address political controversies over religion. One is the public reason requirement that reasons for state policies should be accessible. Another is the civic inclusiveness requirement according to which symbolic religious establishment is wrong when it communicates that religious identity is a component of civic identity. A third is the claim that liberal states have meta-jurisdictional authority to settle the boundary between what counts as religion and what counts as non-religion. The article considers whether Laborde has managed to articulate these three principles in a way that is operationalisable and can serve to provide solutions to practical controversies over religion. It is argued that Laborde’s formulations leave important issues open, and some ways of settling these issues are considered.     

What is democratic reliability? Epistemic theories of democracy and the problem of reasonable disagreement

It has proven difficult to reconcile epistemic justifications of political authority, especially epistemic theories of democracy, with a basic liberal commitment to respecting reasonable value pluralism. The latter seems to imply that there can be no universally acceptable substantive outcome standard to evaluate the epistemic reliability of different political procedures. This paper shows that this objection rests on an implausible interpretation of political competence. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, that epistemic theories of political authority are in fact compatible with a liberal commitment to respecting reasonable pluralism; but second, that if we take reasonable pluralism seriously, the standard of competence we should use is a pragmatic one. Good political decision procedures reliably fix practical problems of social coordination and adapt to new demands and developments; we need not demand that their decisions are all-things-considered just or optimal. This pragmatic account of political competence is compatible with reasonable pluralism, since on this basis we can comparatively evaluate political procedures without controversially asserting a single standard of ‘truth’ in politics. Hence, it is possible to give an epistemic account of political authority that works within a liberal theory of political justification.     

A Pragmatist Critique of Liberal Epistemology

Abstract

This paper wrestles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central feature of liberal epistemology, namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non-public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition.     

Jürgen Habermas on public reason and religion: do religious citizens suffer an asymmetrical cognitive burden,and should they be compensated?

In his recent writings, Jürgen Habermas asks how the liberal constitutional principle of separation between church and state, religion and politics, should be understood. The problem, he holds, is that a liberal state guarantees equal freedom for religious communities to practise their faith, while at the same time shielding the political bodies that take collectively binding decisions from religious influences. This means that religious citizens are asked to justify their political statements independently of their religious views, resulting in a burden that secular citizens do not experience. To compensate, Habermas demands from secular citizens that they open their minds to the possible truth content of religion, enter into dialog and contribute to the translation of religious reasons into generally acceptable reasons. This article focuses on Habermas’s assumption that religious citizens suffer an asymmetrical cognitive burden that should be compensated, and his claim that his approach to religion in the public sphere is less restrictive than that of John Rawls.     

How generous should egalitarians be?

Abstract

Lippert-Rasmussen has proposed a new version of luck egalitarianism: equality of concern. In this article, I argue that equality of concern is more generous than its two luck egalitarian rivals. That is, against equality of opportunity for welfare, it is more generous in that it recognises shortfalls in the satisfaction of one’s impersonal concerns as potentially inegalitarian. Against equality of resources, it is more generous in that it advocates more extensive compensation. I suggest that equality of concern’s generosity regarding impersonal concerns is justified but its generosity regarding compensation is not. Equality of resources, however, faces other problems, and so I argue that a hybrid of equality of concern and equality of resources would be the more attractive luck egalitarian view.     

Does justice stand alone?

A common feature of leading liberal-egalitarian political theories is the sharp priority they attribute to justice, and to distributive justice in particular. In this article, I argue that liberal egalitarians have yet to offer a persuasive argument for prioritizing justice, and distributive justice in particular, in this way. I focus on assessing arguments advanced in the seminal work of John Rawls and employ the pluralist liberalism of Isaiah Berlin to illustrate that Rawls’ arguments are not even persuasive for reasonable liberals like Berlin, let alone for non-liberals. The upshot of my argument is not that liberals should abandon the pursuit of greater equality of wealth and income, but only that such goals should still be balanced against the claims of other fundamental values, such as individual liberty and the common good (contrary to those who want to give sharp priority to distributive justice).     

Can my religion influence my conception of justice? Political liberalism and the role of comprehensive doctrines

In his last works, John Rawls explicitly argued for an overlapping consensus on a family of reasonable liberal political conceptions of justice, rather than just one. This ‘Deep Version’ of political liberalism opens up new questions about the relationship between citizens’ political conceptions, from which they must draw and offer public reasons in their political advocacy, and their comprehensive doctrines. These questions centre on whether a reasonable citizen’s choice of political conception can be influenced by her comprehensive doctrine. In this paper I present two models of the relationship, which give contrasting answers to these questions, and defend the model that is more permissive with regard to the influence of comprehensive doctrines. This has important implications for our understanding of Rawlsian political liberalism, and reduces the force of objections that have been offered by theorists sympathetic to religion.     

Reconciliation Arguments in John Rawls’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

Recently debates about the worth of “ideal theory” have directed attention to the functions that an account of a perfectly just society can serve. One function is that of “reconciliation”: learning that a seemingly undesirable feature of the social world would exist even in the perfectly just society can show us the value that it has in the present as well. John Rawls has emphasized reconciliation as among the roles of political philosophy. For instance, Rawls claims that his theory of justice can reconcile us to the pluralism of liberal democracies. In this essay, I argue that Rawls’s political theory also can reconcile the inhabitants of liberal democratic societies to the fact that such societies may be cognitively confusing on account of their complexity. Then I contend that Rawls’s work offers valuable theoretical resources for analysing a society’s transparency or lack thereof.     

Alan Patten’s theory of equal recognition and its contribution to the debate over multiculturalism

In this introduction, we first give a brief overview of the debate over multiculturalism in political theory. We then situate Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition in that context by highlighting his major normative thesis, according to which there are reasons of principle, in a liberal democracy, to grant special forms of public recognition and accommodation to cultural minorities. Finally, we present a succinct summary of the nine articles that follow this introduction and that critically engage with Patten’s arguments.     

Neutrality of what?

In what sense should a liberal state be neutral between the conceptions of the good held by its citizens? Traditionally, liberals have provided two different answers to this question. Some have adopted a conception of neutrality of justification, while others a conception of neutrality of effects. Recently, Alan Patten has defended an alternative, novel and sophisticated, conception of neutrality – neutrality of treatment. In this article I assess whether neutrality of treatment is, in fact, a superior conception of neutrality. I try to show that neutrality of treatment suffers from the very same weaknesses that Patten attributes to its alternatives and that, overall, neutrality of justification, properly construed, provides a more promising account of both the sense in which a state ought to be neutral and of the object of neutrality. Finally, I argue for a broader account of the normative bases of liberal neutrality than the one proposed by Patten. This account includes, beyond considerations of fairness, a relational principle of equal standing.