Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion: Between Public Reason and Pluralism 0415552184, 9780415552189

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CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

What is the place of religion in a pluralist democracy? The continuous presence of religion in the public sphere has raised anew normative and practical issues related to the role of religion in a democratic polity, generating spirited political debates in Western and non-­Western contexts. Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion provides an advanced introduction to, and a critical appraisal of, the major schools of political thought with a focus on the relationship between democracy and religion. Key features of this book include: • Analyses of different political traditions: liberalism, republicanism, deliberative democracy, feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and interculturalism; • Critical discussions of key contemporary philosophers, such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, Will Kymlicka, Chandran Kukathas, and Bhiku Parekh; • A pluralist approach that questions the strict divide between analytical and continental political philosophy; • Discussion on the place of religion in politics from multiple perspectives by drawing on a plurality of political contexts, both Western and non-­Western; • Analyses of legal and political cases related to different religious traditions, for example, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. This comprehensive text will be of great use to students of religion and politics in the fields of political and legal theory, and religious and theological studies, while also offering critical insights and arguments that will be of interest to the experts in the field. Camil Ungureanu is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Coordinator of the MA in Political Philosophy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. He has published articles in several journals and co-­edited various books on the topics of contemporary political philosophy, art, religion, and politics. Paolo Monti is Lecturer at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy. He has published and edited several works on the philosophy of social practices, the ethics of democratic citizenship, and the role of religion in the public sphere.

“Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti have written an impressive book full of insights on one of the most important political issues of our time. The book provides a compass with which to navigate the oceanic literature on the topic: the authors take the reader through very high seas of contemporary controversies on the place of religion in our societies. Ungureanu and Monti steer the boat to the safe harbour of detailed knowledge and dispassionate analysis despite the sheer complexity of the problem.” Lorenzo Zucca, King’s College London, UK “This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debates about the role of religion in our contemporary democratic societies. It will be essential reading for scholars and students looking for a critical introduction to the debates, while Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti also provide their own original take on the subject.” Lasse Thomassen, Queen Mary University of London, UK “Complete, well-documented, lucid, and always thought-provoking, Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion takes stock of a rapidly growing debate on the changing relation of religion and politics in the 21st century. Always paying the complexity of the subject its dues, Ungureanu’s and Monti’s volume is a must-read for any reader up to find her own way through the maze of the conflicting views on religion in the public realm.” Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy

CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION Between Public Reason and Pluralism

Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti The right of Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Ungureanu, Camil, author. Title: Contemporary political philosophy and religion: between public reason and pluralism / Camil Ungureanu and Paolo Monti. Description: New York: Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017032582 | ISBN 9780415552189 (hardback) | ISBN 9780415552196 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315142418 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Religion and politics. | Political science–Philosophy. | Democracy–Religious aspects. Classification: LCC BL65.P7 U54 2018 | DDC 322/.1–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032582 ISBN: 978-0-415-55218-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-55219-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14241-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

To Alexandra To the memory of my mother (C.U.) To my parents, for hope (P.M.)

CONTENTS



Acknowledgements



Introduction: a plea for complexity

viii 1

1 Political liberalism, public reason, and religion: John Rawls

21

2 Public reason debated: religion, citizenship, and inclusion

51

3 Postsecularism, translation, and religion: Jürgen Habermas

74

4 Republicanism: between non-­domination, the common good, and civil religion

105

5 Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity: secularization, recognition, and inclusive liberalism

142

6 Multiculturalism and its critics: from rise to fall? 

174

7 The conundrum of gender equality and religion: between the autonomy and the capability approach

206

8 Democracy and postmodernism: Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo

248

9 Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

277



298 300 336

List of cases Bibliography Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Will Kymlicka for his promptness in making useful observations on an early version of the manuscript. Marcos Picchio was extremely helpful in proofreading, raising useful questions, and making suggestions concerning an earlier version of the manuscript. Friends and colleagues read versions of some of the chapters making useful comments: Joan Vergés and David Thunder (Chapter 1); Robert Audi (Chapters 1–2); Mariano Croce (Chapter 3); Iseult Honohan, Jose Lluis Martí, and Albena Azmanova (Chapter 4); Bernard Gagnon (Chapter 5); and Anabella Di Tullio and Irene Gómez Franco (Chapter 7). We thank two anonymous reviewers for reading an earlier version of the first three chapters, and making useful suggestions. We would also like to thank Maria Whelan for her copy-­editing of the manuscript. This manuscript was finished in May 2017.

INTRODUCTION A plea for complexity

1  A plural landscape Religion is a universal phenomenon in human evolution: it characterizes all historically known societies (Bellah 2011; De Waal 2013: 437).1 The universality and historical success of religion have most probably to do with the creation of meaningful orders and the contribution to social integration, yet there is no scientific consensus over why and how exactly religion has maintained such a vital and constant role throughout human evolution (Watts and Turner 2014). In the history of human society, modernity and Enlightenment introduced an important caesura that still shapes the problematic of contemporary political philosophy. While secular political arrangements predate modernity and Enlightenment and are not specifically Western,2 it was during this period that secularism emerged with its multiple forms and implications. As a political and intellectual trend, secularism has had an enormous impact, propagating the notion of the modern constitutional practice of the state separated from godly matters and, more radically, opening up the possibility of a society without religion. Great secularist thinkers from Marx and Freud to Parsons and the early Habermas were deeply convinced that the advancement of modernity would lead to the death of God and the fatal unravelling of religion.3 Today “secularism” is a deeply contested concept and, as we will see throughout the book, it is used in quite different ways and contexts. In an initial approximation, it is helpful to reckon with three dimensions of secularism that do not necessarily go together: first, secularism refers to political arrangements between the state and religion based on modern constitutional principles such as equal respect, freedom of conscience, separation, impartiality, and neutrality. These arrangements and principles have been variously articulated in Western and non-­Western contexts, leading to the formation of varieties of secularism from the US liberal-­separationist model and French laicist republicanism to the Indian and Indonesian legal-­pluralist systems (Maclure and Taylor 2011; Bhargava 2006a, 2006b). Second, secularism refers to the philosophical and ideological belief that religion is an illusion, a pre-­modern form of alienation and unfreedom. At its most extreme, this belief was put into practice by communist states that aimed at eradicating religion from the public sphere and, in cases such as Albania and North Korea, from the private sphere as well. A new militant atheism champions the idea of the evils of religion viewed as a relic of the “dark ages” and as undermining political emancipation and democratic life. In its

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Introduction: a plea for complexity

most sophisticated versions, this secularist trend cultivates a form of scientism that can draw on evolutionary theory and neuroscience.4 But the philosophical belief that religion is by necessity a form of unfreedom and mere self-­deception has lost its appeal for a good number of philosophers and scientists.5 In order to contrast the hostility to religion of an influential secularist trend, different thinkers have replaced the term “secularism” with open or inclusive secularism (Sen 2006; Bhargava 2006a; Nussbaum 2008a), secularity (Taylor 2009), or postsecularism (Habermas 2008a). These perspectives argue, first, that religion is a way of articulating valuable attitudes in front of existence, searching for meaningful experiences, and answering ultimate questions (the meaning of life, suffering, death, evil, and God); moreover, they argue that religion can, under specific conditions, be a dimension of democratic life and a tool for political emancipation.6 Third, at the sociological level, secularism refers to the hypothesis that the rise of the modern society causes the irremediable decline of religion and its impact on society at large.7 This idea (also called the secularization thesis) has been interpreted variously, generating an extremely complex sociological debate that can only be hinted at here (Casanova 1994; Bruce 2011; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Roy 2010; Beck 2010; Berger 1999; Pollack 2009). For some, religion actually disappears with the advent of the emancipated modern society. In Marx’s view, religion vanishes in the new communist society because the basis of its existence, the economic conflict and class struggle, is eliminated. For others, the secularization thesis means that the advancement of modernity makes religion gradually irrelevant in determining the socio-­political integration of society (Steve Bruce speaks of secularization as the “the diminishing of the social significance of religion”; Bruce 1992: 6). Versions of this hypothesis have been dominant in Western academia until recently. However, modern history, evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and sociological research have not clearly confirmed the secularization thesis (Barrett 2012; De Waal 2013; Bellah 2011). Though it remains open and influential (Norris and Ingelhart 2004; Bruce 2011), this thesis has lost some of its support and plausibility. As Alexis de Tocqueville notes already in the nineteenth century, in the US modernization proves compatible with a high level of religiosity, although the religious disaffection and atheism among Amer­ican citizens (in particular the youth) has increased in recent times. Moreover, even in Europe, the most secularized continent, there has been a revival of interest in spiritual-­religious matters. At the global level, the number of believers is actually on the rise: the world’s population is predominately monotheistic, and the overall number of affiliated to monotheism is expected to increase, largely for demographic reasons, even if in some countries the number of disaffiliations and atheists is growing (slowly in the US and some Muslim countries; more rapidly in Ireland and Spain).8 The difficulties of the secularization thesis amplified by the visibilization of religion in the public sphere in the past two decades have led some scholars to speak of desecularization (Berger 1999). According to the idea of desecularization, the proclamation of the death of God was too hasty: after a period of decline, religion has come back in full force. “God’s revenge” and the “clash of civilization” are the buzzwords of this literature which pictures a global “battle of gods and demons” (Kepel 1993; Huntington 1993). Nonetheless, the idea of desecularization is empirically questionable: the gigantomachia between capitalism and communism overshadowed the problem of religion



Introduction: a plea for complexity

during the cold war, yet modernization did not make religion radically decline or disappear (Thomas Luckmann (1967) deconstructs in the ‘60s the traditional “myth” of secularization), so that it can return afterwards. The recent history and sociological research neither confirms unambiguously the narrative of secularization nor its opposite. The current landscape is plural: it is made of different trends that are not fully captured by one single narrative or hypothesis. The merit of the idea of desecularization is that it draws attention to trends that have questioned the expectation that the model of secular, capitalist, and liberal democracy would prevail worldwide after the fall of Soviet Union. The most visible change is the Islamism-­related violence that has captured the headlines and people’s imagination and fears. This new wave of violence has a paradoxical relation to religion: despite the claim to redeem the purity of original Islam, Al Qaeda and Daesh are in many respects ultra-­modern in drawing on ideas coming from the West, and in being parasitic on technological and capitalist dynamics (Gray 2007; Roy 2010; 2013; Asad 2009). Al Qaeda and Daesh claim to reinstate the age-­old fundamentals of Islam, yet they break with the complexities of the Islamic tradition and culture: the new terroristic violence is the expression of a “holy ignorance” (Roy 2010). There has been, further, a spreading of charismatic forms of religiosity (e.g. Pentecostalism) as well as revival of individual interest in spiritual-­religious search, especially among the youth (Pollack 2009; Pollack et al. 2008; Berger et al. 2008). A significant change has been that religious majorities and minorities worldwide have become more active in the political and legal public sphere. In the global arena, the political influence of religious majoritarianism has grown stronger, sometimes in combination with ethno-­ nationalism and populism.9 This trend is transversal and affects democratic and non-­ democratic regimes, questioning the faith in the possibility of shaping politics on dialogue, public reasoning, and forms of exchange, and shaping a future marked by uncertainty.10 Under different guises, political and legal conflicts related to religion have become part of the headlines and public debates from France, Poland, and Turkey to the US, Israel, Indonesia, and India.11

2  The multi-­dimensionality of religion The continuous presence of religion at the centre of public debates has prompted a new wave of studies in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary theory and neuroscience to sociology and political philosophy. At core of the debates in political philosophy lies the interpretative and normative interrogation: what is the place of religion in a constitutional democracy? This question is common to the various philosophers included in this volume, regardless of their school of thought (liberalism, republicanism, multiculturalism, feminism, and so on), and philosophical approach (analytical or non-­analytical). Political philosophers are, nonetheless, divided concerning their assumptions about religion and their method of inquiry of the nexus religion–politics (for the latter problematic, see Sections 3 and 4 below on the analytical/Continental divide and the uses of comparativism). Throughout the book we will show that it is instructive to look at what different philosophers actually understand by religion, as this shapes their perspectives on the relationship between religious and democratic matters. Our critical evaluation of

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Introduction: a plea for complexity

d­ ifferent views from Rawls and Habermas to Okin and Rorty will be partly constructed on discussing their sometimes-­tacit assumptions about religion. Interpreting and circumscribing the complexity of the religious phenomena is, admittedly, an arduous task that continues to exert scientists, philosophers, and lawmakers. The difficulty of this task has different sources. First, religion is puzzling and hard to pin down because it inspires and relates to deeply contrasting phenomena, which makes implausible any essentialist approach. Religion can demand cruel human sacrifices on a mass scale or unconditional love towards the other; it can inspire imperialist adventures and the Inquisition, as well as ethical transformations driven by infinite compassion, charity, and forgiveness, or sublime artistic creations. Some of the worst Western dynamics of colonization were religiously justified, yet religion also shapes regimes of toleration of the likes of Aśoka and emancipatory movements guided by leaders such as M. Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, D. Day, and M.L. King.12 Second, the “lived religion” is made of an evolving set of practices and beliefs that are articulated in different and even divergent ways. Many live religion as an outward, social, or communal matter without going through the qualms of searching for ultimate truths and eternal salvation. For the Ancient Greeks and Romans, religion was mostly a civic matter orientated towards worldly affairs, and not a question of absolute certainties and personal faith. Today, for a good number of Hindus, religion is a vibrant communal practice. Others experience religion as an intimate relation of faith between one’s conscience and God (as in Protestantism); still others experience religion as obedience to the Law (as in some strands of Judaism), and so on. In turn, for many secularized Christians in Europe, religion is reduced to a “believing without belonging” (G. Davie) and an occasional social practice relevant at births, weddings, and funerals. Even within one religious tradition, experiences, beliefs, and practices can contradict each other (see, for instance, Ahmed’s analysis of the contradictions of Islam, 2017). Third, contrary to what political philosophers sometimes assume, the religious and non-­religious fields are not self-­explanatory and fixed. As sociologists, anthropologists, historians of ideas, and comparativists underscore, the borders between the religious and the non-­religious is not set in stone, but are porous, contested, and negotiated by social actors (Göle 1997). Moreover, the debate concerning what religion is has not generated any consensus whatsoever among scholars. Is Confucianism – at least in the way it is articulated in the Analects – a religion or a social ethics centred on junzi – the man of superior ethical quality? Is Buddhism as understood by the Buddha and his immediate followers a religion, or is it a spiritual discipline and practical wisdom? To what extent can new age groups or new communities (e.g. the Osho community, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Jedi Church) can be considered religious? What about Scientology – is it a religion or a business enterprise based on a dubious ideological mix strategically mimicking religious vocabulary? Taking at face value religious claims for recognition as well as practices or conflicts involving religion is often debatable. Some demands may be strategically wrapped up in religious language or the language of the rights of religious minorities so as to gain legal status and access to resources and privileges. Practices such as cliterodectomy, polygamy, or wearing the burqa appear, at least in some contexts, to be traditional or cultural “additions” rather than religious.



Introduction: a plea for complexity

Mere definition and postulation of an ahistorical essence of religion cannot replace the debate and controversy about the religious and non-­religious fields, and the comparative research in the concrete contexts. The task of political-­philosophical inquiry requires a multi-­dimensional approach to religious beliefs and practices that acknowledges their diversity and relatively fluid borders. Our critical approach throughout the book is attentive to the dimensions and plurality of religious phenomena, and is at odds with reductionist strategies of interpretation; in particular, two one-­sided strategies stand out for their influence on political philosophizing: (a) the first is based on the generalization of one religious paradigm at the expense of others; (b) the second is based on the exclusive focus on one dimension of religion – e.g. religion as power and domination or religion as source of meaningfulness and moral values – at the expense of others.

a  The parochial strategy The first objectionable interpretive strategy takes one particular religious experience as capturing the core of religion in general, and uses it as a normative benchmark for assessing different religious practices. The parochial strategy has often regarded Christian theism as the paradigm for other religious practices: religion proper is has defined in terms of transcendence, God, inner faith or conscience, a holy scripture, absolute truth, and so on.13 This parochial universalism is rooted in Western colonial history. From this perspective, other religions emerge as incomplete and inferior. To illustrate, African religion has been constructed as primitive, immoral, animist, and centred on superstition, witchcraft, and magic. As postcolonial critics argue, this labelling has served the colonial dynamic of domination and exploitation by placing African religion as inferior to Christianity – a spiritual, moral, and nobler religion meant to civilize the African savages (Mbembe 2013; Fanon 1961). Similarly, the varieties of secular arrangements are not evaluated on their own merits and demerits, but are placed on a single scale and assessed against one ideal Western model. Political-­religious arrangements different from Western experiences are regarded as inferior, unsatisfactory, and incomplete. To exemplify, India’s pluralistic system appears not as an alternative form of democratization but as an imperfect compromise in a context that has not yet undergone the desirable Western secularization. Traces of this parochial gaze in universalist garments and focused on one idealized model (best approximated in the West) can still be perceived in legal-­political practice and scholarly studies. As postcolonial critics and comparative scholars have emphasized, generalizing and evaluating on account of the specific religious history and secular model of the West is still common in academia and public discourse (Asad 2003; Bhargava 2006a; De Roover and Balagangadhara 2008; de Sousa 1995, 2015). The concern with parochialism and the diversity of religious practices has led some scholars to abandon the use of term “religion” altogether (Smith 1963; Ahmed 2017; Sloterdijk 2013).14 Analogously, given the European roots of secularism, some scholars have been sceptical about its application to non-­European cases involving other religious­political traditions.15 Talal Asad, Asish Nandy, and others call attention to the fact that Western secularism is deeply tributary to Christianity,16 and has pernicious consequences if applied to non-­Christian religions. If the liberal model of toleration “results from an

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internal Christian dynamic of secularization, which reproduces theological principles in secular guise”, it risks being unintelligible to communities originating from other cultures that “are unrelated to the attitudes generated by the Judeo-­Christian anthropology” (De Roover and Balagangadhara 2009: 545). A non-­parochial alternative looks thus at pre-­ colonial experiences of religious toleration and studies “how cultures other than the West have tackled and solved the problem of pluralism” (ibid.). Thinkers like Nandy (author of an “Anti-­secularist Manifesto”) plead for the abandonment of “secularism” for damaging the traditional Indian way of mutual co-­existence and co-­habitation between religions (Nandy 1995). However, the strategy of abandoning to use of “religion” and “secularism” is unconvincing as an answer to the problem of parochialism. Contestability and the European origins of “religion” and “secularism” are not sufficient reasons to abandon concept-­ formation and concept-­travelling, provided that one assumes that there is always something lost in translation. Speaking about “religion” and “secularism” is not, as a matter of inexorability, a European colonizing gesture. It has been rightly pointed out that “religion” acquired its current use and was institutionalized in modern Europe; there is, in effect, no precise equivalent in the Hindu, Confucian, or Islamic tradition, and the translatability of the term is limited and contested.17 Moreover, Western colonial powers used the label of “religion” and their understanding of secularism to catalogue, regiment, and dominate other cultures and civilizations. It is thus inadequate for political philosophers to universalize the parochial lexicon of religion based on monotheism, individual faith, clerical authority, or the Western models of church-­and-state. Focusing on a critical understanding of these terms in the academic inquiry and political debate is a way to account for both the similarities and differences of their meaning across a diversity of contexts. In particular in a globalizing scenario, political institutions and legal arrangements are likely to emerge from the interaction between different traditions; their study needs to use concepts that, albeit disputed and ambivalent, contributed to their formations.

b  The one-­dimensional strategy The second strategy of interpreting religion that we question throughout the book involves the absolutization of one dimension of religion at the expense of the others. Not unlike parochialism, this strategy can lead to questionable and simplified evaluations of the place of religion in the constitutional democracy. From our perspective, religion is, first, a source of meaningful discourses and experiences (moral, theological, spiritual, etc.) connected to specific attitudes when dealing with life and cosmos. As a source of meaningfulness, religion provides complex worldviews that shape public argument, affect, and imagination. These discourses and experiences can inspire deep reflections and morally right and noble actions as well as beautiful works of art, but they can also be a fountain of untruth, prejudice, and intolerance. Second, religion comprises social-­communal practices that have a function of integration. These practices support community building through a variety of rituals, sacred symbols, and ceremonies. Religious practices are not only vital to identity-­formation but also to experience of (self-)transformation and transcendence. Third, religion institutes and regulates relations of power and sacral authority amongst



Introduction: a plea for complexity

believers and practitioners, and within the religious community. Power relations are internalized, leading to the disciplining of the self, sexuality, body, and beliefs. Depending on context, the power and authority relations can involve either mechanisms of (self-)domination, exclusion, and violence or, alternatively, sources of resistance and contestation, as well as ways of empowering persons. Due to this multidimensional character and inner tensions of religion, in a single context the same religious tradition may be at once supportive and in conflict with the democratic practice. Religious relations of authority can comprise authoritarian and dis-­ empowering mechanisms – namely child marriages or purdah practices in South-­East Asia (see Chapter 6), and be capacitating and inspire emancipation (see Chapter 4 on practices of self-­discipline in Buddhism and civil disobedience). Often the same religious tradition involves at once valuable sources of meaning and practices of domination and violence – namely, gendered practices (Chapter 7), rituals premised on cruelty against animals (Chapter 6), and practices and beliefs endangering children’s health. The consideration of the multidimensionality of religion as source of meaningfulness, social practice, and relations of power and domination informs the critical evaluation of the political-­philosophical views discussed throughout this book. Since religion involves different dimensions that can be in tension with one another, the analysis of its relationship with the moral and the political sphere calls for complex judgements and, sometimes, for dilemmatic interpretations. Some influential political philosophers are criticizable for building their views on an image of religion that does not acknowledge the intricacy of religious phenomena: for instance, as we will argue in detail, Susan Moeller Okin is rightly concerned with religion as domination (in particular, with the domination of women), but she downplays the plurality of religious practices and the role of religion in articulating meaningful experiences and attitudes (see Chapter 7). Will Kymlicka is persuasively concerned with the religious cruelty against animals, but he tends to overlook the contribution of religion to respecting and cherishing animal life (Chapter 6). By reducing religion to a comprehensive doctrine, John Rawls underestimates that what he takes as reasonable doctrines can enhance practices of domination and exclusion that need to be questioned (Chapter 1). Rawls’ intellectualistic approach is partially shared by public reason theorists like Audi and deliberative democrats like Habermas, as they focus on the cognitive contribution of religious traditions to the political debate. This move relies on the assumption that the domains of the religious and the political are essentially external to each other. Such a perspective is based on a limitative politics rightly challenged by feminists (“the personal is the political”) and other schools of thought that focus on informal patterns of domination and the interrelation between micro- and macro-­politics. Practices of domination and exclusion do not occur only in the upper part of the public sphere but also in the domestic, private, and social spheres where religion is deeply influential (e.g. family, sexuality, and marriage, inheritance practices and laws, etc.). All these levels have, or should be seen as having a vital political significance as the locus where individuals acquire basic moral-­social reflexes, habits, and beliefs that shape identities and form the basis of interpersonal relationships. Even when there is a constitutional separation between state politics and religion, religious groups, beliefs, and practices raise interlinked problems: what types of power and domination relations are formed and institutionalized within religious communities and organizations? Should the state

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challenge the inner structures of religious institutions? How does religion influence the formation of a democratic ethos? These concerns question a stark dichotomy between religion and politics, and are central to contemporary political philosophy.

3  Approach and method (1): the analytical/Continental divide Contemporary political philosophers are deeply divided with respect to approach and method, which is reflected in the different ways they deal with the problematic of the place of religion in a constitutional democracy. Academic works in (political) philosophy often situate themselves in one camp and completely ignore other camps. In contrast, part of the contribution of this book is that it critically discusses philosophers from various camps, touching on their similarities, differences, and comparative merits. This is to say that this book goes beyond the analytical/Continental divide (it includes chapters on Rawls and Okin but also on Habermas and Rorty); furthermore, our approach to the complexities of the relation between politics and religion is nourished by sensitivity to the importance of comparison and contextual knowledge (see later, Section 4). Given the profound split between analytical and so-­called Continental philosophy, the choice to include and discuss authors and schools of thought from both sides of the fence requires an explanation. The use of the dichotomy between “analytical” and “Continental” philosophy is an invention of the post-­war period (Chin and Thomassen 2016; Wolff 2013; Critchley 2001; Prado 2003; Glendinning 2006). In its origins, the analytic­Continental division is a construction of analytical philosophy that was, and it often still is, used as rhetorical weapon to demarcate “philosophy” (i.e. analytic or real philosophy) from mere rhetoric (Critchley 2001; Babich 2003; Wolff 2013). For many analytical philosophers, the so-­called Continental philosophy is sophistic, obscurantist, metaphysical, anti-­rationalistic, anti-­scientist, and relativist. The so-­called Continental philosophers defend themselves against these grave accusations by returning the favour and framing analytic philosophy as a form of neo-­scholasticism unaware of its historical conditions of emergence and validity, a type of philosophy that cultivates an un-­reflexive style of abstract and counter-­factual reasoning that verges on irrelevance. The mutual bashing tends to turn the opponent into a caricature, and reduce argument and polemic to a dialogue of the deaf. Although the analytical/Continental dichotomy signals and at once generates a breach between epistemic communities and academic fields, it is ultimately misleading. This is not meant to minimize the divide. The differences are real, and the practical implications of this debate are notable: academic fields have been constituted, and this has a deep impact on the publishing criteria, the job market, and access to financial resources. Nonetheless, sticking to a rigid separation of analytic/Continental fields is confusing and ultimately unfruitful. First, the dichotomy is based upon a conflation of methodological and geographical categories. As Bernard Williams observes, this is “as though one classified cars into front-­wheel drive and Japanese” (Williams 1995: 66).18 Second, “Continental philosophy” has an eclectic and amorphous referent; it is neither a tradition nor a school since it lacks the minimum of coherence, relationships of filiation, and methodological affinities characteristic of other philosophical traditions and schools of thought. Briefly



Introduction: a plea for complexity

stated, the dichotomy is questionable because there is no tradition that can be usefully called “Continental”. Problematic historical continuities and families have been created by means of retrospective teleology. There are unbridgeable methodological, substantial, and historical differences between, say, Arendt’s defence of republican freedom, Habermas’ Critical Theory, Derrida’s appeal to unconditional justice, and Žižek’s exaltation of violence and communism. It is more accurate to recognize and speak of different traditions, schools or fields that are separate from analytical philosophy – hermeneutics, phenomenology, Critical Theory, post-­colonialism, comparative political theory, genealogy, the Cambridge School and so on. Third, it is unproductive for political philosophy to turn relevant philosophical and methodological debates and questions into fault lines between enemy intellectual camps. Political philosophy gains little from rejecting complexity and congealing core questions into ideological stands: what is the nature of practical rationality – is it based on one or a few abstract principles, or is it historically and socially rooted? Do religious paradigms historically contribute to the content of practical rationality? What is the specificity of political philosophy with respect to scientific research, and should political philosophy draw on hard socio-­economic science or humanities? Notwithstanding the differences between these approaches to political philosophizing in the way they prioritize the normative and the interpretive, the conceptual and the historical, they cannot be separate from each other. The endeavours in normative “ideal theory” (Rawls) as a way to tease out the normative principle of justice cannot extract themselves from the critical reflection on the relevance of practice, context, and historical contingency. As David Miller remarks: The problem is to know which of these facts [about human behaviour and institutions] to treat as parameters that our theory of justice must recognize, and which to regard as contingencies that the theory may seek to alter. If the theory abstracts too far from prevailing circumstances, it is liable to become a merely speculative exercise, of no practical use in guiding either our public policy or the individual decisions we make as citizens. If the theory assumes too much by way of empirical constraints, on the other hand, it may become excessively conservative, in the sense of being too closely tied to contingent aspects of a particular society or group of societies, and therefore no longer able to function as a critical tool for social change. (Miller 2007: 18–19) Idealization in political philosophy needs to question its contextual limitations so as to avoid parochialism; conversely, the historical-­genealogical treatment of conceptual problems (Quentin Skinner, Michel Foucault) cannot avoid the clarification of its normative presuppositions – be they of Skinner’s advocacy of the neo-­Roman conception of the republicanism as non-­domination in the contemporary context or of Foucault’s genealogical critique and support of the idea of the care of the self. If complex philosophical-­ methodological tensions between conceptual analysis and historicity, idealization and practice, general norms and contextual singularity are transformed into ideological markers, the likely result is philosophical impoverishment and academic sectarianism. Political philosophy benefits from counter-­factual examples, conceptual clarification, and

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ideal modelling just as much as it from contextual analysis and interaction with other disciplines. While the analytical/Continental dichotomy is unpersuasive, it does not entail that there are no significant differences between the various philosophers dealt with in this book, or between philosophers who do analytical political philosophy and those who understand philosophy differently (which does not turn them into “Continental philosophers”). Although there is no Continental school or coherent set of traditions, we can detect an analytical philosophical approach that shapes the way the question about religion and democracy is treated.19 This analytical approach involves the use of abstract examples and simplified models detached from the historical context (e.g. from examining and considering the variety of religious practices, heritages, and secularist arrangements), a methodological and moral individualism that aspires to formulate simple theories or principles of great power and application, and the preference for quantitative over qualitative social science (see Wolff 2013: 2327–2328). Analytical political philosophy, in particular, prioritizes normative ideal theorizing over non-­ideal theorizing. According to Rawls’ approach, the specification of the ideal is taken to be the first and crucial step in a theory of justice, as it provides a way of guiding the principles of non-­ideal theory that serve overall justice. The resulting normative theories articulate general principles of justice that tend to be independent from religious traditions and political context, and that are meant to guide and orient political judgements about institutions and/or forms of conduct. Different ways of thinking and philosophical traditions contest, to various degrees, elements of this analytical view of political philosophy and tend to be sceptical of ideal theory and abstract normativism, and give an important role to the social and historical embeddedness of reason (Chapters 4, 5, 8, and 9). It is beyond the purpose of this short introduction to deal with the variety of non-­analytical approaches illustrated in this book: Critical Theory (Habermas), hermeneutics (Vattimo, Taylor), postmodern pragmatism (Rorty), history of ideas (Viroli), and comparative political theory (Bhargava; Bell; An-­ Na’im). Yet we can identify different axes of disagreement between analytical and non-­ analytical approaches that shape the way they deal with religion: the role of ideal theory in political philosophy, the nature of practical reason, historicity and power, the balance between normativity and history, the issue of methodological individualism/holism, etc. The focus of various non-­analytical approaches is not on projecting a best model and a “realistic utopia” that normatively guides our behaviour and practice. The concern of different non-­analytical thinkers begins from an acknowledgement that our argumentative practices are historical formations bound up with relations of power and domination. These approaches question the over-­confidence we can have in our practices of reasoning (including those of political philosophy) as sources of normative guidance. The nature of practical reason is regarded as social, historical, and contextual; instead of an ideal theory, an embedded critique of modernity and modern rationality is at the centre of concern. A common theme for non-­analytical philosophers is what McCarthy (1994b) identifies as “the critique of impure reason”, which takes its cue from Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. The different practices of political reasoning are, from this perspective, not freestanding (Rawls [1993] 2007), but are always connected to power struggles and embedded in broader social, economic, and cultural-­religious contexts. These



Introduction: a plea for complexity

authors are more inclined to deal with questions regarding religion and democracy by granting more importance to contextuality and historicity. For instance, by combining a double interest in general principles of constitutional democracy with their particular realization in a concrete historical context, Habermas focuses on how public reason has been nourished by religious imagination, and can continue to do so in a postsecular society where believers and non-­believers come together in deliberative processes (Chapter 3). Likewise, Taylor builds his hermeneutic liberalism on a philosophical anthropology, a historical narrative of the emergence of the secular West, and a Kulturkritik of late modernity (for more details, see Chapter 5). To sum up: the distinction between analytical and Continental is, for us, questionable: while there are significant differences between philosophers dealt with in this book, the institutionalization of this dichotomy is mostly artificial and has an impoverishing impact. Rather than relying on an ideal model and benchmark for the assessment of all varieties of secularism or taking one style or method as the royal path in political philosophy, it is more productive to consider the interaction and tension between general principles and historical contexts, normative theorizing and genealogical-­historical approaches, conceptual and interpretive concerns.

4  Approach and method (2): the uses of comparison The accelerated pluralization and the multiple interactions in times of globalization are challenging contemporary political philosophy in both its analytical and non-­analytical guises. Particularly in dealing with religion, it has become increasingly clear that neither an exclusively idealizing approach nor a Kulturkritik as a broad diagnosis of modernity can dispense with the desideratum of the comparative and contextual knowledge of the complexities of the religious-­political arrangements. The esprit géométrique of philosophical analysis is “corrected” in its parochial biases and nourished by the esprit de finesse of the comparative knowledge of the varieties of secular arrangements. As Petito notes, (w)hether it is the issue of democracy, development, human rights, or secularism […] it is becoming increasingly theoretically clear and politically visible that the merging of ‘modern’ political values and practices with traditional local cultural references and ways of living will be the rule rather than the exception in a post-­ Western world. (Petito 2016: 83) Just as there is no royal path towards the constitution of a modern society, there is no best secularism or single road towards the formation of constitutional democracy. It is a central idea of this book that considering the diversity and complexity of religious beliefs and practices is crucial for understanding democracy in a global perspective. Modern plural societies are not converging “on a common path involving capitalist industrialism, political democracy, modern welfare regimes […] different religious traditions act as cultural sources for the enactment of different programmes of modernity” (Katzenstein 2010: 17). From the perspective of a pluralist approach in political philosophy, diverse societies can embark on multiple paths to constitutional democracy and adopt political-­religious

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arrangements; these cannot be all ranked on a uniform scale or construed as self-­enclosed cultural and political entities (see Chapter 9). The concern with the diversity of religious traditions, the plurality of democratization processes, and the importance of differentiated institutional arrangements informs the critical approach of the book, and has methodological implications. In tune with the global interconnections and the hyper-­pluralization of democratic societies, the tools of political philosophy need to evolve beyond the Western canon and acknowledge the complexity and variety of religious practices and secularisms. The emergence of new political actors from different cultural-­religious contexts demands a renewed understanding of the task of normative theorizing in a pluralist and dialogical way (Eisenstadt 2003). Comparative and contextual knowledge contributes to address the problem of parochialism: a pluralist approach to the problematic of religion and politics implies the rethinking of the categories of secularism and religion beyond their limited context of emergence, and envisaging forms of mutual correction and learning. A political-­theoretical reflection sensitive to the relevance of comparative knowledge is premised on the ideas of translatio and multilingualism. Translatio considers the relevance of embedded forms of “travelling”, interaction, exchange, and learning between political and religious languages and practices.20 Multilingualism is the acknowledgement that there is no monopoly either on the political vocabulary or the best political model. Multilingualism implies instead that local bodies of knowledge and experiences are relevant in articulating and giving content to fundamental principles, rights, and duties in a constitutional democracy. From this perspective, there is no ultimate fix for the tension between general rules and particular forms of interpretation and realization; as a consequence, the question of the role of religion in constitutional democracy should not be simply asked in the abstract, disregarding the complexity and diversity of religious practices and the varieties of secularist arrangements and historical trajectories. The questions asked by comparative theorists (and sometimes overlooked by analytical and non-­analytical approaches) regard the justifiability of specific practices (e.g. cow protection in India; filial piety, xiào, and the associated laws and policies in South-­East Asia), the comparative merits and demerits of different forms of secularism and religious coexistence, or the risks of distortion and the benefits of learning when moral and political ideas and practices travel from one context to another. These sorts of questions aim to consider the different dimensions of religion, taking into account the specific and contextual nexus between religious concepts and meanings, experiences and practices, structures of authority and political arrangements. The multilingual focus on the specificities of religious traditions and political arrangements challenges the reductionist tendency to one-­dimensional and ahistorical understandings of religion. Similarly, the attention to internal transformations and cross-­cultural contaminations undermines parochial understandings that read and evaluate religious phenomena based on Western models. The sensitivity to context and comparison in political philosophy can have different implications. We distinguish different uses of comparison in recent theorizing: (a) the communitarian perspective is concerned with particular communal arrangements that are legitimate and valuable even if they are different from the Western and liberal practice; (b) a specific liberal perspective is interested in comparison mainly as corroborating an ideal Western model of secularism; (c) a post-­colonial perspective is meant to unmask processes of



Introduction: a plea for complexity

domination behind conceptual travelling, as well as the limits of translatability from one context to another; and (d) a pluralist strategy investigates how different political cultures shape multiple paths to democratization.

a  A communitarian perspective The communitarians’ use of comparison is often concerned with the deep embeddedness of political arrangements in specific communal and historical contexts (Walzer 1983; Bell 2006a, 2006b; 2015). For instance, Daniel Bell has the merit of pointing out that different societies have different ideas regarding “which human goods must be protected regardless of competing considerations, and which human goods can be legitimately subject to trade-­offs with other goods as part of everyday politics” (Bell 2006a: 73). From this perspective, some liberal or republican conceptions of human rights appear to be culturally specific conceptions that reflect the prevalent Western views on fundamental human goods. There are, further, fundamental human goods that East Asia knows and the West neglects:  consider also the value of filial piety, what Confucians consider to be “the essential way of learning to be human.” East Asian societies influenced by Confucianism strongly emphasize the idea that adult children have a duty to care for elderly parents.  Whereas it is “morally acceptable in the West to commit elderly parents to nursing homes” from an East Asian perspective this would be considered extremely cruel towards them and a violation of a fundamental human good. In some cases, “the right to be cared for by adult children is secured in the constitution itself, along with other ‘constitutional essentials’ ” (Bell 2006a: 76–77). In the Confucian outlook, piety (xiào) is not limited to one’s own parents, but is extended to one’s dealings with all elders and, ultimately, to the political authority. The public institutions, in turn, tend to adopt towards the citizens a stance that, in Western eyes, appears paternalistic but it is not equally reprehensible within the Chinese political ethos. Bell does not claim that the West should learn from China, but he argues that the West should understand the specific religious and cultural traits of the country, whose difference should not be expected to disappear in favour of a gradual development into a liberal democracy. For Bell, understanding what it means to support human rights in those regions “involves drawing upon East Asian political realities and cultural traditions that are defensible to contemporary East Asians”. In some cases, where mutual learning proves impossible, we should admit “there may also be areas of conflict, in which case the Western-­style liberal democrat should tolerate, if not respect, areas of justifiable difference” (Bell 2006a: 8). This approach to comparison has the merit of emphasizing the importance of local knowledge and plurality of contexts of interpretations. Yet problems arise when communitarianism envisions the world as divided in distinct religious-­cultural blocks, and communalism or culturalism becomes a pretext for justifying practices of discrimination and domination. The most conspicuous case is the debate on Asian Values, which served as a pretext for political leaders to legitimize authoritarian practices (Sen 2006). A similar

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problem emerges in some of the outstanding work in political philosophy. In his magisterial Spheres of Justice (1983), Michael Walzer condones the caste system in India out of the sensitivity for local context; writing immediately after the fall of communism; even if he is not strictly speaking a communitarian, John Gray uses a culturalist-­communitarian argument to justify an authoritarian regime in countries like Romania (Gray 1993); and Daniel Bell himself advances the essentializing view that, due to the heritage of Confucianism, in East Asia it is more adequate to adopt an elitist regime that does not rely on citizens’ participation (2006a, 2015).

b  A liberal perspective Liberalism takes a multiplicity of forms and relates differently to the question of comparison. However, an influential liberal perspective uses comparisons so as to show how non-­Western traditions can sustain liberal-­secular arrangements. In this perspective, comparisons are made in order to find similarities that support the general validity and applicability of the Western model (e.g. secular liberal): comparisons have the function of corroboration. A case in point is the work of Abdullahi Ahmed An-­Na’im, who focuses on the political and juridical doctrines of the Islamic tradition. The thrust of his analyses is that within the Islamic culture, political philosophers can find an abundance of intellectual resources that support the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy. An-­Na’im’s inquiry addresses both the problem of the interpretation of the original sources of Islamic thought and the recent history of political Islam in the postcolonial era. From both analyses emerges the claim that modern constitutionalism, modern international law, and the defence of universal human rights are all within the scope of a coherent application of the Islamic doctrine that evolves with historical circumstances (An-­Na’im 1990). From the Islamic perspective of the origins, there should be no coercion in matters of faith and, consequently, the state needs to be secular and act as a mediator between political and religious claims (An-­ Na’im 2008). Institutional safeguards that include constitutionalism, human rights, and democratic citizenship enforce this due separation and allow the exercise of what An-­ Na’im calls civic reason. The idea of civic reasons is akin to a form of public reason, as it points to “the ability to promote consensus over policy and legislation without reference to religious doctrine” (An-­Na’im 2009: 14). In The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, Rawls points out that An-­Na’im’s work “is a perfect example of overlapping consensus” (Rawls 1999a: 151, n. 46; see Chapter 1), as it shows how political principles of equality and non-­discrimination can be supported from religious views without appealing to religious reasons for public justification. Andrew March (2009a) further developed the project of comparative validation of the overlapping consensus. By appealing to the Islamic legal tradition, March argues that an ideal-­typical Muslim can support all the main tenets of Rawls’ political liberalism without deviating from her own religious doctrine. Liberal approaches to comparative political philosophy, like An-­Na’im’s and March’s, provide a convincing rebuttal to the clash-­of-civilization picture by debating the content of religious political traditions beyond their stereotypical opposition to the democratic West. The theoretical use of religious conceptual resources, however, remains significantly detached from the reality of religious movements and institutions. The concern of showing the compatibility of theological views with liberal perspectives confines religious doctrines to



Introduction: a plea for complexity

the role of providing “external support” to liberal political theorizing and arrangements. This instrumental tendency overshadows the fruitful pluralization of political discourse that comes from the comparison between different traditions and cultural-­historical contexts.

c  The postcolonial critique Postcolonial critics in particular make use of comparison in order to question the imposition of Western concepts developed in specific historical circumstances over different realities; this imposition in the name of progress, civilization, and universalism has been a key dimension of the colonial enterprise of conquest and domination (Said 1979). The postcolonial critique draws attention to the limits of translatability from one context to another, and to the possible distortions and difficulties involved into this process of “migration” of concepts and ideas. De Roover et al. argue that the language of liberal political theory consists of topoi resulting from the secularization of Christian theology. These topoi are dependent on […] their conditions of intelligibility: they require other clusters of ideas present in western society in order to remain coherent and productive in the theorizing of political problems. (De Roover et al. 2011: 591) Consider secularism. Leading political philosophers like Rawls and Habermas connect the principles of neutrality and separation between church and state to the European Wars of Religion and the subsequent affirmation of the modern state (see Chapters 1 and 3). But they do not examine how this idea has travelled and has been imposed on different contexts of historical experience, where “conditions of intelligibility” are distinct. To move beyond this bias, De Roover et al. argue that (w)e can no longer assume that the fact that ideas like secularism have been invoked in India proves their relevance and intelligibility across cultures. The Indian debate reveals something different: at least some principles of liberal political theory are not sufficiently freestanding from the cultural setting where they emerged to be intelligible and helpful to societies other than the West. (De Roover et al. 2011: 591) The discussion of the Indian case provides evidence that exporting and imposing a specific secular model has questionable consequences. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that such a translation is outright impossible. De Roover et al. themselves admit that the Western experience is of great significance to people living in other parts of the world, and that “we should learn from local traditions of tolerance and try to understand how these have allowed the co-­existence of communities” (De Roover et al. 2011: 591–592). This mutual significance of different experiences of tolerance, justice and public deliberation suggests that it is possible to pursue meaningful “translations” and processes and mutual learning between the languages that articulate those experiences (Bhargava 2006a).

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d  A pluralist perspective A global-­pluralist approach to comparison builds on the postcolonial critique of domination and sensitivity to local knowledge and context, and focuses on the relation between religious patterns of domination and violence, as well as on the multiple origins and articulations of the democratic idea of political rule based on public argument, respect for individual and collective freedom, and cooperative decision-­making (Bhargava 2013; Sen 2009).21 While considering the value of religious diversity and local specificity, this pluralist approach also seeks to articulate comparisons that can call into question our understanding of existing arrangements and lead to the transformation of consolidated policies. Local and historical deliberative practices hold a value of their own and support multiple forms of public reasoning that cut across liberal and non-­liberal models, as well as across different religious-­cultural contexts. At the same time, religious-­cultural dissemination and hybridization are central to understanding history from a global perspective; the increased level of interconnection of the world is now accelerating these processes. The global diffusion of universalizing moral ideals and democratic forms of government inspires “translations” of political ideas around world, questioning established authorities and publicly engaging religious traditions in new and transformative ways. Understanding multiple democracies without measuring them against an ideal (Western) model requires considering how the “spirit of democracy”, beyond the letter of laws and procedures, resonates with different versions of modernity around the globe (Ferrara 2014). Consonances can be found in most historical religions for an orientation to the common good, for a positive notion of pluralism, for a notion of legitimate rule as resting on the consent of the governed, for the equality of the citizens, and for a positive appraisal of individuality. (Ferrara 2014: 140) These consonances emerge from the analysis of political categories and practices that originated from a non-­European history or from the encounter between Western and non-­ Western political cultures that determined in time an original understanding of similar institutions. Histories of religious conflict and domination are equally relevant, as they provide a rationale to appraise multiple varieties of secularism and to justify accommodations and exemptions based on the demands of religious minorities. To illustrate, in The Argumentative Indian (2006) and The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen convincingly argues how looking into the many strands of “global history” we are compelled to abandon the idea that public deliberation, democracy, and secularism are the cultural product of the West. By means of comparative analysis, Sen shows how crucial features of the democratic idea, including toleration, public discussion and collective decision-­making, had an extremely refined and autonomous development in India and Japan thanks to the influence of Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions. This does not only show that forms of democracy have developed and flourished “outside of Athens”, but also that the culturalist critique of democracy as a purely regional phenomenon is misguided. In the twentieth century, the process of democratization undertaken in several countries around the globe was led by leaders such as Sun Yat-­sen, Mahatma Gandhi, and



Introduction: a plea for complexity

Nelson Mandela. The knowledge of local religious traditions and political practices played a key part in their reformism. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela writes how he was profoundly influenced as a young man by the democratic nature of the local meetings that were held in Mqhekezweni. The self-­government of the community rested on the principle that all should be free to voice their opinions and be equal in their value as citizens. As Sen observes,  Mandela’s understanding of democracy was hardly aided by the political practice that he saw around him in the apartheid state run by people of European origin […]. His discernment of democracy came […] from his general ideas about political and social equality, which had global roots, and from his observations of the practice of participatory public discussion that he found in his local town. (Sen 2009: 332) Sen’s analyses are an exemplary application of the use of comparison from a global and pluralist perspective: his approach neither assesses the plurality of religious-­political arrangements against one benchmark nor justifies authoritarian practices by resorting to a culturalist ontology. Our approach echoes the Senian perspective that conceives the task of political theorizing in a global perspective and operates under the assumption that a plurality of religious, moral and political traditions concur to define multiple routes to democracy. From this perspective, the significance of general principles, rights, and duties, as well as their weight and value in relation to each other, cannot be established a priori independently of historical experiences but by considering together reasons and the pluralism of practices and contexts. 

5  Structure, questions, limits This book is an advanced introduction that aspires to integrate political philosophy, legal­political cases, and examples from different parts of the globe. The structure combines the focus on schools of thought and representative thinkers who generally stand for types of political philosophy or specific trends of thinking. Each chapter has a reconstructive part based on an interpretation of relevant views (e.g. Rawls’ political liberalism; Habermas’ postsecular democracy) and then a critical part. Depending on the school and methodological approach, each chapter specifies how the question of the place of religion in the constitutional democracy is dealt with. This interrogation is common to the various philosophers included in this volume, regardless of their school of thought (liberalism, republicanism, multiculturalism, feminism, and so on), and type of approach (analytical or non-­analytical). This central interrogation has different facets that can be broken down into questions that are irreducible to each other. Key questions are: what is the role of religious discourse in the public sphere? Should the state recognize and accommodate religious practices and protect religious minorities? What is the role of the state in protecting women and children within religious groups, and in fomenting equal freedom amongst the members of the political community? However, predetermining a set of political-­philosophical questions obscures the fact that there are philosophical differences between the philosophical approaches represented

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in this book. To illustrate, in Rawls’ later work, the central question is: how is it possible to justify political authority in conditions of reasonable pluralism? Methodologically, Rawls argues that, in order to answer this question, political liberalism should bracket all comprehensive philosophical issues and concerns (identity, language, the relation between reason and faith or religious imagination, etc.). While Habermas and Taylor are also concerned with this interrogation, they frame it into a comprehensive philosophical framework that deals with questions such as “What is the genealogical relation between practical rationality and religion?” or “What does it mean to believe today?” that are – for them – vital for understanding the role of religion in democracy (see Chapters 3 and 5). In turn, different versions of republicanism centre on the question “what is the role of religion in pursuing the common good?” or “what’s the role of religion in building a society without domination?” by resorting to a history-­of-ideas approach (Viroli) or an analytical one (Pettit, Laborde) (Chapter 4). The critical parts of each chapter are not exhaustive but focus on some of the main problems central to specific authors (e.g. Rawls’ proviso; Habermas’ translation proviso) and schools of thought, and make an effort to take into account examples and authors from different traditions. For instance, with respect to Rawls, we deal with the “dialogues” between his work and the Islamic and Buddhist traditions. While this is not a book in comparative political theory, the critical discussions are shaped by our own perspective nourished by the awareness of the importance of a multidimensional approach to religion, and the relevance of comparison and context. The book’s scope is marked by substantial limits. These are given by education, involuntary preconceptions, and reduced linguistic skills and time. There are, further, important scholarly contributions that, for reasons of space, we were unable to reference and discuss. Dealing with some of the complexities of the religion-­political nexus in different civilizational areas has been a humbling experience. The plea for the complexity of religion, ways of philosophizing, and religious traditions cannot be but accompanied by a sense of insufficiency. Avoiding parochialism is a regulative ideal and not something we claim to have achieved. This book is an invitation to travel more – in space, time, and between disciplines – when thinking about the intricacies of the relation between democratic politics and religion.

Notes   1 Some scientists identify in animal behaviour – specifically in what resembles the mourning of the death of a fellow elephant or chimpanzee – rudiments of religion. Goodall even speaks of “chimpanzee spirituality” and Smith of “animal religion” (King 2016; Schaefer 2015). But the hypothesis of a pre-­linguistic non-­human religion is debatable. The primates share an awareness of death, but it is much less clear that they ponder on their own death. In turn, the continuities between non-­human and human animals are remarkable in the domain of morality, which undermines the thesis that morality is an outgrowth of religion. Between humans and some non-­human animals there are a number of proven continuities such as empathy, including occasional empathy for members of other species, a basic sense of fairness, and the capacity for different forms of cooperation (De Waal 2009, 2013).   2 See, for instance, Roy (2007), Sen (2006, 2009) and Asad (2003).   3 Habermas changed his previous view moving from secularism to the vision of a postsecular society (see Chapter 3).   4 Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous example of this recent trend. In his influential book The Selfish Gene, he champions a version of scientism based on a perspective on human beings as machines: 



Introduction: a plea for complexity

(w)e are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. (Dawkins 1989: 2) For a more sophisticated version of an anti-­religious scientism, see for instance Dennett (2006).   5 E.g. Rawls (1999b), Habermas (2008a), De Waal (2013), Nagel (2009), Dworkin (2013), Bellah (2011), and Nussbaum (2008a).   6 Sociologically speaking, there is no agreement on whether religion is generally supportive of democracy (see Bruce 2011 and Casanova 1994 for two opposite views). The difficulty of making a general evaluation is the contestability of democracy and its key normative principles (equality, freedom, etc.): empirical evaluations can clash depending on the substance of the concept of democracy that is operationalized.   7 Bryan Wilson speaks of “the secularization thesis” in his Religion in Secular Society and defines secularization as “the process whereby religious thinking, practices, and institutions lose social significance” (Wilson 1966). The thrust of his perspective is not that religion is disappearing; it is rather that religion ceases to have significance for the functioning of the social system. See also Bruce (1992: 195–201, 2011).   8 At a global level, of the three Abrahamic faiths, Christianity remains the most numerous, as it comprises over a third of the world’s population (of around 7.4 billion), and is followed by Islam (which now has around 1.5 billion adepts). According to statistical predictions, this may change within the next fifty years, as Islam could overcome Christianity (Pew Research Centre 2015a). In turn, the largest democracy, India, where 80 per cent are Hindus, is to become the most populous state overcoming China (ibid.).   9 The hope of the Arab spring has been painfully contradicted by the rise of Islamist radicalism. In Turkey, Erdoğan has built a presidentialist regime that instrumentalizes religion and challenges core assumptions of the previous laicist-­republican arrangements. In Israel, the right-­ wing politicization of religion has become ever more radicalized and far removed from D. Ben-­Gurion’s project of a secular and pluralist state (Walzer 2015). In India, Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), led by Narendra Modi, has been imposing a majoritarian regime to the distress of defenders of the long-­term tradition of Indian pluralism; this regime is far removed from Nehru’s vision of a secular Indian federation. For the rise of religious nationalism, see Mark Juergensmeyer’s work (1993, 2003). 10 In Michael Walzer’s interpretation, one can identify a pattern of shifting from secular revolutions that pitted elites against the demos to the current religious counterrevolutions (Walzer 2015). 11 The dominant economic paradigm with its beliefs, dogmas, and institutions is considered by some scholars a form of “everyday religion” (Norgaard 2015; see also Emmett 2003). 12 Scott Appleby speaks of “ambivalence of the sacred” (Appleby 2000). 13 Consider Durkheim’s classic definition:  A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden (séparées, interdites) – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. (Durkheim [1912] 1995: 65) 14 Some scholars stick to the concept of religion but stretch it too much (we call this the “catchall strategy”). Dworkin’s approach is a case in point (Dworkin 2013). For Dworkin, the faith in God does not represent what is fundamental and universal about religion: an understanding of religion in theistic terms is too limitative (or parochial). Dworkin goes on to propose to open up the concept of religion by taking the faith in and the commitment to values as what is “deeper than God” (Dworkin 2013: 1). Since this is what is essential to religion, it becomes perfectly legitimate to speak of “religious atheism”.    The Dworkinian approach is, we believe, questionable: first, given that all political, ethical, and scientific practices involve commitment to values, the catch-all strategy blurs the distinction between various kinds of human practices. Second, since human life is inconceivable without some commitment to values, Dworkin’s catch-all strategy makes everybody religious, including those who describe and perceive themselves as anti-­religious. Third, this strategy is too broad in one sense, yet too restrictive in another. Dworkin’s analysis excludes core religious experiences:

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in Buddhism, Daoism, Sufi, or Christian mysticism, the quintessential religious experience entails transcending the belief in and the separation between values (Ungureanu 2014: 2–9). 15 Asad criticizes “the attempt to construct categories of the secular and the religious in terms of which modern living is required to take place, and non modern people are invited to assess their adequacy” (Asad 2003: 14). 16 For Bhargava, Western secularism presupposes a Christian civilization that is easily forgotten because, over time, it has silently slid into the background. Christianity allows this self-­limitation, and much of the world innocently mistakes this rather cunning self-­denial for its disappearance. But if this is so, this “inherently dogmatic” secularism cannot coexist innocently with other religions […]; it can live comfortably with liberal, Protestantized, individualized, and privatized religions but has no resources to cope with religions that mandate greater public or political presence or have a strong communal orientation. (Bhargava 2011: 39; 101) 17 For instance, in India, the equation of the Western concept of “religion” with the much wider Indian notion of dharma, which points to ritual practices based on sacred texts, but also to ideas of “cosmic order”, “law”, and “ethics” (De Roover et al. 2011: 587) can lead to conceptual distortions, and have pernicious practical implications. For the relative equivalents in different languages, see Bowker (2007). 18 To make matters even more confusing, the most outstanding analytical philosopher (Ludwig Wittgenstein) is an Austrian, and the roots of analytical philosophy are Continental. Dummett traces these roots in continental Europe – namely, in Frege’s logicism as opposed to Husserl’s phenomenology (Dummett 1993). 19 This approach to analytical political philosophy crystallized as a self-­conscious field in the years 1971–1981 with Rawls, Nozick, and Dworkin. In Wolff ’s characterization, analytic political philosophy has developed into a discipline that privileges the self-­ conscious search for clarity and precision of thesis and argument and has the ambition of presenting simple theories or principles of great power and application. It often uses abstract examples and simplified models, and favours quantitative over qualitative social science, as well as assuming methodological and moral individualism. It has become the dominant approach in the English-­speaking world. (Wolff 2013: 2276–2277) 20 We adapt these criteria from Dallmayr (2004). We prefer to use translatio (transfer, moving over, etc.) to his “translation” in order to avoid the possible intellectualizing resonance of the later. The question of translation has a long history in different disciplines (linguistics, literary studies, theology, and philosophy). In contemporary political theory the principle of translation is best known for its key role in Habermas’ postsecularism (see Chapter 3 for a critique of his translation proviso). 21 Conversely, it centres on the critical study of the religious patterns that foster, other conditions being equal, discrimination, intolerance, and violence.

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POLITICAL LIBERALISM, PUBLIC REASON, AND RELIGION John Rawls

Introduction: the reinvention of liberalism John Rawls’ magnum opus A Theory of Justice ([1971] 1999b), which triggered a wide­ranging revival in normative political theorizing (Wolff 2013), poses a fundamental question: what are the basic principles of a just society? His influential answer reworks Kant’s contract view as a universalist theory of justice and a critique of the utilitarian tradition, and continues to be deeply influential in political theorizing up to the present day. The breadth of Rawls’ autonomy liberalism notwithstanding, issues such as nationalism, culture, and religion are either nonexistent or play a marginal role in A Theory of Justice.1 Yet the intensification of the presence of religion in the public sphere, resulting in a prolonged culture war (Hunter 1992), in addition to the internal problems of his initial project, led Rawls to recalibrate his theory as political liberalism (Rawls [1993] 2007, 1999a). In this second stage of the development of his view, Rawls goes back to an original interrogation of Western liberalism and political modernity, namely to the conundrum of legitimizing coercive power in a society where different moral and religious doctrines are in conflict. Echoing the main concern of the liberal thinkers confronted with the devastating wars of religion of the sixteenth century, Rawls focuses on the following question: how is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines? (Rawls [1993] 2007: xxvii). Religion poses the toughest challenge for answering this question, since any “religious doctrine that is based on religious authority, for example, the Church or the Bible” appears to at odds with “a reasonable political conception that supports a just democratic regime” (Rawls [1993] 2007: xxxix). By focusing his liberalism on religion after the 1990s, Rawls reconnects to an early stage of his family life and University education. Rawls came from a Presbyterian family and intended in his youth to become a minister. His first relevant text (published posthumously) is written from a believer’s standpoint (Rawls 2009). Yet the young Rawls loses his Christian belief: the harrowing experience of evil and radical contingency as soldier during WWII, along with the revelation of the Holocaust, proves incompatible with his faith in God. Having lost his belief, he turns to an academic career in philosophy.2 His distancing from religion notwithstanding, Rawls retains what Thomas Nagel calls a “religious temperament”, namely a deep yearning for meaningful integration, reconciliation, and harmony with society and the universe as a

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whole (Nagel 2009: 3–5).3 This temperament shapes Rawls’ specific view of the role of political philosophy in both stages of his development of liberalism: political philosophy is meant to contribute specifically to a “pact of reconciliation” between religious and non-­religious members of society through their use of reason (Rawls 1971: 221, [1993] 2007: 157). The Rawlsian view of the possibility of reconciliation is based, in his later work, on a re-­evaluation of the legacy of liberalism that aims to bring together Enlightenment, rationality, and religion.4 Political liberalism accepts reasonable religious manifestations in the public sphere, yet commonly binding decisions are not to be made on the basis of a “comprehensive doctrine” – his term for designating religious and secular conceptions of the good – but rather on political justifications. This approach to liberalism – which carves a separate domain of the political, whose “beating heart” is public reason – has two dimensions: political legitimacy and stability. First, Rawls argues that, despite the divergence between comprehensive doctrines, a political consensus based on the exercise of public reason is reachable with respect to constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. The consensus is termed political because it is not built on any single comprehensive doctrine but instead on public justifications. According to Rawls, coercive power in a pluralistic society can be legitimated only if founded on public reasons that all citizens can be reasonably expected to endorse despite their different conceptions of the good. While Rawls defends the presence of religion in the public sphere, he argues for a principle of restraint.5 The principle has two aspects. According to the first, citizens engaging in political decisions (e.g. voting in elections) have the moral duty of civility to rely on political values and justifications that could be understood and agreed upon by all citizens. The second aspect is captured by Rawls’ famous proviso: politicians, judges, or any citizens that join a discussion in the public political forum may express their comprehensive views provided that they offer, in due time, proper political reasons for grounding commonly binding laws and policies. Second, Rawls is concerned not only with the normative question of legitimacy, but also with the practical question of stability. Political theorizing needs to show how a legitimate political order can be stable over time. Rawls’ proposal for tackling this problem is captured by the idea of “overlapping consensus”. On the one hand, public reason – the “central nerve” of the domain of the political – is “freestanding”, which means that its contents do not depend on any comprehensive doctrines. On the other hand, citizens can be realistically motivated and driven to construe a viable consensus over the fundamentals of politics by means of their own reasonable comprehensive doctrines. This consensus is “overlapping” because it is not built on the same reasons but on divergent conceptions of the good (e.g. Catholic, Hindu, Kantian, utilitarian, etc.) In the following, (1) we outline the passage from the A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism and explain in more detail main elements of the latter. Then (2) we focus on the idea of public reason and its implications for the question of religion. Finally, (3) we discuss some difficulties with Rawls’ political liberalism. Due to the enormous impact of his perspective, this discussion will continue in various chapters dedicated to deliberative democracy, feminism, republicanism, and multiculturalism.



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1  The quest for justice and the fact of pluralism a  A Theory of Justice and religious freedom Rawls’ goal in A Theory of Justice is to “generalize” and “carry to a higher level of abstraction” the social contract tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant (Rawls 1971: viii) by answering a crucial question: what are the fundamental principles governing a just society that we can rationally agree on? Rawls aims to tease out these basic principles of justice and counteract the dominance of utilitarianism.6 To this end, Rawls reworks the contractualist strand of the social contract tradition represented by Immanuel Kant. This is in contrast to the contractarian strand – best represented by Thomas Hobbes – which centres on the aggregation of individual rational preferences as key to political legitimacy.7 Rawls grounds his vision of the social contract on the Kantian insight that practical reason requires that we respect persons as rational beings endowed with equal dignity. This results in a critique of utilitarianism and perfectionism: Rawls argues that the principles of justice cannot be built respectively on the shaky grounds of a utilitarian calculus nor can they be built upon a specific conception of the good. Doing so could entail forfeiting individual freedom and rights for the benefit or the good of the majority. For Rawls, a just society can never permit that the individual be sacrificed for the sake of the many. All individuals possess a dignity that requires equal respect;8 this is realized in a well-­ordered society, namely in a society structured upon principles of justice that can be publicly discussed, criticized, and endorsed by all citizens. In order to develop this liberal view in which individual rights take precedence over the collective utility/good, Rawls proposes a famous mental experiment drawing on the social contract tradition.9 He imagines an initial situation that replaces the state of nature in the liberal contract tradition and is “specified to embody the appropriate reciprocity and equality” amongst persons (Rawls [1993] 2007: 475).10 Rawls calls this variant of the initial situation the original position. In the original position, rational agents are equal and rational and choose the principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance. This veil conceals any information concerning social class, race, religion, ethnic membership, nationality, conception of the good (e.g. religious doctrine or secular ideology), and their society’s specific resources or history (Rawls 1971: 12–21 and Chapter 3). Rawls’ reason for limiting the rational agents’ access to information about the actual society echoes Kant: in thinking about principles of justice valid for everybody, it is necessary to bracket contingencies that are morally irrelevant (Kant 1997). Rational agents in the original position are not to know their social status. Without the veil of ignorance as an impartiality constraint on choice, the contracting parties in the original position would most likely adopt biased principles. If, for instance, the majority of individuals had information about themselves being Christian and rich, they would be inclined to adopt principles that privilege the Christian community and the most well-­ off. The original position is designed to ensure that no member of the political community finds himself or herself at the mercy of contingent majorities and interest groups. However, the veil of ignorance does not block all types of contingent information: contractors have access to relevant information that does not undermine their impartiality – e.g. general facts about human nature, social and economic institutions, and their most basic interests (including the interest of pursuing a religious conception of the good).

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One of the major conclusions established in A Theory of Justice is that rational agents in the original position would choose two principles of justice. First, contractors would choose the principle of equal freedom.11 This principle protects the equal dignity of persons as they freely pursue their interests and conceptions of the good. Second, contractors would adopt the principle of fair distribution of the primary social goods.12 This is a principle of socio-­economic justice that combines the principle of fair equality of opportunities with that of difference. Contractors under the veil of ignorance have a rational interest in adopting a system where fair equality of opportunity is ensured and inequalities are permitted when they are to the advantage of the less favoured. These two principles form the core conception of Rawls’ theory of justice, which he calls justice as fairness. In addition, a central tenet of justice as fairness is that social cooperation should be fair to all citizens regarded as free and equal. This conception justifies the political legitimacy of coercive power and grounds a consensus beyond cultural and religious contexts. In this sense, the principles of justice “define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong” (Rawls 1971: 221; our italics). The goal of the two principles of justice is that each and every person is autonomous – that she has fair and equal opportunities to develop her rational plan of life or conception of the good: (t)he main idea is that a person’s good is determined by what is for him the most rational long-­term plan of life given reasonably favourable circumstances. A man is happy when he is more or less successful in the way of carrying out this plan. (Rawls 1971: 92–93) With respect to religion, rational agents seek to secure the possibility to pursue religious views by means of choosing fundamental rights and liberties, like liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. (Rawls 1971: §§33–35). In doing so, the contractors’ aim is  not merely to be permitted to practice some religion or other, but to practice some definite religion, that is, their religion, whatever it turns out to be. […] In order to secure their unknown but particular interests from the original position, they are led, in view of the strains of commitment […] to give precedence to the basic liberties.  (Rawls 1999b: 475) These basic liberties, including civic and political liberties, are the expression of the principle of equal freedom; neither laws nor policies that favour or disfavour religious people are compatible with it. For instance, the notion of a state religion is, as a matter of principle, incompatible with justice: (t)he state can favour no particular religion and no penalties or disabilities may be attached to any religious affiliation or lack thereof. The notion of a confessional state is rejected. (Rawls 1971: 212)13



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Rather, the government has a duty of “impartially supporting” the conditions necessary for everyone’s pursuit of his interests and obligations (Rawls 1971: 213).

b  The challenge of reasonable pluralism in Political Liberalism Religion remains, as we have pointed out, at best a secondary aspect in A Theory of Justice,14 while in Rawls’ later work it occupies the centre stage.15 There is, however, a fundamental continuity between the two stages of Rawls’ conception. Rawls maintains his anti-­perfectionist and anti–utilitarian liberalism, but acknowledges that A Theory of Justice does not properly address the challenge of pluralism. In Rawls’ early work, the theory of justice is part of a theory of rational choice (Rawls 1971: 16), based on a “monophonic” conception of rationality and a comprehensive view of autonomy and liberalism. This theory assumes that all contractors choose the same doctrine of justice in the original position, and that the Kantian notion of freedom as rational autonomy is an “ideal” that shaped the entire life of the individual. Rawls sees now that his previous idea of a well-­ordered society based on a universal consensus over a substantive liberal doctrine “contradicts the fact of reasonable pluralism”; as a result, “Political Liberalism regards that society as impossible” (Rawls 1999a: 179; our italics). If people are committed to doctrines that are fundamentally different (different, for instance, from the Kantian ideal of freedom as rational autonomy), they do not recognize coercion to be justified on the basis of a comprehensive liberalism. In time, this doctrinal pluralism can undermine the very stability of the political system. The fact of reasonable pluralism in contemporary societies is due to what Rawls calls the “burdens of judgment” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 54–58). These burdens are the multiple causes – ranging from the complexity of our evidence to the vagueness of our concepts and the limits of our experience – that lead even reasonable and rational persons to have persisting different judgements regarding philosophical, moral, and religious issues. Since it is “unrealistic […] to suppose that all our differences are rooted solely in ignorance and perversity” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 58) we should accept that in our societies the extent of possible agreement is limited. From a political point of view, we need then to deal with the question: “(h)ow is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?” (Rawls [1993] 2007: xx). While not all citizens’ disagreements can be sorted out, Rawls’ assumes that it is possible to make a clear-­cut distinction between a freestanding political conception of justice that citizens share and a plurality of comprehensive doctrines of the good over which divergences persist. These comprehensive doctrines can be religious or non-­religious. For instance, a religious doctrine resting on the authority of the Church, the Bible or the Quran is comprehensive in the sense that it provides a worldview answering questions such as the existence of God, the nature of evil, the good life, and so on. Likewise, there are secularist comprehensive doctrines, such as Marxist communism or Kantian ideal of freedom of rational autonomy, that are rooted in a metaphysical vision of history and society, and deal with similar questions. The possibility of enduring cooperation between free and equal citizens rests on their ability to agree to political arrangements that hold despite their different comprehensive views. The “torturing question” at the centre of political liberalism can thus be formulated as: “(c)an democracy and comprehensive

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d­ octrines, religious or nonreligious, be compatible?” (Rawls 1999a: 175). Rawls elaborates an answer to this foundational interrogation by means of political constructivism – a method of elucidating, clarifying, and systematizing the basic assumptions that are inherent in the tradition of democratic constitutionalism (Rawls [1993] 2007: 125–129). Rawls’ constructivism is termed “political” as it claims to bracket controversial issues in order to focus on assumptions and reasons that can be endorsed by all citizenry. According to Rawls’ reading of these assumptions, persons conceive themselves as free, equal, and are capable of taking responsibility for their actions and complying with moral requirements. Persons regard themselves as endowed with two fundamental moral powers: the reasonable capacity “to act from […] the principles of justice as fair terms of cooperation” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 302) and the rational capacity “to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue” (ibid.) a comprehensive conception of the good.16 Political conceptions of justice pertain to the domain of reasonableness and need to be justified based on public reasons that all can accept in their capacity as citizens.17 At this fundamental political level, which is concerned with constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice,18 consensus and reconciliation between free and equal moral persons can be ordinarily pursued and reached, therefore establishing fair terms of cooperation. On the other hand, difference and disagreement is still to be widely expected with respect to the citizens’ conceptions of the good. Rawls argues that the new perspective achieved with this political turn can successfully address (i) the normative problem of legitimacy and (ii) the practical problem of stability in pluralistic societies. (i) The legitimate use of coercive political power is  fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason. (Rawls [1993] 2007: 137) Legitimacy is thus grounded on the reasonableness of citizens; everyone can be expected to agree on basic terms of cooperation that do not question their conceptions of the good as long as those terms are only political and concern the treatment of others as equals. As in A Theory of Justice, political liberalism is anti-­perfectionist: the right has priority over the good. While the definition of the fundamental principles of justice in a society is a shared political task, the pursuit of the good within specific comprehensive worldviews is a matter of individual freedom. The consequence of this renewed anti-­perfectionist argument is the replacement of the comprehensive view of autonomy championed in A Theory of Justice with political autonomy. A comprehensive liberalism centred on the active support of the ideal of individual autonomy is at odds with the fact of pluralism: the Kantian desideratum of freedom as rational autonomy meant to shape one’s entire existence is only one of the many understandings of freedom available: life in the service of God and not driven by “sovereign reason” or life in the pursuit of Buddhist Enlightenment are among the examples of practices of freedom that do not conform the ideal of individual autonomy. The defence of the principle of equal freedom is maintained, but only at a political level. As long as individuals support the basic principles of justice, they should be free to



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choose or reject this comprehensive view of autonomy and opt – say – for a life in accordance with heteronomic duties given by God. This requires a change within the liberal framework: the conception of political autonomy is not a way of life protected and fostered by the state, but refers only to the “the legal independence and assured integrity of citizens and their sharing equally with others in the exercise of political power” (Rawls 1999a: 146). Basic institutions and public policies need to be neutral “with respect to comprehensive doctrines and their associated conceptions of the good” so that they “can be endorsed by citizens generally as within the scope of a public political conception” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 192). (ii) A legitimate political power is not automatically stable. Even though the citizens can endorse the basic principles of justice and accept the public reasons that are offered to support them, their comprehensive worldviews may still clash with the resulting political arrangements. For Rawls, mere acquiescence to existing power equilibria can only support ephemeral arrangements that citizens accept as a contingent and breakable modus vivendi. Unless citizens are willing to obey the law for “for the right reasons” no social order can be secure for long. To achieve stability, the political legitimacy must be protected, but citizens cannot be expected to abandon their own comprehensive doctrines either, since their life­plans and their understandings of the good are too central in their argumentative and motivational resources. There must be a way, then, for those resources to support a shared political conception of justice without undermining its legitimacy. To this end, Rawls advances the notion of an overlapping consensus. This is defined as the agreement of reasonable comprehensive doctrines on a liberal conception of justice in a well-­ordered society (Rawls [1993] 2007: iv; Freeman 2009). The consensus holds when all reasonable doctrines endorse a liberal political conception of justice, each from its own point of view and for its own comprehensive reasons. The political conception is legitimate because it is defined through public reasons and does not depend on a single comprehensive doctrine. However, the citizens can find reasons in their own worldviews to support it. Any comprehensive doctrine that offers ground to support the basic tenets of liberal constitutionalism is reasonable. From this perspective, the Catholic Social Doctrine or the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Buddhism are considered to be reasonable comprehensive doctrines.19

2  Public reason and comprehensive doctrines The Rawlsian answer to the problem of the legitimacy of coercive power relies on public reason as the source of justification in the domain of the political. The basic idea is that by bracketing their comprehensive doctrines, including religion, citizens can find a common “neutral” ground to discuss their political views and reach reconciliation. This neutrality regarding the justification of the coercive power is to be distinguished from the neutrality of treatment/effect, as well as from other principles with which it is often confused, e.g. impartiality/separation. In political liberalism, the game of public justifications can legitimately lead to differences in treatment and unequal effects, as well as to more or less distance between political institutions and religion. Rawls’ justificatory neutralism builds a “wall of separation” between the domain of the political and the conceptions of the good in the domain of public deliberation. We now look into the implications of this stance in order to later examine some of its difficulties.

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a  Public reason and reciprocity Despite Rawls’ political turn, the continuity of his liberal approach remains, as we’ve highlighted, fundamental. In A Theory of Justice the two basic principles of justice are defined independently of religion (Rawls 1971: 153–160). The same goes for Political Liberalism: comprehensive doctrines do not contribute to the content of public reason nor do they contribute to the individuals’ capacity to choose fair principles of justice as free and equal citizens. Central to Rawls’ view of public reason and overlapping consensus is the criterion of reciprocity. Reciprocity is already present in the way Rawls builds the original position in A Theory of Justice, but it acquires a new significance in his later writings. The problem of public reason is that it aims to achieve public justifications, i.e. justifications that legitimize the use of coercive power by the government in the form of policies and laws. Public justification is not merely valid logical reasoning, “but argument addressed to others: it proceeds correctly from premises we accept and think others could reasonably accept to conclusions we think they could also reasonably accept” (Rawls 1999a: 155). This kind of justification fulfils the criterion of reciprocity by being based on reasons, premises, and conclusions that citizens believe, in a reasonable and sincere way, can be endorsed by their interlocutors regardless of their different comprehensive doctrines. Citizens are reasonable when, seeing each other as free and equal members of society, they are ready  to offer one another fair terms of cooperation according to what they consider the most reasonable conception of political justice; and when they agree to act on those terms, even at the cost of their own interests in particular situations, provided that other citizens also accept those terms. (Rawls 1999a: 136) Rawls believes that, ideally speaking, citizens ought to use public justifications when they participate in decision-­making in the domain of the political. He also believes that the majority of citizens could do so. Thus, public reason recasts Kant’s image of citizens as co-­legislators. According to this “legislative” model of politics, the exercise of coercive power is legitimate “only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions – were we to state them as government officials – are sufficient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons” (Rawls 1999a: 137; our italics). The idea of public reason thus refers to the articulation of the criterion of reciprocity in the basic moral and political values that shape a constitutional democratic government’s relation to its citizens and their relation to one another (Rawls 1999a: 132). In this sense, public reason applies when the most fundamental political issues are at stake, as in the case of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. This idea puts the freedom and the equality of citizens and the fairness of social cooperation at the centre of political arrangements and excludes any political engagement that separates citizens between friends and foes or aims to “embody the whole truth in politics” based on some comprehensive worldview (Rawls 1999a: 133). Accordingly, public reason defines the content of political discourse within precise boundaries and expresses an ideal of civic engagement respectful of those boundaries.



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The content of public reason is neither predetermined nor given by liberalism. It is instead made up of a family of political conceptions of justice that include different kinds of liberalism but also includes forms of republicanism, deliberative democracy, and Catholic political views about solidarity, equality, or freedom of religion. What is crucial for political liberalism is that the justifications that support these conceptions are public. This means that: (i) “they are expressed in terms of political values” (Rawls 1999a: 142) that comply with the criterion of reciprocity and encompass equal liberties and equal opportunities,20 and (ii) “fall under the guidelines for public inquiry, which make that inquiry free and public” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 224) by relying on reasons that are accessible to all. Reasons are public not because they are secular rather than religious, but because of their accessibility without relying on specific comprehensive doctrines or appealing to supernatural revelations. In this sense, some religious traditions may in fact hold relevant convictions that are based on the sole use of reason (Seleme 2007). In these cases, the constraints of public reason do not compel religious people to rationalize their beliefs, but rather stress the internal resources of their doctrines (that already allow for truth claims compatible with their faith) in order to identify justificatory reasons that can be endorsed by all reasonable persons.21 The ideal of public reason refers, in turn, to a moral duty of civility. This duty gives expression to the notion of citizens as co-­authors of the law, or co-­legislators. It applies to both (i) public officials, and (ii) citizens, though in different ways. (i) For judges, legislators, chief executives, and other government officials, as well as candidates for public office, the ideal is fulfilled when they “act from and follow the idea of public reason and explain to other citizens their reasons for supporting fundamental political positions in terms of the political conception of justice they regard as the most reasonable” (Rawls 1999a: 135). Politicians that appeal to religious claims or arguments based on comprehensive views when discussing fundamental political issues violate this duty22 and lack the respect due to those that do not share that justificatory basis. (ii) But should the citizenry comply with the ideal of the duty of civility as well? Typically, in elections citizens vote for representatives rather than specific laws. From the perspective of Rawls’ legislative model of politics, citizens “are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think it most reasonable to enact” (ibid.). As we will argue further on, it is unrealistic to expect all citizens to imagine themselves as legislators; but for Rawls the disposition to do so should be sufficiently influential. The presence of a “firm and widespread” propensity that citizens regard themselves as “ideal legislators” is a vital root of democracy; it leads to the rejection of government officials and candidates for public office who violate public reason.

b  The public sphere and the proviso According to the first principle of justice regarding civic and political liberties, citizens are free to manifest their religious beliefs in various societal arenas. However, the duty of civility demands that in public justifications the free expression of religious beliefs is limited based on the criterion of reciprocity. To determine such a limit, Rawls introduces a relevant distinction between different levels of the public sphere. First, the background culture represents the bottom layer of the public sphere. This includes the cultures

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expressed by churches and associations of different kinds. It also includes institutions of learning at all levels, especially universities and professional schools, scientific and other societies. The content of the background culture is not limited by a specific proviso or principle. Second, there is a non-­public political culture that mediates between the background culture and the public political culture proper (Rawls 1999a: 134, n. 13). The non-­public political culture includes (mass) media – namely, newspapers, reviews and magazines, television and radio, etc.23 At this level there is no principle of restriction either. Political liberalism poses restrictions at the third level of the public political forum. The rigours of public reason apply to those political debates carried in the public political forum and which focus on fundamental political questions. The public political forum includes the discourse of judges in their decisions (first and foremost, the Supreme Court judges), the discourse of government officials (in particular chief executives and legislators), the discourse of candidates for public office and their campaign managers (more specifically, in their public oratory, party platforms, and political statements) (Rawls 1999a: 133–134). The idea of public reason generally applies more strictly to judges, especially to Supreme Court ones, given that they deal with constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice, and their application. However, for Rawls there is no principled difference between the legal and the political public sphere: the requirements of public justification – be it for a new policy or for a legal decision – are “the same” (Rawls 1999a: 134). Rawls’ insight is that legal and political public spaces where discourse is intimately connected to decisions on fundamental political matters require an “appeal to political conceptions of justice, and to ascertainable evidence and facts open to public view, in order to reach conclusions about what we think are the most reasonable political institutions and policies” (Rawls 1999a: 155). In this sense, any citizen that joins that level of political discussion, such as by publicly advocating a referendum, is at that point subject to restrictions. The Rawlsian proviso defines these restrictions without categorically forbidding the appeal to reasonable comprehensive doctrines. These can be introduced in public political discussion at any time, “provided that in due course proper political reasons – and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines – are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines introduced are said to support” (Rawls 1999a: 152; our italics). Rawls’ proviso aims for a middle ground between the inclusion of religious reasons and the enforcement of the ideal of public reason in political discussions and formal public forums. Religious language and insight may play a role in supporting a shared conception of justice, but ultimately justifications need to become public, otherwise coercion is illegitimate. Take the example of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In virtue of freedom of speech, faithful politicians are free to cite the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 29–37) in Congress when discussing and grounding their position with respect to a new immigration law. But if “in due time” a public justification of the parable’s morale in terms of political values is not provided (Rawls 1999a: 155), coercive power becomes exerted on the basis of non-­public reasons; this is illegitimate since it violates the criterion of reciprocity.24 Only decisions that comply with the proviso show the respect due to each citizen. The ideal of public reason and the proviso have been objected to for being too restrictive (Waldron 1993; see also Chapter 2 and 3), but Rawls rejects this charge. First, in



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contrast to his previous comprehensive liberalism, political liberalism is flexible and does not predetermine specific institutional arrangements and policies. Public reason does not prescribe a specific set of institutions and policies, but requires only that public justifications and political values be used to adopt or reject them. In this sense, under the premises of political liberalism the arrangements with respect to religion are more open-­ended than the specific provisions about fundamental liberties set in A Theory of Justice. Rawls gives the examples of church establishment and the school prayer controversy in the US (Rawls 1999a: 464; Greenawalt 2009). Comprehensive liberalism is prima facie against the establishment of school prayer because it favours the religious majority in the US. But Rawls’ political liberal view is different. Whether establishment of school public prayer (or a moment of silence) is admissible depends on the public justifications and political values that are invoked. For instance, if benefits in terms of social cohesion and education prove to be relevant in preserving “a moment of silence”, then they may very well justify the practice. In cases of prayer in public settings, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled differently based on different reasons. In 1962’s Engel v. Vitale, the Court struck down a policy requiring public school students to begin their day with a non-­sectarian prayer. The verdict was based on the Establishment Clause, according to which no law should be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. However, in 2014’s Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Court ruled that it is acceptable to begin a legislative body’s meeting or session with a prayer, even one that uses explicitly Christian or other religious language. The court argued that to restrict prayers to non-­sectarian languages would force courts and legislators to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech. As long as the opportunity to offer a prayer is open to different faiths, the practice is acceptable. The rulings are motivated by different levels of coercion involved (in Engel v. Vitale the prayer was a requirement on students) and based on public reasons that appeal to principles of equal opportunity, freedom of speech, and religious freedom. This form of public reasoning on religious matters has a long tradition in the United States, argues Rawls. The debate in 1784–1785 between Patrick Henry and James Madison concerning the establishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia and the presence of religion in schools was debated almost exclusively in terms of political values (e.g. religion’s contribution to morality and peace), and not by resorting to the authority of Scripture or Church dogma.25 In short, political liberalism is concerned with the “grammar” of political justification: as long as they are justified on account of political values neutral with respect to the comprehensive doctrines of the citizens, institutions, laws, and policies can be different according to context. Political justifications complying with the ideal of public reason can be understood and embraced by all citizens, regardless of their different religious affiliations. The overlapping consensus on a conception of justice from the different comprehensive doctrines that are present in a given society is the most reasonable basis of social unity and political stability that is available in modern democracies (Rawls [1993] 2007: 391).

3  Debating political liberalism Rawls’ public reason approach to legitimacy and stability has generated a multi-­layered debate that will be partly unfolded in this chapter and throughout the book (see, especially,

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­ hapters 2, 3, 7, 9). His early liberalism focusing on the comprehensive view of freedom C as autonomy has been fruitfully developed in distinctive ways by incorporating feminist and multicultural concerns that we discuss in further chapters (Okin 1989a; Okin 1989b; Kymlicka 1989; see, respectively, Chapter 7, Section 1 and Chapter 6, Section 3). Here we focus on Rawls’ political-­liberal approach to the challenge of (non)religious comprehensive doctrines. The appeal of political liberalism lies in the endeavour to account for the exercise of public power when citizens hold different conceptions of the good (including the conception of freedom as autonomy). In Rawls’ consensualist vision, the exercise of public power is legitimate when it is based on reasons that are justifiable to all. He interprets this requirement as implying a consensus between all citizens that is achievable if political power is grounded on public justifications; these are justifications that citizens are able to share or offer each other in virtue of reciprocity. For clarity’s sake, Rawls’ approach to the construction of legitimacy and stability in a liberal democracy can be reconstructed as follows: 1 Public power belongs to all, and is exercised in the name of all, so that it must be exercised in a way that is justifiable to all. 2 Therefore public justifications must be based on reasons that can be endorsed by all citizens, and must filter out reasons that are comprehensive. In this sense, all citizens are the equal co-­authors of the law (political legitimacy). 3 Therefore any citizen who makes claims regarding the exercise of political power must give public justifications based on political values she expects all citizens could reasonably endorse (the duty of civility). 4 Therefore the participants in the formal political sphere can manifest their comprehensive doctrines, yet they must present “in due time” public justifications of the exercise of public power (the proviso). 5 Therefore liberal democracy is stable since citizens support it “for the right reasons”, and on account of the comprehensive doctrines that are reasonable (the stability of the overlapping consensus). In the following, we briefly analyse and question the two key dimensions of political liberalism – the different facets of the construction of legitimacy (a and b) and the stability of the overlapping consensus (c). In a first step (a), we intimate that Rawls’ consensualist view of public justifications based on political values that all citizens can be expected to endorse is implausible and unfruitful. Public justifications do not imply the Kantian representation of an idealized consensus over a largely pre-­established set of reasons constituting the domain of the political or the reasonable. In the democratic game, reasonable and informed citizens can and will disagree over what is reasonable. Rawls’ rigid separation between the political and the comprehensive doctrines is unpersuasive: substantive values can, we argue, be part of public justifications. This critique of Rawls’ view of public justification and legitimation leads further to the questioning of the proviso (3) and the duty of civility (4), since these are premised on the Rawlsian strict dichotomy between the political (the domain of consensus, reciprocity, and shareable reasons) and the comprehensive (the domain of divergence and substantive values).



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In a second step (b), we suggest that, from the viewpoint of stability (5), Rawls’ intellectualized vision of politics and religion can lead to the disconnection of democratic life from the motivating resources provided by different value practices.26 By keeping substantive values out of politics, political liberalism can alienate citizens and create an affective and imaginative vacuum to be filled by religious fundamentalism and xenophobic nationalism.

a  Public justification, consensus, and substantive values i  Public justifications do not imply consensus over shareable reasons In a constitutional democracy public power belongs, as Rawls underscores, to all and can be exercised by all; public power is legitimate if adequately justified by and for citizens, else it becomes arbitrary (1). The justification of the exercise of power in a religious community or private association addresses only its specific members; in turn, the justification of political power is public in that it must address the citizens. If, for example, a government adopts laws on the basis of reasons that discriminate and exclude women or members of religious and sexual minorities, then these reasons are not properly speaking public, and cannot make for public justifications. Nonetheless, Rawls’ specific Kantian way of interpreting public justifications as based on a consensus over reasons that every citizen shares or should share is inadequate. For the condition of justifiability as shareability to be valid, citizens need access to a source of reasons that is acceptable to all “regardless of their comprehensive doctrines – a source of reasons that is, in those ways, independent of all comprehensive doctrines” (Wolterstorff 2012b: 82; see also Bailey and Gentile 2014; Vergés 2006).27 Yet postulating one source of reasons that all can endorse is both implausible and undesirable. These independent (or “freestanding” in Rawls’ idiom) justifications that all can share are not only unavailable in everyday political practice – marked as it is by limited information or misinformation, error, conflict, and deep disagreement – but also in ideal conditions. It is mistaken to assume that all citizens would come to a unanimous agreement on the same kinds of reasons because they are informed and reasonable. Someone can advocate a piece of legislation based on political values that religious citizens do not endorse under the assumption that they would in the appropriate conditions. The outcome, however, is still that those religious citizens cannot in fact regard themselves as co-­authors of that legislation and will be coerced based on reasons they do not in fact endorse (Wolterstorff 2012b: 90–91). The consensualist approach to public reason aims to avoid the exercise of political authority being unjustified to those who are subject to it. But it is unclear how the strategy of idealization can avoid that: as it bases its understanding of public justification on heavy assumptions about the beliefs and rationality of citizens in ideal conditions, it seems to circumvent the problem of citizens’ deep disagreements rather than addressing it (Enoch 2015: 13–30; Van Schoelandt 2015). As Quong underscores, citizens can end up holding divergent but justified beliefs “by each doing a respectable amount of good reasoning from their respective epistemic starting positions” (Quong 2014: 547). Citizens build their justifications by drawing on the existing vocabularies (liberalism, socialism, communism, deep ecology, utilitarianism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and so on)

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as well as on their experience and socio-­historical context. In engaging in public justifications, citizens start from different practical, contextual, and epistemic standpoints; this “path-­dependence” is constitutive to their public justifications (Gaus 2010: 238–244), and not a mere residue or dross to be distilled out by deliberation or the exercise of public reason. Rawls’ goal to circumscribe the domain of the reasonability that all citizens share is utopian: reasonable people can and will interpret differently what is reasonable and what is not. In matters of practical rationality, informed and reasonable citizens can espouse a plurality of views and reach equally reasonable conclusions. Additionally, more dialogue based on public justifications among reasonable and informed citizens can lead to more and not less disagreement. What some think can be endorsed by all based on human reason alone will appear to some as the entailment of a sectarian comprehensive view.28 This interpretive difficulty in defining what is actually shared by the contending parties is problematic for the practice of public discussion and political deliberation. If Jane, based on her reasoning and some scientific evidence, has conscientiously come to embrace the notion that we should consider embryos as persons since their conception, she will sincerely offer that conclusion as a public reason. Her interlocutor, Tom, could argue that the reason provided is not public as it is implicitly based on a sectarian conception of reason that relies on comprehensive metaphysical and religious assumptions. Similarly, if he brings an argument based on the notion that we should not ascribe personality until the embryo has developed the biological underpinnings of intellectual operations, Jane could in turn state that the argument is based on improper comprehensive premises about the relationship between brain functions and personhood. From the point of view of both Jane and Tom, the reasons they offered are among those that should be discussed. They both see themselves as complying with the duty of civility and, since their reasons are based on widely accessible sources of scientific evidence and do not evidentially appeal to any divine revelation or religious authority, they are at least prima facie justified in believing so. They perceive themselves as reasonable and assume that the reasons that have persuaded them should persuade all other reasonable persons without violating the principle of reciprocity (Archard 2001: 219). By framing their controversy in terms of public reason, they do not solve their disagreement, but only move it to a different level: the discussion over the public or non-­public nature of their respective arguments. In the process each, however, instead of taking into consideration the content of the reason offered by their interlocutor, dismisses it as not acceptable: therefore, not only is consensus not reached,29 but also the disagreement is overcharged with a lack of recognition of the reasonableness of the other party.30 Rawls contemplates the first kind of persisting disagreement on such difficult issues, but he does not address the second kind: the lack of consensus on what does count as a public reason. While the first kind of disagreement can be eventually, even though temporarily, solved through democratic voting, the second one damages the justificatory process by moving the argument to the mutual misrecognition of the kind of reasons offered by the interlocutor. The insistence on a sharp separation between political and comprehensive regimes of discourse opens up a cultural war over which conceptions are freestanding and which are comprehensive, and thus to be excluded from the process of justification (see Chapter 2). While authoritarian, dogmatic, or epistemically flawed arguments are clearly unfit for public justification and should not be



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deemed acceptable in the public political forum, excluding references to entire traditions of thought because of their comprehensive scope is a much more dubious strategy. In its endeavour to circumscribe the consensus among all citizens, Rawls’ conception becomes too exclusionary towards alternative and minority political values that are not widely shared; consensualism favours the majority sense of justice at the expense of value practices and imaginings that challenge the dominant political culture. It is, in this context, unsettling that minority views are not part of the family of the reasonable conceptions that constitute the domain of the political, while political history and experience suggests that democratic emancipation usually starts from the margins and gradually shifts the dominant political culture.31 Divergence and contestation in public justifications is a crucial and normatively valuable feature in the development of democracy and a vibrant democratic ethos. A plurality of perspectives – socialism, radical democracy and feminism, anarcho-­syndicalism, Gandhian politics of radical non-­violence, animal rights, deep ecology, engaged Buddhism, de-­growth and cooperative economy, native Amer­ican spirituality – can provide sources of inspiration, alternative imaginings, and ways of reasoning and communicating in a continuing debate about political philosophy and the just and good society. Rather than a neutral methodological requirement, Rawls’ exclusion of a plurality of voices from the domain of the “reasonable” and the political is a substantive philosophical decision and a questionable rhetorical tool for disqualifying philosophical and political opponents.32 Postulating a consensus over the domain of the political obscures, further, the importance of open-­ended discursive exchanges about the basic terms of cooperation and interaction. The very borders between what is public and non-­public, political and non-­political vary in time. Questioning these borders is partly the object of democratic struggle between different discourses and powers, as well as a familiar and necessary task of political philosophy. Consider the feminist and the animal rights battles that have “revealed” the political dimension of issues that were previously seen as non-­political and private. Such struggles for legitimacy and power cannot be put to rest by philosophical fiat about what is reasonable and what is not: theory cannot fix and define away the question of borders by idealization. In short, while Rawls’ insight that legitimacy must be based on public justifications is persuasive, his specific interpretation of it is not: the public justification of political power neither depends on (idealized) consensus nor should it aspire to determine a consensus over what is reasonable for all citizens; a more realistic and normatively profitable re-­ presentation of the democratic struggle for legitimacy and power acknowledges the plurality of normative sources of public justification as well as a more robust sense of the inescapable and positive role of divergence and contestation.

ii  Public justifications can include substantive values For Rawls, public justifications imply the consensus over shareable reasons and, as a corollary, the exclusion of comprehensive doctrines and substantive values. But just as public justifications do not imply consensus, they do not need to exclude substantive values either. Surely, Rawls’ conception of political legitimacy of public power as premised on the separation between the political and the comprehensive conveys a valid concern with

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the specificity and limits of public justifications. In a pluralistic democracy, majorities cannot legitimately impose, for instance, their comprehensive doctrines over minorities. No comprehensive doctrine as a worldview, totalizing conception, or “the whole truth” can legitimately constitute public justifications of political power. Likewise, certain ways of advocating religious and non-­religious reasons so as to stop the open and fallible dialogue among citizens do not amount to public justifications, but undermine the democratic game (see also Chapter 2 and Chapter 8, Section 1). Consider the appeals to the absolute authority and revelation such as “X is absolutely true because God, the pope, the imam or, alternatively, the People, the proletarians or Marx say so”. The commitment to public justification specific to a vibrant democracy and its ethos “derives precisely from the recognition that one’s own perspective is not necessarily definitive” and is subject to revision (Gaus 1996: 130); furthermore, this commitment of the citizens is premised on the equal respect of citizens’ freedoms, beliefs, and practices. Nonetheless, the wholesale exclusion of substantive values and of the relevance of comprehensive from the construction of political legitimacy is both implausible and undesirable. At the heart of Rawls’ consensualist strategy lies a significant tension. Rawls regards his view of public reason as rooted in a specific political tradition. He argues that political liberalism is the best distillation of the “familiar ideas and principles” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 9) that constitute the public political culture of a liberal constitutional democracy like the US. Yet he postulates at once that public reason is freestanding with respect to comprehensive doctrines. Rawls cannot have it both ways: substantive values, ideologies, and visions have shaped and will continue to shape political arrangements as well as idealizations in political theory. Rawls’ talk of a freestanding public reason at the core of his ideal model is interpretable as an echo of the metaphysics he claims to overcome; the freestanding public reason is but an echo of Kant’s metaphysical drive to preserve the “purity of reason”. However, the content, borders, and internal diversity of democratic political culture cannot be distilled into one best model that “stands freely” or hovers above context and practice. The rhetoric of public reason disguises as an epistemic appeal to independent reasons what is ultimately the preference for a specific tradition and model. But there are various comprehensive specifications of citizenship that are reasonable, and are endorsed by people willing to cooperate with others on fair terms. The political culture in the US has been shaped by the tension and the compromises between liberal, republican, socialist, and conservative visions that represent different sources of public justifications, as well as by eventful constitutional moments and historical transformations (Ackerman 1998). The content of fundamental principles freedom, rights, equality solidarity, sovereignty, and equality cannot be properly understood without a genealogical inquiry into their spiritual-­religious heritages as well as their transformations in specific contexts (see also Chapter 3, dedicated to Habermas). Rawls’ interpretation of political legitimacy is thus too restrictive, as it is premised an “wall of separation” around the domain of the political which does not square with the complexities of the interactions between religion and politics. There is a variety of non-­ hierarchizable and/or non-­reconcilable values practices that affect the citizens’ interpretation and prioritization of fundamental rights and duties. This comes into play when rights and duties conflict and one must decide which one to give the upper hand. One religion’s ethics may put the emphasis on individual responsibility, another on the ethics



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of community and solidarity, and still another focus on the importance of developing a harmonious relation to animals and nature. Spiritual-­religious values similarly influence people’s sense of what the community owes to its less fortunate members and their sense of how tolerable the gap between rich and poor is. Specific interpretations of political values drawing on (non)religious conceptions of the good can be relevant for establishing the terms of cooperation and social interaction.33 To the extent that a social and constitutional project is based on respect for equal freedoms and pluralism, there is no a priori reason to exclude substantive and non-­authoritarian values (De Koster and Van der Waal 2007).34 Political liberalism is not only selective with the plural and conflictive traditions of the US political culture but also downplays the variety of democratic paths in different civilizational areas. Democratic projects can legitimately champion substantive values that are not predominantly individual-­centred, but are oriented towards community and nature. In different contexts – Latin Amer­ican, South-­Asian, African, Indian, and so on – communal and comprehensive values related to living freely in family, community, and in closeness to nature can be regarded as fundamental. Once basic individual rights and equal liberties are respected, comprehensive values rooted in existing practices are legitimate even if they do not comply with the Rawlsian ideal of public reason.35 Substantive values rooted in spiritual-­religious imaginaries, traditions, and practices can legitimately nourish alternative visions of fundamental political arrangements. Value complexes such as vivir bien (Latin America), Ubuntu (Africa), or xiào (South-­East Asia) need not be excluded from reflections on the fundamentals of democratic life. Consider in more detail a case from Latin America. The 2009 Constitution of Bolivia, while stipulating the separation between state and religion, integrates comprehensive values at odds with Rawls’ interpretive framework.36 These constitutional values are the interpretation of moral and spiritual-­religious elements of the Bolivian traditions in a new societal context. Article 8.I of the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia stipulates that “The State adopts and promotes the following as ethical, moral principles of the plural society: suma qamaña (live well), ñandereko (live harmoniously), teko kavi (good life), ivi maraei (land without evil) and qhapaj ñan (noble path or life).”37 These and other similar values are not mere rhetoric: being adapted and reinterpreted to meet new historical challenges, they have influenced fundamental laws in Bolivia such as the “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” and the “Law of Education”. The “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” provides an interpretation of traditional spiritual values in a new political situation, and reacts against the marketization of land and related ecological threats. The “Law of Education” envisages that education is laic (secular), pluralistic, and also spiritual (spiritual): it is oriented towards a Vivir Bien (“good living”) in harmony with Mother Nature, and in community with others. As in the case of the value complex of Ubuntu in Africa, this mind-­set has inspired alternative political and economic arrangements that are able to cross borders (Mogobe 2015). These discursive practices show that the realization of substantive values is at the basis of meaningful self-­understandings that the political communities articulate. Rawls suggests that the way a society’s main institutions fit together to form a unified scheme of social cooperation over time is to be established only by appealing to political values. But across different cultures and contexts, social cooperation focuses on different substantive values that are relevant to define the fundamental arrangements of that ­political

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community. In this sense, the basic structure of society does not lie entirely within the domain of the political (Rawls [1993] 2007: xliii, n. 7), but is also based on comprehensive grounds. The respect of the basic rights and freedoms of citizens, however, rules out the possibility of democratically pursuing strong perfectionist strategies that embrace a comprehensive doctrine of the good as the sole foundation of a constitutional project. Multiple democracies are built out of a plurality of substantive values, but no democracy can be defined by a single way of understanding and ordering these values without also violating the reasonable plurality of comprehensive views held by its citizens.

iii  The limits of the duty of civility and the proviso Rawls’ duty of civility and proviso convey his interest in the process of constructing political legitimacy. Even if we question Rawls’ specific Kantian interpretation of legitimacy, his concern with the realization of the democratic idea and the importance of public justification at different levels of the political community is persuasive. If a significant part or a majority of citizens are not able to support or provide public justifications when voting in referenda or for elections, this can endanger the democratic practice (3). In the public political forum, to ensure the political legitimacy of their decisions, politicians and judges have a special responsibility to fulfil that duty by providing, “in due time”, appropriate public justifications (4). A vibrant democracy is unconceivable without a democratic ethos, namely as the citizens’ practical knowledge made of “habits of the heart”; these are embodied and exercised values that must be effective both at the level of the political public forum and the citizenry at large (see also Ferrara 2014; Cohen 2008).38 The democratic ethos articulates and puts to works values of equal respect, a disposition for toleration and public engagement in open dialogue, actions of solidarity, and so on. As the citizenry of modern democracies is culturally and religiously diverse, so the democratic ethos is pluralistic, i.e. made of a diversity of conflicting perspectives on what makes a good citizen, some of them being strongly divergent with respect to the dominant political cultural trends; but in the absence of such a democratic ethos of equal respect and open dialogue and engagement, the participants in the political public forum will attempt to impose their particular values and interests on others in manipulative, discriminatory, and authoritarian ways. In this sense, the democratic ethos has a function of restraint and self-­restraint, critique, and marginalization of speeches and actions that are legal but undermine democracy – e.g. racist, discriminatory, sexist, xenophobic, manipulative, and so on. This function, however, cannot be fully captured by a master-­principle such as Rawls’ proviso, based on an allegedly transparent definition of what is reasonable and political, and what is not. Take the example of a religious political majority that appears to comply with the proviso in that it uses the language of law and political values to discriminate against sexual minorities. Nowadays, this is not uncommon in the US where the democratic ethos at the level of the political public sphere has been undercut by deep polarization, populism, and the politicization of religion. The adoption of and polemic about Religious Freedom Restoration Acts at the federated state level in the US is one way in which Christian conservative politicians and judges use and abuse the language of rights and freedoms so as to marginalize and exclude sexual minorities (see Chapter 7). Especially in an environment where religion



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is politicized and political life is polarized, it is utopian to expect that religious traditionalists and conservative politicians would bracket their religious beliefs other than for strategic reasons in order to comply with the proviso. Conversely, a secularist majority can adopt laws, policies, and build a public discourse that is exclusivist to the relevance of the religious beliefs and way of life of minorities. In this case, the idea of the proviso would be used to show the ultimate irrelevance of one’s religious life for the life in common. This is arguably the case of France where Muslim communities have been marginalized, even if there are notable differences between political liberalism and French republicanism (see also Chapter 4). The Rawlsian specification of the democratic ethos, by relying on the stark separation between the political and the comprehensive, creates a tension between the recognition of the citizens’ reasonable worldviews and the actual process of public justification. Rawls points out that (p)ublic justification is not simply valid reasoning, but argument addressed to others: it proceeds correctly from premises we accept and think others could reasonably accept to conclusions we think they could also reasonably accept. This meets the duty of civility, since in due course the proviso is satisfied. (Rawls 1999a: 155) Rawls is right in pointing out that public justification entails a concern for the engagement of one’s reasons with the interlocutors, but he incorrectly assumes that this concern is respected only by appealing to political conceptions of justice. This puts comprehensive doctrines at the margins of the process of public justification, even though, in Rawls’ own understanding, they are crucial to the political self-­understanding of citizens. As he notes, “(c)itizens’ mutual knowledge of one another’s religious and nonreligious doctrines […] recognizes that the roots of democratic citizens’ allegiance to their political conceptions lie in their respective comprehensive doctrines, both religious and nonreligious” (Rawls 1999a: 153). But when formulating public arguments, the duty of civility requires that those respective comprehensive doctrines are excluded; effectively, the roots of the citizens’ democratic allegiance are severed from their participation in public justification. The proviso is meant to be an inclusive form of fulfilment of this duty, since it allows the use of non-public reasons in the public political forum if in due time appropriate public reasons are offered. But “non-­public reasons” still play no justificatory role: even though they can be mentioned, they are ultimately “silenced” in the process of public justification. Let us see more in detail the implications and limitations of this twofold approach to the exercise of citizenship and the boundaries of the public political forum. (a) With regard to the duty of civility, Rawls is convincing in distinguishing the constraints of a judge taking a decision and of a citizen voting in a referendum; the office of the judge implies a degree of impartiality in taking decisions that is not applicable to the citizen voting in elections for a political party and a specific ideology. However, the idea of a democratic ethos that includes breaks and internalized “restraints” against majoritarian, discriminatory, and authoritarian use of public power, and in favour of the equal respect and liberties, is fundamentally important at the broad level of citizenry as well. If

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the construction of the political legitimacy is disconnected from an ethics of citizenship or democratic ethos, then it is likely that public power will be abused. A case in point is the 2016 referendum concerning the construction of minarets in Switzerland, which is at odds with equal respect and freedom of religion (see Chapter 2). In voting in such referenda, it is necessary that a vast share of the population feels committed to respect the equality and freedom of their fellow citizens. Nonetheless, it is both unfeasible and unnecessary to ask them to bracket their fundamental beliefs to do so. First, this moral duty of civility overtaxes the rational capacities of religious citizens who are asked to make a clinical distinction between their religious and non-­religious beliefs. Yet the border between the religious and the non-­religious domains is controversial even amongst scholars who build their life-­careers in studying religion. Second, Rawls represents citizens in a typical Kantian way as co-­authors of the law; the ideal of citizenship and the exercise of public reason is, for Rawls, the Supreme Court. Kant’s legalistic metaphor of the “tribunal of reason” finds its echo in Rawls’ image of the Supreme Court as the “exemplar of public reason” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 231–240). But modelling democratic engagement on the logic of a court is misleading: citizens are not incomplete or imperfect judges who are meant to exercise their public reason in an as impartial way as possible. It is ironical to note that, in actual practice, not even the Justices of the Supreme Court are up to Rawls’ Kantian-­legalistic representation. The US Justices are politically elected depending not only on their expertise and probity but also on their commitment to specific ideologies and substantive values. Third, the duty of civility under Rawls’ rigid formulation is uncalled for, since different religious frameworks are compatible and supportive of equal respect and religious freedom. As Rawls admits, the citizens’ allegiance to a political conception of justice is rooted in their own comprehensive doctrines, and they are able to see that their fellow citizens are similarly bound to their respective worldviews. This connection should not be irrelevant to one of their most fundamental roles as citizens: advocating and defending political decisions. Fourth, and finally, by implying that voting on religious reasons is necessarily immoral or uncivil, the Rawlsian view of the duty of civility is unfair to believers, and runs the risk of disrespecting and alienating them. The result may be self-­enclosure and sectarianism rather than open dialogue and mutual learning and transformation in the common democratic space. (b) The proviso is meant to be an inclusive requirement that fulfils the duty of civility in the public political forum, but it is ultimately unclear to what purpose citizens are to offer their reasons from comprehensive grounds in that context. If someone has both a religious and a public argument to support a law or policy, the proviso makes clear that the public one ultimately plays the justificatory role. Gerald Gaus has criticized the proviso arguing that, from a practical point of view, it does not manage to establish a more inclusive framework for religious people who are willing to join the political debate but cannot offer non-­religious reasons or, even if they can, also want to offer religious ones. The thrust of this argument is that, in most cases, the door left open by the proviso does not leave a meaningful choice for the religious person. If Jane has a public argument to support her pro-­life stance, she has no reason to also offer a religious argument since her public argument is the only one that will be playing a justificatory role as it is



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c­ onsidered to be appealing to all reasonable persons. Even if she only knows religious arguments, she still does not have much reason to offer those arguments under the proviso since the value of those arguments is dependent on a public argument. Since Jane knows no such argument, she can at best guess that there could be one. According to this line of reasoning, the only case in which the proviso is relevant is when the religious person knows that there is also a public argument to support her stance but does not know what it is. However, even in this case,  it is hard to see how one can be confident that there is a good public argument without knowing what it is, and why, faced with that knowledge, one response is to provide a [religious] argument that one knows is not a good public argument. (Gaus 2003: 200) As Gaus points out, Rawls does not allocate any autonomous justificatory role to religious reasons. The possibility of expressing religious concerns in formal settings is a temporary way of preserving the participation of religious groups.39 The problem, once again, lies in the consensualist assumption that the reasons that all can endorse are only those formulated in terms of a political conception of justice. Claims based on the mere reference to the pronouncement of a religious leader or a quote from the Holy Scriptures are not arguments properly “addressed to others” in legitimizing the use of public power. Ascribing a justificatory role to such claims would entail that the religious epistemic authority they are based on is also political, thus violating the neutrality of the political institution where they are offered (court, parliament, etc.). On this account, Rawls is persuasive in considering their use in the public political forum to have only a motivational or rhetorical significance. It is less clear, however, that substantive values like a Kantian conception of autonomy or a Buddhist argument for compassion based the spiritual and material connection of all human beings should never play any justificatory role. Public justification is a discursive engagement and, in this sense, their formulation should be appropriate to their being “addressed to others”. Unlike dogmatic statements and appeals to religious authority, reasons that are spelled out in a way that is intelligible to the uninitiated and open to further qualification and revision can be thought of as “public reasons”. Despite their comprehensive grounds, someone offering those reasons can think that others could reasonably accept them as supporting conclusions they could, in Rawls’ sense, reasonably accept.40

b  Stability and the limits of consensus Legitimacy and stability are, for Rawls, fundamentally interconnected; stability is achievable when coercive power is exercised “for the right reasons”. This conception has at least two important merits. First, Rawls is spot-­on in pointing out the instability of modus vivendi liberalism, as well as its normative difficulties. A mere modus vivendi in which people are not publicly engaged is too exposed to disruptions in addition to de facto relations of dominations: politics is not only a matter of compromise and peace but also of struggling against injustices through participation in the public sphere (see Chapter 6). Second, the concept of overlapping consensus captures a significant dimension of

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global religious-­political developments. In recent history, public support for democracy and human rights has come from within different comprehensive views – Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto, African-­religious, Hindu, and Islamic. Consider the historical importance of the Civil Rights Movement in the US, the support given by the Catholic Church to the international diffusion of human rights after Vatican II, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, and the articulations of Ubuntu with regard to the practice of democracy. This support can be vital for the stability of constitutional democracies notwithstanding the fact that major religions include practices in tension with some fundamental principles such as gender equality (Chapter 7). Nonetheless, Rawls’ view of political legitimacy generates stability problems of its own: namely, (i) the problem of the marginalization of civic resources and (ii) the problem of consensus from unfamiliar doctrines. (i) The problem of the marginalization of civic resources stems from the limited role that Rawls envisions for comprehensive doctrines that provide “external” support to the political conception of justice. As long as insights coming from religious and comprehensive doctrines overlap and offer elements in support of a specific understanding of liberal principles, they are fair game, but as soon as they lead in other directions, they fall outside the boundaries of public reason. Rawls tries to address this problem by distinguishing three levels of justification: a pro tanto justification of the political conception based exclusively on political values, full justification of that conception by an individual person in civil society, and actual public justification within the political institutions (Rawls [1993] 2007: 385–386). The general principles of justice articulate the requirements that all reasonable citizens are supposed to share, but it is up to the second stage of justification to actually “say how the claims of political justice are to be ordered, or weighed, against non-­political values” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 386). Now, “this guidance belongs to citizens’ comprehensive doctrines”, even though the conception of justice stays freestanding from such doctrines, since it is not dependent on them but can be “embedded in various ways – or mapped, or inserted as a module – into the different doctrines citizens affirm” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 387). However, as Gaus has noted, the passage from the pro tanto justification to full justification is likely to be more unstable than Rawls hopes; this is for at least for two reasons. First, once free and equal individuals are aware of their full range of relevant values and concerns, they may conclude that the abstract justification is defeated. In this case, the abstract justification is not robust. Second, however, even when it is robust these justifications occur at a high level of abstraction, and so do not provide justification of moral rules that are sufficiently fine-­grained to serve as the basis of our actual social life. (Gaus 2010: 42) There is a permanent gap between the general principles of public morality and the actual social moralities of a pluralistic civil society. The political conception of justice is inserted into the comprehensive doctrines of citizens, but is not substantially shaped by those doctrines. Its public justification depends only indirectly on them, because of the support the



Public reason and religion

citizens give to it by finding a place for it in their comprehensive views. The contents of their doctrines “have no normative role in public justification” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 387), and citizens should not even consider the content of the arguments offered by their interlocutors beyond the mere acknowledgement of the fact that some reasonable overlapping consensus exists. Public reason does not weigh the epistemic value of arguments coming from outside its boundaries; they are deemed inappropriate rather than true or false, despite the fact that citizens may be bringing those arguments precisely because of their conviction about their truth and the good they could bring to society. Restricting the overlapping consensus to an external support of pre-­established liberal principles and rejecting the engagement with value practices may be ineffective in addressing the problem of stability. Rawls’ over-­intellectualized take on democratic discourse runs the risks of disconnecting public life from the motivating resources provided by substantive worldviews and practices. In turn, the exclusionary aspect of the proviso can lead to hostility and resentment, since a good number of conversational partners are in practice disqualified as unreasonable, at least insofar as they wish to invoke the true grounds of their political and moral positions. A view of politics centred on public reason at the expense of imagination, affect, and substantive values, may alienate citizens, generate resentment, and create an affective and imaginative vacuum to be filled by populist passions and myths, in addition to religious-­fundamentalist enthusiasm. (ii) The problem of consensus from unfamiliar doctrines originates from the weakness of Rawls’ consensualism. As we previously argued, there are serious doubts as to whether his conception of the overlapping consensus is feasible. Even if different religious groups support democracy and human rights at a general level, the interpretation of fundamental values among these groups is deeply contested and may not necessarily generate stability. This problem is especially evident for political cultures rooted in comprehensive views that are less likely to share the “familiar ideas and principles” of Western liberal constitutional regimes. Rawls and his supporters tackle this objection by discussing the compatibility of the religious-­legal tradition of Islam with political liberalism. Rawls refers to the argument developed by An-­Na’im (1990), according to which the earlier Mecca interpretation of Sharia would support gender equality, religious freedom, and other fundamental rights that lie at the core of modern constitutionalism but does not develop the case (see Introduction). Andrew March takes up this task by arguing that the religious and juridical culture of Islam allows for a contractual relationship with a non-­Islamic political society, thus opening the door to the acceptance of a Rawlsian overlapping consensus from Islamic doctrines (March 2009a). March acknowledges that Islamic jurisprudence also holds resources to deny Muslims the possibility of residing in countries that are not governed by Islamic authorities and laws, as highlighted by the traditional distinction between dār-al-­islām (Abode of Islam) and dār-al-­h.arb (Abode of War). However, in the recent past Muslim scholars have showed how that distinction is outdated and can be overcome without leaving the boundaries of Islamic doctrine. March appreciates in this regard the proposal advanced by Tariq Ramadan to conceive Western countries as a dār-ash-­shahāda (Abode of Testimony), a space of public responsibility where Muslims should be committed to the universalism of rights and the welfare of non-­Muslims (Ramadan 1999: 158–159).41 March maintains that once the legitimacy of Muslim residence in non-­Islamic

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countries is accepted, an ideal-­typical faithful Muslim can subscribe to some fundamental political statements based entirely on reasons that come from the Islamic tradition. These statements encompass the right of the liberal state to defend itself against external enemies, the acceptance of ethical and religious pluralism as a permanent condition, and the commitment to contribute to the welfare of society by benefiting Muslims and non-­Muslims alike. These statements, he argues, are all political liberalism should demand as a contribution to the overlapping consensus. March’s work based on the Rawlsian notion of overlapping consensus displays both its strengths and limitations in addressing the problem of political stability. He effectively argues that a comprehensive doctrine like Sunni Islam can provide solid ground to support a conception of justice compatible with political liberalism. In this sense, March breathes new life into the Rawlsian vision, and provides a useful precedent for its application to non-­Western religious traditions. However, two difficulties behind the idea of overlapping consensus still stand. First, the notion of overlapping consensus is meant to open a path of reconciliation between liberal democracy and moral-­religious traditions; yet, as we have underscored, it never grants those traditions the possibility to be relevant in the definition of the fair terms of cooperation, disregarding their role in shaping the meaning of social cooperation for many citizens. This frustrates the spirit of citizens’ engagement on religious grounds, as in Ramadan’s notion of testimony: not just accepting liberalism from one’s comprehensive view, but actually shaping the idea and practice of justice with one’s ideas and behaviours. This form of commitment is of a kind that “a freestanding political theory cannot justify, since to attempt to do so would be to abandon freestandingness” (Talisse 2009: 69). Second, relying on the understanding of religions as comprehensive doctrines, the idea of overlapping consensus shows at best a possible doctrinal support to political liberalism from some theological perspectives, but this still appears a thin basis to ensure that the problem of stability is addressed. The Rawlsian approach construes religion as a comprehensive repertoire where reasons can be picked up or dropped at will to support a political conception; but doctrinal elements assume different meanings inside individual or communal practices of social cooperation. As Modood notes,  For some Muslims […] being Muslim is a matter of community membership and heritage; for others it is a few simple precepts about self, compassion, justice and the afterlife; for some others it is a worldwide movement armed with a counter-­ideology of modernity, and so on. Some Muslims are devout but apolitical, and some are political but do not see their politics as being “Islamic” (indeed, may even be anti“Islamic”). (Modood 2007a: 134) By assuming Rawls’ doctrinal understanding, March’s argument is at risk of conflating the detailed analysis of the religious sources with the sociological and political problem of integration and support for fundamental rights and liberties. Considering religious beliefs and arguments detached from the form they assume in their communities of belief and interpretation gives little assurance that they will serve as an acceptable warranty of stability in the actual life of a pluralist liberal democracy.42



Public reason and religion

Preliminary conclusion Rawls developed his conception of politics and religion within a rich tradition of liberal thought in the US, and pressed by the intensification of the public debates about religion. While Samuel Huntington, whose “The Clash of Civilizations?” was published the same year as Political Liberalism (1993), poses religion at the centre of a new era of international conflicts, Rawls endeavours to reconcile Enlightenment and religion, reason and faith. Rawls’ concern with attempts to ground politics on the “whole truth” and full-­fledged perfectionist views is persuasive, yet his Kantian-­idealized image of politics does not sufficiently acknowledge the relevance of value pluralism in the democratic struggles for power and legitimacy. In his popular The Naked Public Square, Richard John Neuhaus comments: In Rawls’ theory we have, I believe, an instance of a laudable intention miscarried. It is symptomatic of our problems in relating law to life, in democratizing the public square. […] Rawls’ people behind the veil are, in fact, non persons. They have no history, no tradition, no vested interests, no self-­knowledge, no loves, no hates, no fears, no dreams of transcendent purpose or duty. (Neuhaus 1986: 257–258) Rawls’ political turn answers in part this line of objection since political liberalism distils one political tradition and culture; yet in doing so Rawls is caught in an aporia. While Rawls acknowledges the dependence of political liberalism on a tradition, he claims that public reason is freestanding, and thus risks alienating it from the plurality of voices and the inner diversity of political cultures. The Rawlsian public reason is at once too exclusive and inclusive, depending on the dimension of religion that we look at (e.g. religion as a source of plural frameworks of reference; or religion as power and domination; see Introduction). It is exclusive because it does not account for the role of values and practices in shaping a diversity of constitutional projects, ideologies, and citizens’ attitudes. At the same time, Rawls underplays the role of religion as power and domination. Rawls takes for granted that reasonable comprehensive doctrines, once confined within the boundaries of public reason, will fit into the deliberative process in non-­dominating ways that are irrelevant for political philosophy. In doing so, Rawls works with an over-­intellectualized image of religion. Religion is a complex field of practice that shapes social interactions in the domestic and social sphere, and these interactions often include the domination of sexual minorities and women on religious grounds (Okin 1999, 2002; Rorty 2009). There is no reason why political philosophy should not engage with these dimension of world religions that Rawls’ frames as reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and places outside of the domain of the political; this critical and transformative engagement is one of the tasks of political philosophy (for more details about this criticism with respect to gender equality and family, see Chapter 7). The limits of Rawls’ Neo-­Kantian conception of legitimacy pose, further, a problem for the stability of political liberalism. The role of external support that Rawls envisions for comprehensive doctrines is insufficient: while the pursuit of the “whole truth”

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through political means is incompatible with the fact of pluralism, democratic participation is driven by the citizens’ sense that some fundamental truths they hold dear can play a significant role in shaping the understanding and practice of justice. Despite its difficulties, the impact of Rawls’ political liberalism in the debate about the public role of religion has been enormous. The idea of public reason as a shared basis for political deliberation has been subject to countless reformulations, and the Rawlsian take on the principle of restraint has been the springboard for subsequent discussions on the legitimate role of religious arguments in the public sphere. For these reasons, our critical discussion of his view is not strictly limited to this chapter. The following pages will articulate, either in developing or by distancing from Rawls, alternative liberal, feminist, deliberative, republican, or postmodern conceptions of the place of religion in democracy (see Chapters 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8); In the last chapter we will come back to Rawls’ development of political liberalism beyond the limits of the nation-­state. In the next chapter, we continue our examination of the debate around Rawls’ political liberalism, mainly in light of academic discussions in the US, and examine alternative solutions to the questions of justification of public power and the role of religion in the construction of political legitimacy.

Notes   1 There are “secret continuities” between his theory of justice as fairness and his earlier Protestant faith (Cohen and Nagel 2009). Cohen and Nagel argue, for instance, that Rawls’ stance on merit in his theory of justice largely originated from his religious upbringing and views.   2 Rawls recounts in more detail these experiences in the moving short text “On My Religion” (Rawls 2009). In one of them, there was a moment during his period as a soldier when either he or one of his best friends was to be sent on a reconnaissance mission. His companion was chosen for the sole reason that there was a sudden medical need for a blood type. The blood type happened to be Rawls’. This contingent factor saved his life, while his companion and friend died in the mission.   3 For Nagel, a “religious temperament” does not depend on one’s belief in God or adherence to a conventional religion or a Church. Having a religious temperament is not a matter of mere understanding, but an attitude of deep concern with “cosmic questions” (Nagel 2009: 3–5).   4 Rawls states: “There is, or need be, no war between religion and democracy. In this respect political liberalism is sharply different from and rejects Enlightenment Liberalism, which historically attacked orthodox Christianity” (Rawls 1999a: 176).   5 Eberle and Cuneo speak of a doctrine of religious restraint supported by the “standard view” in its different versions (see Eberle and Cuneo 2015). It is the case of Rawls’ proviso, of Audi’s principle of secular rationale (see Chapter 2), of Habermas’ translation proviso (see Chapter 3). We prefer to speak of a principle of restraint given that Rawls’ proviso is not directed specifically at religious people, but at the supporters of comprehensive doctrines in general. Note that Eberle and Cuneo interpret Rawls’ proviso as demanding secular reasons. This is misleading: Rawls rejects the religious/secular dichotomy in conceptualizing public reason (Rawls 1999a: 173).   6 The principle of utility has received different formulations from J. Bentham and J.S. Mill to P. Singer.   7 In contrast to contractualism, contractarianism holds a rational assessment of the best strategy for attaining the maximization of individuals’ self-­interest will lead them to act morally (where the moral norms are determined by the maximization of joint interest) and to consent to governmental authority. While in both stages of his liberal theory Rawls follows the Kantian tradition, he does not rule out the question of self-­interest. In particular, in A Theory of Justice, the rational agents in the original position are self-­interested, but their interest is defined in moral



Public reason and religion

terms. For Rawls, the domain of the fundamentals of politics is essentially moral, and subject to public justification.   8 This respect cannot be legitimately forfeited for the utility and good of any group, even if the group in question is the majority:  (e)ach person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice […] does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. (Rawls 1971: 4)   9 For a brief assessment of this thought experiment, see Kymlicka (2001b) and Freeman (2007). 10 For Rawls’ constructivism, see McCarthy (1994a) (containing a comparison with Habermas’ reconstructive approach, here illustrated in Chapter 3), Freeman (2009), and Weithman (2011). 11 From Rawls’ perspective, individuals’ rights to own and control the means of production are not basic liberties but are made conditional on the second principle of justice (see later). Additionally, libertarian rights to unlimited accumulation, unconstrained use of property, and absolute freedom of economic contract are not protected liberties at all. For a good introductory discussion of Rawls’ conception, see Kymlicka (2001b). 12 For Rawls, the primary social goods are, broadly speaking, of five kinds: basic rights, liberties, opportunities, income, and wealth, as well as a sense of one’s own worth or the social bases for self-­respect (Rawls 1971: 62; see also Rawls 1971: 178–180). For a discussion of how Martha Nussbaum’s builds her capability approach on Rawls’ notion of “primary social goods”, see Chapter 7. 13 Rawls further specifies:  Instead, particular associations may be freely organized as their members wish, and they may have their own internal life and discipline subject to the restriction that their members have a real choice of whether to continue their affiliation. The law protects the right of sanctuary in the sense that apostasy is not recognized, much less penalized, as a legal offense, any more than is having no religion at all. In these ways the state upholds moral and religious liberty. (Rawls 1971: 212) 14 For an introduction to the debate about this aspect of A Theory of Justice, see Kukathas and Pettit (1990), Kymlicka (2002). 15 For a more detailed discussion of this shift in focus, see Mulhall and Swift (1996), Freeman (2009) and Weithman (2011). 16 In Rawls’ view, “moral persons” refers to a conception of agents (in A Theory of Justice) or citizens (in Political Liberalism) as being both rational and reasonable in virtue of having two moral powers (Freeman 2009). 17 However, in Political Liberalism the content of public reason is not given by one single doctrine, but by a variety of political conceptions of justice that are both liberal and self-­standing and not as comprehensive. Public reason “is a way of reasoning about political values shared by free and equal citizens that does not trespass on citizens’ comprehensive doctrines” (Rawls 1999a: 179) provided that they are reasonable – namely, consistent with democratic constitutionalism. 18 Constitutional essentials (corresponding to the first principle of justice) include questions of basic rights and liberties as well as constitutional powers and procedures of government. Basic justice (corresponding to the second principle) includes matters relating to equality of opportunity, the social minimum, and other all-­purpose means for effectively exercising basic liberties and fair opportunities (Rawls 1999a: 133, n. 7). In particular, the first principle of equal freedom protects basic liberties (Rawls [1993] 2007: Chapter 8): liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of association; political liberties; the rights and liberties constituting freedom of the person (including a right to hold personal property); and the rights and liberties of the rule of law. Rawls justifies these basic liberties by arguing that they are especially needed to exercise and develop the moral powers and pursue a wide range of reasonable conceptions of the good.

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19 Rawls’ question “(h)ow is it possible – or is it – for those of faith, as well as the nonreligious (secular), to endorse a constitutional regime even when their comprehensive doctrines may not prosper under it, and indeed may decline?” (Rawls 1999a: 149) remains, however, open. It is unclear why a community of belief would support the overlapping consensus if this leads to its radical decline and even extinction. 20 Political values (of public reason) are values that are responsive to the higher-­order interests of democratic citizens as free and equal. Political values provide the core considerations that serve as legitimate public reasons upon which to base laws and other government measures. Among political values Rawls lists: liberty and equality of citizens; fair opportunities and other primary social goods; justice and general welfare; the common defence; public health and other public goods; the security of persons and their property; fair distribution of income, wealth, and taxation; effectiveness and economic efficiency; respect for human life; the role of the family in achieving the reproduction of a just society over time, etc. Contrast non-­political values and “comprehensive reasons” that stem from religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines. 21 It is the case, in Catholic doctrine, of the so-­called Preambula Fidei (Seleme 2007: 486). The extent of the accessibility of these beliefs to non-­religious people is subject to controversy: the acknowledgement of the high dignity of the human being is more easily shared than the claim that convincing arguments about the existence of God need not rely on faith. 22 The duty that is not legal but moral, otherwise it would contradict freedom of speech (Rawls 1999a: 135–136). 23 Compare these differentiations with Habermas’ view of the informal and formal public sphere (see Chapter 3). For details on Rawls’ divisions, see also Rawls ([1993] 2007: 382 n. 13). 24 There are other arguments in favour of the doctrine of religious restraint: (i) the argument for religious warfare. According to this argument, restraint is necessary given that it contributes to avoiding violence and war. According to Robert Audi, for instance, “if religious considerations are not appropriately balanced with secular ones in matters of coercion, there is a special problem: a clash of Gods for social control. Such uncompromising absolutes easily lead to destruction and death” (Audi 2000: 103; see Chapter 2). Audi’s argument, however, is based on the reduction of religion to “absolutist” claims and on over-generalizing empirical assumptions. (ii) the argument from divisiveness. According to this argument, even if the there is no danger of violence and war, the absence of restraint generates frustration and social alienation and undermines solidarity (Habermas 2008a and Chapter 3). For a critique of these arguments, see Eberle and Cuneo (2015). 25 Rawls comments: Madison’s objections to Henry’s bill turned largely on whether religious establishment was necessary to support orderly civil society. He concluded it was not. Madison’s objections depended also on the historical effects of establishment both on society and on the integrity of religion itself. He was acquainted with the prosperity of colonies that had no establishment, notably Pennsylvania; he cited the strength of early Christianity in opposition to the hostile Roman Empire, and the corruption of past establishments. (1999a: 464) 26 Conversely, Rawls does not take into account a situation of politicization of religion, in which the probability or willingness of politicians to separate between the domain of the political and the religious decreases dramatically. 27 According to Wolterstorff (2012b), these independent reasons that all can endorse are not only unavailable in everyday political practice – inevitably marked by error, conflict and deep disagreement – but also in ideal conditions. It is mistaken to assume that all citizens would come to a unanimous agreement for the same reasons because they are informed and reasonable.  28 This interpretive uncertainty is reflected in Rawls’ discussion of the controversy on abortion. In Political Liberalism, Rawls maintains that the issue should be framed in terms of purely political values: the due respect for human life, the ordered reproduction of political society over time, and the equality of women as equal citizens. On this basis, he argues that “any reasonable balance of these three values will give a woman a duly qualified right to decide whether or not to end her pregnancy during the first trimester” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 243, n. 32). Later on, Rawls clarifies his position by acknowledging that some of the arguments against abortion coming from Catholic leaders fall in the camp of public reason because of their appeal to political values. Rawls acknowledges that a discussion held within the boundaries of public reason



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does not always produce unanimity of views, just as reasonable political conceptions of justice do not always lead to the same conclusion (Rawls 1999a: 169). This does not entail that all arguments brought within those boundaries are equally strong or valid. Rawls, in fact, strongly disagrees with the denial of the right to abortion and argues against it, but acknowledges that this matter is distinct from assessing if the anti-­abortion argument falls inside or outside the boundaries of public reasoning (Rawls 1999a: 170, n. 82). This leads to the suspicion that it is too abstract to provide guidance for judgement and decision-­making. It is to be noted, however, that in their effort to fulfil the duty of civility both Jane and Tom articulate reasons that are not overtly based on comprehensive doctrines. In this sense, the ideal of public reason is effective in introducing the concern of reciprocity in the discursive process. However, it also provides a controversial ground that is source of mutual delegitimation of the reasons offered by the counterpart. A related problem is that Rawls uncouples “truth” and “reasonableness” (Freeman 2007). We cannot pursue here a detailed discussion of Rawls’ distinction. Suffice it to say that it cannot be taken for granted: at least some conceptions that claim to be reasonable may be actually unreasonable because they support clearly false beliefs. The view that “women have pig souls” (to use Okin’s imaginary example; see Chapter 7) is not merely unreasonable; it is blatantly false. J.S. Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) was considered an eccentric and “unreasonable” book in the nineteenth century, and feminism was seen as a marginal vision just a few decades ago. Neither of them reflected the dominant sense of justice built into Western political cultures. Minority, original, and radical views nowadays may turn out to be part of the moral common sense tomorrow. It is implausible if not intolerant to exclude perspectives such as Noam Chomsky’s anarcho-­ syndicalism or Robert Nozick’s libertarianism as unreasonable; in particular the latter view represents an influential trend in US political culture. The rigidity of the border that Rawls wants to draw between political and comprehensive doctrines may be linked to his perception of the specifically Western origins of political liberalism as a solution to the problem posed by “salvationist, authoritative and expansionist” religions after the Protestant “moment”. Robert Audi gives a clearer expression to the concern with religious authoritarianism: “if religious considerations are not appropriately balanced with secular ones in matters of coercion, there is a special problem: a clash of Gods for social control. Such uncompromising absolutes easily lead to destruction and death” (Audi 2000: 103; see Chapter 2). This concern is backed by numerous examples from Western and Eastern history; yet religion per se is not authoritarian. If “good life” has an authoritarian content or is publicly defended with authoritarian arguments (Cooke 2007), pursuing it with political means results in conflict with the basic principles of legitimacy in a pluralist constitutional democracy. Thus, even if the proviso is unconvincing insofar as it relies on acceptance of the freestanding nature of public reason, Rawls’ overall concern with restraint and neutrality is legitimate: aiming to realize “the whole truth” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 143) or one exclusionary conception of the good with political means is not a valid option in conditions of value pluralism. The principle of neutrality is one of the constitutional means to achieve equal freedom and respect (Chapter 5). For Confucian political ethics that differs from Rawls’ political morality, see Bell (2006a, 2015) and the Introduction. The spiritual traditions in Bolivia lack the hierarchical institutionalization of “absolute truths” and dogmas characteristic of the history of Christianity. However, our point is not to defend uncritically and idealize Bolivian democracy and its indigenous traditions, but to draw attention to possible alternatives to Rawls’ view. Art 8.II stipulates: The State is based on the values of unity, equality, inclusion, dignity, liberty, solidarity, reciprocity, respect, interdependence, harmony, transparency, equilibrium, equality of opportunity, social and gender equality in participation, common welfare, responsibility, social justice, distribution and redistribution of the social wealth and assets for well being.

38 Alessandro Ferrara characterizes the democratic ethos as a “spirit of democracy” that shapes from the inside the social life of people with a series of distinct attitudes that range from a

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40 41 42

fundamental “passion for openness” that rejects the fear of difference, to the pursuit of “learning and reflectiveness” as guiding values and a disposition of “hospitality and generosity” towards the other (Ferrara 2014: 49–54). The diffused presence of a democratic ethos among the citizens allows democracy to flourish as a political order, whereas the mere application of democratic practices and procedures is insufficient to its full realization. The formulation of religious reasons in a form that is adequate to public justification can be interpreted to require a form of translation. As we will see, Habermas’ translation proviso aims to offer an alternative strategy of inclusion that engages secular and religious citizens alike in the variety of their interactions (Chapter 3). Accepting that these arguments can have a justificatory value does not entail that they are conclusive or that they cannot be defeated in the process. The concern of the proviso is about their acceptability as public arguments in the public political forum. In this sense, Ramadan’s view differs from al-­Qaradawi’s notion of Europe as a dār al-­da‘wa (Abode of Proselytizing), which sees Muslim residence in the West mostly as a temporary arrangement that is merely instrumental to its long-­term Islamization. Hamoudi notes that March’s  ideal-­typical Muslim has no nation, gender, or race. He/she has no family, no material interests, no social connections and no tribal associations. The only interest of this ideal-­ typical Muslim seems to be adherence in some sort of faithful fashion to Islamic doctrine in its academic reconstruction. (Hamoudi 2011: 398)



The case of the prohibition of joining the military effort of non-­Muslim countries against Muslim countries is enlightening. On account of his reading of the Islamic sources, March sees that involvement as strictly forbidden to the Muslim citizen and thus a fixed limit his civic loyalty; however, as Hamoudi argues, this has been actually a common occurrence in the recent past, in some cases even with the endorsement of religious authorities.

2

PUBLIC REASON DEBATED Religion, citizenship, and inclusion

Introduction: the culture war in the US and the quest for inclusion The United States has been the main backdrop of much of the debate on public reason (Audi 2001; Weithman 2002; Wolterstorff 2012b; Vallier and d’Agostino 2014). In past decades, the politicization of Evangelical Protestantism shaped the identity of the Amer­ ican political right and generated a clash with liberal activists and civil rights movements over various issues, ranging from abortion and same-­sex marriage to religious exemptions and genetic engineering. These controversies have led to a “cultural war” (Hunter 1992; Dworkin 2013) and have defined central points of the political agenda in different pres­ idential campaigns in the US (Espinosa 2008). The key role of religion in the lives of many Amer­ican citizens,1 the length of the cultural war, and the presence of religion in politics, are all factors that have nurtured a rich tradition of academic inquiry. In par­ ticular, the political polarization over values is a serious test for the Rawlsian project of reconciliation (Chapter 1). In times of deep disagreement on fundamental moral and political issues, the Rawlsian vision of an overlapping consensus rooted into the soil of a shared commitment to public reason appears over-­optimistic. A number of liberal, fem­ inist, and other critics have argued that the Rawlsian stance gives too prominent a role to religion in democratic politics and society. By separating the political and the compre­ hensive domain, Rawls would undermine individual autonomy and gloss over the funda­ mental incompatibilities between religious and liberal views with respect to family, school, and minority groups (see in Chapter 7 Okin’s criticism of Rawls and defence of autonomy liberalism). Moreover, by welcoming the use of religious language in politics outside of the public political forum, the public reason approach would underestimate the relation between institutionalized religion and domination (see Chapter 8 for Rorty’s criticism and defence of postmodern liberalism). From an opposite inclusive stand, critics have seen Rawls as the most influential rep­ resentative of “mainstream liberalism” (Weithman 2002), which would marginalize reli­ gion in the public sphere (see also Chapter 1, Section 3). Liberal democracies should instead seek the inclusion of religious citizens and their reasons to the benefit of demo­ cratic life. The acceptance of religious reasons in political discourse is, in this perspective, a crucial point of contention within a wider cultural conflict against “mainstream liberal­ ism”. Philosophers in the inclusive camp raise various critiques against the Rawlsian public reason approach; this is seen as downplaying the historical role that churches and religious have in the formation of the civic identity (Weithman 2002), as disregarding the

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contribution of religious reasons to the cause of justice and human rights (Audi and Wol­ terstorff 1997; Wolterstorff 2012b), and as generating a social gulf between believers and non-­believers (Neuhaus 1986). From this perspective, citizens engage in public life not from an ideal position, but from within a social and religious-­cultural context that nur­ tures their commitments and reasons. In this chapter we discuss this inclusive stand aiming at giving more importance to religion by focusing on the crucial problem of the adequate justification of public power (Audi 2011a; Gaus and Vallier 2009). In the process of justification, the citizens are both actors and recipients: in offering reasons, they are to consider which kinds of reasons are adequate to the task; in turn, in being offered reasons, they must be respected as free and equals. The inclusion of religious citizens requires that this justificatory process does not overburden their capacities by requiring them to bracket their reli­ gious commitments. But equal respect for all citizens demands that coercion be not imposed in a way that disregards a citizen’s status as a free and equal member of the political community, and regardless of her religious or secular convictions. Inclusivists criticize Rawls’ answer to this conundrum: his separation of the political and the com­ prehensive sacrifices valuable substantive resources of public justification; his idealiza­ tion of the citizens as co-­legislators that deliberate based on political values imposes an unfair burden on religious people and excludes the relevance of their discourses. Altern­ ative accounts of the requirements of inclusion and equal respect have taken different paths in providing answers to the difficulties of “mainstream liberalism”. In the follow­ ing we deal, first, with Robert Audi’s influential ethics of citizenship. Audi considers the problem of public reason from the perspective of individual morality: when offer­ ing reasons in the process of public justification, religious citizens need to provide justifications and be motivated in ways that respect their secular counterparts, yet they need also to stay true to their fundamental religious commitments. To achieve these requirements, Audi suggests that their civic participation in democratic life is not pre­ mised on the impossible separation of substantive and political conceptions, but on the increasing attunement between religious and non-­religious reasons (1). For his critics, Audi’s model depends on unwarranted consensualist premises and is not sufficiently inclusive. Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier provide an alternative solution that replaces the quest for consensus with a convergence-­based model of public justification, and highlights the inclusive role of institutions of the representative democracy. In the jus­ tification of coercion, the citizens can recognize each other as co-­legislators even if they appeal to different kinds of reasons, including religious ones; it is up to the repre­ sentative bodies to seek the convergence on specific political decisions by taking into account the concerns raised from these multiple grounds. This perspective disentangles the requirement of equal respect for all citizens from utopian normative expectations on the justificatory conduct of individuals. The risk is, however, to create a rift between the workings of the legislative institutions and the discourse of citizens (2).

1  Public reason and consensus: Audi’s alternative Robert Audi articulates a consensualist approach to public justification that aims to address the concern with the marginalization of citizens and their comprehensive doctrines; further,



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it aims to avoid an over-­inclusive stand on religious discourse in the public sphere when binding or coercive decisions are taken. To tackle the problem of an adequate level of inclusion, Audi argues that the commitment to public justification is compatible with reli­ gious conviction based on a set of moral principles that all citizens can endorse and that should guide their conduct. Rather than seeing public justification as a special requirement for persons when they act as citizens (Rawls), Audi argues that public justification is to be regarded as continuous with the rest of their moral lives.2 This ethical model of citizenship seeks an equilibrium between religious and non-religious commitments and reasons: for Audi, the normative ideal of democratic citizenship does not rely on the division between political conceptions and comprehensive doctrines; the duty to sincerely express religious reasons is compatible with the requirement to have adequate secular reasons and motivations in acting in the public sphere.

a  Religious reasons, natural reason, and the justification of coercion On which grounds can coercion be justified in a liberal state? Are religious reasons adequate for legitimizing commonly binding or coercive decisions? Audi thinks that these questions cannot be properly answered either by taking all comprehensive moral doctrines out of the picture (Audi 2000: 59–60; for the Rawlsian strategy, see Chapter 1) or by assuming that state neutrality towards religion entails neutrality towards all moral values (Audi 2011a: 48–53). Some conception of the good is required as a basis for the constitution of a liberal democracy. In this sense, the state is not value-­ neutral both toward what has value in itself and is thus a proper object of basic concern and […] toward specific moral principles that go beyond the general normative standards that Rawls and a number of other liberal theorists take to be needed for democratic societies. (Audi 2011a: 53) This non-­neutrality of the state is required not only to positively determine the plurality of goods that the state should realize, but also to justify coercion. In a liberal perspective, argues Audi, the liberty of competent adults should be restricted to prevent harm to other people, animals, and the environment (Audi 2011a: 62); it is, however, not possible to articulate a notion of harm if not based on some positive conception of moral values and the human good that is being harmed. Compulsory education is a case in point: it is a major but uncontroversial limitation of liberty in democratic societies and it is justified as essential to prevent the harm of ignorance. In defining the content of the obligatory curriculum, a liberal state necessarily promotes the development of substantive goods that are taken to contribute to the realization of the citizens’ capacities.3 Yet not all such con­ ceptions are adequate to the task. Ideologies that support racist or discriminatory stances or comprehensive conceptions that allow for a tyrannical rule are incompatible with the centrality of freedom and equality that characterizes the liberal democratic paradigm, and are inadequate for legitimizing coercion. Apart from these and similar other exceptions, a wide range of moral-­religious values and insights can be a resource in public discourse

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and political deliberation.4 The mobilization of citizens against the persecution of minor­ ities (or the violation of their dignity) stems from their moral intuition that a social harm has occurred and that the duty of beneficence calls for action.5 Where abstract considera­ tions of justice and reciprocity fail, these substantive evaluations are crucial. The political builds upon the moral (including what Rawls takes as reasonable comprehensive doc­ trines), especially when it comes to normative public claims. Religion comes into this framework as a source of normative reasons and an authority structure. Religious reasons are, in Audi’s view, not an adequate ground for legitimizing coercion and the structure of law in a liberal democracy. In this sense, the non-­neutrality of the state towards all substantive values is not to be confused with a rejection of religious neutrality: a liberal democratic government must be neutral towards religion so as to avoid the risk of religious domination. What exactly makes religious reasons inadequate in comparison to secular reasons in legitimizing coercion? First, religious reasons are usually bound to the powerful authority structures of religious communities and institu­ tions. These can interfere with the free exchanges among equals that are required in any liberal democracy, and thus enhance religious domination. Second, religious reasons are inadequate since they are not accessible in the same way non-­religious reasons can be; religious reasons are epistemically dependent on religious experience, scriptural authority or divine revelation; these grounds are not available in the same way, as a source of evid­ ence, to non-­religious persons. Secular reasons do not depend on such grounds but rely on sensory experience or logical inference; in this sense they are equally available both to religious and non-­religious persons. The premise of Audi’s version of the principle of restraint (see also Chapter 1) is the acceptance of secular reasons as a universally accessible basis for the restriction of liberty. Audi defines this principle (which he calls the principle of secular rationale) as follows: Citizens in a democracy have a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless they have, and are willing to offer, adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support (e.g. for a vote).6 (Audi 2011a: 65–66) A secular reason is, for Audi, a reason that is available to rational and adequately informed citizens based only on their natural rational capacities. Secular reason does not require any appeal to beliefs about God, divine revelation or the authority of religious tradition: everyone can acquire and appraise secular reasons through the exercise of natural capa­ cities and without any reliance on sacred scriptures or ecclesiastical teachings. As Audi notes: “the principle of secular rationale could with virtually equal appropriateness be called the principle of natural reason” (Audi 2011a: 76). Secular reasons are “natural” – that is, they have non-­religious evidential grounds accessible to anyone, but they are not necessarily supportive of anti-­religious positions. The exercise of natural reason (i.e. a natural endowment of all competent adults) is not inevitably in contrast with other sources of justification, like supernatural revelations: in Audi’s view, the theistic belief in the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God is not incompatible with natural reason. Similarly, in the field of moral theory, religious people can recognize the authority of natural reasons in ethical matters without having to



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deny a religious view of moral duties as prescribed by divine command. In this sense, religious people can share the same moral justifications accepted by their secular counter­ parts without renouncing to religious reasons. Audi argues that prominent Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and the ensuing natural law tradition support this compatibilist stance. For Audi, any religious outlook that encompasses the notion of a rational, omniscient, and benevolent God should easily acknowledge that such a creator would make humans able to discern moral truths. The rational discernment between good and evil lies within the natural reach of human beings, based on epistemically secular reasons that do not depend on divine revelation or mystical insights. The secular is thus a wide notion that both religious and non-­religious people can recognize as a common ground to build upon (Audi 2011a: 77–86). On this shared ground, one can articulate and defend the basic moral values and duties that a liberal democracy needs and that most religions espouse, even though believers may have additional religious justifica­ tions to support them. The principle of the secular rationale displays clear similarities to the Rawlsian duty of civility (Chapter 1), given that it reflects a Kantian notion of the citizens as co-­legislators and articulates a moral principle of reciprocity between them. But the resemblance to Rawls’ public reason model leaves room for substantial differences. Audi’s view is, as we have pointed out, not based on the distinction between political conceptions of justice and comprehensive doctrines of the good, but rather on the political appeal to substantive moral values and intuitions. The normative value of moral discourse is the basis of justification for decisions on coercive laws and public policies.7 It results that the adequate reasons offered by citizens to justify their stance must be secular, but not necessarily public in the way Rawls defines it (see Chapter 1, esp. p. 28). Moral discourse can be a mediator between the dif­ ferent normative frameworks including religious commitments and secularist political ideals. Considerations of reciprocity play a role, since by offering at least a secular reason to justify their stance, the religious citizens seek a ground on which the non-­religious citizens can reciprocate. But other basic ethical intuitions about duties of prevention from harm, benefi­ cence or promise keeping are also deemed universally accessible. Likewise, the appreciation of intrinsic values encompassing the flourishing of fundamental human capacities is an adequate basis for political deliberation, even including coercion, as in the case of compul­ sory education (see above). In short, in Audi’s understanding, different sets of substantive reasons can be used to justify the essential premises of liberal democracy. He is not inter­ ested in offering a single comprehensive version of liberalism, but rather to see how reli­ gious reasons fit into the process of public justification within the context of a pre-­established liberal democratic setting (Audi 2000: 63–65).

b  Civic voice and religious activism Audi claims his view to be inclusive of religion by appealing to the notion of equilibrium between religious frameworks and substantive moral values. Yet his principle of secular rationale has been criticized for leading to exclusionary consequences by pressing reli­ gious citizens into strategically concealing and disguising their religious reasons under a secular cloak; as such, believers appear to be subject to the burden of which their secular counterparts are exempt (Wolterstorff 1997; Habermas 2006).8 Audi answers these two

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objections by advancing two complementary moral principles: the principle of secular motivation and the principle of religious rationale. The principle of secular motivation is for­ mulated as follows: Citizens in a democracy have a (prima facie) obligation to abstain from advocacy or support of a law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless in advocating or supporting it they are sufficiently motivated by adequate secular reason. (Audi 2011a: 143)9 The principle of secular motivation is a virtue principle – namely, it is less normatively binding and concerned with the way citizens engage with each other,10 while the prin­ ciple of secular rationale is a justification principle: it is intended to place an epistemological restraint on the resources people rely on for their participation in the democratic process. In contrast to the principle of secular motivation, the concern with the secular reasons affects the actual content of public discourse and deliberation. Taken together, these first two principles allow a religious citizen to bring as many religious reasons as she wishes to a public debate, while also being motivated by religious ideals, insofar as she also has at least one secular reason that justifies and motivates her stance. Rawls’ conception seems more open to the temporary use of religious reasons alone, as it contemplates that political reasons should be provided “in due time”; in contrast, Audi does not point towards the possibility of delaying the presentation of secular reasons (Wolterstorff 2012a: 86; Chapter 1). Nonetheless, providing religious reasons in public debate has for Audi a moral significance that the Rawlsian duty of civility and proviso do not acknowledge. Audi’s ethics of citizenship articulates this by way of the principle of religious rationale: Religious citizens in a democratic society have a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct, unless they have, and are willing to offer, adequate religious reason for this advocacy or support. (Audi 2011a: 89) For Audi, the use of religious reasons by believers is a moral duty based on a requirement of integrity and sincerity; since the problem of coercion is central in a liberal democracy, citizens should be ready to disclose their reasons when they debate and take decisions. The principle of religious rationale is both a form of emphasis on the justificatory role of religious reasons and a safeguard against hypocrisy in public deliberation: religious reasons must be publicly expressed and need not be disguised as non-­religious reasons. According to Audi’s ethics of citizenship, sincerity in an essential component in defining the civic voice with which people are to contribute to the effort of public deliberation and demo­ cratic government. Each citizen should be able to expect their counterparts to publicly express all the most relevant reasons upon which they feel their stance is justified and to act publicly upon motivations that they can understand without radically shifting their own point of view (Audi 2011a: 148). The fulfilment of this form of civic virtue is a commitment of religious citizens to achieve a theo-­ethical equilibrium (Audi and Wolter­ storff 1997: 21; Audi 2000: 130–133), namely a “reflective balance between religiously



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and secularly based moral beliefs and attitudes” (Audi 2011a: 22). This equilibrium of a comprehensive ethical kind is the result of an effort to find a cognitive balance in which the moral beliefs and attitudes of a person are mutually consistent and, so far as possible, mutually supportive. In this perspective, civic engagement is a crucial way for religious citizens to gradually integrate their religious and secular beliefs in their thinking and political conduct (Audi 2011a: 134). Religious insights can enrich and even lead one to revise secular moral intuitions; on the other hand, secular moral beliefs can serve as a crit­ ical resource for religious people to question their understanding of the requirements of religious commandments. The exposure to non-­religious forms of research and practical reasoning can also suggesting new directions and approaches when it comes to the inter­ pretation of religious sources (e.g. Holy Scriptures, theological traditions, or personal experiences). This balanced and reflective stance preserves the central place that religious reasons occupy in the lives of people of faith in addition to preserving their commitment to public justification. Ultimately, the balance between secular and religious considera­ tions is the key to the possibility of public justification among citizens who have different religious commitments. Religious citizens that have come to justify their own ethical view based on a coherent mix of religious and secular reasons, can offer those reasons in the process of public justification without being internally divided and allowing secular citizens to understand their stance based on the non-­religious rationale. Two cases make for an interesting test of Audi’s ethics of citizenship: (i) the issue of religious-­related teaching within the framework of compulsory public education and (ii) the role of religious speech in the advocacy of fundamental rights. (i) Consider first the debate concerning the inclusion of teaching related to religion in public education curricula. The public school is an institution where the fundamental values and principles of liberal democracies are transmitted and internalized. In executing this task, how can public school be at once value-non-neutral and religiously neutral? From Audi’s perspective, public institutions do not infringe religious neutrality by adopting inclusive and transformative solutions that challenge the existing relationship between religious and secular reasons of the students. Religion is not a subject of public education in various countries including the US, but the teaching of both science and ethics in public schools has a potential impact on the faith of the students. Teaching evolutionary biology upholds beliefs that are incompatible with a literal interpretation of the Bible. Teaching some basic ethical principles, like the prohibition of killing, stealing, and lying, calls into question the compatibility of these prohibitions with different religious doctrines and the possible foundation of morality in God. If the Holy Scripture says that lying to a certain category of people is justified but the morality taught in schools denies it, there is both a conflict of content and a problem of justification. The potential conflict of these teachings with religious belief is not a reason that overrides their intrinsic value. To avoid the violation of governmental neutrality towards religion, public schools are not to teach their students that they should reject religious propositions like “God created the world” or “The validity of moral duties depends on the existence of God” (Audi 2011a: 48–52). They can teach, however, different perspectives and present arguments that challenge such beliefs. This neutralist stance on public education is a cause of concern for enclosed religious communities, and can lead them into a conflict with the public school system. In Canada

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and the US, “pluriform” public school systems have been established to favour the diffu­ sion of public educational programmes; these systems allow for faith-­based schooling within the framework of public curricula. Take the case of the Hutterite Colony schools. These faith-­based schools serve exclusively Hutterite communities in accordance with their view of separation from the broader society. Non-­Hutterite public school teachers give the classes in English while a selected community member is responsible for com­ plementary teaching, focusing on religion and German (the main language of the Hut­ terites) (Hiemstra and Brink 2006). This hybrid system discourages the tendency of enclosed communities to establish their own private schools. Due to the pluriform approach, the young Hutterites can aspire to attend public universities and later come back as trained teachers; these can, in turn, innovate the educational approach of the community (Janzen and Stanton 2010: 184–188). This interaction between religious and public educational programmes is consistent with Audi’s view that religious citizens should pursue a theo-­ethical equilibrium. By being educated based on curricula that offer both religious and secular teachings, the religious citizens are helped in pursuing a greater integration between their religious and secular reasons. In this sense, joining a public education system encourages anti-­dogmatic and anti-­sectarian forms of religious belief. Among the desirable outcomes of this process are the adoption of a non-­literal interpreta­ tion of the biblical tale of creation12 and the teaching of basic ethical obligations as prin­ ciples shared with the rest of the population (Audi 2011a: 50–53). These transformative results are in line with the purpose of compulsory public education, as they provide the Hutterite citizens with conceptual and moral resources that support their participation in democratic life. From this perspective, Rawls’ separation between the political and the comprehensive overlooks the importance of engaging with the citizens’ substantive beliefs and values to support a democratic ethos that connects the top-­down and bottom­up dimensions of politics. In this sense, inclusive and transformative educational systems are essential for promoting an ethics of citizenship that takes seriously the engagement of believers in the common socio-­political life. (ii) Consider the role of religious discourse in the advocacy of fundamental rights. Is the appeal to religious reasons always justified in this case, given that they are not offered to justify coercion but to protect basic freedoms? Audi’s answer to this question does not only take into account, like Rawls’, the kind of reasons that are offered and the public forum where they are pronounced. The citizen’s motivations and her standing within the structures of ecclesiastical authority are also relevant. Audi argues that religious institu­ tions and leaders should display a greater restraint than ordinary believers when it comes to the use of religious reasons on political matters. The authority of religious institutions and leaders in the eyes of their followers amplifies the moral responsibility not to use their power to interfere with a democratic process that includes all citizens as equals. In this perspective, churches should neither endorse candidates for public offices nor support laws that restrict human conduct. Additionally, religious leaders should keep a separation between their personal political views and their views as clergy (Audi 2011a: 95–97). To illustrate, consider Martin Luther King’s role in the Civil Rights Movement. For Audi, King’s speeches and actions as Baptist minister are consistent with both the restraint on the type of reasons that can justify coercion and on the support of a specific candidate. Audi admits that religious reasons can support the expansion of freedom and equality.



Public reason debated

However, “(t)he admissibility of religious considerations in certain cases of supporting liberalization is one thing; its desirability is quite another” (Audi 2011a: 94). In this per­ spective, even though the appeal to religious considerations is in itself unobjectionable based on the principle of religious rationale, when it is based on a clerical authority or a literal reading of scripture is undesirably sectarian and divisive. Second, the use of reli­ gious arguments formulated in a non-­sectarian way is still less than ideal: there are apparently “comprehensive reasons” (in Rawls’ sense), such as the value of a Kantian kind of autonomy in human life, that are shared by all the religious tradi­ tions likely to be represented in a political discussion in a democracy. But even where such commonality among religions exists, noting it may or may not lead to citizen’s bringing into public discourse religious arguments that unify rather than divide them. (Audi 2011a: 94) As a result, even in the admirable case of King, the religious style of advocacy he adopted was acceptable for Audi only because it was mostly moral in nature rather than strictly political, as in supporting a specific candidate or piece of legislation (Audi 2000: 49); in general, even in the case of struggles for expanding freedom and equality, Audi is against bringing up religious reasons because of their divisive nature and their privileged rela­ tionship with religious structures of authority. This recommendation stands also when the appeal to religion is limited to comprehensive moral reasons embedded in religious doctrines. It follows that, for Audi, a moral argument articulated in a religious fashion (including King’s) would be acceptable, but not advisable. Audi further expects the clergy to always separate their own political views from their role, even though this may entail that they refrain entirely from joining the political debate.

c  Consensus, unequal burden, and inclusiveness Audi’s ethics of citizenship is persuasive in challenging the strict separation between com­ prehensive conceptions and the domain of the political (see also Chapter 1). The under­ standings of goodness and justice are inseparable in the experience of many religious people, and can stem from a combination of religious and non-­religious beliefs. However, Audi’s perspective relies on overoptimistic assumptions about the level of agreement that can be reached on secular reasons based on “natural” cognitive capacities. It is revealing, in this sense, that he regards comprehensive moral reasons like “the value of a Kantian kind of autonomy in human life” (Audi 2011a: 94) to be shared by the religious traditions repres­ ented in democratic discussions. Similarly to other consensualist approaches to public reason, Audi’s ethics of citizenship artificially separates an area of agreement based on inde­ pendent reasons (secular moral reasons, in his case) from an area of disagreement (on reli­ gion). But disagreement on non-­religious issues is as widespread as disagreement on religious matters and secular political leaders can be as controversial and divisive as religious ones. Audi’s principles, not unlike the Rawlsian proviso (Chapter 1), run into (i) the problem of the unequal burden that religious citizens carry when joining the process of public justi­ fication and (ii) the problem of consensus based on alleged independent secular reasons.

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(i) The burden of public justification is not shared equally between religious and secular citizens. Audi’s focus on the religious character of reasons as problematic for public justification can be burdening for religious citizens as religious in a way that does not for secular citizens. While secular citizens can offer any reason they have as long as it is adequate to the task of justification, their religious counterparts can publicly argue for their political stance only if they can find a proper candidate within a subset of their reasons. Citizens with strong religious commitment may find difficult to do that, especially on deeply controversial moral matters, which are more likely to call into question their religious perspective on the life, death and other existential values. This burden can be increased by the principle of secular motivation, which requires religious citizens to express their claims not only by offering secular reasons, but also because of those secular reasons. Ultimately, Audi’s ethics of citizenship has exclusionary implications that are only par­ tially counterbalanced by his inclusion of the substantive conceptions of the good in the process of public justification. The case of Martin Luther King is emblematic of the internal split demanded of religious persons by the application of Audi’s principles. Is it possible to neatly separate King’s political views from his views as a religious leader? It is difficult to imagine that King’s religious commitment and his experience as member of the religious community did not play a major role in shaping his perspective and in making it relevant to his fellow citizens. In general, the political and the religious views of the clergy can be distinguished, but in some cases may not be as surgically separable as Audi implies. The conduct of the clergy should respect the distinction between the two domains, but in some cases to ask for an outright separation may be unrealistic due to the connection between their persona and the beliefs they represent.13 This demand is more taxing for the capacities of common citizens with strong religious commitments. Even though they do not represent any group or ecclesiastical institutions, they still need to question their individual motivations for political participation and make sure that they have sufficient non-­religious reason to advocate and vote what they do at any given time. The asymmetric distribution of burdens between religious and secular citizens leads to a question: what makes religion special in this context and justifies that it is singled out from other factors that can determine the inadequacy of a reason to justify and motivate political agency? Audi points out that religious reasons are connected to ecclesiastical structures of authority and are thus a potential source of justification for the domination of other reli­ gious groups; but cultural, ethnic, linguistic and economic group pose similar threats while relying entirely on non-­religious reasons to justify their claims. He also deems religious reasons unfit for public justification because of their reliance on evidential grounds that exceed natural human capacities. But assimilating secular reasons to natural ones is a deus ex machina strategy that confines all religious reasons in a separate camp and pools together all sorts of non-­religious reasons, from scientific evidences to substantive value preferences, under the banner of natural reason. Religious reasons are not pecu­ liarly “unnatural” or inaccessible if compared to other kinds of substantive reasons. Reli­ gious belief is widespread across cultures and societies, and recent psychological research supports the notion that it is a nearly inevitable product of human nature since the early stage of development (Barrett 2012). Moreover, secular worldviews that rely on specific



Public reason debated

grand narratives and complex conceptual schemes may appear to the uninitiated as evi­ dentially puzzling and inaccessible as religious doctrines. Ultimately, the unequal burden that Audi’s perspective imposes on religious citizens is the result of a questionable polari­ zation between religious and natural reasons that reflects a parochial understanding of religion, modelled after Christian rational theology. The domains of theology and ethics are thought as autonomous but also ultimately convergent on basic moral truths that all can acknowledge. In continuity with this understanding, the notion of a theo-­ethical equilibrium is based on the rationalistic assumption that, liberated from the shackles of dogmatism and literalism, the citizens’ religious beliefs can be harmoniously attuned to the content of a universally accessible form of secular reason. Audi is right in highlighting the transformative role of public education, which should equip the students with critical tools and fundamental knowledge that are required for the exercise of their role as con­ scious citizens. This process, however, does not necessarily determine the harmony and convergence of religious and secular perspectives. A significant trait that defines the civic engagement of religious citizens is, rather, the contestation of mainstream secular stances on fundamental moral and political matters. The interaction between religious and secular reasons is likely to generate discussion and transformation, but not necessarily equilibrium and consensus. (ii) Audi’s consensualism is premised on his conviction that secular reasons are an independent source of justification that all citizens can have access to; his assumption is that all rational citizens, if appropriately informed, would agree on some fundamental prin­ ciples of secular morality based on their natural capacities. But as an independent and sufficiently ample source of reasons, secular morality is not immune from the same difficulties met by political liberalism. As Wolterstorff argues, “there is no such thing as a secular morality acceptable to everyone; there’s not even a secular morality accept­ able to all secularists” (Wolterstorff 2012b: 97). On issues like the permissibility of assisted suicide, capital punishment, migration, or animal rights there is a persisting disagreement between irreconcilable positions that are supported with both secular and religious arguments. The problem of consensus is not resolved by the principle of restraint. Audi acknowledges that in democratic societies we should accept rational disagree­ ment as a widespread phenomenon that opposes citizen to citizen regardless of their religious or non-­religious affiliations. In all these cases of disagreement, the more evid­ ence we have that the relevant parties are epistemic peers, that is persons who are equally rational, acquainted with the same evidence, and equally conscientious in their judge­ ment, the more we are morally obliged to choose toleration over coercion (Audi 2011a: 118–120, 2011b). But this argument only shifts the problem of consensus from the matter at stake to the moral principles that are supposed to guide citizens’ conduct when delib­ erating on it. The appeal to toleration over coercion in the case of persisting disagree­ ments is a reaffirmation of the liberal ideal of freedom as the default position and does not escape from the criticism based on the internal pluralism of democratic political culture.14 The most heated public moral conflicts are such that  the distinction between “no-­rule” (blameless liberty) and a maximally permissive rule is hard to sustain. […] The familiar moral controversies concerning the public

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education curriculum, same-­sex marriage, gun-­control, stem-­cell research, porno­ graphy, among many others have at their core a dispute about whether there is a meaningful no-­rule/permissive rule distinction. (Talisse 2014: 560–561) What appears as a non-­coercive default position for a liberal moral view is a policy that enables state support of an immoral practice from a different moral standpoint. Seeking the legitimacy of coercion based on Rawls’ public reasons or Audi’s secular ones relies on the assumption that fully rational persons would agree either on which political concep­ tions of justice are reasonable or on the fundamental content of secular morality. But rationality does not yield consensus. Just as one’s comprehensive doctrine shapes a con­ ception of justice, it also forms one’s judgements about moral principles (Wolterstorff 2012b: 36–37; see Chapters 1 and 3 as well). Since the focus on secular reasons is not sufficient to solve the problem of consensus, it is reasonable to question if separating the reasons into religious and secular is indeed necessary to define which reasons are fit or unfit to the process of public justification. According to Audi, a reason is secular when its status as a justifier of action does not evi­ dentially depend on (but also does not deny) the existence of God, on theological con­ siderations or on the pronouncements of a religious authority (Audi 2011a: 67). In his understanding, this epistemic notion of the secular is required but not sufficient to make a reason fitting for legitimizing public power. According to the principle of secular rationale, a reason should be offered if it is at once both secular and adequate, where an adequate reason is one that “in rough terms, evidentially justifies the belief, act, or other element it supports. We might also say that adequacy implies that an action or belief based on the reason is thereby rational” (Audi 2011a: 67–68). An alternative to Audi’s view is to focus on what makes reasons adequate for public justification without singling out their secular character as a separate requirement. It is possible that the adequacy cri­ teria will indirectly burden religious people more than others, but not by targeting them as religious. This is the kind of strategy adopted by Rawls, who chooses to speak of comprehensive doctrines rather than religions. His refusal to identify public and secular reasons is, on this account, more inclusive:  in considering whether to make homosexual relations between citizens criminal offenses, the question is not whether those relations are precluded by a worthy idea of full human good as characterized by a sound philosophical and nonreligious view, nor whether those of religious faith regard it as sin, but primarily whether legislative statutes forbidding those relations infringe the civil rights of free and equal demo­ cratic citizens. (Rawls 1999a: 148) The Rawlsian strategy of seeking a political conception of justice that specifies basic freedoms and rights is, as we have argued, objectionable for clinically separating public justification from comprehensive doctrines (Chapter 1). Part of the difficulty of Rawls’ account is that, in his understanding, the political conception articulated by public reason should be complete and “answer to all, or to nearly all, questions involving constitutional



Public reason debated

essentials and matters of basic justice” (Rawls 1999a: 148; see also Lafont 2016: 10). Audi discards this assumption and allocates a substantial role to the contribution of moral and religious reasons to public justification. But in doing so, he misleadingly conflates secular and public reasons. All sorts of comprehensive doctrines (or parts of them) can be in conflict with the very idea of public justification and reasoning; they may work either as conversation-­stoppers or be blatantly discriminatory (see above). Some arguments are wholly inadequate to enter the process of public justification because of their epistemic flaws or their morally repugnant content. Their use in courts or legislative bodies should be contestable on those bases; but authoritarian arguments grounded exclusively on dog­ matic faith and religious authority resist this kind of contestation and are thus unfit for public justifications. A justificatory process where people withhold their assent based on the mere assertion of their own view is not a public process in the first place. The com­ mitment to public justification “derives precisely from the recognition that one’s own perspective is not necessarily definitive” and is subject to revision (Gaus 1996: 130). First, consider how the lack of sound epistemic sources is incompatible with public justifica­ tion. Statements based on no evidence or on unreliable evidence are inadequate to support policies or coercive measures and arguments based solely on sectarian moral and religious sources fall into this category. For instance, Christian Science, according to which physical illness is an illusion that requires no treatment but prayer (Schoepflin 2003), is not an adequate source of public justification in the field of healthcare policy-­ making. Second, statements that conspicuously clash with human dignity and funda­ mental principles of justice are also incompatible with public justification. This applies for arguments with racist or discriminatory implications. The KKK’s belief in the supremacy of the God’s chosen “Holy White Race” and the divine mandate to restore the integrity of a “Racial Nation” (Sánchez 2016: 140–141) are unacceptable within any instance of public justification. Their content is at odds with the basic moral premises of democratic dialogue and incompatible with any quest for just terms of cooperation among equals. In both these cases, it is unclear what the focus on religion adds to the task of isolating reasons that are inadequate to the process of public justification, when general require­ ments may be sufficient to exclude epistemically flawed and morally repugnant reasons without specifically targeting the religious citizens in a way their secular counterparts are not. The critique of the consensualist aspect of Audi’s model needs not lead to the collapse of public justification into an open conflict between opposed religious and secular world­ views. His ethics of citizenship project is persuasive in pointing out that some moral constraints on the democratic conduct of citizens need to be in place for public justifica­ tion to be possible. Blatantly immoral and discriminatory views do not provide adequate grounds for democratic deliberation (see above). Inclusion in a democratic process entails acceptance of the essential premises of democracy, such as respect for the dignity of persons, individual liberties, and equal treatment before the law. Within these bound­ aries, however, religious reasons, like secular ones, can be either conversation starters or conversation stoppers (Perlin 2011; see also Chapter 8). The ambition to define “preven­ tively” an independent source of reasons that ensures the possibility of the conversation is misleading. This is the difficulty that the convergentist perspective – the topic of the next section – aims to overcome.

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2  Public reason without consensus: the convergence model Gaus’ and Vallier’s convergence model takes on the problem of the inclusion of religious citizens and their reasons by focusing on the electoral and legislative institutions of rep­ resentative democracy. In this model, for democratic life to be inclusive it is necessary for people to be free to form and manifest political views on their own epistemic and moral grounds. It is up to legislative bodies and other democratic institutions to realize a con­ vergence between different pools of reasons and values. The public exercise of reason is significantly differentiated within these levels. Public reason is not bound to the idea that citizens, in order to treat each other respectfully, must offer reasons that all could endorse. Moreover, public reason is not about bracketing those beliefs or commitments that divide us in order to construct a set of moral or political rules on a shared ideal of citizenship. Once we bracket all the beliefs that distinguish one person from another and concentrate only on their commitment to shared political or moral ideals, there may be indeed reasons left to accept shared political principles. However, these reasons cannot amount to anything more than pro tanto reasons that hold so far as other reasons, based on the person’s comprehensive views, do not override them (Quong 2014: 545–546). This bracketing strategy cannot explain how laws could be fully justified to an individual person as long as they are only grounded in a subset of her values and commitments. If reasons coming from outside of that subset can still defeat the pro tanto public justification, the use of political power in question will be ultimately unjustified in the eyes of that citizen (Gaus and Vallier 2009; Gaus 2010: 39–41). Is it possible to keep the centrality of public justification in the legitimation of political power while avoiding the downfalls of the bracketing strategy? To answer this question, Gaus and Vallier suggest that we need to replace consensus with convergence and to allow the citizens to offer different reasons that are not accessible or shared by others. In the convergentist model of public justifications, it is sufficient that reasons are intelligible to all citizens. The cause of public justification is to formulate laws that respect all as free and equal: this cause is not furthered by allowing some to impose laws on those who do not have sufficient reasons to accept them. But these reasons need not be of the same kind for everyone. The citizens can recognize each other as co-­legislators even though they appeal to different sets of reasons: it is sufficient that they can see them as reasons.

a  Intelligible reasons and convergence The convergence model articulated by Gaus and Vallier aims at correcting two main problems of the mainstream approach to public reason: (i) the error of consensus, which lies in the assumption that public justification must be based on accessible or, alternatively, on shared reasons; (ii) the error of deliberation, which lies in supposing that publicly justified laws should always be generated through public deliberations in which all aim at such laws.15 (i) The first error of most public reason theorists is to think of public justification as requiring all reasons exchanged to possess a peculiar epistemic property: availability. Religious reasons are not available to all citizens, but only to those who accept them through an act of faith. In



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contrast to non-­public reasons, public reasons are available to all. The availability can take two forms, according to which public reasons are either accessible or shareable. A reason is accessible to someone if and only if members of the public can see that the reason is jus­ tified according to common evaluative standards (Vallier 2011: 367). Accessibility can be based either on the notion that all have access to a natural use of reason (Audi) or on common evaluative standards (Rawls). A reason is shareable if the members of the public – in ideal conditions – share both its content and evaluative standards. Shareability is a stronger requirement, which is implied in A Theory of Justice; therein the justificatory problem in the original position is construed so that “everyone is equally rational and similarly situated, each is convinced by the same arguments” (Rawls 1999a: 120). Despite their popularity, these requirements run into different objections. First, the level of consensus they aim to achieve, be it on the content or the standards of public reasons, is hardly sustainable in a pluralistic society. Second, the consensus view of public justification is hostile to the appeal to religious reasons; since in modern secular­ ized societies religious reasons are a kind of reason that is not accessible or shared by everyone, they are considered inappropriate in public justification. But for many reli­ gious citizens that kind of reason is central: ruling out the use of those reasons is denying them that respect as free and equals which is supposed to be the main purpose of public justification. Third, principles of restraint exert cultural pressure on citizens, with an undesirable effect on public justification: “(p)rinciples of restraint […] are apt to distort the dispersal of information: the most reasonable voters may self-­censor their views, leading to widespread misperceptions about the real issues and the breadth and depth of consensus” (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 69). Beyond the problem of the sincerity of voters, listening to unreasonable and dogmatic citizens can provoke a positive reac­ tion, as the public is encouraged to critically consider their view and bring new reasons against their theses. For public reason to be genuinely inclusive, the paradigm needs to shift from consensus on the same available reasons to convergence on the basis of a broad variety of reasons. (ii) The second error that leads to marginalizing religious reasons is the assumption that deliberation is constitutive of justification. Principles of restraint, such as Rawls’ proviso and Audi’s principle of secular rationale rely on the understanding of politics as an exercise in public reasoning. This understanding is popular due to the success of deliberative democracy, according to which the justification of the political terms of cooperation proceeds through public discussion among citizens. The argument behind this view is that since all laws must be publicly justified, and politics is about what laws are to be selected, then politics is essentially a form of public reasoning addressed to the dissenters based on arguments they could reasonably accept (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 65). What is missing from this picture is the fundamental role of political institutions in generating political outcomes. Instead of taking seriously the task of constitutional design as a way of generating publicly justified outcomes in light of imperfect citizen inputs, liberals have spent too much time developing ethical constraints on the activity of justification. The underlying hope is that by perfect­ ing the arguments with which the citizens would feed the electoral and legislative institu­ tions, the outcomes of the democratic process will also improve. The political institutions are largely relegated to the role of registering these vastly improved inputs (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 66–67). But this is a misguided hope:

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given the reasonable pluralism and the centrality of convergence, the relevant know­ ledge of such system-­wide justification is simply not available to even enlightened and public-­spirited citizens. Rather than seeking to restrain citizen inputs, the important project for justificatory liberals is to develop the theory of constitutional government that takes the real-­world imperfect inputs we confront, and yields laws that tend to be publicly justified. (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 69) The convergence model aims to articulate the ideal of public reason in a way that is (i) more open and hospitable to a plurality of forms of reasoning, including religious ones, and is (ii) more in tune with the practical workings of representative democracy. Con­ vergence means that, even in the absence of consensus based on the same kinds of reasons that are available to all, public justification may build on different kinds of reasons that support the same political decision.16 Members of the public can arrive at common laws by reasoning based on diverse values and concerns. In this perspective, the strong require­ ments of accessibility and shareability are replaced with a weak one – intelligibility. A citi­ zen’s reason is intelligible to the public if and only if members of the public, equipped with an appropriate level of information and rationality, can see that the reason is justified for that citizen according to her evaluative standards (Vallier 2011: 388).17 Pluralistic reasoning of this kind is the very basis of justification: as long as intelligibility obtains, all members of the public acknowledge that everyone engages in genuine reasoning such that each person’s conclusions provide her or him with reasons to accept the law. So everyone can see everyone else as a self-­legislator and freely subject to the law. Appealing to a law justified in this manner respects each person as free and equal, without any insistence that we reason in the same way. (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 58–59) Political institutions have a crucial role in connecting these multiple forms of justification with specific legal arrangements. Legislative bodies, in particular, do not merely register the diverse views of citizens; they draw from their arguments and insights to generate publicly justified outcomes. The restraint on reasons is thus mostly a problem of regulat­ ing, in the justificatory process, the behaviour of elected representatives and public offi­ cials who have direct, obvious, and substantial control over the levers of power (Vallier 2015: 140). The elected representative need not subject to any restrictions apart form the principle of convergent restraint: a legislator should not vote for a law or publicly encourage others to vote for it if he justifiably believes that members of the public lack sufficient reason to endorse it (Vallier 2015: 154, 2014: 191).18 If the law is defeated even for a small sector of the population, and the reason they have is sufficient, this is enough for the principle to apply (Vallier 2015: 151–153). While citizens are free to express their argu­ ments based on a wide set of worldviews, the principle makes sure that the legislators take seriously into account the objections of minorities against the risk of majoritarian domination.



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b  Justification and deliberation: voting on religious grounds The convergence approach highlights a discontinuity that is characteristic of democratic life between public debate and voting.19 Advocacy and voting have different purposes: citizens join the discussion on specific laws and policies but vote for representatives. The legislative process is then in the hands of the elected members of parliaments. Public discussion is open-­ended, while legislators engage with deliberative processes that end with specific political outcomes. But is the role of representatives in public justification always so dif­ ferent? While legislators need to refrain from voting, or even encouraging others to vote if members of the public lack sufficient reason to endorse their position, the principle of con­ vergent restraint is based on the idea that citizens should not be subject to restraint. At least in the case of a referendum, however, people are called to act at once as citizens and legisla­ tors. Here Rawls’ public reason and Audi’s ethics of citizenship take seriously the problem of public justification in a way the model of convergence does not: should citizens cam­ paign and vote in a referendum based on their religious reasons? Consider the 1994 refer­ endum held in the US state of Oregon, which approved Measure 16, the “Death with Dignity Act”, thus legalizing the practice of physician-­assisted suicide. Religious citizens advocated their opposition to the norm and voted against it based on their beliefs in natural law and the defence of life as sacred as integral elements of the common good. Some also appealed to the pronouncement of religious authorities that they believe to be a reliable source of guidance on difficult moral questions (Weithman 2002: 130). Both Audi’s prin­ ciple of secular rationale and Rawls’ proviso are restrictive on the kinds of reasons that should be offered in similar circumstances. Audi rejects the appeal to a religious authority as a decisive factor, but allows for the appeal to a substantive conception of the good as long as it is also defined on the basis of non-­religious reasons. The discourse of the religious authority could be accepted under the principle of secular rationale only if the reasons from the common good are adequate and provide sufficient grounds by themselves; nonetheless, religious leaders should refrain from directly engaging in the referendum campaign. On the other hand, the Rawlsian principle of restraint excludes both the appeal to a comprehensive conception of the good and the mere appeal to religious authority. Despite their normative differences, these perspectives entail that the commitment to public justification demands citizens to assess, revise, or complement the reasons they offer when deliberating in public. The convergence model bypasses this restrictive strategy altogether. If de facto con­ vergence on common proposals is acceptable as long as each citizen has justified reasons according to his or her own evaluative standards, direct democracy has no constraint other than majority vote. This inclusive stance, however, (i) downplays the importance of justification in the public sphere, (ii) enables forms of majoritarianism and (iii) raises a problem of political accountability. (i) The citizens’ views and modes of reasoning remain mutually opaque because of a lack of substantial engagement. Within the convergence model, the legitimacy of political decisions depends exclusively on the de facto convergence on common proposals, since citizens with different views and ways of reasoning are never really expected to engage with each other’s reasons. In this sense, the convergence model paves the way for an unstable modus vivendi. Everyone is free to offer any kind of reason, but as

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Lafont notes, “there is no argumentative entanglement that allow members of a polit­ ical community to gain traction within each other’s views and transform them over time” (Lafont 2016: 23–24). A disposition to evaluate the justifying reasons of others and to re-­evaluate one’s own reasons from the perspective of other citizens is a relevant civic virtue. The case of a referendum, where citizens are at once engaged in cam­ paigning and legislating, is a proving ground for the importance of the commitment to engage with the reasons of others. This does not entail that the citizens should abandon their own substantive reasons to seek an independent neutral ground, but rather that they formulate their arguments as addressed to all their peers and that they remain open to the possibility of revising those arguments based on the discursive engagement with their interlocutors. (ii) The convergence model may pave the way to the risk of majoritarianism. In times of politicization of religion, the de facto convergence of public justifications raised by the citizens can easily fall on a decision that targets a religious minority: paradoxically, in such a case, the convergentist inclusive stance on public justification determines an exclusionary outcome. Consider the Swiss referendum that in 2009 introduced a constitutional ban on the building of Islamic minarets in the country. First, the content of this decision is prob­ lematic on several accounts. The ban is difficult to reconcile with the Swiss constitutional bill of rights and with the European Convention on Human Rights that protects the freedom of religion (Langer 2010: 876–902). The principles of equal treatment and neutrality are infringed, as the restriction applies only to the symbols of one religion but not to those of others. The adopted procedure is also questionable: the ban was imposed by national referendum and it took the form of a constitutional amendment. The referendum excluded any margin of negotiation and compromise over, say, the shape, height, or usage of the minarets, as would have been possible within a legislative body. The constitutional amendment barred the way to any future revision or local exception of the ban (Miller 2016: 452–454). An argument could be made that these difficulties are not sufficient to question the legitimacy of popular vote: the ban on minarets does not entirely impede the exercise of religion and, within limits, a state is allowed to protect its cultural and religious heritage (Miller 2016: 445–452). The public justificatory process that led to this decision is, however, even more troubling. Campaign posters showed minarets emerging from the Swiss flag like missiles and women wearing a niqab under a big “STOP” message. The small Swiss Islamic community was mostly silent during the weeks leading to the vote: the vocal supporters of the ban took the main stage. In this context, fear was the main justified message according to the evaluative standards of the majority. (iii) Beyond the specific case of referenda, if the justifications and forms of argumenta­ tion pursued by legislators diverge sharply from those of ordinary citizens, there arises a problem of accountability. Unless the accountability dimension of representation is secured through ongoing evaluation by citizens,  the requirement that legislators rely only on accessible, secular reasons in political decision-­making will be less effective at encouraging politically justified laws and policies. Legislators might even ignore this requirement altogether, insofar as their constituents fail to acknowledge or value it. (Boettcher 2009: 226–227)



Public reason debated

In a democracy, representative claims depend on the assumption that there is some robust relationship between the reasons upon which citizens make their electoral choices and the reasons legislators offer to justify their political decisions. The advocates of the con­ vergence model are right in pointing out that the two levels are not the same and that it is misleading and exclusionary to expect a high degree of consistency between the reasons that are offered by citizens in the public sphere and by representatives in the legislative bodies. However, it is fundamental to the democratic process that elected representatives interpret, reformulate, and articulate the claims of the people. Otherwise, as Greenawalt argues, “citizens would appropriately vote out of office […] legislators who rightly declined to pay attention to citizens’ views developed from nonaccessible and compre­ hensive grounds” (Greenawalt 1995: 151). If, according to the convergence model, only public officials should be concerned with the reasons offered in public justification, this robust representative relationship cannot be assured. An ethics of democratic citizenship should set relatively loose moral standards for the conduct of citizens and be more demanding when it comes to their representatives. Still, both citizens and representatives need to be committed in some way to the process of public justification as a discursive practice that is shaped by the engagement with free and equal interlocutors.

Conclusion Rawls’ public reason approach aims at securing the perimeter of political arrangements from the deep disagreement about conceptions of the good. His view is premised on a philosophical “disentanglement”: “to succeed in finding […] a consensus political philo­ sophy must be, so far as possible, suitably independent of other parts of philosophy, espe­ cially from philosophy’s long-­standing problems and controversies” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 171–172). However, this separation based on a substantive philosophical “decision” over­ looks the moral-­religious significance that many citizens attach to their civic engagement as they learn what it means to be a citizen in a religious environment. Audi’s alternative con­ sensualist approach affirms the relevance of morality as common ground in the relationship between the political and the religious. The clash between religious and secular reasons needs to be dealt with by citizens and their representatives, and the language of moral theory is the relevant normative ground where they can engage this task together. Audi shares with Rawls the belief in “independent reasons”; he seeks them in the field of secular moral reasons, but his attempt does not overcome the problem of the universal accessibility of its principles. In the domain of public discourse, most clashes between secular and reli­ gious citizens concern moral disagreement on topics such as abortion, euthanasia, and same­sex marriage. Audi highlights the problem of individual political conduct but leaves to the margins important discussions about the role of democratic institutions. Much rests on the cognitive and moral resources of the individual subject and her capacity to evaluate, limit, and ultimately adapt her participation to public discourse in a responsible way. When addressed, the ethical relevance of institutional agency is reduced to the matter of the indi­ vidual agency of religious and political leaders (Audi 2011a: 97) or to an application of the liberal principle of separation between church and state (Audi 2011a: 95). In turn, the model of convergence vindicates the need for inclusion of religious reasons by leaving behind a consensus-­based notion of public justification. This view has the

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advantage of framing the problem of inclusion within a more realist consideration of representative democracy. Yet it does not address convincingly the transformative dimen­ sion of the deliberative process: citizens are not only concerned with the freedom to express their own reasons, but also with the challenge of offering those reasons in a way that is compatible with the understanding of others. By separating justification and delib­ eration, what gets lost are the interaction and the engagement with the beliefs of others, and the revision of one’s beliefs. The “cost” of introducing one’s reasons into the political arena is being exposed to the possibility of critique and transformation. This can create a tension between religious commitments and the civic commitment to public justification. Once a reason, secular or religious, is offered in public justification, it cannot be deemed dogmatically above scrutiny and revision. Arguments based on flawed sources of evidence about social and natural events or claims that conflict with basic moral requirements of equal respect for the dignity of all human beings can play no justificatory role in the democratic conversa­ tion. The debate stemmed from the culture wars in the US shows that the inclusion of religious citizens into the public fora and the activism of religious groups on sensitive political matters is cause of disagreements on fundamental issues and entails a risk of domination and discrimination. However, it also exposes religious belief to the fact of pluralism and enables the penetration of democratic principles within religious com­ munities. In some cases, such as the history of the Civil Rights Movement, the force of religious traditions may become crucial to the recognition of fundamental moral values and the democratization of society. To acknowledge this ambivalence and plurality of the use of religious discourse in the democratic politics, a critical approach to the issue in the public sphere  cannot be a matter in the first place of an ‘ideal’ theory of the justification of norms but instead of a theory which asks how the justification of norms can become a dis­ cursive practice – and why such justificatory practice is lacking in so many social domains. (Forst 2014: 7) In the next chapter, we continue the discussion on public reason by exploring the Jürgen Habermas’ ambitious proposal of a postsecular society. On account of his compre­ hensive approach to philosophy drawing on a variety of disciplines, Habermas has developed an influential deliberative theory focused on translation understood as a cooperative effort of turning religious discourse into secular reasons. This kind of trans­ lation aims at once at the reconciliation of religious and secular communities and inclu­ sion of reformulated religious insights into the process of public justification.

Notes   1 In the last decade, an increasing segment of public opinion in the US has perceived religion’s influence in politics as waning, but a consistent half of the population believes that churches and religious groups should express their views on social and political matters, and a president should share their religious beliefs (Pew 2016). A growing number of US citizens (32 per cent in 2014) thinks that churches should publicly endorse candidates for political office (Pew



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2014a) even if there is also a growing segment of the population that is losing interest in insti­ tutionalized religion and describe themselves as non-­affiliated (Pew 2015a; Pew 2015b; Pew 2015c; Pew 2015d).   2 Robert Audi is a philosopher of wide-­ranging interests, from epistemology and action theory to moral theory and business ethics. A significant part of his work from the 1980s on has been devoted to the philosophy of religion and the relationship between religion and politics. His ethics of citizenship bridges his long-­standing attention for normative moral theory to the specific field of civic engagement and religious commitment. Audi articulated a significant part of his view before Rawls’ Political Liberalism (1993). See also Monti (2008).   3 In support of this stance, Audi argues: Judgments of what is worthwhile in human life are essential for properly determining the content and manner of required public education. The kinds of values that government may presuppose – including not only liberty and equality but also elements of human flourishing – may be favored more by some religions than by others. But where citizens understand the basic principles of sound democratic governance, it will be clear that even the best governments cannot expect to win the approval of every citizen. It is enough that the framework of a sound democracy provides opportunities for every citizen to protest and to seek support for rectifying inequalities that historical contingencies may bring. (Audi 2011a: 57)   4 Comprehensive views can be apt for the task of deliberation as long as they do not violate some fundamental moral constraints: I am leaving open that a view of the good can be highly comprehensive in scope without licensing violations of the liberty, equality, and neutrality principles. Rawls might not agree, nor is it clear how much neutrality in matters of value he would require of demo­ cratic government. (Audi 2011: 163 n. 12)   5 In Audi’s moral intuitionism, the duty of beneficence is a duty to contribute to the good (roughly, the well-­being) of other people. The good of people here is more than just their experience of pleasure over pain, but it includes the realization of several values that range from physical well-­being to the development of intelligence and knowledge (Audi 2004: 191–192).   6 We quote the definitions of this and other principles in their most recent version from Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State. The formulation of the principles remains, as we’ve pointed out, essentially unchanged throughout his works. Audi prefers adding com­ plementary and more articulated principles to account for critiques and new issues rather than changing the old ones. In this sense, we focus on the internal architecture of his thought rather than its evolution. In the case of the principle of secular rationale, it has the most longstanding presence in Audi’s work. It is defined, with small variations, in Audi 1989: 259–296, Audi and Wolterstorff 1997: 25, Audi 2000: 86 and Audi 2011a: 65–66.   7 Audi does not imply “that adequate reasons must be shared by everyone, even everyone who seriously considers them” (Audi 2011a: 70) but only that they need to be accessible to all rational adults, which means that they should be “appraisable by them through using natural reason in the light of facts to which they have access on the basis of exercising their natural rational capacities” (Audi 2011a: 70). The notion of reciprocity is paired with the idea that all persons share substantial rational capacities; these rational capacities give them access to the same epistemic sources. Note that access to the same epistemic sources does not mean at all that we have the same reasons, just that we form reasons by relying on the same sources.   8 Habermas interprets Audi’s view as a version of the Rawlsian duty of civility, and focuses most of his considerations on the principle of secular rationale without considering the other principles. In his criticism of Habermas, Audi argues that the translation proviso (see Chapter 3) is more demand­ ing to the religious citizens than the principle of secular rationale, since the latter leaves the religious reasons “untouched” and only asks for the presentation of at least some secular reason.   9 Audi’s moral theory is not consequentialist; his normative framework is a reformulation of W.D. Ross’ moral intuitionism integrated with Kantian elements. In this sense, Audi’s assess­ ment of the ethical value of the citizens’ conduct takes into account both its content and motivation.

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10 Specifically, what is at stake in this case is the morality of the public acts of citizenship that, in Kantian terms, should be performed by the citizens from their duty of respect towards their interlocutors and not just consistently with what their duty prescribes to do (Audi and Wol­ terstorff 1997: 32–33). The first principle is more morally binding. The second establishes a standard of civic virtue. Their pairing aims to an ethical ideal of citizenship less focused on the exclusive exchange of reasons, which can be regulated in procedural terms. Civic virtue does not just require the observance of duty, but also a sense of integrity between the speech acts and the motivations of the person. 11 To provide an example, Audi states: (i)f moral reflection convinces me of certain moral principles and these seem central in my scriptures and appropriate to approval by God as perfectly good, I am likely to be and to feel in equilibrium. If, on the other hand, my scriptures seem to support both capital punishment and the sanctity of all human lives, I will be in disequilibrium. (Audi 2011a: 21) 12 On this basis, Audi argues that conflicts between science and religion are often only the result of adherence to specific understandings of religious doctrines that are by no means required to be a conscientious religious person:  In many religious traditions, including at least Christianity and Judaism, the scientific study of nature is readily viewed as an attempt to understand God’s creation. One can view sci­ entific inquiry as a use of reason conceived as a natural endowment from God. To be sure, the theory of evolution is inconsistent with the account of creation given in Genesis inter­ preted literally. But literal interpretation of scripture throughout is not a requirement of a reasonable theology and is increasingly rejected by educated Biblical interpreters. (Audi 2011a: 49) 13 By pointing out this difficulty, we do not overlook that the direct participation of the clergy in political matters can support mechanisms of exclusion and domination. See Rorty’s discus­ sion of the problem of clericalism in Chapter 8. 14 For an extensive inquiry into the conflicted origins of the concept and practice of toleration, see Forst (2013). 15 Gaus and Vallier point out that another major mistake is to assume that in public justification the same constraints apply to two different kinds of reasons: for imposing or resisting coercion (Gaus and Vallier 2009: 62–65). 16 D’Agostino articulates the distinction between consensus and convergence as follows:  If both A and B share a reason R that makes a regime reasonable for them, then the jus­ tification of the regime is grounded in their consensus with respect to R. If A has a reason Ra that makes the regime reasonable for him, and B has a reason Rb that makes the regime reasonable for her, then the justification of the regime is based on convergence on it from separate points of view. (D’Agostino 1996: 30) 17 The intelligibility requirement opens up public discourse to a plurality of contributions, including reasons based on moral and religious testimony: Moral testifiers are frequently embedded in communities and traditions of moral reason­ ing, and are often reliable in the sense described. Arguably then, some reasonable people can justifiably trust their testimony. This trust will produce accessible testimonial beliefs about morality. Those who accept religious testimony are in a symmetrical epistemic position. Religious testifiers are often embedded within intelligent communities and rich traditions of theological and moral reasoning; further, at least some of them are reliable in the sense described. Those who believe religious testimony can develop justified beliefs based on that testimony. (Vallier 2011: 384) 18 Vallier also formulates a specific variation of the principle of convergent restraint for public officials (Vallier 2014: 189) and for judges (Vallier 2014: 195). 19 Consensus models, on the other hand, underline the continuity between the two. Audi con­ siders advocacy and voting as a kind of public conduct for which citizens should be sufficiently



Public reason debated

motivated by secular reasons and equally ready to offer them as their justification. Religious motivational and cognitive grounds may legitimately play a role, but their decisions and actions should not be based exclusively on those. Rawls argues that the ideal of public reason is to be applied more restrictively to the conduct of public officials, but he also points out that citizens should aspire to the model embodied by the Supreme Court (see Chapter 1).

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POSTSECULARISM, TRANSLATION, AND RELIGION Jürgen Habermas

Introduction: two stages of Habermas’ view In response to a secularist trend hostile to religion and the rhetoric of the clash-­ofcivilizations, a number of public figures and institutions have championed the vision of a positive interaction between democracy and religion mediated through dialogue (Leustean and Madeley 2009). The philosophical articulation of this trend is most prominently represented by Jürgen Habermas’ account of a postsecular society centred on the dialogue between believers and non-­believers (Habermas 2006, 2008a: 140, 2011). Nonetheless, for a good part of his intellectual trajectory Habermas advanced a secularist theory of history, modernity, and democracy in which religion played only a marginal role. More recently, he has articulated a version of the public reason approach to the relation between religion and democracy whose significance remains deeply controversial (Bader 2012; Beckford 2012; Cooke 2013; Lafont 2014; Calhoun, Mendieta, and VanAntwerpen 2013).1 To properly understand his changing view of democracy and religion, it is necessary to make a step back and consider Habermas’ philosophical system in its context. First, Habermas develops his political philosophy as part of a comprehensive philosophical system that deals with different issues such as rationality, language, history, social action, modernity, capitalism, ethics, law, and democracy. In contrast to Rawls’ methodological self-­restraint (Chapter 1), Habermas’ interdisciplinary approach draws on a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics, social science, and philosophy of history to legal theory; as a result, Habermas’ view entails a broadening of the scope of the problematic of political philosophy: its questions, argues Habermas, cannot be properly grasped without engaging in an interpretative exercise with the help of the advances in sciences and humanities.2 Second, Habermas’ philosophical system is an answer to a practical problem and historical context, namely to the shock of the collapse of Germany and the Western modernity into the horrors of the WWII and the Holocaust. His treatment of the question of the place of religion in a democracy develops against the background of this project of restoring confidence in universal rationality, historical progress, and modern democracy. In the following, we distinguish and analyse the two stages of Habermas’ dealing with the place of religion in a deliberative democracy. In the first stage represented mainly by the magnum opus The Theory of Communicative Action (Vol. I 1984; Vol. II 1987), Habermas combines a linguistic-­pragmatic reinterpretation of Kant’s practical reason as communicative reason with a Marxist-­secularist critique of religion as ideology. The resulting view is a



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theory of secularism and modernity that envisages an emancipated post-­class democracy in which religion is overcome; in this vision, religion – in particular universal religions – plays only a historical role in the development of rationality (1). In the second stage, Habermas parts with the secularist tradition and develops the relation between communicative reason, democracy, and religion in a novel way. Not unlike Rawls (Chapter 1), he pursues the Kantian endeavour of a historical reconciliation between Enlightenment and religion, while aiming to preserve a rigid border between the domains of reason and faith, the neutral state and religious worldviews.3 However, he develops the public reason approach in a different direction. In tackling the question of the role of religion in the construction of political legitimacy in conditions of pluralism Habermas gives a nuanced answer that takes into account the genealogical and dynamic interaction between practical rationality and religious worldviews. In this vision, religion can legitimately nourish the public reason and indirectly influence political decision through the processes of translation, in which believers and non-­believers deliberate on equal footing in the social public sphere. For Habermas, by means of translations, the particularist language of religion is transmuted into a secular-­rational language accessible to all citizens. The translation proviso encapsulating the interaction between public reason and religious worldviews replaces, in Habermas’ view, Rawls’ proviso, that overlooks the historical and social embeddedness of rationality. Habermas’ postsecular turn aims to emphasise the relevance of the religious grounds of the citizens’ engagement in democratic life: by pursuing a project of reconciliation and mutual learning between religious and secular citizens, he acknowledges the persisting relevance of religious traditions without abandoning the defence of the neutrality of the state (2). In the last section of this chapter we will examine the limits of Habermas’ translation proviso and postsecular society.

1  Habermas’ theory of communicative action and earlier secularism The general stakes of Habermas’ public reason approach to religion and democracy need, as we’ve pointed out, to be understood from the perspective of his life-­trajectory and historical context. The emphasis on communication and rationality in Habermas’ philosophy is self-­avowedly marked by the traumatic episode of the breakdown of the Western modernity and the collapse of the interwar German constitutional regime into Nazism (Wiggershaus 2004; Specter 2010). In his long-­running debates with decisionists, postmodernists, and neoconservatives, Habermas has repeatedly acknowledged his “anguish of regression” that democracy could collapse into a generalized battle of gods and demons (Habermas 1990).4 This has triggered Habermas’ lifelong quest to establish a terra firma for democracy, a place that all citizens could share by virtue of the reconciling power of reason and deliberation.5 Habermas’ belief in reconciliation through the use of public reason and deliberation is a constant theme in his philosophy, yet the place of religion in it, as noted, has varied significantly. In order to understand the specificity of Habermas’ approach as well as its difficulties, we need to outline elements of his theory of communicative action and reason.

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a  Elements of Habermas’ theory of communicative action and rationality Habermas develops his theory of communicative action in the interdisciplinary tradition of Critical Theory (Habermas 1984, 1996: Chapter 1; Cooke 1994; Thomassen 2008).6 Habermas’ reconstructive approach7 aims at explicating and systematizing the intuitive pre-­theoretical knowledge that constitute communicative action and rationality. He develops this theory mainly from the 1970s onwards and focuses on some fundamental philosophical and socio-­theoretical questions: How is meaning constituted in communication? What is the connection between language and rationality? What are the rational foundations of constitutional democracy?8 Central to Habermas’ enterprise is his reinterpretation of Kant’s practical reason through two theoretical turns – namely a linguistic turn and a pragmatic turn. First, the linguistic turn means that, for Habermas, language plays a key role in the understanding of philosophical issues (e.g. rationality, meaning-­formation) and in the construction of social reality.9 In Kant’s monological view, rationality is an individual faculty rooted in a mysterious noumenal world and is capable of engendering the rules of practical reason by itself. Habermas aims to abandon Kant’s metaphysical language based on the postulate between two separate worlds: the noumenal world, in which rationality and freedom are rooted, and the empirical world of causal relations and determinism. In Habermas’ view, rationality is not an individual faculty, but emerges instead from communicative exchanges among human beings. In this inter-­subjective view, linguistic communication and rationality are in a relation of co-­implication.10 Second, the pragmatic turn means that Habermas regards language from a perspective centred on communicative action (pragmata – πραγματα means acts or actions).11 According to the argument underlying this theoretical turn, language does not only convey information about the natural and social world, but also performs social actions. Language is an act that generates social reality and not merely a mirror that reflects reality. As such, it is a “primary source of social integration” (Habermas 1996: 45). Take two common examples from the social and the private spheres. When a priest says “I declare you married” in a wedding ceremony, his speech act does not mirror a pre-­existing reality, but brings into being a new social relation between two persons. Likewise, when Jane tells John “I promise to be at the restaurant by nine”, she is not simply imparting information about the outside world, but she is generating a meaningful social connection with him that orients their behaviour. Such speech acts have the pragmatic function of taking part in the constitution and transformation of a meaningful social world in all its dimensions – namely, expressing one’s inner world, relating to and creating the social world, and representing the natural world.12 The argument is that speech acts do things – i.e. their meaning does not emerge as a passive reflection of an external reality: speaking is engaging with and creating reality, and meaning is generated and assessed in this process. The previous examples were taken from the private and the social life, yet the legal-­ political reality is also moulded through the performative function of language. When the US Declaration of Independence (1776) famously states that “We hold these truths to be self-­evident”, this speech act does not simply describe an already existing reality, but rather calls into being and establishes the reality of a “we” as subjects of a new and independent political community.



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Habermas deals with the question of rationality within this linguistic-­pragmatic perspective. Rationality is an essential dimension of communicative action, which explains why Habermas speaks of communicative rationality.13 He defines communicative action in opposition to strategic action: “I speak of communicative action whenever the actions of the agents involved are coordinated not through egocentric calculations of success but through acts of reaching understanding” (Habermas 1984: 285–286). The point of this distinction is not to say that we do not use language in strategic action. We do so in order to pursue individual-­centred goals. In contrast, the communicative action involves a cooperative attempt to reach understanding and agreement. The analysis of the implicit presuppositions or conditions of possibility of communicative action unveils the scaffold of communicative rationality. This scaffold is made of two types of interrelated presuppositions – namely validity claims (i) and pragmatic idealizations (ii). (i) First, validity claims are presupposed in any communicative action. Every communicative action, no matter how banal, involves raising implicit and criticizable validity claims of truth (with respect to the natural world), rightness (with respect to the moral world), or authenticity (with respect to the subjective world). For instance, if Jane says to John “I promise to be at the restaurant by nine”, she implicitly raises validity claims about the natural world (e.g. “it is feasible to arrive to the restaurant by nine”; “there is a restaurant”), her subjective world (e.g. “the promise expresses my wish”), and about the social-­moral world (“It is my duty to be on time”). Though validity claims are oftentimes implicit, they can be thematized by means of questioning, critique, and reason-­exchange. In raising validity claims, any communicative action or speech-­act invites taking a yes/no position with the right kind of reasons, if needed. When validity claims are made explicit and reasons are exchanged with a view to obtain an agreement over the “truth of the matter”, there is a passage from communicative action to deliberation. In deliberation, the participants exchange reasons about different types of questions (in the previous example: is Jane truthful and sincere in making the invitation? Is her proposal workable? Is her proposal morally acceptable? etc.). For Habermas, properly understanding the conditions of validity in the meaning of a sentence entails agreement over it. Understanding fully the meaning requires “is a process of reaching agreement (Einigung)” (Habermas 1984: 286); and the agreement constitutes “the inherent telos of human speech” (Habermas 1984: 287). Deliberation – the beating heart of Habermas’ theory of democracy – is a type of communicative action in which the force of the argument drives the interested, sincere, and equal participants towards establishing an agreement over the validity of the matter at stake. In a constitutional democracy, deliberation becomes institutionalized: democratic deliberation is the process of exchanging communicative actions in which validity claims are made explicit through informal and formal procedures. These procedures range from procedures of inclusion of all those affected by decisions to procedures of fair timing granted to the participants in the Parliament, as well as the allocation of proportional TV slots during elections. (ii) A second characteristic of speech acts is that, in raising validity claims, they presuppose pragmatic idealizations – e.g. of truth, rightness, the single right solution, the universal audience, the ideal consensus, etc. These are idealizations in the sense that although they orient the communicative exchanges, they can never be fulfilled. Validity claims can never be fully answered, even if they make communicative action possible. We can never

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be absolutely sure of the truth, rightness, or the authenticity of the matter at stake; the force of reasons can drive us towards “the single right solution”, but we never actually reach it. Likewise, due to their limitations, people never quite constitute an ideal audience: inequalities, power games, prejudices, strategic actions, lack of information, or passions are factors that shape any real audience. Still, in raising validity claims, communicative exchanges are premised on idealizations. For instance, in the deliberative game of exchanging reasons about the moral significance of abortion, the participants aspire to be closer to the right answer. Participants in the actual deliberation may be driven by some irrational passion and religious or anti-­religious prejudice, but the deliberative game – imperfect as it may be – is made possible by making validity claims and pragmatic idealizations. In Habermas’ teleological vision, criticizing validity claims and exchanging reasons is an open and never-­ending deliberative process of mutual learning and progress oriented towards the “single right solution”.14 Habermas’ understanding of the relation between language and rationality is non-­ conventionalist. Meaning is often grasped by means of interpreting familiar conventions; without conventions, social relations would break down. But conventions are not sufficient to explain meaning-­formation: by making validity claims and presupposing idealizations, any speech act – even if implicitly – points towards an ideal point of reference or telos (truth, rightness, etc) that transcends the current conventions and context. Take again the example of the priest officiating a wedding ceremony. For a long time, it was taken for granted that “I declare you married” could only be pronounced in relation to a man and a woman, and that this pronouncement could only be made by male priests. But these social conventions have become deeply contested. Their implicit validity claims (only a man and a woman can marry; only men can be priests) have become the object of reason-­exchanges and deliberations, which has triggered a significant social transformation. This is a crucial point for Habermas’ Critical Theory centred on social critique and transformation: the reconstruction of the bond between language and rationality is neither context-­dependent nor reliant on a set of accepted conventions. Habermas’ intention is to construct a theory of communicative action and rationality as a basis for his defence of a deliberative model of democracy that is not relative to a specific cultural-­religious context. Only a universalistic theory is able to provide a solid foundation to a democracy centred on the exercise of reason in public deliberations.15 The theory of communicative action and reason has a historical-­genealogical dimension as well. Reason does not spring from language as Athena is born from Zeus’ head – already mature and fully equipped. The “seeds” of rationality grow in time, and religions – in particular, the universalistic religions (Judaism and Christianity) of the Axial Age – play a fundamental role in this long-­term historical process. This idea is central to Habermas’ secularist theory of modernization.

b  Habermas’ early secularism Habermas proposes a complex typology of the variety of speech acts and discourses according to their validity claims (moral, scientific, legal, religious, etc.) and the scope of audience. The moral discourse is concerned with universal norms of morality or normative



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rightness that provide the basic principles of universal human rights. This discourse is independent of cultural-­religious contexts, as it answers the question of what is morally right for each and every human being. Scientific discourse also makes universal validity claims, but not in relation to the social world (humanity at large). Its goal is truth about the representations of the natural world. In turn, religious discourse refers to a specific community (Hindu, Christian, Muslim, etc.) or person, and answers the question what is good for it/her.16 Echoing Hegel, Habermas labels discourses about the good as “ethical” (sittlich).17 The religious worldviews are the expression of, and relate to, the subjective world; they provide particular communities and individuals with imaginative frameworks of interpretation that shape their understanding of a good and flourishing life. Religious claims presuppose an orientation towards mutual understanding, which is constitutive of all speech acts, but only amongst the members of a specific community. The orientation towards mutual understanding and agreement about religious validity claims serves as a mechanism of social integration as it grounds shared expectations, actions, and ways of interpreting the world. Religion plays an important role not only in social integration, but in social transformation as well. In particular, universalist religions have been historically crucial in the genealogy of rationalization and modernization of Western societies. In this sense, Habermas backs his complex theory of communicative reason with a philosophy of history which interprets human history as the progress and the advancement of reason. While Habermas rejects the idea of historical necessity, the historical development displays a progressive “logic” – that of the gradual unveiling and institutionalization of the rational potential in-­built in every communicative action. The emergence of universalist religions is the result of the evolution from tribal societies (and their corresponding irrational forms of religiosity) to large and stratified class societies. The change in socio-­political structure and the emergence of empires led to the abstractization of the notion of divinity. The monotheist religions centred on a universal God represent an important step in the development of the ideas of universal rationality and morality. Not only did they open up a universalistic perspective, but they also started from “the same basic problem”, i.e. the problem of moral nature: to satisfy “the rational interest in material and ideal equalization” in view of the “evidently unequal distribution of earthly goods” in a stratified class society (Habermas 1984: 201–202). Universalist religions have, however, an ambivalent function: while they give voice to a moral reason and open up a universalist perspective, at the same time, they institutionalize, legitimate, and perpetuate class inequalities. In other words, they “release” the rational potential inscribed in communicative exchanges, yet they “imprison” the newly born reason in the illusionary trappings of dogma and hierarchical institutions. This ambivalent view of the role of universalistic religions is not entirely new. In some ways, the early Habermas is Marx’s heir, as he pursues a radically secularist critique of religion as ideology. From the orthodox Marxist perspective, religion is a form of alienation, an “inverted world-­consciousness”, and a “fantastic realisation of the human being” (Marx 1994: 57) that is at odds with an emancipated society. Instead of challenging the class conditions that generate injustice and suffering, religion has the ideological function of camouflaging and legitimizing them. For Marx, religion is the opium of the masses not just because it provides a narcotic against the harsh realities of everyday life: more importantly,

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it helps the oppressed dream of a better and more just life but takes out any political sting by linking it to the compensatory illusion of an afterlife. In this view, the moment of truth in Christianity is a “sigh” of the downtrodden and marginalized, even if it ultimately gives rise to an alienating expression. Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action largely follows this Janus-­faced stand on religion. Habermas replaces Marx’s alienation with a concern with “distorted communication” and the obliteration of communicative rationality, but the critique of religion is preserved. Even if universal religions contain rational arguments, overall they are “immunized against objections already within the cognitive reach of everyday communication” and reproduce themselves in a “dogmatic form” (Habermas 1984: 188). However, although religion remains a form of alienation, the universalist view of morality (the discursive ethics) is the result of “rescuing” the rational core of the universal religions by a process of philosophical translation. Habermas projects himself as a philosopher-­translator able to unfetter the rational essence of the universal religion – in particular, Christianity – from its dogmatic form in order to put it into its proper language, i.e. a language made of secular concepts. The philosopher is a mediator capable of fully translating the rational potential of universal religions by means of his theory of communicative rationality and universalist discourse ethics. For instance, by means of his understanding of speech acts and idealizations, the transcendence (God) of the Judeo-­Christian tradition becomes immanent to the most banal communicative acts, and Kant’s metaphysical projection of a noumenal world of reason becomes unnecessary: The idea of the redeemability of criticisable validity claims requires idealizations that, as adopted by the communicating actors themselves, are thereby brought down from transcendental heaven to the earth of the lifeworld. The theory of communicative action detranscendentalizes the noumenal realm only to have the idealizing force of context-­transcending anticipations settle in the unavoidable pragmatic presuppositions of speech acts, and hence in the heart of ordinary, everyday communicative practice. (Habermas 1996: 18–19) This immanent transcendence or “transcendence from inside” (Transzendenz von innen) points beyond current contexts, but loses the aura of “exceptionality” and wonder of otherworldly transcendence that characterizes monotheist religions. Still, the “moment of unconditionality” and “banal transcendence” is essential for understanding the universal link between language and communicative reason that is irreducible to strategic action and to the conventions of any cultural-­religious context. In sum, Habermas claims to be able to fully articulate the rational content of universalistic religions into the proper philosophical language. Both Kant and Marx claimed to do something similar, albeit in different ways. Habermas’ universalistic concept of communicative reason remains up to this day largely indebted to Kant, yet his earlier view of religion and history is also heavily influenced by Marx’ vision of class struggle and emancipation. In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason ([1793] 1998), Kant attempts to reconcile Enlightenment and religion, reason and faith, and argues for an important role



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of rational and even dogmatic faith in the public sphere. From Habermas’ post-­Marxist secularist perspective, these elements of Kant’s view are the relics of a society characterized by the dominance of one class over another, relics that get in the way of the evolution of reason through mutual dialogue and learning.

2  The postsecular turn: the translation proviso and the double-­ tiered public sphere With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growing relevance of sociological and philosophical­theological debates concerning religion (see Chapter 1), Habermas gives up the critical ethos of Marxian secularism. Starting in the late 1990s, religion becomes a major focus in Habermas’ work, leading to his shift to postsecularism. This change is motivated by empirical and normative concerns. After the collapse of communism, the empirical hypothesis of modernization as cause of the inevitable decline of religion has lost part of its appeal (see Introduction). Influential sociologists, such as Peter Berger and José Casanova, have replaced the teleological vision of modernization as secularization with the idea of the “de-­ secularization” of societies and “deprivatization” of religion (Berger 1999; Berger et al. 2008; Casanova 1994; Gamper 2014; see Introduction). In accordance with these ideas, the fact that religion becomes more visible in the public sphere proves the implausibility of the hypothesis of the incompatibility between modernity and religion. The public visibility and relevance of religion nowadays is, for Habermas, determined by at least three factors: the worldwide rise of fundamentalist religious movements and conservative churches, the permanent cultural and political role of traditional religious groups as relevant “communities of interpretation” inside secularized societies, and the formation of minority groups of migrants and refugees whose religion plays an important role in their identification and socialization (Habermas 2008b: 20–21). Habermas’ turn to postsecularism is further fuelled by his preoccupation with the civic disaffection and moral impoverishment of public discourse in capitalist democracies. As the sense of solidarity, moral resources, and citizens’ motivation to participate in deliberative exchanges wane, democratic societies need to focus back on their prepolitical conditions of existence.18 Habermas’ vision of a postsecular society is meant to tackle these empirical and normative concerns in order to project a new pact of reconciliation between modernity and religion. The postsecular project does not deny the necessary separation between the modern state and religion or the secularization trends in modernity.19 It designates a renewed collective self-­understanding that is needed to answer the following question: “what must we reciprocally expect from one another in order to ensure that in firmly entrenched nation states, social relations remain civil despite the growth of a plurality of cultures and religious worldviews?” (Habermas 2008b: 21). This interrogation has two facets: first, Habermas inquires, not unlike Rawls, about the proper justifications of public power in conditions of pluralism. Second, he asks about the proper social relations between religious and non-­religious citizens in a democratic state. According to his vision of a postsecular society, the state is legitimate when it is based on secular reasons that are neutral with respect to citizens’ worldviews, and that all citizens could agree on. However, public reason is not static, but it draws on the deliberations between citizens (believers and non-­believers) in the public sphere. As Habermas notes,

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the expression ‘postsecular’ does not merely grant religious communities public recognition for their functional contribution to the reproduction of desirable motives and attitudes” but “reflects, rather, a normative insight that has implications for political interactions between religious and nonreligious citizens. (Habermas 2008a: 111; see also Habermas 2008b; 2013) In postsecular societies, both religious and non-­religious persons are aware (or expected to be aware) that they have cognitive reasons to engage in mutual learning by taking each other’s contributions to public debates seriously. The “central nerve” of this vision, which relies on the desideratum of reciprocity between believers and non-­believers, is Habermas’ translation proviso. The citizen-­ translator becomes the protagonist of Habermas’ postsecular democracy; this vision replaces his earlier conception centred on the philosopher-­translator and his solitary ambition to distill the rational-­moral content of religions without any rest.

a  The translation proviso Habermas’ perspective on the interaction between religion and politics is centred on replacing Rawls’ proviso (see Chapter 1) – as a principle of restraint – with a translation proviso. The translation proviso stipulates that religion can legitimately influence democratic decision-­making only indirectly, namely through translations from the particularist religious language to a secular-­rational language that is generally intelligible and accessible to the members of the political community. The translation proviso has two dimensions: (i) a limitative dimension that rules out religion from the formal public sphere where commonly binding decisions are taken; and (ii) an inclusive dimension with reference to the role of religion in the informal public sphere. According to the (i) limitative dimension of the translation proviso, religious discourse should not cross the threshold of institutions (government, Parliament, courts) where commonly binding decisions are taken. The proviso works as an institutional filter that protects state neutrality as a crucial principle of legitimacy of the political authority in a modern, pluralist society. For instance, in the Parliament there should be a procedural rule according to which the house leader can “strike religious positions or justifications from the official transcript” (Habermas 2008a: 131); without such restrictive procedures that shape deliberations and negotiations in the formal public sphere, we run the risk of constituting a privileged relation between state institutions and a specific religious community. Political and legal activity in the formal public sphere should be rigorously neutral and separated from the plurality of religious worldviews: The neutrality of the state toward competing worldviews is the institutional precondition for the equal guarantee of freedom of religion for all. The consensus on constitutional principles in which all citizens must share pertains also to the principle of the separation of church and state. (Habermas 2008a: 128)20



Postsecularism, translation, and religion

For Habermas, state neutrality is not value neutrality in a strict sense, since democratic procedures are based on the idea of the self-­legislation of voluntarily associated citizens who are both free and equal. The presumption here is that non-­fundamentalist religious and secular citizens will accept that idea as a shared condition for cooperation. Democratic institutions and procedures articulate a legal framework for discursive exchange among citizens that is neutral with respect to specific worldviews and establishes discursive processes of deliberation and decision-­making where citizens of different secular and religious worldviews are on equal footing (Gledhill 2015: 7).21 This democratic institutionalization of discourses aims at fulfilling the universal pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation: “universal access, an equal right to participate and equality of opportunity in making contributions, the participants’ orientation toward reaching understanding, and freedom from structural coercions” (Habermas 1998a: 407). These discursive conditions provide a protection against the appropriation of the political sphere by dominant religious or secularist ideologies while still allowing a plurality of value-­laden contents into the deliberative process. In this sense, the neutrality of democratic procedures promises impartial outcomes as the result of a rational process of argumentation and decision-­ making (Habermas 1998a: 386). Even if the state needs to be neutral towards both religious and secularist worldviews, the presence of religious manifestations in the formal public sphere poses a specific problem due to the centredness of religion on non-divisible goods. In contrast to other goods – final resources, solidarity, etc. – the nature of the “goods of salvation” (Habermas 2008a: 135) is that they are not divisible. The “absoluteness” of religious goods is not conducive to democratic deliberation, negotiation, and compromise; therefore, their place is not in the formal public sphere.22 Allowing a discourse on non-divisible goods in the formal public sphere risks denting neutrality and tearing apart the community of free and equal citizens. The reasons that ground commonly binding decisions should generally be intelligible and accessible to all citizens regardless of their membership in a particular community or adherence to a specific worldview (or conception of the good, to use Rawls’ language). In contrast, religious “reasons” are not necessarily intelligible to everybody.23 More importantly, even when they are intelligible, they are not generally accessible to citizens who do not share a particular faith or belief (e.g. the faith in the divinity of Christ or in the sacredness of the Quran as God’s word). Religious convictions are fully accessible only on condition of adhering to a community of belief that assumes their validity in the first place. Thus, “by dint of their if necessary rationally justified reference to the dogmatic authority of an inviolable core of infallible revealed truths, [religious convictions] evade that kind of unreserved discursive examination to which other ethical orientations and worldviews” (Habermas 2008a: 129). The (ii) inclusive dimension of the translation proviso concerns the informal political public sphere made of social organizations, cultural movements, mass media, etc. In this wide area, religion can legitimately nourish public reason; as such, it can influence decisions in the formal public sphere only indirectly through deliberative processes of translation of the particularistic language of religion into a secular-­rational language that is generally intelligible and accessible to citizens. The translation of religious discourse into generally intelligible and accessible reasons is far from being literal. It rather involves a

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significant transformation, bracketing appeals to “absolutes” (God, the Holy Book, dogmas, etc.) in order for discourse to enter the terrain of fallibilistic dialogue based on cooperative reason-­exchanges between equally positioned, informed, and sincere participants. In Habermas’ teleological view, deliberative translations are able to collectively retrieve the “seeds” of truth contained in the plurality of religious voices and contribute to mutual learning and progress. The translation proviso does not impose a strict obligation on citizenry, since this may be overburdening, especially for deeply religious people. Religious citizens who are “neither willing nor able to divide their moral convictions and their vocabulary into profane and religious strands must be permitted to take part in political will formation even if they use religious language” (Habermas 2008b: 28–29). In Habermas’ vision, other citizens in the informal public sphere could, in time, take charge of elaborating those contributions and converting them into a more widely accessible form to be employed in institutional settings. According to this perspective, Rawls’ proviso (see Chapter 1) appears inadequate as it is unable to properly acknowledge the place of religious conviction in postsecular societies.24 In formal settings, Rawls’ conception allows the expressions of religious views provided that, in due time, proper political reasons are offered. The translation proviso is admittedly more restrictive with respect to the formal public sphere; however, it also provides a more central justificatory role to religious reasons, problematizes the porous border between formal and informal public spheres, and puts into historical perspective the relation between secular and religious reasons. First, the translation proviso establishes a relationship between the religious and non-­ religious contents of the public discourse: in institutional settings, the richness and originality of religious insights are not offered as a temporary or supplementary contribution (as with Rawls); once translated, religious citizens’ reasons get to the stage with the same justificatory value as any other generally intelligible and accessible reasons. Second, Habermas argues that the concept of translation provides a more dynamic relation between the formal and informal public spheres. In informal public discourse, religious views are freely expressed and defended, but also criticized, discussed, and transformed at the hands of believers and unbelievers. The widely accessible form they assume in the institutional sphere is not unrelated to their previous religious manifestation, but it is, rather, the consequence of its exposition to informal discussion and deliberation. In contrast, Rawls would artificially reinforce the border between religious and secular discourse and gloss over their possible cross-­fertilization. Third, for Habermas, Rawls’ proviso is premised on a historically static vision of public reason. Habermas argues that public reason is unintelligible without a historical reflection on its religious sources. The transformative exchange between theology and philosophy has been crucial in creating “such normatively charged networks of concepts as responsibility, autonomy and justification, history and remembrance, rebirth, innovation and return, emancipation and fulfilment, renunciation, internalization and incarnation, individuality and community” (Habermas 2008a: 110). Some of these ideas and topoi – in particular from the Judeo-­Christian paradigm – have shaped the political-­cultural landscape of the West. A case in point is the “translation of the theological doctrine of creation in God’s image into the idea of the equal and unconditional dignity of all human beings” (ibid.). The content of the biblical image



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was transformed, but not exhausted in the process, thus being available to present and future deliberation and translation in the public sphere.

b  Citizen-­translators in the postsecular society The translation proviso is premised on a broad social transformation that is not only about the content of public reason, but also about the reflective attitude of the members of society. In Habermas’ postsecular democracy, this increased reflexivity is expressed as a widespread postmetaphysical mindset that acknowledges “the finiteness of reason” and combines “fallibilism with anti-­sceptical conceptions of truth” (Habermas 2008a: 140). Reflexive societies are postsecular to the extent that they are marked by the modernization of religion and the diffused awareness of the unexhausted role of religion as a valuable source for democratic life. The modernization of religious conscience and the evolution of the secular attitudes towards religion take distance from “a scientistically truncated conception of reason and the exclusion of religious doctrines from the genealogy of reason” (ibid.). This new mindset breaks with claims of epistemic superiority that religious and non-­religious parties may hold: the attitude of religious believers based on absolute certitudes and the secularist confidence in the project of the Enlightenment and its counterparts. Religious and secular members join, in this vision, a cooperative effort of translation and deliberation as peers.25 The translation proviso reflects Habermas’ intent to include religious citizens in democratic deliberations on an equal footing. Thus conceived, the deliberative process is (i) fairer to religious citizens, and (ii) more open to their insights. As a result, (iii) religious citizens are more prone to support the democratic values of their societies. (i) For Rawls and Audi, the principle of restraint is a civic duty incumbent upon all citizens; however, Habermas argues that this stringency is objectionable since it overburdens religious citizens in particular (Habermas 2008a: 132, n. 37). Religious people resist any simplistic “switchover of religiously rooted political convictions onto a different cognitive basis” (Habermas 2008a: 121); this is because “genuine faith is not merely a doctrine, something believed, but is also a source of energy that the person of faith taps into performatively to nurture her whole life” (Habermas 2008a: 127). As a consequence, the translation proviso envisages a broad duty that demands self-­ scrutiny and cooperation from both religious and non-­religious citizens. Secular citizens are to share the burden and join the translation effort based on the acknowledgement that their religious counterparts could bring equally relevant contributions to public discourse and political deliberation (Habermas 2008a: 131–132). This implies a complementary learning process according to which secular citizens accept the cognitive or truth potential of religious frameworks, and religious people modernize their religion so it is accepting of human rights, the neutrality of the state, and the relevance of science.26 The resulting climate of deliberation imposes some burdens on religious people, as it is evident in the controversies over ethically sensitive matters like abortion and euthanasia. But secular citizens are expected to “adopt a self-­reflexive critical stance toward the limits of enlightenment” (Habermas 2008a: 112), and accept that the persisting disagreement of their religious counterparts is not irrational, but belongs to the experience of a reasonable pluralism. In this sense, Habermas’ translation proviso stipulates that, in the cooperative task of translation, secular and religious citizens are burdened in a symmetrical way.

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(ii) Once developed in the informal public sphere and properly translated into the formal one, religious discourse can be a privileged source of moral intuitions that are universally valid. Religions, in fact, excel at articulating moral intuitions that secular traditions of thought miss, in particular with respect to the downtrodden, the marginalized, and all “vulnerable forms of communal life” (Habermas 2008a: 131). The dormant richness of religious traditions can be usefully reappropriated and translated to acquire “sufficiently differentiated expressions of and sensitivities to squandered lives, social pathologies, failed existences, and deformed and distorted social relations” (Habermas 2008a: 110). Being open to the contribution of religions, in this sense, is not a merely functional solution to gather new strengths and face social inequality; more substantially, it is the acknowledgement that where the tradition of the Enlightenment may lack words, symbols, and understanding, philosophy can learn from different sources, undergoing a “successful ‘Hegelian’ learning process” (Habermas 2008a: 110; Ungureanu 2006). The values embedded in religious traditions can, from this perspective, legitimately influence the political landscape, once the citizen-­ translators turn these values into secular reasons in the informal public sphere. (iii) The contribution of translation in re-­animating the exhausted resources of public discourse is particularly needed in times of disaffected democracies. Markets are increasingly assuming regulatory functions over important domains of social life and appear essentially immune to democratization. The attention of citizens has been steadily pushed from the public to the private as most decisions on national issues are moved to supranational levels, beyond the reach of traditional democratic debate. Moreover, the failures of the international community in promoting peace, justice, and universal respect for human rights has fostered a growing disillusionment about the capacity of politics to guide the globalization processes (Habermas 2008a: 107). From Habermas’ perspective, this trend is not an inevitable destiny but rather the outcome of a “selective exploitation of the rational resources implicit in Western modernity” (Habermas 2008a: 107–108). Thus, a reflexive and self-­critical re-­appropriation of those resources, including the religious ones, is the appropriate answer to a crisis that could otherwise lead to a situation in which social power is largely out of the hands of the demos. Habermas envisions a greater role for citizens than the liberal notion of legitimation of political coercion by popular will. His view takes inspiration from the republican tradition (see Chapter 4) in pointing out that the process of democratic will-­formation needs also to nourish the sense of belonging to the political community. Popular sovereignty is a communicatively generated power “that springs from the interactions between legally institutionalized will-­formation and culturally mobilized publics” (Habermas 1994a: 10). As long as religions are a vital part of civil society, their role is crucial in defining the resources of democratic life. From this viewpoint, Habermas objects to Rawls’ political liberalism for relying on a non-­communicative notion of public reason that is too static and ahistorical: a proper view of public reason takes into account the interaction with world-­disclosing religious views and has valuable resources in times of crisis. The notions of solidarity, autonomy, freedom, universal equality, friendship, and human rights cannot be understood in the absence of reflection on the debt to the religious heritage, and in particular the Judeo-­Christian heritage (Habermas 2008a: 142).27 This interaction is not merely a question of the past – namely, it is not merely a matter of “genealogy” or the “history of reason” (Habermas 2008a: 143; 147). Not only are democratic regimes



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embedded in a plurality of contexts shaped by cultural-­religious traditions, but there is also no reason to believe that religious imagination is exhausted and incapable of innovation:  (r)eligious traditions appear to have remained present in an even more vital sense than metaphysics, even if they at times present themselves as the opaque other of reason. It would be unreasonable to reject out of hand the idea that the major world religions […] can claim a place within the differentiated architecture of modernity because their cognitive substance has not yet been exhausted. At any rate, we cannot exclude that they involve semantic potentials capable of exercising an inspirational force on society as a whole as soon as they divulge their profane truth contents. (Habermas 2008a: 142) In this vision of a postsecular democracy, through deliberation citizen-­translators are capable of overcoming the division between Enlightenment and religion, thereby injecting new blood into a democracy in crisis and aspiring to reconciliation through the exercise of reason.

3  Towards a postsecular society? Habermas’ postsecular approach to the place of religion in democracy is, in some important respects, close to Rawls’ political liberalism: they both look for a way to reconcile modern democracy and religion through the use of public reason. They advance a Kantian-­idealized view of the legitimacy of public power based on the consensus over reasons accessible to all religious and non-­religious citizens. In this sense, Habermas and Rawls carve out a space of the political that is strictly separated from the domain of the comprehensive or metaphysical doctrines. There are, nonetheless, significant differences between them related to Habermas’ depiction of religion and his comprehensive approach to public reason as situated and historical. First, rationally accessible public justifications are, for Habermas, by definition secular; and given that the religious worldviews centre on absolute and non-­divisible goods, they should be kept out of the formal public sphere as the sphere of secular reasons. Second, for Habermas public reason is not “freestanding” (Rawls) but it is nourished by different worldviews; in particular, religion plays a key role in the informal public sphere where citizens cooperate and translate their semantic content into secular reasons that can legitimize the public power. We can reconstruct Habermas’ conception in the following steps (compare with Rawls, Chapter 1, Section 3): 1 Public power belongs to all, and is exercised in the name of all, so that it must be exercised in a way that is justifiable to all. 2 Therefore public justifications must be based on secular reasons that can be endorsed by all citizens, and they must filter out religious reasons. In this sense, all citizens must be regarded as the equal co-­authors of the law (political legitimacy).

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3 Religion should be kept out of the formal public sphere since it is centred on non-­divisible goods or “goods of salvation”. 4 In the informal public sphere, it is desirable that citizens translate religious discourse into secular reasons that are accessible to all citizens (the translation proviso). In this process of translation, secular and religious citizens engage in mutual learning and self-­criticism. 5 In the informal public sphere, religious believers who make claims regarding the exercise of political power do not have to provide secular reasons since this imposes an asymmetric and unfair burden on them. In the following, we argue that Habermas’ understanding of the postsecular society (points 2 to 5) runs into interlinked conceptual-­interpretive and empirical difficulties. Habermas’ approach is divided between, on the one hand, the articulation of Kantian-­ rationalist conception of public justification and a strictly neutralist idea of the state and, on the other hand, the pursuit of an open-­ended and historicized view of the interaction between democracy and religion, public reason and religious worldviews. We will discuss this central tension of the Habermas’ approach by first looking at (a) the scope and limits of his view of public justification and the translation proviso; then we will consider (b) his vision of a postsecular society centred on the image of the citizen-­translator.

a  Habermas on public justification and the translation proviso Habermas’ view of legitimacy and translation is objectionable since (i) it is based on a consensualist understanding of public justification that relies on teleological and over-­ rationalist premises; (ii) and it assumes a limited view of religion that does not sufficiently acknowledge the variety of interactions between religion and democracy. (i) In a constitutional democracy, political power is legitimate when it is publicly justifiable; severed from adequate justifications, the exercise of political power becomes arbitrary (Chapters 1 and 2). However, at one level Habermas’ conception of legitimacy runs into objections similar to those regarding Rawls’ political liberalism that we examined in detail in Chapter 1, Section 3. Habermas misleadingly assumes that the public justification of political power depends on the idealized consensus amongst all citizens. But the standard of Habermas’ counterfactual consensus is too high and abstract to sort out what is actually a valid public justification, and thus to properly account for the actual agreements/disagreements amongst informed citizens (for further details on the critique of consensualism, see Chapters 1 and 2). In particular, Habermas’ comprehensive approach is tributary to Kant’s teleological rationalism and philosophy of history, as it envisions the gradual transformation of the existing plurality of justifications into the “unity of reason”, i.e. the idealized consensus on a rational outcome that all citizens can endorse. The principled exclusion of religion from the formal public sphere (3) is meant to make possible the consensus by eliminating intractable disagreements on the “goods of salvation”; in turn, the translation proviso envisages the “alchemy” of religious reasons into secular reasons equally accessible to all citizens (4). This understanding of the process of public justification is underpinned by two teleological premises: that reasons translated into a secular form can gradually build consensus among all citizens, and that the diverse content



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of religious reasons is transferred into a generally accessible secular form. But, first, the discursive engagement of informed citizens in the public sphere can lead to more disagreement rather than agreement (see Chapter 1; Sanders 1997: 147–176). The democratic deliberations often result into the articulation of a plurality of reasonable and diverging public justifications rather than into a “single outcome”; the democratic game of justification needs neither assume nor aspire to ideal consensus. Second, the notion of extracting the pure secular content from religion implausibly postulates the reconciliation between reason and religious belief/practice minimizing historicity and disagreement believers and non-­believers (Ungureanu 2008a). The root of the difficulties of this Habermasian view is largely located at the foundations of the theory of communicative rationality and the linear conception of history. The conceptual scaffold of communicative reason is made of pragmatic idealizations, e.g. “ideal consensus”, “universal audience”, “same perspective”, and the “single right solution”. By means of these idealizations, Habermas relocates the tension between empirical and noumenal, immanence and transcendence into the domain of communicative action and rationality at the basis of his theory of deliberative democracy. But the pragmatic idealizations so conceived turn the concept of communicative reason into a paradox.28 Whereas the idealizations are intended to clarify the practice of rational dialogue or deliberation, they represent the denial of what they set to do: the price of the final reconciliation is the “sacrifice” of deliberation.29 The fulfilment of the ideal consensus is the end of deliberation itself: the silence of Habermas’ “union of minds” is the echo of Kant’s “union of hearts” inspired by Pietism (Wood 1996, 1999). Moreover, the postulate of historical harmonization between reason and religious worldviews is unwarranted: it is as if, in Habermas’ conception, the religious worldviews would contain the seeds of secular reason to be gradually extracted by means of translation.30 This idea of translation as rational extraction shapes both Habermas’ genealogy of reason and his view of the democratic public discourse. This idea remains, Habermas’ claims notwithstanding, premised on a metaphysical narrative that frames religion as a vehicle of communicating the moral truths or reasons; these truths and reasons are ultimately independent from religion and emerge if the outer religious layer of religion is peeled off through translations and historical development. The semantic resources of religious worldviews are not made of “empirical” or “accidental” impurities meant to be filtered out of their context and distilled into a single rational solution. The translations or interpretations of values like dignity, freedom, solidarity, forgiveness, solidarity, responsibility, and compassion embedded in religious traditions generate plural and controversial interpretations rather than pure secular reasons. Take one of Habermas’ prime examples, the question of dignity. The merit of Habermas’ postsecular turn is to point to the genealogy of such key concepts whose understanding has, in the Western historical context, been shaped by the Judeo-­ Christian paradigm and the interpretation of the biblical image of the human beings created in the image of God. But the interpretation of this image leads to important disagreements, and there is no neutral criterion to ascertain that a specific translation extracts the rational content of religious discourse and discards the particularistic religious layers of religious discourse. When discussing the problem of genetic engineering, and in particular the extent to which parents and physicians should be allowed to intervene into the genome of an embryo, Habermas makes reference to the question of translation of the

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biblical image of the human beings created in the image of God. For Habermas this reference is useful because, according to him, it was translated into a secular moral conviction that humans, unlike a transcendent creator, live in a condition of moral parity or equal dignity; this would lead to the prohibition of the intervention without consent into someone’s genetic constitution (Habermas 2003b: 114–115). In contrast to Habermas’ translation, a more “traditionalist” one (common in the public sphere in the US or in some of the European countries) rejects any form of genetic intervention whatsoever, including in cases of grave diseases: all intervention assumes a God-­like role and violates equal dignity. Habermas provides no intrinsic reason why any of these different translations is more adequate in extracting the right “seed” of moral truth.31 Moreover, the reasonableness of Habermas’ focus on the crucial importance of translation of the biblical image can be questioned as anthropocentric. From the perspective of animal rights, the translation of the topos of man’s creation in the image of God is likely to support the idea of the special standing of human beings, and thus a controversial notion of human speciesism; this reasonable interpretation of the religious discourse granting human beings a privileged status is at loggerheads with the extension of the notion of justice and rights to animals, and generates radical divisions among philosophers and citizens. There is, therefore, no compelling argument for assuming the convergence between religious and rational discourse. The significant differences between citizens and groups (be they religious or not) cannot be reconciled through translations generating reasons that fit all needs, experiences, and value preferences. Democratic practices are embedded in and interpreted based on a wide-­range of non-­reconciling worldviews that articulate different experiences and attitudes in front of life, suffering, evil, community, and cosmos. There is no discursive process of translation of religious reasons that can rank these views and attitudes in their entirety on a single hierarchical value scale (see also Chapter 9). It is thus hard to see how translations can or should aim towards reaching the “same perspective” being espoused by religious and non-­religious citizens. In effect, historical changes often emerge from struggles and contestations initially driven by minority and creative groups. By appealing to their moral and/or religious insights and values they produce a new imaginary and interpretation of the principles of justice and, in time, form a majority that triggers a shift in the existing democratic practice. Political arrangements between religious and secular groups reflect rather a dynamic of contestation, dialogue, and compromise. In sum, whereas this conception has the merit of pointing to the possibility of the interaction between moral-­religious worldviews and political imagination, the specific understanding of translation as underpinned by teleological premises is not persuasive. Habermas’ teleological image of public discourse envisions a linear progress whereby reason gradually converts the plurality of voices into the rational unity is inadequate to interpret the political importance of historical changes in public morality and imagination as well as the plurality of justifications and the disagreements amongst citizens.32 (ii) Habermas’ teleological and rationalistic approach to translations reflects an overall restrictive interpretation of the role of religion in democratic politics. Habermas assumes, in contrast to Rawls, that public justifications are built on secular reasons (2) and that religion should not be part of the formal public sphere (3).33 This exclusionary view with respect to religion is premised on a limited image of it. For Habermas,



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(t)he (political) parties can reach compromises because they all aspire to the same categories of divisible goods. Yet precisely this condition is no longer met as soon as the conflicts are no longer triggered by agreed-­upon basic goods, but by competing “goods of salvation”. Conflicts over existential values between communities of faith cannot be resolved by compromise. (Habermas 2008a: 135) Religious traditions, argues Habermas, justify the pursuit of these non-­divisible goods by appeal to a metaphysical and non-­fallibilistic mode of thinking that is incompatible with democratic forms of deliberation. But this “absolutist” representation of religion becomes questionable when it is generalized. Indeed, religions often trade in absolute truths that they immunize, protect, and sacralise through rituals, sacrifices, and institutionalized power mechanisms (see also Introduction). In this sense, religions are not mere comprehensive or metaphysical doctrines; they are embodied into particular communities of faith with their structures of power and authority. Yet Habermas’ understanding of religion in terms of “goods of salvation” and absolutist metaphysical thinking is rooted in a concern with the political history of monotheism in the West, and does not stand for the inner complexity and the variety of the religious phenomena. As Cooke notes, Habermas considers religious claims unfit for argumentative assessment because he assumes that they refer to a specific dogmatic community of authoritarian nature (Cooke 2013: 444). Nonetheless, religion neither unescapably trades into incommunicable absolutes nor necessarily articulates substantive moral values as inflexible dogmas that are not to be discussed or negotiated. Religions give expression to more than Habermas’ “existential values” and “goods of salvation” – such as the pursuit of eternal life by strict adherence to religious beliefs and precepts – that generally appeal to the members of the particular community of faith. The values of solidarity, dignity, hospitality, moral excellence, forgiveness, toleration, care for the others, and charity, are inherent to all world religions, and have an appeal that that goes beyond particular communities of faith. Advocating solidarity to the poor, hospitality towards immigrants and refugees, or care for the animals by way of religious discourse (reasons, narratives, parables, etc.) need neither appeal to the blind faith in dogmas nor be absolutist in nature nor, further, reject gradations and compromise depending on circumstances. In effect, all world religions contain rich traditions of discussion, reasoning, and controversy over the understanding and merits of all these values; and religious people do not necessarily hold beliefs as valid irrespective of their own capability to reason, judge, and reflect on them. Some religious traditions do not focus on absolute truths, salvation, and a supreme authority (Assmann 2009; see also Introduction), but can be civic and pluralistic in nature and/or centred on communal practice; they can, further, make a point of rejecting this focus on absolute truth and authority as misguided – an attitude suggested by the beautiful koan “When you meet the Buddha, kill him”.34 The “absolutist” and “salvationist” claims are, furthermore, not exclusive to religion or to some of their prominent forms. This is the case of some of the most influential secularist ideologies that have shaped modern politics, and that involve the abolishment of the individual judgement and the “fact of pluralism”: communism, populism, ethnic nationalism, and fascism. To exemplify: communism projects the proletarian class as absolute

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truth holder and the party as their mouthpiece and saviour; the party and its leaders free society from evil, unfreedom, and falsehood. In turn, populism and ethnic nationalism take the People as the absolute truth possessor and the charismatic leader as both its emanation and liberator from the corrupted elites. As a result, the line between anti-­democratic and democratic, absolutist and non-­absolutist discursive modes does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between the religious and the secular.35 The corollary of this critique of Habermas’ “absolutist” view of religion is that his principled exclusion of religious worldviews from the formal public sphere (3) is not entirely convincing. It is certainly true that “absolutist” religious or secular discourse is at odds with the democratic logic of openness, fallibility, and compromise. Habermas’ exclusivism that allows only for secular reasons in the formal public sphere is rooted in a specific European experience of the wars of religion in which religious-­political divisions undermine political order and lead to a “battle of gods and daemons”. But there are no a priori reasons for generalizing this experience and limit freedom of speech by eliminating religion from the formal public sphere (in particular from the political public sphere) regardless of context and type of religiosity. Religious discourse per se is no more divisive than the secular one. The fixation on the religious/non-­religious dichotomy rather than on authoritarian/non-­authoritarian or discriminatory/non-­discriminatory modes of public discourse may better support internal shifts within the citizens’ religious and secular views, as it may help citizens with religious worldviews who hold authoritarian views of truth and knowledge to see that religious faith is not necessarily dependent on such views, encouraging the kind of non-­authoritarian approach, not just to knowledge but also to ethics and politics. (Cooke 2007: 235, 2013) Habermas’ limited interpretation of religion also determines a narrow view of the communicative interactions between religion and democracy. Consider the example of a value transfer during the transition from post-­apartheid to democracy in South Africa. Under the influence of religious figures like Desmond Tutu – the president of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – values and practices incorporated and “codified” within the Christian tradition (forgiveness, confession, reconciliation) played a significant role in the complex process of the transition to a democratic regime (Tutu 1999). In this process, the requirements of penal justice were curtailed in favour of forgiveness, public confession, and reconciliation. However, the fact that these values and practices were severed from the appeal to the divinity of Christ or the normative reference to the Bible did not turn them into “pure reasons” obtained through deliberative translations à la Habermas. It is more adequate to describe such value transfers as embedded interpretations contributing to bringing about a solution nourished by Christian values and practices to a political problem rather than describing it as merely generating a secular political practice governed by rational norms. The Christian values and practices were creatively interpreted into a new context, they were not – in accordance to Habermas’ teleological view – “brought to reason” (or closer to reason) through translation (Taylor 2011a; Butler 2011). The interpretation in the South



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African context is based on an innovative and contested interpretation of a religious tradition posited in order to answer a political challenge in what Walter Benjamin called “now-­time”, i.e. a singular historical situation. The impact of this political move is not the result of consensus over a secularized value of reconciliation extracted from its context of practice. The “translation” is, rather, successful because it preserves the link between value and practice, including a distinct symbolic and ritual dimension of collective reconciliation inherited from the experience of the Christian religious community.36 The interaction between religious insights and secular discourse can take various forms: creative interpretation, inspiration, influence, acculturation, spiritual enlightenment, long-­term civilizational transformations that can shape different democratic experiences. Rational dialogue is, as Iris Marion Young points out, one of the relevant forms of communicative interaction: rhetoric, symbolic communication, and exemplary story­telling (Young 1997) can, in different ways, foster a democratic ethos of mutual exchange and tolerance. Notable examples, such as the impact of Martin Luther King’s speeches on the Civil Rights Movement, suggest that Habermas’ conception is too restrictive towards the variety of communicative interactions in the democratic struggles. The beliefs of the secular and religious citizens stem from the interplay between non-­argumentative and argumentative, non-­linguistic and linguistic forms of communicative interaction and experience. For Habermas, reasons offered in public justification need to be accessible to all citizens. But, as Cooke observes, meeting this condition of accessibility requires meaningful shifts in perception that are irreducible to “the force of the argument”. In some cases, these shifts “may depend on kinds of ‘world-­disclosure’ or ‘revelation’ that are non-­argumentative, in the sense that they do not happen within argumentation” (Cooke 2013: 448). When someone “is moved by the power of the words of a preacher” or goes through “an existentially significant experience such as the death of a loved one or a practice of attending church services for many years”, she undergoes a change in perception that is relevant to her assessment of what counts as a valid reason (Cooke 2013: 453–454). King managed to fight deeply ingrained prejudices that changed the imagination of Amer­ican society not by engaging in abstract academic arguments but, rather, by combining appeals to faith and emotions through the use of parables, symbols, and reasons, and through the example of his moral-­religious integrity. Without reference to a shared self-­understanding as “all of God’s children”, and without summoning his audience to believe in a higher truth, hope despite failure, and agency based on prior forgiveness, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech would not have managed to make Amer­icans take a new path that had once seemed impossible. Religious insights matter not because of the argumentative contents they may add to the deliberative process, but because of the transformation that they trigger in the conscience of citizens. Translation understood as an abstract-rational exercise empties out the significance of the non-­argumentative, non­linguistic, and embodied instances of interaction between “lived religion” and political activities.

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b  From the postsecular society to multiple paths to democratization How convincing is, then, Habermas’ vision of the postsecular society? Habermas regards Western countries, especially in Europe, as distinctively postsecular, but his descriptive account of postsecular societies has thin empirical-sociological support. In addition, the normative ideal of citizenship that is supposed to emerge from those societies is too demanding as it overtaxes the reflective capacities of individuals (i). Nonetheless, if severed from its rationalist premises and the ambition to articulate a grand vision of society, Habermas’ postsecular turn has significant merits: not only that it draws attention to the historical aspects of the constitution of the democratic discourse and is receptive to the fruitful interactions between religious and democratic life, but can be a valuable resource for theorizing democratization in a global perspective. Its focus on the interaction between religion and democracy opens up the possibility of comparative analyses of the contribution of religion to multiple paths to democracy (ii). (i) Habermas’ postsecular vision is centred on the image of the citizen-­translator who is meant to connect the lower and the upper part of the public sphere, the represented and the representatives. This presupposes a society where both religious and secular citizens have become accustomed to the persisting relevance of their counterparts, have learned to value their interlocutors’ views and have begun adjusting their political views to a postmetaphysical way of thinking that seeks rational dialogue over dogmatic confrontation. On this basis, believers adhering to a dogmatic view of religion and militant atheists that completely discard the relevance of religion must undergo a reassessment of their self-­understanding in order to become disposed to mutual learning and cooperative translation. In Habermas’ perspective, this requirement burdens the different parties in a fair way, since it is demands a self-­critical effort both from the religious and the secular citizens (5). If taken as a grand vision pointing to a new emerging trend in society, this postsecular vision has thin and questionable empirical-­sociological support. The maximalist interpretation of postsecularism lacks empirical backing: as different sociologists have emphasized, the theory of secularization has not lost its empirical relevance (see Introduction). In the European democracies – Habermas’ usual reference point –, the interest in religion has steadily decreased, even if there is a revival of interest for spiritual-­religious matters among the youth. Significant macro-­trends of secularization are detectable not only in Western Europe but also in the United States and in some Muslim countries (see Introduction). The current landscape is plural: the existing divisions between militant atheists, non-­ affiliated sceptics, dogmatic believers of different faiths, lukewarm churchgoers, and other groups are unlikely to become marginal any time soon. If anything, these divisions have become even more pronounced with the recent politicization of religion. The “cultural wars” have not receded; they have extended to various part of the globe, given the increased entanglement of religion with populism and nationalism (Walzer 2015; Juergensmeyer 1993; 2003). In particular, Habermas overlooks the importance of a specific religious group – the “traditionalists” – and their role in recent politics in various democracies from the US to India, Israel, Turkey, and Poland. In so doing, he runs “the risk of reducing the religious spectrum to two categories – the ‘highly self-­reflective theologian’



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or the ‘wholly incapable of such self-­reflection’, […] overlooking that group which appears most vocal in present-­day morality politics: the traditionalists” (Stoeckl 2016: 10). This group accepts, within limits, the pluralism of society and the democratic procedures of deliberation, but joins the task of “translation” with a strategic mindset and without a readiness to undergo a cognitive change (Hennig 2015). In the US, for instance, the result is that religious majoritarianism has imposed its particular values (e.g. homophobic values, as in the current attempts at adopting Religious Freedom Acts at the state level, see also Chapter 7). In societies marked by such contradictory trends and deep divisions, Habermas’ ideal of citizenship focused on self-­criticism and mutual recognition appears too demanding on citizens. Habermas’ rationalistic gesture of placing reflexive translation and deliberation at the core of the interaction between religious and non-­religious people overtaxes their rational capacities; as empirical research suggests, deliberation and argument are not the rule in democratic regimes (Sanders 1997). Habermas’ increased reflexivity is a demanding ideal that requires from many citizens a deep revision of their ordinary ways of reasoning. He admits that the requirement to base public justifications on non-­religious reasons is inevitably burdening for religious citizens, but this burden should be mentally and psychologically reasonable and shared with non-­religious persons. From this perspective, both Rawls’ duty of civility and Audi’s principle of secular rationale (Chapters 1 and 2.) unfairly demand that religious citizens make an effort that has no equivalent for their secular counterparts. To correct this, Habermas calls for sharing the burden of translation between believers and non-­believers: believers are more prone to accept this burden of translation once it is shared with non-­believers in a commonly cooperative effort. A more equal distribution of burden does not amount, however, to an overall less burdening requirement. Habermas’ conception is more demanding than the Rawlsian one when it comes to the large scale revision of cognitive and motivational resources it suggests.37 It is revealing that when it comes to the actors of translation, Habermas’ examples do not point to argument-­driven translations made by citizens or even elected officials, but rather to grand philosophical and theological reformulations – namely the complex passage from the vision of human beings being made in God’s image to the concept of universal dignity (Habermas 2008a: 110); or the “conceptual labour” of prominent intellectuals such as Bloch, Benjamin, Levinas, or Derrida (Habermas 2010b: 4, 2013: 645, 675).38 Habermas’ vision of a postsecular society has the merit of drawing attention to the possibility of the fruitful interaction between religion and politics, yet it remains short of citizens engaging in deliberative translations. Habermas’ view of the citizen-­translator fails to do the work intended by him: reconnecting citizenry to a debilitated democratic politics, and be the central nerve of an alternative reflexive democracy. (ii) In his genealogy of this reflexive postsecular society, Habermas mainly focuses on the Judeo-­Christian tradition and the specific from of secularization that affected the European societies (Habermas 1984; 2003a; 2008a; 2008b). Most recently, he has become more open to acknowledging that other religious traditions can play a role in the process of democratization. Habermas argues that citizens of non-­Western countries will be able to use their own cultural resources to enhance democratizing dynamics “if the religious consciousness in these countries also opens itself up to modernization from within” ­(Habermas 2008a: 311). At the institutional level, non-­Western countries should develop

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“functional equivalents for the European innovation of the separation of church and state” (Habermas 2008a: 311). In this sense, intercultural discourses about the foundations of a more just global order should be undertaken “under the symmetrical conditions of mutual perspective-­taking […]. The West is one participant among others, and all participants must be willing to be enlightened by others about their respective blind spots” (Habermas 2010b: 1). Habermas’ interactive conception of religion and democracy opens up the promising possibility of a pluralist approach that at once clarifies the normative principles regulating the relation between religion and democracy, and investigates into the multiple paths to democratization. However, Habermas’ acknowledgement of multiple paths to democratization has not been so far substantiated by a more contextual analysis of public reason and historical trajectories. Habermas’ account of the paths to democratization does not envisage the possibility of different institutional arrangements and boundaries between religious and democratic discourse as well as the informal and formal public spheres. He is thus at pains to clarify how different historical processes enter the formation of validity claims. He invokes Karl Jaspers’ conception of the Axial Age in which world religions emerged; the heritage of the world religions is deeply relevant for the development of reason and nowadays performs “the function of articulating an awareness of what is lacking or absent” (Habermas 2008a: 6). Yet Habermas has not analysed the diversification between civilizations and the ways in which the interaction between religion and politics are articulated.39 Alessandro Ferrara convincingly argues that “the urgency of drawing a cartography of ‘multiple modernities’ can be perceived only from a vantage point” that takes seriously how diverse genealogies articulate different democratic societies (Ferrara 2014: 140). Moral-­religious traditions can shape distinct democratic cultures: Catholic, Islamic, Confucian, Buddhist, or Hindu backgrounds “when and where they do prize pluralism, majority rule and the separation of powers, nonetheless inject in the spirit of democracy underlying their institutions an instinctive aversion to conflict and confrontation” (Ferrara 2014: 138). These religious traditions balance the relation between rights and duties and the individual and the community in different ways (Salvatore 2007). Alertness to the diversity of contexts entails a more nuanced analysis of the interaction between religion and democracy rooted in comparative studies in political theory, history, and sociology (Walzer 2015).40 Alternative histories of democratization reveal the different uses of religious discourse in political debate. In The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions, Michael Walzer (2015) argues – by means of a comparative analysis of Algeria, Israel, and India – how unfruitful it is to implement top-­down secularist solutions that attempt to evacuate religion from the political public sphere. Historically speaking, these secularist-­revolutionary attempts have led to religious counterrevolutions and the re-­emergence of fundamentalism. Thus, in countries with a history of secularist domination, accepting the use of religious language and the reference to exemplary religious practices in political discourse may be acceptable and even commendable. The exclusion of religious views from political discourse can have pernicious authoritarian implications in some genealogies of modern democracy and may lead to a backlash. The case of Tunisia displays a similar pattern. The ban of religious movements in North African countries has been justified by means of an emancipatory discourse:



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(a)lleging that if the Islamists were permitted to gain power through the ballot box they would put an end to democracy, the purported supporters of secularism justify for themselves the undermining of what they set forth to protect, and so justify the violation of every single human right. (Ghannouchi 2000: 105) Rachid Ghannouchi, an influential Tunisian politician and co-­founder of the Ennahda Movement, has defended his political engagement on a religious basis by arguing that secularist restrictions in North Africa have been historically anti-­democratic (Ghannouchi 2000). In this perspective, the road to democracy in Islamic countries need not depend on specific secularist principles, which are the result of a particular Western trajectory, but partly on Islamic values that can adequately support the fundamental principles of popular sovereignty, equality between citizens, and free elections on their own (Tamimi 2001: 118–122). Habermas’ postsecular view is, at its core, supportive of an open interaction between democracy and religion, public justifications and (non)religious worldviews; by envisioning porous borders and meaningful translations between religious and secular communities, it offers a valuable framework for understanding the role of religion in the democratization of non-­Western societies. Habermas’ recent opening to an analysis of the diversity of democratic routes is a promising approach in political philosophy. But his conception is still split between, on the one hand, the articulation of Kantian-­rationalist view of legitimacy and translation that is hostile to religious manifestations in the public sphere; on the other hand, the openness to translation and interaction. If severed from the Kantian legacy and the pronounced focus on the Western religious problematic, Habermas’ postsecular turn as bringing together the interest in the clarification of normative principles and the situatedness of communicative relations can be fruitful in analysing the contribution of religion in shaping different democratic experiences.

A (moderately) sceptical conclusion Habermas aims to challenge the standard model of secularization that suggested the inevitable withering away of religion in modernity and depicted religion as a relic of a past, at loggerheads with rationality, freedom, and emancipation (a view shared by the earlier Habermas). While the grand vision of a postsecular society is questionable on normative and empirical grounds, Habermas’ postsecular turn has different merits, and has generated a fruitful debate in political philosophy whose important goes beyond the (still) fashionable concept of “postsecularism”. First, Habermas has the merit of moving past the dichotomy between the secularization paradigm and the revival of political theology without rejecting their relevance. From his perspective, the “linear” tale of the decline of religion turns secularism blind to the processes of transformation of religion in modernity, the resurgence of (non)religious spirituality, and the interaction between public discourse and moral-­religious imagination. Second, Habermas’ focus on learning, deliberation, and translation offers a convincing alternative path to the one-­dimensional frame of the “culture wars” between religious and secular groups or the “clash of civilizations” between different religious worldviews. The concept of translation highlights how

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r­ eligious traditions can still offer crucial resources to public reason so that it can “keep awake, in the minds of secular subjects, an awareness of the violations of solidarity throughout the world, an awareness of what is missing, of what cries out to heaven” (Habermas 2010a: 19). Third, Habermas’ conception has the merit of opening up the path of an approach to religion and democracy that is sensitive to the specificity of contexts and the transformations determined by the global condition. His perspective provides an interactive and historicized view of the relationship between public reason and religion and underlines how self-­critical interactions can reflexively shift the epistemic and normative attitudes of both secular and religious citizens. Despite these merits, Habermas’ interpretation of postsecularism remains, to an important extent, a more inclusive form of Kantian secularism: his interlinked notions of reason, deliberation, and translation are dependent on a rhetoric of final reconciliation through a teleological process of rational discussion. Habermas’ translation proviso relies too much on the overtaxing of citizens’ rational capacities through argument in the public sphere; it also glosses over other possibilities of fruitful influence of spiritual-­ religious worldviews – e.g. creative interpretations, acculturation, ethical shifts, etc. The translation proviso is, further, over-­restrictive as it confines the expression of religious traditions and imagination to the informal public sphere and tends to reduce the variety of spiritual-­religious traditions to authoritarian versions centred on incommensurable “goods of salvation” (Habermas 2008a: 135; Cooke 2007). Habermas’ work on postsecularism is torn between different tendencies. When it comes to the public place of religious views, he aims to domesticate the cognitive and motivational resources of religion to fill the voids left into the democratic project by the historical processes of capitalist globalization and postmodern fragmentation. He still struggles to remain faithful to the spirit of his rationalistic theory of communicative action that is heavily indebted to the secularist narrative of the Enlightenment. As Harrington observes,  one might say that in its will to “include the other”, Habermas’ thinking about religion sometimes has a paradoxical tendency to perform the thing it most seeks to avoid, namely to exclude the other or to exclude otherness. […] Only when his thinking regains a commitment to expose itself to something more one-­sided, to something more dangerously particularistic, decisive or excessive […] only then, one might suggest, will it have a chance of acceding to the universality it so passionately desires. (Harrington 2007: 557) Habermas’ framework becomes more persuasive if it is severed from the image of politics centred on the unity of reason and the strict state neutrality, and it becomes more receptive to the plurality of historical contexts of democratization. Habermas’ model of democratic politics remains under the spell of Kant’s image of citizens as rational and impartial co-­legislators. Habermas cannot have it both ways: on the one hand, he opens public reason to the influence of differing worldviews through translations; on the other hand, the institutional translation proviso represents a “wall of separation” between a space of neutrality (the formal public sphere) and citizens’ worldviews. The existence of a diversity



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of forms of interpretative communication and exchange between religious and non-­ religious citizens is an important dimension of a pluralistic democracy, yet reducing this variety to rational argument and regarding cooperative translation through the use of reason as the central pillar of a future postsecular society is an intellectualist projection. A final remark: there is an unfortunate ceasura between Habermas’ postsecularism and his earlier post-­Marxist approach to religion in the tradition of Critical Theory. Habermas’ passage to postsecularism comes with the cost of giving up the radically critical ethos of the Enlightenment that informed his earlier analysis of the dogmatic and ideological function of religion. His secularist criticism of religion as ideology was reductionist, but had the merit of thematizing the link between religion, power, and ideology. This thematization gets lost in Habermas’ treatment of religion as a worldview or conception of the good.41 It is, for instance, significant that by focusing exclusively on the public sphere and its internal differentiations, Habermas glosses over one of the most crucial issues involving religion – the question of power and domination in the domestic and social public sphere. Yet – as feminists and republicans have rightly insisted, religion permeates the domestic and the social public sphere – the place where individuals acquire their basic moral-­cognitive reflexes and where relationships of structural domination and marginalization often have their deep roots (Shachar 2004; Phillips 2007; Chapter 7). By drawing from multiple insights that, at different times, Habermas has articulated, political philosophy needs to give equal weight to the reconciliatory and critical moments of reason, one that not only displays an interest in highlighting the prospects for consensus and mutual understanding but is also attentive to the ways that consensus and mutual understanding can prove illusory, or harden when embedded in the legal form, deadening communication and masking disagreement. (Hedrick 2010: 194) The critique of power and domination mechanisms needs to remain one of the central focuses of a renewed Critical Theory of religion and politics; it should not be so quickly abandoned as a trait of old-­fashioned secularism.

Notes   1 Veit Bader rejects postsecularism as a mere academic vogue (Bader 2012). Bader might be right about the term itself, which has been ambiguously used in a variety of contexts, yet it is implausible that the idea of a positive interaction through dialogue and interpretation will lose relevance any time soon. For a brief qualified defence and a typology of postsecular outlooks, see Ungureanu and Thomassen (2015) and Ungureanu (2016). For a good bibliography on Habermas, see www.habermasforum.dk/.   2 With respect to religion, Habermas advocates another form of methodological restraint in claiming that he deals with philosophical and not theological issues (e.g. the question of the existence of God and other matters of faith).   3 Habermas shares this trait with Rawls: for both of them religious and non-­religious people can reach reconciliation through public reason.   4 It is also worth signalling Habermas’ autobiographical reflections in his “Kyoto address” (Habermas 2008a). Therein, Habermas admits that his fixation on communication and communicative reason could be related to the suffering he endured at a very young age due to a physical impairment that made him unable to communicate normally.

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  5 His debate with Rawls is, in many ways, a “family quarrel” between two neo-­Kantian philosophers.   6 In philosophy and the social sciences, Critical Theory designates a tradition of inquiry inaugurated and developed by intellectuals such as M. Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, W. Benjamin, H. Marcuse, J. Habermas, and A. Honneth. Sometimes known as the Frankfurt School, this group drew on various sources (Marxism, psychoanalysis, social sciences, etc.) so as to pursue different lines of research substantially engaged with the exposition of forms of domination hidden in the structure of modern societies; these researches aimed at supporting, from a theoretical perspective, processes of political liberation and democratization. In recent decades, Critical Theory has gradually become independent from its context of origin and, in general, the term indicates a method of investigation that “provides the descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry aimed at decreasing domination and increasing freedom in all their forms” (Bohman 2016; see also Thomassen 2008 for a more detailed analysis of the relation between the Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School).   7 In his earlier writings, Habermas speaks of reconstructive science: “Reconstructive procedures are not characteristic of sciences that develop nomological hypotheses about domains of observable events; rather, these procedures are characteristic of sciences that systematically reconstruct the intuitive knowledge of competent subjects” (Habermas 1979: 9, emphasis in the original). However, since at least Between Facts and Norms (1996), Habermas has toned down his scientific claims, and speaks of a reconstructive approach that combines philosophy and the human sciences so as to theorize about democracy (for Habermas’ comparison between his reconstructive approach and Rawls’ reflective equilibrium, see Habermas 1996: 59–66). One of Habermas’ methodological objections against Rawls is the inability of political constructivism to integrate normative political theorizing and social science research.   8 For an excellent analysis of the relation between language and reason in Habermas, see Cooke (1994).   9 Communicative action does not necessarily involve human language (blowing a kiss can communicate something, but not through language). It remains, however, that for Habermas the paradigmatic cases of communicative actions are linguistically mediated – i.e. speech acts. Therefore, all speech acts are communicative actions, but not all communicative actions are speech acts. Deliberation involves the giving and taking of reasons that help elucidate and institutionalize (through formal and informal procedures) validity claims. However, this marginalizes the political significance of “more explicitly situated, imaginative, inflected forms of political communication” (Young 2000: 64) that do not fit the ideal of deliberation based on rigorous argumentative exchange. 10 For a more recent development of Habermas’ pragmatics, see his dialogue with Robert Brandom and Donald Davidson in Truth and Justification (Habermas 2003a). 11 Habermas draws on J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts in his How to Do Things with Words (Austin 1975). Habermas proposes a universalist approach that eludes the “conservative” implications of Austin’s pragmatic turn in explaining meaning in terms of existing linguistic conventions. For a brief comparison with an alternative non-­conventionalist reappropriation of Austin’s theory of speech acts with different consequences for the question of discourse and religion, see Chapter 8. 12 Examples include: “I love you” (expressing the inner world); “It is bad to lie to her” (relating to and generating the social world); “The sea is green today” (representing the natural world). 13 In more recent writings, Habermas has historicized his understanding of rationality (Habermas 2013). 14 In Habermas’ view, the immanent transcendence involves a permanent tension between facticity and validity – that is between its factual generation, administration, and enforcement in social institutions on the one hand and claims that deserve general or universal agreement on the other. 15 It is important to emphasize the political intent of Habermas’ project. Providing a rational anchoring of democratic politics contributes to the avoidance of debacles that plagued political modernity. 16 Habermas’ discourse ethics is based on two principles – the principle of universalization and the discourse principle – that are reinterpretations of Kant’s notion of categorical imperative. 17 Habermas discusses the



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integral role that religion plays – i.e. its “seat” – in the life of a person of faith. A devout person conducts her daily existence on the basis of her faith. Genuine faith is not merely a doctrine, something believed, but is also a source of energy that the person of faith taps into performatively to nurture her whole life. However, this totalizing trait of a form of faith that permeates the very pores of daily life resists, so the objection goes, any nimble switchover of religiously rooted political convictions onto a different cognitive basis: It belongs to the religious convictions of a good many religious people in our society that they ought to base their decisions concerning fundamental issues of justice on their religious convictions. (Habermas 2008a: 121) 18 In 2004 Habermas met with Joseph Ratzinger (cardinal and future pope) at the Catholic Academia of Bavaria to debate about the prepolitical conditions of a free state. Habermas and Ratzinger agree that politics is autonomous and that reason and faith are not opposed, but reconcilable. For both, religion can indirectly influence the democratic process by supporting moral values and taming capitalism. Not unlike Habermas, Ratzinger also speaks of translations from religious language into secular language. The dialogue between reason and faith (as well as inter-­faith dialogue) has, for both thinkers, an instrumental role in fostering peace, mutual understanding and learning (for a discussion of the differences between Habermas’ postsecularism and Raztinger’s political theology, see Ungureanu 2015). 19 In addition, the fundamental tenets of constitutional democracy are entirely justifiable on philosophical-­secular grounds; at this juncture, Habermas takes issue with Ernst-­Wolfgang Böckenförde, former judge in the German Constitutional Court, who argues that “the liberal, secularized state is nourished by presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee” (Böckenförde 1991: 45; see also Gordon 2013). 20 One of the relevant questions in this regard arises when candidates in an election campaign confess or indicate that they are religious persons: is the use of religious discourse legitimate? (On this issue, see also Michael Sandel’s (2010) reflection on the changes from Kennedy to Obama; see Chapter 4). For Habermas, The principle of separation of church and state certainly extends to the platform, the manifesto, or the “line” that political parties and their candidates promise to realize. Electoral decisions that are driven by personality issues instead of programmatic ones are in any case problematic from a normative perspective. It becomes even more problematic when the voters take their cue from candidates’ religious self-­presentations. (Habermas 2008a: 143; see Chapter 2) 21 Habermas states clearly that the dominating influence of a secularist view in the democratic process is as incompatible with the principle of state neutrality as the influence of religious establishments would be: “The neutrality of state power vis-­à-vis different worldviews, which guarantees equal individual liberties for all citizens, is incompatible with the political generalization of a secularized worldview” (Habermas 2008a: 113). The affaire du foulard in France is seen by Habermas as a major example of this secularist violation of neutrality (Habermas 2008a: 266; see Chapters 4 and 7). 22 Habermas further explains that since religious controversies cannot be solved through political compromise, they should be depoliticized and contained within shared normative boundaries: The competition between worldviews and religious doctrines that claim to explain human beings’ position in the world as a whole cannot be resolved at the cognitive level. As soon as these cognitive dissonances penetrate the foundations of the normative regulation of the social interactions of citizens, the political community fragments into irreconcilable religious and ideological segments based on a precarious modus vivendi. In the absence of the uniting bond of a legally unenforceable civic solidarity, citizens do not regard themselves as free and equal participants in the shared practices of democratic opinion- and will-­formation in which they owe one another reasons for their political stances. This reciprocity of expectations among citizens is what sets a liberal polity integrated by a constitution apart from a community segmented along the divisions between competing worldviews. (Habermas 2008a: 135–136)

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The reciprocity argument is one of the elements that bring together Rawls and Habermas’ views of public reason (see Chapter 1). Consider the dogma and mystery of Trinity, which is deemed not fully intelligible even for Christians. Habermas is also critical of Audi’s principles of secular rationale and motivation (see Chapter 2).  Habermas’ perspective grants a status of epistemic parity to secular and religious citizens engaged in public deliberation. In Rawls’ or Audi’s interpretations of public reason, the absence of translation as a medium between secular and religious reasons renders epistemic parity more problematic, since a relevant subset of the reasons held by religious citizens has an irredeemably inferior justificatory power. See Monti (2013). For religious people, it “calls for the epistemic ability to consider one’s own religious convictions reflexively from the outside and to connect them with secular views” (Habermas 2008a: 130). On this account, Habermas is not that far from Audi’s notion of a “theo-­ethical equilibrium”, which implies that religious citizens should establish a reflective balance between their religious and their secular moral beliefs and attitudes (Audi 2011: 22; see Chapter 2). As Habermas remarks: Solidarity religions that have their roots in this period made the cognitive leap from mythical narratives to alogos that differentiates between essence and appearance in a very similar way to Greek philosophy. Since the Council of Nicaea, philosophy also took on board and assimilated many motifs and concepts, especially those associated with salvation, from monotheistic traditions in the course of a Hellenization of Christianity. The complex web of inheritance cannot be disentangled solely along the lines of a history of being, as Heidegger claimed. Greek concepts such as “autonomy” and “individuality,” or Roman concepts such as “emancipation” and “solidarity,” have long since been invested with meanings of Judeo-­Christian origin. Philosophy has repeatedly learned through its encounters with religious traditions – and also, of course, with Muslim traditions – that it receives innovative impulses when it succeeds in freeing cognitive contents from their dogmatic encapsulation in the crucible of rational discourse. (Habermas 2008a: 142)

28 Derrida was the first to advance this type of argument in his early critique of Husserl’s metaphysics of presence (Derrida 1973). For more details on Habermas’ reworking of the notion of idealizations, see Habermas (2003a: Chapters 4–5, 1998b: 418–419). (Note that Rawls’ concept of reciprocity does not have a similar implication. Even at the ideal level Rawls accepts differences between different stands based on political values.) 29 Habermas acknowledges the paradox in his more recent work Truth and Justification (Habermas 2003a). In order to avoid it, he suggests that the pragmatic idealizations should no longer be understood as referring to an end-­state, but to the conditions of deliberation (see (Habermas 2003a: 257–258). Nonetheless, Habermas does not further pursue the distinction between condition and end, which would have entailed a profound change of his concept of reason. In effect, in Truth and Justification and his subsequent writings, he keeps advancing the concept of a communicative reason characterized by the same idealizations which ostensibly refer not to conditions of deliberation, but to an end-­state; the ideal consensus over the single right answer remains the “logical” telos of deliberation and translation. That the same conceptual teleological framework guides his understanding of translation can be seen from his recent writings on religion. For instance, in Between Naturalism and Religion (2008a), Habermas argues as follows: For whether the liberal response to religious pluralism can be accepted by the citizens themselves as the single right answer depends not least on whether secular and religious citizens, from their respective points of view, are prepared to accept an interpretation of the relationship between faith and knowledge that first makes it possible for them to treat one another in a self-­reflexive manner in the political arena. (Habermas 2008a: 147) 30 Habermas’ earlier post-­Marxist theory aims to get to the roots of religious experience in order to retrieve its moral truth. In contrast, in his later writings, Habermas admits that the roots of the religious experience and imagination are inscrutable and opaque. This is in the sense that



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religious creativity – on a par with the artistic one – cannot be analysed or codified by way of concepts provided by reason. The scope of reason and philosophy becomes thus substantially limited: religion “can be at best circumscribed, but not penetrated, by philosophical reflection” (Habermas 2008a: 143). Even on Habermas’ premises, it is unclear the convergence is possible given the “inscrutable” roots of religious and artistic imagination. Habermas claims, moreover, that to understand the result of this translation one does not have to believe in theological premises (Habermas 2003b: 115). But why is it relevant for non-­religious citizens to reflect on the difference between the dependence on the Creator and the dependence on other human beings? Even if we admit that the concepts at stake can be grasped regardless of personal religious commitments, the significance of the image for one’s self-­understanding as a human being is related to the validity of its premises. The insights communicated by the image may not be strictly dependent on a specific doctrinal apparatus, but the image is normatively relevant if one believes that it indeed grasps something important about the ontology of human beings. The significance of religious meanings and images for human agency and self-­reflection can be interpreted into a non-­religious idiom, but much of their relevance may thereby get lost by severing their constitutive link to metaphysical assumptions, like the existence of God, that are methodologically excluded from the matters at stake in the deliberative effort (Cooke 2006a; Baumeister 2011: 228–230; Junker-­Kenny 2014: 181–182). As Chambers points out, “the power of religious language is not due to our level of historical/cultural development, but rather to something about the way we experience the world” (Chambers 2007: 219–220). Habermas’ focus on the citizens’ aspiration towards the “the same perspective” underpins the idea of a unitary legal order applied homogeneously. But in the democratic arena, the claims of recognition neither point at nor aim at the ideal of rational unity but at the accommodation of difference through adjustments, exemptions, legal pluralist regulations, and other mechanisms. The participation of different religious and non-­religious citizens and groups in the struggle for power and legitimacy can lead to the establishment of legal-­pluralistic arrangements (Croce 2015); this is the case of India, the largest existing democracy. For Rawls, public reason is neither secular nor religious; moreover, the believers can manifest their religious views in the formal public sphere as long as they provide public justifications “in due course” (see Chapter 1). This is not to argue that Habermas’ concern with the conflict and divisions related to religious absolutist and authoritarian claims is not valid: in particular when absolutist claims are interwoven with struggles for political power and authority, they block the democratic game of open and fallible conversation and compromise. Yet the political instrumentalization and radicalization of religion comes both at the expense of democratic practice and the inner pluralism of religious cultures and traditions, and their support for toleration and dialogue among believers of different stripes, as well as between believers and non-­believers. In the same line, Maeve Cooke argues:  [t]here is no conflict in principle between non-­authoritarian reasoning and an orientation towards some ‘otherworldly’, transcendent source of validity (for example, God or the good). […] In short, non-­authoritarian citizenship is independent of postmetaphysical thinking or metaphysical and religious belief. (Cooke 2007: 235; see also Cooke 2013)

36 It is noteworthy that this experience of translation and interpretation did not result in consensus. Despite the vast support it received, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was met with a fair share of criticism. Several commentators pointed out that whereas the ideals of pacification and reconciliation found a powerful implementation, the same cannot be said when it comes to justice and retribution for past offences (see Norval 1998; Wilson 2001; Comaroff 2005). 37 On this account, Habermas states: “I do not believe that secular citizens can learn anything from fundamentalist doctrines that cannot cope with the fact of pluralism, with the public authority of the sciences, and with the egalitarianism of our constitutional principles” (Habermas 2010b: 9–10). 38 Habermas acknowledges that this outcome can be difficult to integrate into ordinary discursive exchanges: This is why the terrain bordering on religion is mainly reserved for the writers among the philosophers, like Benjamin and Derrida. They develop innovative concepts and leave

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their contemporaries in the dark as to how suitable they are for discursive purposes. An interesting case in point is the figure of the “other” that Levinas uses to introduce an asymmetry into the relation between ego and alter. (Habermas 2013: 645) 39 There is no lack of attempts to reinterpret the concepts of postsecularism and translation beyond Habermas so as to apply them the realm of global politics and international relations. Among others, it is worth mentioning Mariano Barbato’s translation of the Catholic idea of pilgrimage as a model for reinterpreting the concepts of self, agency, and community in a global perspective (Barbato 2013), as well as Gregorio Bettiza’s and Filippo Dionigi’s analysis of the actions of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation at the United Nations as an example of successful and failed translations of religious norms into international institutions (Bettiza and Dionigi 2014). 40 By acknowledging the diversity of historical genealogies of democracy, Cooke draws the conclusion that one should drop the notion of a strict religious neutrality of the state to account for “the increased migration to the West of religious believers, for whom the Western experience of secularization as a historical achievement is remote or even alien” (Cooke 2007: 234). The respect of the “political autonomy” of these citizens could justify their use of religious reasons in formal settings, provided that their reasoning is non-­authoritarian and acknowledges “the essential contestability of claims to truth and rightness” (ibid.). 41 There is an instructive tension in Habermas’ perception of religion: on one hand, there is a restrictive view of religion (as authoritarian and based on incommensurable goods of salvation) and on the other, an idealist view of religion as a worldview that has a disclosing function on par with art.

4

REPUBLICANISM Between non-­domination, the common good, and civil religion

Introduction: the renewal and diversity of republican thinking Starting in the 1960s, interest in republicanism as political philosophy underwent a significant revival. Republican discourse has been a constant and enriching presence in the theoretical and, to a limited extent, in the political debates. The initial renewal of republican political thought in the 1960s was largely linked to the Amer­ican search for identity, as well as to criticism of the negative consequences that individualistic liberalism produces (Haakonssen 2007). A crucial impetus for the republican revival came from the field of historical research (Pocock 2009; Skinner 1983, 1984, 2012a; Van Gelderen and Skinner 2002). Historians have painted a diverse landscape of the republican traditions (Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Mexican, etc.) and claimed to unearth the forgotten treasures of a tradition of “liberty before liberalism” (Skinner 2012a, 2012b) – namely, the neo-­Roman conception of liberty as non-­domination perceived as useful in tackling the present democratic malaises. The strength and the continuous relevance of republicanism are to be understood against the background of a more generalized and structural crisis of citizens’ disaffection in current democracy (Crouch 2004).1 Republicans have argued that the liberal conception – focused on individual rights, markets, and freedom as non-­interference – contributed to the democratic crisis (Arendt 2006; Skinner 2012a). Because liberalism severs the individual from the actual exercise of collective self-­rule and overlooks the communal dimension of freedom, it is deemed ill-suited to provide an adequate solution to the phenomenon of disaffection and the centralization of economic and political power. Republicans emphasize a politics tuned to the cultivation of the public spirit and the education of citizens motivated to participate in collective self-­rule, the pursuit of the common good, and the counteracting of domination (Sandel 1996; Pettit 1997). Republicans have thus sought to have an impact on public debate by designing policies that thwart domination and foster public spirit and participation in matters of common concern (Braithwaite and Pettit 1990; Martí and Pettit 2010). Republicans have approached the question of religion from the perspective of their basic concerns: what is the role of religion in the pursuit of the common good (res publica)? What is the relation between religion in fostering non-­domination and freedom as a collective practice? In the history of Western political thought, Roman republicans took for granted that religion represented a key element of a good republic. This common belief was related

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to the fact that the Roman religion, like the Greek one, was largely civil (see below, Section 3). However, in contrast to the civil religion of antiquity, Christianity introduced a split between the earthly matters and salvation, collective self-­rule and divine sovereignty: by giving primacy to salvation over worldly matters, Christianity generated contrasting reactions within the republican tradition that have lasted up until today. Depending on how different traditions have interwoven religion and politics, there emerged major divisions between the French, Amer­ican, Dutch, Turkish, and other republican traditions (Pettit 2005). At one end of the spectrum, in the federalist and decentralized vision of the Amer­ican republic, reason and faith went together (Beiner 2011; Smith 2014). The Founding Fathers incorporated elements from both the liberal and the republican tradition, and aspired to achieve a synthesis between natural rights and God, Enlightenment and Protestantism. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in France, the new republic engendered during the 1789 Revolution clashed with the hegemony of the Catholic Church; it is this confrontation that led to a conflictive relation between the new republican state and organized religion that still resonates today, in particular in dealing with Islam (Asad 2003; Gauchet 1998). The leading figures of the contemporary republican revival have largely ignored religion until recently (Pocock 2009; Skinner: 1983, 1984; Pettit 1993; Viroli 2001); yet in the current context republican thinkers have increasingly turned the place of religion in a democracy shaped by the republican principles. Religion has become one of the most divisive issues for contemporary republicanism. This division within republicanism concerning religion is, to an important extent, rooted in a cleavage regarding the essentials of the republican project itself. At one extreme, an influential version of laicist republicanism exalts la république and the virtuous citoyen stripped of its cultural-­religious particularities. More moderately, the republicanism of non-­domination tends to accept and grant recognition to the religious manifestations in the public sphere, yet it is sceptical and critical of religion as enhancing relations of domination (Pettit 1997; Lovett 2010a, 2010b). At the other extreme, “communitarian” republicanism tends to grant a more positive to religion, as it is grants more importance to community and the question of the common good (Sandel 1996); alternatively, republicans like Maurizio Viroli argue that a free republic is unfeas­ible “without a god”; he champions the idea of a “civil religion” as theorized by Machiavelli (Viroli 2010: 237). In this chapter we deal with three main versions of contemporary republicanism centred, respectively, on non-­domination, common good, and civil religion, with a focus on some of their key representatives. First, we look into the “thinner” and most influential version of republican political theory centred on non-­domination (Pettit 2012; Laborde 2008; Lovett 2010a) (1). Then, we examine two “thicker” versions of republicanism that grant a more significant role to religion – namely, the republicanism of the good (Sandel 1996) (2); and the republicanism of civil religion (Viroli 2010) (3).

1  Republicanism of non-­domination Isaiah Berlin’s take on negative and positive freedom (1969), and his defence of the former as freedom from interference captured an important trend in the liberal tradition.2 According to this liberal trend, the individual is free to the degree to which nobody



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interferes with her expressions and actions. From a normative standpoint, this form of freedom is to be protected against external coercion as long as it does not inflict harm on others. State coercion is legitimate only to the extent that it protects the individual’s pursuit of her good under the umbrella of individual rights. For the republicanism of non-­domination, this influential liberal defence of freedom as non-­interference is insufficient. One can be under no immediate coercion and still be subject to forms of external mastery; likewise, one can be formally free to pursue any goal in life yet be deprived of the cultural, economic, and political conditions that enable such a pursuit in the first place. Consider the common situation when a minority that does not suffer from actual interference is socially stigmatized (e.g. Muslims in Europe today, Asad 2003; Göle 1997); or a situation in which individual economic freedom is not interfered with, yet the economy is dominated by one corporate conglomerate. Such situations cannot be reasonably seen as a condition of liberty, since they are characterized by domination and dependence. Hence various republican thinkers have posited the necessity of developing a more ambitious idea of freedom as non-­domination; this negative idea of freedom has acquired a historical pedigree: according to Quentin Skinner (2012a), freedom as non-­domination is developed in the Roman period, and thus antedates liberalism. From this perspective, the central goal of political activity is the active pursuit of conditions of independence, and the place of religion in a democracy is evaluated in relation to the issue of non-­domination.

a  The idea of freedom as non-­domination (P. Pettit) The non-­domination approach (NDA) articulates a conception of freedom as absence of external mastery. According to this viewpoint, to be free from domination is to be independent from the arbitrary influence of individuals, groups, or institutions. The republican ideal of non-­domination is negative “to the extent that it requires the absence of domination by others, not necessarily the presence of self-­mastery” (Pettit 1997: 51). Similar to the liberal account centred on non-­interference, the NDA values people’s individual power of choice, but it rejects the idea that freedom is limited only because of occurring interferences. As a result, a free society properly conceived calls for the active obstruction of the power of arbitrary interference by other citizens and groups (dominium) or by the state itself (imperium) (Pettit 1997: 11). To underline this weakness of the non-­interference approach, Pettit argues that a benevolent master who refrains from interfering with the conduct of the slave appears, for the liberalism of non-­interference, blameless.3 The case of benevolent master is meant to show that the republican commitment to liberty is not about the freedom to pursue a specific course of action, or even about the actual availability of all courses of action; it is about freedom not depending on the arbitrary will of anybody. Not only must all available doors be open, it must also be the case that there is no doorkeeper who can shut, jam, or conceal doors at will (Pettit 2011: 709). A second front of disagreement between republicans and liberals is the institutional balance between the enforcement of the principles of justice and the inclusiveness of the political society. In this regard, Pettit argues that Rawlsian liberalism, while being concerned with the legitimacy of non-­arbitrary political power and the fairness of the terms of

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cooperation, is in need of two different justifications for them. The difficulty of Rawls’ approach is that this duality of the justificatory resources opens the way to the twofold risk of grounding either a socially just but dominating government, or a legitimate but unfair state. Conceptualizing freedom as non-­domination offers instead a common measure to the Rawlsian test of contractual eligibility and civic justifiability. Pettit acknowledges that a republican theory of justice based on the NDA overlaps with Rawls’ in many of its policies; yet he underlines the secondary role that procedural liberties like the freedom to vote or to stand for office play in justice as fairness. The NDA gives, further, a major weight to the problem of a despotic state and a socially unjust regime, and regards popular control as an answer to both (Pettit 2012: 185–186). The interference of different actors in the life of citizens is unavoidable, but it is essential that they retain ultimate control over their choices. The role of citizenry is more prominent than it is in the liberal outlook, and the goal of this engagement at different levels (including religion) is neither a specific conception of justice (Rawls) nor one of an overarching common good (Nussbaum 2000, 2002; see Chapter 7), but challenging relational and systematic regimes of domination (Azmanova 2016). Based on this conception of freedom as non-­domination, Pettit articulates a republican model of democracy focused on three constitutive elements: (i) the rule of law, (ii) civic participation, and (iii) the institutional protection of liberty. (i) The laws of the republic are to protect citizens from the risk of being subject to dominium, shielding them from the arbitrary power of fellow citizens, religious institutions, corporations, and parties. Just laws are thus freedom’s condition of possibility but, by actively eradicating instances of domination, they are also inevitably a source of interference, most notably in the form of coercion over the agency of citizens. On the republican view, this non-­arbitrary interference does not count as a constraint on freedom. (ii) Non-­domination is, as noted, a negative account of political freedom and, in this sense, it rejects a portrayal of political activity as a pursuit of the common good. In contrast, non-­domination aims to establish the conditions for every citizen to pursue her own good. Nonetheless, the exercise of civic virtue, or civility, is required so that laws be respected and justly developed. Citizens are to respect the law for its own sake, to actively express their own political claims, and to exert vigilance over the concentration of power in the hands of the few. A lack of civility renders democracy vulnerable to the influence of powerful interest groups and thus to regimes of domination (Pettit 1997: 246–248). (iii) In the NDA, the republican state is a necessary guarantee for realizing freedom, and not only a political entity the citizens happen to be subject to. Institutional and legal boundaries define freedom4 as a stable condition in a way that virtues alone cannot. A legal and political framework that protects citizens against unchecked power adopts some institutional strategies that limit the discretionary exercises of power, like the separation of powers and the accountability of elected officials who must ultimately respond to their fellow citizens for their choices (Lovett and Pettit 2009; Honohan 2013). Taken together, the rule of law and other institutional mechanisms inhibit the degeneration of the interference of the state into the arbitrary nature of imperium (Pettit 1997: 36–37). Non-­domination is thus both a value that the republican state promotes and a constraint on how it can pursue other goals like peace or economic development (Pettit 1997: 97). The republic and its citizens are also mutually implicated: in order to be free from dominion the republican state is a necessary condition, whereas the nourishment of



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civic virtue is a necessary condition to safeguard against the state’s exertion of arbitrary imperium (Pettit 2012: 180–184). The ideal of a free citizen is a unifying element in the life of the republic, presiding over the legitimacy of state coercion and the pursuit of social justice. Arrangements between citizens are just when designed to promote people’s equal enjoyment of freedom as non-­domination (Pettit 2012: 123). On account of these fundamental premises, the NDA develops in different directions, which vary on account of the scope of the concept of domination and of the design of political institutions. The nature of arbitrary power can be construed by looking at the intentional agency of individual or groups, as Pettit does through the concept of domination as invasion in one’s freedom of choice (Pettit 2012: 44–67). This view captures the traditional case of the relationship between master and servant, but also the institutional problem of the relationship between established churches and religious minorities. However, structural arbitrary interferences in one’s freedom do not always have clearly defined perpetrators. Freedom can be subject to the power of social structures or to unintended consequences of human behaviour, such as in the case of financial markets or the effects of climate change. Global religions, with their far-­reaching influence on culture and morality, fall into this category as well. As Cécile Laborde suggests, it is necessary to take domination as referring “not only to interpersonal relationships but to basic, systemic power structures” (Laborde 2010: 54). To clarify this dimension of injustice, Albena Azmanova (2016) distinguishes between “relational” and “systemic” forms of domination. The former is engendered by the asymmetrical distribution of power among actors within a given social system, incurring inequalities and exclusion. The latter is a matter of the subjection of all to the imperatives of the system of social relations they inhabit. While relational domination is countered by means of equalization of material and ideational resources, remedying systemic domination demands social reform beyond equality and inclusion – that is, altering the parameters of public institutions and political economy so as to enable democracy as collective authorship of the basic social structure. Viewed in the perspective of relational domination, religion becomes relevant as a problem of granting equal presence in public life; viewed in the perspective of systemic domination, religion becomes cogent to the extent it enables or hampers a process of collective self-­authorship. This approach broadens the scope of the NDA but also extends the problem of institutional design beyond the nation­state, which is Pettit’s focus. Under conditions of globalization, “freedom from tyranny and domination cannot be achieved without extending our political ideals of democracy, community and membership” (Bohman 2004: 352). The interconnection and interdependence of power relationships in a global world suggest that the interlocutors of the NDA should be the organized forces of global civil society and a cosmopolitan model of citizenship.5 Across its different versions, the NDA sheds new light on our understanding of law, citizenship, and institutional design. From our perspective, by moving beyond non-­ interference, republican thinkers offer an insightful alternative to the liberalism of non-­ interference when facing the major challenges associated with the building of a free society. In particular, they convincingly address the problem of power asymmetries and the balance between justice and inclusiveness. First, the NDA gives central importance to the informal aspect of unfair power asymmetries. The political focus goes beyond the

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public sphere, to include the problem of freedom inside families and communities. Likewise, the rule of law has a broader scope, as it has the role of actively discouraging forms of diffused domination. In addition, the idea of civility encompasses the engagement of citizens to control any arbitrary exercise of power. This puts the spotlight on the ethical and political significance of social interdependence: citizens depend on each other for their freedom but also need to be guarded from mutual dependency.6 Iris Marion Young convincingly argues that the non-­interference approach fails to articulate how the lack of self-­determination is not rooted in interference itself, but in how interference affects the balance of power between subjects:  A non-­interference model assumes that autonomous units can be and are properly separate and need have no interaction other than that into which they voluntarily enter. However, in fact, the world’s peoples are often geographically mixed, or dwell in close proximity to one another, within physical and social environments that jointly affect them. […] Some of the weaker units may be vulnerable to domination by more powerful units not because they directly interfere, but because they determine conditions under which the weaker party is forced to act. (Young 2005: 4)

b  Non-­domination and religious toleration (F. Lovett and I. Honohan) Religion poses a challenge to the capacity of the NDA to address conditions of power asymmetry. Consider the conflicts between existing religious practices and the principles of justice that go from merely limiting to the outright prohibition of these practices (Lovett 2010b; Honohan 2013). Whether teachers or pupils can wear headscarves at school, or whether motorcyclists can wear Sikh turbans are typical instances of this conflict. In the light of the NDA, republican authors assess the restriction (or accommodation) of religious practices differently from liberals. From the republican perspective, there is a twofold risk connected to unfair power imbalances: allowing domination or exerting imperium. Consider the case of religious symbols such as headscarves; by permitting the practice, the state risks the possibility of allowing the domination of women. But the state is also at risk of exerting a form of imperium by prohibiting the display of religious symbols in order to preserve the neutrality of public spaces against the influence of religious groups. Addressing both these threats is, for republican authors, essential to achieve a balance between justice and inclusiveness: a just and inclusive society is to defend the citizens from domination while also protecting minority groups from being unfairly burdened by majoritarian norms. By showing more sensitivity to these opposed dangers, the NDA is more ready to take on this challenge than the liberalism of non-­interference; as a result, it advocates political actions aimed at reducing unfair power imbalances. This applies even when such power imbalances emerge between parties that consensually join dominating practices. Patriarchal models of subjugation, in fact, are transmitted through cultural narratives and traditional practices, even when there are no clear-­cut acts of interference in individual choices and relations of domination are internalized. Despite this focus on power asymmetries, the NDA is not necessarily more restrictive than liberalism towards



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religious traditions. The goal of minimizing overall domination may allow (or even require) accommodation for social practices that include elements of domination. This may apply to the case of minorities and immigrants that live in conditions of cultural and economic vulnerability. Processes of assimilation come with cultural costs that can push vulnerable people to trade away some degree of freedom in order to obtain recognition and support. Counteracting this problem may in turn require the state to offer special measures of recognition for certain practices, not to the end of protecting some intrinsically valuable culture they hold, but only in order to foster non-­domination (Lovett 2010b). Iseult Honohan suggests a similar accommodationist perspective concerning the right to wear religious symbols or garments while performing duties as a public official. In 2007, in Ireland, the Garda Reserve (Ireland’s National Police Service) informed a member of the Sikh community who applied for membership that he would not be allowed to wear his turban instead of the Garda hat that is part of the regular police uniform. The candidate appealed against this decision but the High Court dismissed his challenge. The judges argued that Garda Reserve members are volunteers and do not perform their functions under a contract of employment, which would fall under Employment Equality Acts. The public debate, however, focused on the underlying cultural-­religious claims. The Garda representatives argued that the ban was to preserve the impartiality of the public force, and that their members’ religious beliefs should stay out of the exercise of their public role. In contrast, the President of the Irish Sikh Council argued that “asking Sikh community members to get rid of the turban is like asking a Sikh to remove his head”. In turn, Honohan backs the accommodation by maintaining that “the fact that Sikhs have a long tradition of military and police service  increases the cost of exclusion to the individual involved” (Honohan 2013: 211). The value of the turban for Sikh identity is, for Honohan, relevant in defining the dominating nature of the ban: while performing certain duties, religious symbols are significant within practices that define the cost of wearing (or not wearing) these religious symbols in public. Whereas a small cross or hand of Fatima can be worn under the uniform at no significant cost, this is not an option for those who wear the Sikh turban. Thus, allowing the turban can be a legitimate accommodation of a religious practice that the state concedes in order to alleviate the costs of integration and foster the sense of membership of a relevant minority of citizens. The religious understanding of the practice is only relevant for its significance as to the dominating implication of the ban. In the NDA, the acknowledgement of religious symbols is negative, not positive: what matters is the dominating implication of removing the symbols rather than the positive contribution that their significance can offer to public life. The accommodation of religious practices articulates is, in this sense, only a form of toleration according to which public policies and institutions should impose no special disadvantages on worthwhile conceptions of the good (Lovett 2010b; Lovett and Whitfield 2016). As Frank Lovett argues, the NDA cannot go beyond toleration to fully embrace the liberal principles of neutrality and impartiality. Neutrality requires public policies and institutions to be equally accommodating of all worthwhile conceptions of the good. NDA republicans focus instead on freedom from domination as a primary good that takes priority over all other goods. In turn, impartiality requires public policies and institution to

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be justifiable to all persons holding a reasonable conception of the good (for the question of public justification, see Chapters 1 and 2). But, as Lovett points out, some reasonable conceptions of the good can be at odds with the asserted primary value of non-­domination and its priority over other goods. Connecting the value of non-­domination to human flourishing (Lovett 2010a) provides a justification for republican policies that could be accepted by a suitably wide range of reasonable people, but not by all. Consider, for instance, a Buddhist conception of the good according to which the self is an illusion and freedom, fame, and fortune are to be regarded as meaningless. On such a view, the political pursuit of freedom from domination has little to no bearing on genuine human flourishing. In general, the pursuit of the religious goods of salvation will take precedence over non-­domination in many religious doctrines. Acceptance of dominating relationships may even be part of the pursuit of those goods, such as in the case of patriarchal traditions according to which women need to submit to the unaccountable authority of a husband to realize their purpose in life (Lovett and Whitfield 2016: 131). An objector can point out that, by renouncing the principles of neutrality and impartiality, the NDA offers too much ground for the state to interfere with people’s preferences: if individual freedom is the default position, coercion has to be justified as a form of exception to that position. If the ideal of non-­domination takes precedence, the appeal to republican values and the greater interest of citizens may prevail over individual choices. This offers the state a rationale to downplay the constraints that come from the acknowledgement of the dignity of individuals on grounds of some notion of superior social interest (Brennan and Lomasky 2006). According to this line of objection, the pursuit of non-­domination can degenerate into some form of paternalism that does not find an adequate counterweight in the centrality of individual rights as a constraint to the pressure of the common interest. The notion of interest enters the definition that Pettit offers to separate domination from legitimate influence: interference is arbitrary if it fails to track the relevant ideas and interests of those subject to it. But this definition is based on two assumptions that are difficult to justify in pluralistic and multi-­religious contexts: “First, that it is possible to track the relevant ideas and interests of those affected by the interference, namely the citizens. Second, that those affected (again, the citizens) share relevant ideas and interests” (Saenz 2008: 274). A lack of clarity about the distinction between arbitrary and non-­arbitrary interference has paternalistic implications since it leaves this distinction up to deliberation and popular control. Without well-­defined moral constraints on state intervention, what is deemed to be in the best common interest will be deemed non-­arbitrary. While all citizens are entitled to contest the decisions of the majority, it is not guaranteed that they are able to do that, or that they do not think that being dominated is, in fact, in their best interest. The balance between justice and inclusiveness requires the active participation of religious citizens in the definition of the common interest. A strategy of toleration (Lovett) that supports the accommodation of religious practices is required to relieve religious citizens from unnecessary burdens, but it is not sufficient in itself. The republican state needs to actively support the possibility for religious citizens to develop their own civic voice and contribute to the process of public justification.



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c  Critical republicanism (C. Laborde) The difficult balance between justice and inclusiveness is addressed by Laborde’s proposal of a critical republicanism (Laborde 2008, 2012). The ban on religious symbols and dresses in France provides a bench test that she faces by articulating a republican non-­ domination perspective that is sensitive to the condition of religious minorities and supports their active involvement in the democratic life. In this process, she revises the tradition of laïcité as a model of normative secularism. Laïcité originated in the cultural-­political milieu of the French Revolution and served as a reference in other countries such as Canada and Turkey.7 While, as such, laïcité has a complex historical trajectory (Gauchet 1999; Baubérot, 2004; Asad 2003; Roy 2007), as an ideal-­typical model laïcité extends state neutrality to the state-­driven exclusion or marginalization of religious beliefs from the public sphere and interprets civic autonomy as a collective practice that transcends cultural-­religious particularities. Nowadays different thinkers or politicians champion pluralist, positive, multicultural, or intercultural versions of laïcité (Ungureanu 2015). In Laborde’s interpretation, laïcité envisages a secularist political framework by combining three principles: neutrality of political institutions, citizens’ autonomy, and the civic loyalty to the state. These principles are not exclusive to the French tradition, but take a unique configuration within the context of the conflict with the Catholic Church in France. Laborde’s critical republicanism aims to disentangle the significance of the principles of neutrality, autonomy, and civism from the lack of consideration for the past and present relations of power between state and religious groups. To this purpose, she pairs the tools of critical theory, which question the essentialist construction of predefined cultural and religious groups, with the NDA to take on forms of domination that, “being the product of indoctrination, manipulation, and norm internalization, remain invisible to their victims” (Laborde 2008: 23). The cultural and religious majorities are the most notable offender in these situations, as they can often exert their power of recognition and stigmatization over minorities. But minority groups include relations of domination over vulnerable members, in particular women. This leads to situations of “double domination” from inside and outside groups. Laborde aims to tackle the domination of Muslims and other minorities in a society that is still shaped by the Christian establishment and the post-­colonial heritage while tackling, at the same time, the problem of vulnerable minorities inside minorities. She thus expands the scope of Pettit’s account of non-­domination to deal with the grey area of social belongings, in which elements of domination and self-­determination often come together. Religious communities can be a source of identity and motivation to resist domination against external pressures and an enclosed milieu that perpetuates internal relationships of power. Pettit provides an account of when and how it is legitimate for the state to further non-­ domination, but his view “concerns itself too narrowly with domination as a subjectively experienced harm, thus neglecting phenomena of restrictive socialization and the development of adaptive preferences under oppressive conditions, whereby individuals prima facie consent to living under relations of domination” (Laborde 2008: 151–152). To achieve a proper balance between justice and inclusiveness, it is necessary both to accommodate religious practices in a way that acknowledges the status of minorities and to provide the vulnerable members of those minorities with adequate autonomy-­related

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skills. The first goal is achieved by interpreting laïcité as a critical understanding of secularism, while the second goal requires the pursuit of a strategy of autonomy and voice that differs from Pettit’s notion of popular control and corrects the limitations of his individualistic conception of interest (Laborde 2010). First, Laborde’s critical republicanism adds two provisos to the laicist understanding of neutrality: the state should not support religion, unless such abstention (i) unreasonably burdens the exercise of basic religious freedoms or (ii) legitimizes status quo entitlements which unduly disadvantage minority religious groups. Only then will the secular state be a non-­dominating state. (Laborde 2008: 87–88) This version of the principle of neutrality supports a public environment that is favourable to the non-­domination project, while the two provisos prevent the principle from unintendedly suppressing the formation of the religious citizens’ voice. The state unreasonably burdens the exercise of religion by not supporting religious chaplaincies in public places that citizens are not free to leave, like hospitals or prisons. And, when it enforces the veil ban in schools, the state wrongly legitimizes status quo entitlements that unduly disadvantage certain religious minorities. Second, this accommodating take on neutrality does not entail a lack of initiative from the state in developing citizens’ autonomy. Even when a person does not perceive herself as subject to domination,8 the pursuit of non-­domination entails a responsibility to educate her about her autonomy-­related skills. This educational endeavour does not require people to distance themselves from their religious or communal attachments, nor does it demand adherence to some ideal of the good life as a life of autonomy (Laborde 2008: 155). By means of education, citizens are to reach a minimum level of awareness regarding their skills so that they have minimum discursive control over relationships of power and dependence. This entails reflexivity about one’s beliefs and the reduction of the costs of dissent and separation from one’s traditional community. However, they should also be free to elaborate in time their own strategies of contestation and exercise their voice together with those that share their religious views. The advance over both Pettit’s NDA and the non-­domination accommodationism is twofold: the strategy of voice is not limited to protection of individuals from dominating relationships, but envisages the role of groups in resisting collective domination. Moreover, the focus on autonomy-­related skills addresses the liberal critique about the notion of interest: public education renders the citizens more self-­aware and enhances their ability to protest publicly when they feel their interests are disregarded; thereby, it is possible to track their relevant ideas and interests when they are affected by arbitrary interference. The controversy over the veil ban in France is illustrative of the practical implications of Laborde’s critical republicanism. The controversy shows how a misguided republican commitment to non-­domination can lead to the estrangement of minorities and the isolation of vulnerable individuals within those minorities. Following rising concerns over the expulsion of Islamic students wearing the hijab in 2004 France adopted Law n. 228 that regulated, “in application of the principle of laïcité”, the wearing of signs or



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dresses that manifest religious belongings. The law bans wearing religious symbols or garb in public primary and secondary schools. In 2010, by stressing security reasons, any facial covering was banned in public spaces; the ban was clearly intended to have an impact on the wearing of Islamic niqabs and burqas. For Laborde, l’affaire du voile is a sign of weakness of French republicanism, as it determined the domination of a majority over a minority. What appears as an instance of male domination is, for many Muslim women, a free choice to express their identity and, in some cases, their resistance to the diffused hostility against their religion (Wing and Smith 2006; Bilge 2010). Moreover, even when the practice of wearing hijabs and niqabs is rooted in forms of internal domination, the French appeal to legal prohibitions is not the right and efficient course of action: on principle, democratic societies tolerate a wide array of practices even if they are morally objectionable and, in practice, coercion is an ineffective way of challenging conservative and patriarchal ideologies (Laborde 2012). The veil ban effectively applies the laïc model without considering the condition of cultural and economic disadvantage of the post-­ colonial minorities; in particular, it does not consider the cost of adaptation and integration into a predefined arrangement of the relationship between religion and politics.9 By targeting the practice of wearing the veil in public schools, the ban also damages a crucial process through which Muslim women are introduced to the exercise of a greater discursive control. As a space where their religious symbols and affiliations are effectively “neutralized”, French public schools are in fact unable to foster their recognition as discursive subjects with a voice and an ear of their own (Laborde 2008: 155). By combining the accommodation of religious practices with the active development of the citizens’ discursive control, critical republicanism overcomes the limitations of other non-­domination approaches. But it also aims to correct the flaws of other perspectives that deal with the problem of protecting the citizens from religious domination without enforcing a different form of domination over religious people. Two relevant alternative models that Laborde specifically takes into account are multiculturalism and liberalism. Multiculturalists have good reasons to be averse to the political imposition of ideals of laïcité and autonomy, but in doing so they reduce the citizen’s agency “to the individual negotiation and manipulation of a plurality of normative social orders” (Laborde 2008: 150) that can never seriously question the group identity. The goal of critical republicanism is not to respect minority cultures per se, as they can contribute to instances of “double-­domination” from inside and outside groups. The critical understanding of state neutrality and the development of autonomy-­related skills among the population must serve the purpose of institutionalizing republican equality and allow minority groups to embrace the path of citizenship rather than linger in isolation. Wearing the veil, despite its embeddedness in patriarchal practices, can be a valuable strategy of voice against the risk of double domination: against one’s community, insofar as it means to break out of a passive stance to actively represent one’s religious identity in the public space, and against the state, as it challenges the status quo personified by the notion of laïcité. This twofold strategy of contestation through the reappropriation of a religious practice is, however, context-­dependent and needs to take into account the existing balance of power in a society. While the meaning of the Islamic veil in contemporary France can be effectively contested, subverted, and reappropriated in ways that undermine univocal patriarchal domination,

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it is not clear that veiling practices in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran can be so easily defended as adequate expressions of female agency, even though they are endorsed, resisted, or manipulated by Muslim women. Arguably, women in such countries do not have enough “discursive power” to be able effectively and publicly to contest the dress codes they are supposed to follow. (Laborde 2008: 156) A critical republican approach is, in this sense, aware of the need to balance strategies of accommodation and voice with a central concern for religious domination upheld by the enforcement of state neutrality. Liberal approaches are, according to Laborde, distinctively inadequate to grasp the conditions behind the creation of a civic voice inside minority groups. Comprehensive versions of liberalism marginalize the political participation of groups that do not share core liberal values such as individual autonomy. In a critical republican perspective, “nothing about non-­domination requires that individuals break free from their religious or communal attachments; nor does the ideal imply that the good life is a life of autonomy” (Laborde 2008: 155). Autonomy is, for Laborde, a content-­neutral capacity, a minimum threshold of skills. In this sense, it “is best understood not as an intrinsic but as an instrumental, yet primary, good” (ibid.) to the realization of one’s life plan. In turn, the strategy of voice opens the possibility of developing a fully-­fledged sense of loyalty to the political community at large not by adhering to the status quo, but by participating in public debate and political decisions. On a different note, Rawls’ political liberalism abandons the exclusionary focus on substantive liberal values, but depends on a public reason model that advocates too stringent limitations on legitimate democratic debate. By expecting the commitment of citizens to an ideal of reciprocity based on the exchange of non-­comprehensive views, public reason theorists overlook the importance of developing the citizens’ own voice through the expression of their religious reasons. The inclusion of religious voices into the democratic debate is crucial for people to develop the skills needed to resist domination, both from the state and inside their group (Laborde 2008: 155). The neutrality of the political institutions requires, however, imposing restrictions on the appeal to religious reasons by public officials. Laborde endorses, in this sense, a form of justificatory secularism (Laborde 2013a) that excludes religious arguments from the formal political sphere and encourages citizens who engage in politics as party leaders and candidates for office to translate their religious insights in non-­religious language (for Habermas’ concept of translation, see Chapter 3). This process of translation can only happen within public discussion and deliberation, since it is unfair to expect religious citizens to know in advance which religious view can be expressed in a secular form and how. In this sense, the Rawlsian proviso, which allows the introduction of comprehensive doctrines in political debate provided that ‘in due course’ proper political reasons are presented, reflects an inadequate monological understanding of public justification and disregards the transformative importance of dialogue. When facing fundamental ethical issues that touch on the meaning of life and death, Laborde concedes that “there may not be a shared language of secular reason, which would be relevantly agnostic about ultimate ends and commitments” (Laborde 2013a: 180). In this case, state representatives and officials should equally avoid any appeal to controversial religious and



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secular views, as much as this is compatible with the need to legislate. These restrictions in the formal political sphere notwithstanding, religious discourse remains relevant to the flourishing of democratic debate. Laborde’s justificatory secularism combines the concern for public justification typical of public reason approaches with the critical republican focus on the development of the citizens’ voice. To this purpose, she articulates a pluralistic understanding of democratic discourse that denies the possibility of consensus over a single conception of justice and upholds the importance of diversity and disagreement. In the formal political sphere, general political principles need to be justified based on secular reasons; but to interpret, weight and rank those principles in relation to specific issues, argues Laborde, the citizens will necessarily make reference to their substantive values and different worldviews. In this sense, no consensus is to be expected on the ordering, content and implications of general principles and different political societies will reach a plurality of arrangement on that basis (Laborde 2013a: 171–173).

d  Religion and non-­domination The question of domination has rightly become a transversal theme in political philosophy due to the importance of power imbalances and the structural conditions that undermine equal freedom beyond the basic constitutional warrants. The problem of domination is all the more relevant in discussions about religion, given its impact on informal power relations in the domestic and social public sphere, and in the acquisition of problematic adaptive preferences (Chapter 7). Laborde’s critical republicanism offers an important contribution to the understanding of domination while recognizing that democratic discourse needs to be open to a plurality of substantive values, which are relevant for the interpretation and the application of political principles (see also Chapters 1–2). However, this recognition calls into question the republican conception of non-­ domination as the pillar of political activity – a view inaugurated during Roman times (Skinner 2012). When Pettit argues that “non-­domination is a personal good that practically everyone has reason to want, and more generally, to value” (Pettit 1997: 80–81), he champions a view of freedom that claims to be content-­neutral, yet he commits everyone to a specific ideal of free agency, and regards politics as the pursuit of the conditions of its realization. Lovett, in turn, points to the pursuit of non-­domination as a primary good and asserts its priority over other goods; and while Laborde is more receptive to the possibility that different democratic cultures interpret and weigh differently fundamental political principles, her reformulation of the republican project is still grounded on the principle of non-­domination as a negative or content-­neutral idea of freedom. For her, non-­domination is both the means and the end of critical republicanism (Laborde 2008: 15). These perspectives are all built upon freedom as non-­domination as the master principle of political theory. This approach is at odds with the competition between multiple conceptions of freedom and justice in the democratic public sphere, which are embedded in different historical contexts and democratic cultures. From our standpoint, the fascination with the idea of a single content-­neutral principle is, ultimately, at risk of forcing the interpretation of complex socio-­political phenomena into a narrow analytical path. This “monist” and “formalist” inclination of the NDA to subsume all political ideals and

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goods under one content-­free notion of non-­domination does not sufficiently recognize the role of substantive values in the democratic game (see Chapter 1). From a pluralist perspective, Larmore notes that a number of distinct values, none of them negligible, have taken the name of ‘freedom’, and our concern ought to be, not to determine which of them captures freedom’s essence, but to recognize the differences between these ideals, (and) chart their connections. (Larmore 2001: 233) The role of the concern for non-­domination in the establishment of political arrangements is to be determined through democratic processes, and what counts as domination depends on interpretations and debates embedded in cultural contexts. This challenges any univocal conceptualization of freedom: from the perspective of a political culture shaped by Protestant individualism, some communal bonds and practices influenced by Buddhist asceticism or the Confucian value of filial piety (xiào) will appear as instances of domination; in contrast, some forms of consumeristic individualism will be regarded as a type of dependence by Buddhists.10 Moreover, the NDA often relies on an image of power that opposes the dominator to the dominated. But power dynamics cannot be properly understood by means of a dichotomist scheme; as Michel Foucault underscores, power is not a thing that can be possessed by individual/groups; power is, rather, embedded in complex and shifting networks of relations between individuals and groups.11 Individuals and groups are, to various degrees, both products and participants in games of power, resistance, and domination. The emancipation from domination is not one-­way but can always generate new forms of social and political domination; emancipation from domination is, furthermore, neither absolute nor the mere implementation of an abstract principle, but relative to one’s belonging to societal relations and structures (Mendieta 2012: 320). The resources to resist domination from political institutions are drawn from competing social belongings; the citizen holding multiple kinds of attachments and communal values given by family, religious organizations, and social-­political communities appears particularly resilient towards instances of state domination. On the other hand, the good republican citizen whose resources against domination come from the adequate upholding of the laws and the affiliation to the political community is more vulnerable, as the laws themselves might be complicit in the systemic domination exerted by the political institutions. Religious communities actively engaged against the risk of state domination articulate their political action through strategies that reflect both the importance of substantive values and the inadequacy of a dichotomist approach to power relations. Consider how the Buddhist monks in Burma have articulated non-­domination by drawing on their values and practices. Whereas, under the premises of the NDA, non-­domination is content-­neutral so that all citizens can support it regardless of their comprehensive views, the case of Burma monks illustrates how religious groups engaged in the struggles for non-­domination articulate an ideal that is non-­neutral in content. Their Buddhist conception seeks freedom from internal and external constraints through a path of obedience to spiritual and communal authorities based on ascetic discipline that expresses a distinct



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non-­individualistic ideal of non-­domination. This substantive ideal has played an important role in countering colonial rule and carving the road to democratization. In Burma, since the late nineteenth century “monks have expressed their fight against colonialism as an ascetic struggle for unconditional transcendent freedom of nibbana on a path of liberation from conditioned existence in samsara or loka” (Houtman 2009: 2). Their revolutionary role has decisively shaped the political message of both Aung San12 and his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi (ibid.).13 Most recently, during the Saffron Revolution of 2007, the monks took a decisive lead in the protests against the regime, and were a determinant part of the democratic movement of the country (ibid.). In the process of contestation against the dominant powers, the internal bonds of authority and obedience of the Buddhist communities have fostered the resilience against arbitrary interference and preserved a separation from the dominating culture to generate alternative ideas and practices. Belonging to such a religious group, in fact, exposes one to the vulnerability of internal domination, but also provides resources to contest external domination. Interestingly, though, while the Saffron Revolution was largely successful, it also generated new forms of domination. As the balance of power shifted, the revolutionary forces have become an alternative source of domination. In Burma, despite the on-­going democratic process, the last few years have witnessed a renewed surge of persecutions against the Rohingya Muslims, a religious and ethnic minority that lives in the western part of the country; Buddhist notables have played a major role in fostering this wave of violence and discrimination. Both in religious and secular contexts, the achievement of a condition of non-­domination is relative to dynamics that provide the barriers and the resources to antagonize the power and domination of others. The socio-­political emancipation is positional and context-­dependent; new relations of material and symbolic domination emerge through the rearrangement of the regime of power and discursive legitimation. Consequently, the engagement of multiple civic voices and forces in the democratic arena is instrumental to ensure the limitation of the relations of domination. In actual democratic practice, the institutional mechanisms and the plurality of comprehensive worldviews supporting democracy and diffused among the population are what gives substance to the pursuit of non-­domination, rather than the universal commitment to an abstract, content-­neutral ideal to which all the citizenry adheres. In short, we intimate that the focus on non-­domination as a purely negative or formal conception of freedom questionably narrows the scope of political theorizing, especially when it comes to the democratic role of substantive values and communal practices. In contrast to the NDA, other republican thinkers argue that republicanism should be committed to some form of positive freedom that gives more importance to religion. We move now to two such alternative versions of republicanism centred on the question of the good (Michael Sandel) and on civil religion (Maurizio Viroli).

2  Republicanism of the common good as public philosophy Michael Sandel’s first major contribution to political theory, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Sandel 1982) is a sustained critique of John Rawls’ liberal theory of justice. The critical diagnostic of liberalism is, for Sandel, not an abstract matter but one of vital importance for current democracy: in his subsequent work, he takes aim at the crisis of

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democracy in the US largely generated by the erosion of the sense of common belonging amongst citizens and the capacity of collective self-­rule are (Sandel 1996, 2010, 2012). For Sandel, the current democratic malaise is, to an important extent, due to a liberal turn in US history after WWII. This turn involves a shift from the republican tradition of the Founding Fathers to the discarnate vision of a procedural republic advocated by thinkers like Rawls. The liberal public philosophy that has become dominant reduces politics to procedures and severs it from engagement with substantive issues of the good. In so doing, liberalism undermines what it is meant to construct and protect – namely, a community of free citizens. What is more, the liberal-­capitalist logic of profit seeking has had a distortive impact on the practice of citizenship (Sandel 2012). The “medicine” for these democratic ills is reviving republicanism as public philosophy. Republicanism is a “soulcraft” meant to generate a community-­based practice of politics as the pursuit of the common good by participative and virtuous citizens.14 In Sandel’s teleological conception of politics, religion plays a vital role: religion provides resources for articulating goods and ends in the public sphere; as such, it requires special protection and substantial accommodations.

a  Sandel on liberal public philosophy Sandel’s critical argument combines ontological and normative objections to the liberal trend typified by Rawls. Three interlocked elements are especially relevant for Sandel’s interpretation of liberal public philosophy: the ontology of the unencumbered self; a neutralist stand that severs politics from religion; and the reduction of religious duties to choices and religious freedom to freedom of choice. First, for Sandel, the liberal view is rooted in an ontology of the unencumbered self derived from Kant’s deontology and transcendental subject. Kant’s philosophy is built on a dualistic view that posits the noumenal world – where freedom, rationality, and morality are rooted – against the empirical world, characterized by causality and determinism (Kant 1998; see also Chapter 1). Human beings belong in these two worlds: of freedom, as moral beings; and of empirical causality, as natural beings. According to Kant, dignity and morality result from the exercise of universal reason and free will independent of any particular communal bond, telos, or specific approximation of the good (Kant 1997). For Sandel, liberalism (including Rawls’ version of it) has inherited this view of the self as exerting its will and rationality independently of community and specific goods. Sandel interprets liberalism as arguing that “what is most essential to our personhood is not the ends we choose but our capacity to choose them. And this capacity is located in a self which must be prior to an end it chooses” (Sandel 1982: 19). The liberal self is, in Sandel’s terminology, unencumbered: a sovereign “I” able to choose her rights and duties with no regard to communal loyalties and particular belongings. In this voluntarist ontology, liberty means, first and foremost, making free choices; these choices are seen as valuable because they result from the exercise of the will and not from heteronomous constraints (tradition, custom, God). The second assumption of liberalism is, in Sandel’s ideal-­typical reconstruction, the neutrality of politics and law with respect to religion (and, more generally, to conceptions



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of the good).15 From the premise of the unencumbered self, Sandel reasons that legal-­ political activity is, for liberals, centred on a neutral framework of rights and procedures. The neutral framework neither privileges nor discriminates against any of the competing goods and ends in society. Politics and law guarantee that each and every individual is equally free to pursue those ends that she chooses independently of religious and non-­ religious duties and commitments. In this vision of a “procedural republic” (Sandel), the right takes precedence over the good: the realm of the political is that of rights and procedures and is separated from, and prior to, the pursuit of specific goods and ends. From this neutralist standpoint, religion becomes the paradigm case for liberals’ exclusion of controversial conceptions of the good from the public sphere (Sandel 1996). The liberal appeal to neutrality results in discarding substantive engagement with moral and religious issues in the public sphere. In addition, the liberal idea of freedom as making unconstrained choices leads to the view of religious freedom as a particular instance of the principle of freedom of choice. In the procedural republic, the religious pursuit of the good is scaled down to the manifestation of an individual choice with no impact on political activity. As an illustration of this liberal stand, Sandel refers to a speech delivered by J.F. Kennedy in 1960.16 Speaking of his Catholic faith, Kennedy declared that it had “no bearing on his public responsibilities” (Sandel 2009: 134). For Kennedy, faith was a private matter. In Sandel’s interpretation, Kennedy’s vision “reflected a public philosophy” according to which “government should be neutral on moral and religious questions” so as to allow each individual the freedom to choose “his or her own conception of the good life” (ibid.). The pervasive influence of this liberal public philosophy can be tracked in the legal sphere as well (Sandel 1989: 597, 2005). After WWII, the assumptions of the liberal conception have gradually shaped the public philosophy of the Supreme Court; this philosophy gradually displaced the Founding Fathers’ view of religious freedom as freedom of conscience, as well as the special protection of religious freedom. US constitutional law has come to embody the principles of neutrality and of the priority of the right over the good. However, historically speaking, state neutrality and the idea of religious freedom as freedom of choice are relatively new. The 1947 landmark decision Everson v. Board of Education17 is the first to mention neutrality; in turn, the notion of religious freedom as freedom of choice surfaces for the first time in Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940; Sandel, 1989: 600).18 The increasing influence of the liberal public philosophy for the Supreme Court culminates with cases such as the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith (the peyote case), which discards religious exemptions from general laws and the special protection of religious liberty.19

b  Sandel’s critique and the republican alternative Sandel raises ontological, practical, and normative objections to the liberal public philosophy. He deems that its foundational ontology is misleading since it envisages the self as disconnected and alienated from the community. However, it is community life that gives form and substance to the self. The self does not choose its identity independently from its context of immersion: ends and goods are not a matter of choice, they are pre-­ established and constitutive to the self. In other words, the self is always encumbered by the

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life of the community: its existence is defined by attachments, duties, and ends given by family, religious groups, and by local, regional, and national communities. The liberal conception misses, then, that there is a wide range of duties that emerge not out of choice but out of communal attachments and particular historical trajectories (consider special duties towards parents, children, or co-­nationals). This is specifically true of religious duties. By reducing religious freedom to freedom of choice, liberalism becomes incapable of giving an adequate account of religious experience and practice. Picturing religion as a matter of preference or lifestyle choice that the self selects at will ignores the role that religion plays in the lives of those for whom religious duties are indispensable to their identity and conscience. This Sandelian argument does not deny that a person can choose how to deal with her religious duties. But even a cursory analysis of religious practice indicates that oftentimes religious duties are not originated in the decisions of the sovereign self. Treating persons as “self-­originating sources of valid claims” fails to respect those bound by duties derived from other sources than themselves (Sandel 1996: 67). Religious duties are more accurately conceived as matters of conscience rather than choice. Sandel argues: “(i)t is precisely because belief is not governed by the will that freedom of conscience is inalienable […] freedom of conscience and freedom of choice are not the same; where the conscience dictates, choice decides” (Sandel 1996: 66). When freedom of conscience is at stake, the morally relevant factor deserving of protection is that the person performs a duty, and not that she makes a voluntary choice. For Sandel, this line of criticism has important consequences for the neutralist stand on religion.20 Just as the self is not detachable from its ends and commitments, politics and law cannot be severed from conceptions of the good.21 Rights are not prior to the good: in order to define and give content to their rights and duties, citizens need to take up substantive questions, including religious ones.22 In addition, by attempting to distance democratic politics from community and religion, the liberal public philosophy generates alienation and lack of motivation for participating in public affairs.23 The neutralist view misses the fact that “fairness isn’t everything”; it does not answer a fundamental yearning, namely the “the hunger for a public life of larger meaning”. The liberal public philosophy thus fails to connect “the project of self-­government with people’s desire to participate in a common good greater than themselves” (Sandel 1996: 13, 2005). The result of this failure makes democracy vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. “Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread”, that is, in the realm of the good. When – as in the US – political discourse lacks moral and spiritual-­religious resonance, the yearning for a public life of larger meaning takes problematic expressions that undermine the project of a free society. A republican revival “may stem the tide” of fundamentalism (Sandel 1996: 322) by reconnecting politics with its moral and spiritual-­religious sources.24 This shift in public philosophy from liberalism to republicanism is supportive of engagement with substantive moral-­religious matters in the public sphere25 as well as the special protection of religion.26 In the political public sphere, Sandel is critical of Kennedy’s separation of politics from religion and praises Obama for understanding and speaking to “the moral and spiritual yearning” in the US. Sandel agrees with Obama’s urge in his “Call to Renewal” that progressives need not “abandon the field of religious discourse” but engage with it



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(Obama 2006; Sandel 2009: 250). Politicians should not “forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Amer­icans understand both their personal morality and social justice” (ibid.).27 Sandel’s defence of the role of religion in building a community of citizens takes a teleological form. Fostering religious manifestations in the public sphere and providing special protection for religious freedom is justified by the fact that religion serves either valuable ends in themselves or is useful for the republican project. The special status of religion is derived from the teleological assumption that religious beliefs, as characteristically practiced in a particular society, produce ways of being and acting that are worthy of honour and appreciation – either because they are admirable in themselves or because they foster qualities of character that make good citizens. (Sandel 2009: 257) This teleological conception critical of liberal neutrality is, for Sandel, in harmony with religion’s special status in the US Constitution as designed by the Founding Fathers. Liberal neutrality is at odds with republicanism of the Founding Fathers, and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for judges to discriminate between ordinary secular preferences and religious duties of conscience that deserve special protection. Liberalism is unable to address the problem of the conflict between the encumbered self ’s religious duties and civil obligations: when religious belief is regarded as choice, religious freedom appears as a “private right to ignore generally applicable laws” allowing each person “to become a law unto himself ”; this approach “courts anarchy” (Judge Scalia, apud Sandel, 1996: 70). In contrast, the republican view of freedom of religion as freedom of conscience supported by the Founding Fathers “addressed the problem of encumbered selves, claimed by duties they cannot renounce, even in the face of civil obligations that may conflict” (ibid.). When such conflicts between religious conscience and civil duty occur, there should be a presumption that Courts have the obligation to accommodate religion by granting substantial exemptions or enlarging current rules (Sandel 1996). Clear cases from US jurisprudence where a religious accommodation should be made include: granting unemployment benefits for those who refuse to work on Sundays for religious reasons, allowing soldiers who are Jewish believers to wear the yarmulke even if this is not part of the regular uniform, and allowing Native Amer­icans to smoke peyote in their religious ceremonies despite the anti-­drug legislation in the US.28 In Sandel’s teleological conception, political activity, broadly speaking, should assume its role as “soulcraft”, guided by a republican public philosophy (Sandel 1996: 319–321, 2009; Allen and Regan 1998).29 Sandel depicts a pluralist and decentralized vision of the republic: soulcraft is the political art of cultivating civic virtues and “habits of the heart”, in which religion plays an important role. In Sandel’s revitalized republic, citizens assume their encumbered selves – namely, their embeddedness in a network of communal duties and commitment. The political soulcraft creates virtuous citizens who participate actively in the making of policy and law, join forces in the public sphere, and reason together about the good life.

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c  A republican soulcraft? Sandel’s republicanism is spot-­on in underscoring the significance of participation and public-­spiritedness in times of disaffected democracy. The global rise of neoliberalism fetishizes individualism, market forces, and glosses over the crucial role of active participation in the public sphere for the maintenance of individual and collective freedom. As republicans like Sandel emphasise, the exercise of freedom has a collective dimension that sits badly with a strictly individualistic and economist vision of freedom. Republicans are also persuasive in criticising a maximalist version of the principle of neutrality. Maximalist neutrality’s hostility towards engagement with substantive issues in public sphere is practically unsustainable and normatively undesirable. The exercise of religious freedom has a public dimension, and religious manifestations can positively contribute to a vibrant public sphere in contemporary democracy (Weithman 2002; Chapters 1–3).30 But Sandel’s version of republicanism runs into difficulties that concern interrelated aspects: the ontology of the encumbered self, the teleological approach to republicanism as public philosophy, and the correlated advocacy of the special protection of religion and the rejection of neutrality. To begin, Sandel’s dichotomy between liberalism and republicanism assumes an artificial distinction between the unencumbered and the encumbered self. But liberalism per se is neither necessarily committed to nor depends on the ontology of the unencumbered self. Rawls, for instance, does not support such an extreme view of the unencumbered self as Sandel assumes (Seleme 2007).31 More importantly, the modern self is at once given and chosen, encumbered and unencumbered.32 The self is discovered, reflected upon, and elected to different degrees. Will Kymlicka notes that we understand our selves to be prior to our ends, in the sense that no end or goal is exempt from possible re-­examination […]. My self is, in this sense, prior to its ends, i.e. I can always envisage my self without its present ends. But this doesn’t require that I can ever perceive a self totally unencumbered by any ends. (Kymlicka 1989: 52–53) While the subject does not question all its ends at once, none of them (including those related to the duties of conscience) is exempt from conversation and critique once we are in the democratic public sphere. The Sandelian ontology of the encumbered self does not sit well with pluralism and the reflexive debates about religious traditions in contemporary democracy (Dagger 1999a: 188). Sandel’s view of the self as constituted by its ends is the building block of an equally problematic teleological conception of law and politics. In contrast to Rawls’ liberalism, Sandel argues that “(p)rinciples of justice depend for their justification on the moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve” (Sandel 2005: 105). In Rawls’ specific vision, the right is prior to the good in two respects: (i) the right is prior to the good in the sense that a set of individual rights “trump” or outweigh considerations related to the common good; (ii) the right is prior to the good in that the principles of justice that specify our rights do not depend on any particular conception of the good life for their justification.33 While Rawls adopts (i) and (ii), not all liberals do that: John Stuart Mill, for instance, adopts a utilitarian teleological strategy: rights are ways of pursuing the



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principle of utility (the maximization of happiness). In turn, Sandel’s teleological strategy rejects both (i) and (ii), and posits “republican goods” as the telos of political enterprise: family bonds, communal solidarity, patriotism, the search for higher meaning in our lives, and so on. However, the difficulty of this teleological view is that individual rights are, as a matter of principle, subordinated to the collective good.34 Values may certainly shape the way specific groups and communities interpret and balance between rights. But if there are no rights that cannot be directly derived from a specific conception of the good (e.g. Christianity, Islam, utilitarianism), there are no brakes on the use of state power to pursue the good as the majority conceives it. Sandel’s teleological strategy undermines basic rights, including the right to religious freedom that he is so keen to defend.35 To illustrate this point, we do not need to think of extreme cases (the Taliban view of the good), but Sandel’s fellow republicans. Consider French laicist republicanism; based on a secularist conception of the good, it restricts religious freedom and lacks adequate recognition for religious minorities (Laborde 2008; see above).36 Sandel is right to criticize the view of religious duties as choices and of religion as mere lifestyle. But liberalism per se does not depend on this reductionist view: a variety of liberal authors interpret freedom of religion in terms of freedom of conscience (Rawls 1971; Nussbaum 2003). More significantly, Sandel’s suggestion that religion should enjoy special protection is problematic.37 It is important to separate two different arguments advanced by Sandel in favour of the special protection thesis, since they can lead to opposite implications: (i) the argument from the freedom of conscience, and (ii) the argument from the benefits of religion for building a republican community. (i) First, it is certainly true that there is a difference between mere preferences (e.g. the preference for vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream) and duties of conscience. A Muslim police officer who, on religious grounds, refuses to shave his beard to comply with police force regulations is acting under an obligation in a way not true of the officer who simply wants to make a fashion statement. But the requirement to give special protection does not result from the idea of freedom of religion as freedom of conscience: non-­believers and atheists can have duties and convictions that are equally imperative. Sandel does not take into account the fact that claims of conscience can be either secular or religious; what’s more, he ignores the possibility that choices themselves can be so significant that they may deserve protection. To argue that Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner – killed in 1964 for their rights activism during the Mississippi Summer Project – lacked commitment to racial justice because it sprang from a secular conviction and a voluntary choice is unpersuasive.38 Strong secular convictions have, in effect, found their place in legal decision-­making in Western democracies including the US. For instance, during the Vietnam War, the US Supreme Court granted a pacifist-­atheist (Daniel Andrew Seeger) an exemption on account of his conscientious objection. In that case, the Supreme Court argued that “(a) sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption comes within the statutory definition”.39 In short, Sandel fails to derive the special protection of religion from the freedom of conscience; and even if religion still plays a special role in US jurisprudence, some have recognized that secular claims of conscience can be as compelling as the religious ones (Dworkin 2013).

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(ii) Second, Sandel may still want to defend the special status thesis by championing the argument that religion is instrumental to building a community of citizens in search for the common good.40 According to the Pew Research Forum, religious people in the US tend to be more participative in the public sphere (Pew 2016). This seems to confirm Tocqueville’s old thesis about the positive correlations between religious participation, political participation, religious belief, and active citizenship. Nonetheless, rigorous factual analysis needs to be contextualized and combined with questions about the nature and consequences of the mobilization of the faithful. Religion as a social force is not necessarily a prop to building a democratic egalitarian ethos, and it can rapidly turn into an instrument of political manipulation. In contrast to other forms of republicanism, Sandel is largely unconcerned with religion’s potential for domination of sexual minorities or women. Indeed, Sandel glosses over the role that religion may have in enhancing relations of domination in the domestic and the public sphere.41 He defines away the difficulty of the ambivalent relation of religion to real equal freedom by means of the distinction between fundamentalism and mainstream religion. But the role of mainstream historical religions is not as positive and unproblematic as Sandel seems to imply: the assumption that, by giving more voice to religion in political public sphere one can contribute to collective liberty and combat fundamentalism, cannot be adopted without further reflection. The recent history of the US suggests that the politicization of religion can divide, exclude, and polarize citizens rather than foster the pursuit of a common good through conversation and compromise. Given the ambivalent and controversial relationship between religion and virtuous citizenry, it is difficult to justify, as a matter of principle, the special protection of religion. Moreover, even if religion had a relevant role in engendering democratic participation, granting more protection to religious beliefs over analogous secular ones may be questionable: the special protection of religion may undermine pluralism and generate discrimination.42 It is worth noting that there is an unproblematized tension between the two ways in which Sandel defends the argument from the special status of religion: protecting religious conscience can undermine the telos of building a vibrant public life. Consider Sandel’s discussion of Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) (Sandel 1996: 68–69; compare with Chapter 7, Section 2). In this case, the Supreme Court stipulated that Amish children must not be placed under compulsory education past eighth grade: protecting the parents’ religious freedom outweighed the state’s interest in educating children. Sandel may defend this decision in virtue of the importance and worthiness of religious conscience and belief. But it is difficult to see how secluding children at a tender age from participating in common educational activities could contribute to the republican goal of creating citizens who come together and reason about the common good. From this republican viewpoint, the decision to grant such substantial religious exemption does not seem to be justifiable. Finally, Sandel’s view of engagement with substantive matters in the public sphere is unclear about the difference between debate and decision. Consider the difficult question of abortion. Sandel is right that engagement with conservatives on first-­order moral and religious questions in the public sphere is perfectly legitimate. Religious views generally emphasize the high moral stakes in any decision to abort: they can be a reminder about the sacredness and value of life, as well as a useful way of questioning a triumphalist image



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of the self-­sovereign self.43 But this is different from Sandel’s argument that in defending the right to abortion it’s a political and philosophical mistake to rely on limits to the legitimate scope of collective control over the individual. For Sandel, defenders of the right to abort should not hide behind the principle of neutrality; furthermore, they should not attempt to argue that conservative religious views on sexual morality and abortion are simply false. But Sandel overlooks that, in order to endorse a woman’s right to stop her pregnant condition, pro-­choice liberals do not necessarily aim to disprove the Catholic position that the foetus is a person from the moment of conception. Their argument is rather that the first-­order principles embodied in the Catholic or other pro-­life doctrine cannot legitimately be used to constrain the choice or commitments of non-­Catholics. Whereas neutrality as maximalist principle is problematic, Sandel cannot discard it (see also Chapter 5).44 In this case, the distance between Sandel’s republicanism and an autonomy-­centred liberalism is mostly about the state’s role: in the liberal outlook, the state is only meant to create a space where persons – religious or not – make their choices or pursue their commitments, especially when faced, as in the case of abortion, with a hard dilemma. In this perspective, the bias against Catholic and other pro-­life views would occur only if a state champions an abortionist discourse and takes a position on how this right should be used. The strength of Sandel’s version of republicanism lies more in the problems it poses (participation; public spiritedness; the positive role of religion; the good, see Allen and Regan 1998) than in its solutions. But the Sandelian teleological strategy does not represent a solid basis for thinking about the freedom of conscience and religion. And the image of political activity as a soulcraft guided by one public philosophy – the “right” republican one – is at loggerheads with the fact of pluralism in complex democracies. If there is a “hunger for higher meaning”, fulfilling it by means of a state shaped by the right “public philosophy” is at best a quixotic idea and at worst the recipe of strong paternalism. Sandel is, as we’ve pointed out, generally silent about the issue of domination.45 Likewise, even if he deals with Rousseau and Tocqueville, civil religion does not even figure in the index of Sandel’s most important work in republican political theory to date, Democracy’s Discontent (Sandel 1996; Allen and Regan 1998). We turn now to this third possibility of linking republicanism and religion through the issue of civil religion.

3  Republicanism of civil religion a  The problematic of civil religion The idea of civil religion is not exclusive to republicanism; it has been, in fact, variously formulated and supported from different conservative, reactionary, and liberal viewpoints. Even Nietzsche proposed a version of it (Beiner 2011). The debates as to what is the content and scope of civil religion have not ended in any consensus. Different authors have dealt, from a comparative empirical-­sociological perspective, with European and Asian varieties of civil religion oscillating between maximalist and minimalist definitions of it (Markoff and Regan 1981: 333–352). In turn, while Robert Bellah focused mainly on the Amer­ican case (see also later) he went as far as to argue that “[…] All politically organized societies have some sort of civil religion” (Bellah 1974: 257). This definitional

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strategy risks turning it into a catch-all concept of little use either for empirical research or political philosophy. In political philosophy, the specification of the idea of civil religion depends on the political ideals of each school of thought. From the viewpoint of republicanism, religion is civil when it sustains and cultivates the republican desiderata (citizens’ participation as collective freedom, non-­domination, civic virtue, the pursuit of the common good, etc.).46 The type of republicanism and political-­religious context determines the articulation of different models of civil religion. Historically speaking, republican thinkers in the Western tradition drew inspiration from the political-­religious experience in ancient Greece and Rome. The specificity of this context was that Greek and Roman religions were, generally speaking, civil (Veyne 1988; Smith 2014). The religious experience centred on an inner and true faith in one wholly transcendent God was largely alien to the Romans and the Greeks; theirs was instead “civic and communal and public” in nature (Smith 2014): the religious experience was strongly related to the constitution and perpetuation of the political community as well as the cementing of the bond amongst citizens. The prominent philosopher and politician Cicero explains the interweaving of religion and politics in republican Rome as follows:  Among the many institutions […] created and established by our forbears under the inspiration of the gods, nothing is more famous than their decision to commit to the same men both the worship of the gods and the care of state interests; the result was that the most illustrious citizens might assure the upholding of religion by the proper administration of the state and the upholding of the state by the careful interpretation of religion. (Cicero, apud Smith 2014: 20–21) For the contemporary reader accustomed to the principles of separation and neutrality, Cicero’s view sounds antiquated. But it is important to keep in mind how different was the Roman religion from the more familiar monotheism dominant in the world today.47 By giving primacy to salvation over worldly matters, Christian monotheism introduced a radical split between immanence and transcendence, collective self-­rule and divine sovereignty, outward religiosity and inward faith. A key political problem in the history of Western republicanism was (and still is) the following: is Christianity possible as a civil religion? Depending on how different Christian traditions have interwoven in various contexts religion and politics, the earthly and the heavenly matters, this question has received different answers. In modern republicanism, there is a spectrum of positions between two opposite models: the state-­centred model hostile to Christian monotheism inspired by Jean-­Jacques Rousseau; and the democratic and social-­pluralist model inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville. For Rousseau, the answer to the question “can Christianity support the republican practice?” is a straightforward no. Writing from within a historical context marked by the hegemony of an authoritarian state religion, Rousseau argued that Christianity could not possibly be a civil religion – namely, a religion of freedom. In the last chapter of The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau boldly proposed to replace Christianity – a religion of slaves that undermines the practice of active citizenship – with a new state religion that would foster virtue and political participation. Ironically, while Rousseau pretended to



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take inspiration from the ancient civil religion, his vision in The Social Contract reflected a specific political theology focused on dogmas and hostile towards difference rather than the model of Roman and Greek religion. The Rousseauian view of a state civil religion was actually implemented during the French Revolution in an eccentric experiment, which saw the conversion of Reason into a Goddess and Maximilien Robespierre into her supreme priest. This experiment was symptomatic for the convoluted trajectory of French republicanism (laïcité) and its paradoxical relation to the Catholic Church: at once breaking with and mimicking it (Gauchet 1998; 1999). It is thus unsurprising that the centralized model of laïcité, despite its claim of neutrality towards religions, was deemed a form of civil religion exalting the image of citoyens and state transcending the cultural-­ religious particularities of the members of the political community. In contrast to this state-­driven model of civil religion adverse to historical religions, there is the attempt to bring together modern republicanism and Christianity. The federalist and decentralized vision of the republic of the Founding Fathers is an attempt to reconcile natural rights and God, Enlightenment, and Protestantism (Smith 2014: 39; Tocqueville 2000; Owen 2014). Tocqueville carries on, with different tools, this line of thought. While Tocqueville did not speak of civil religion, he can be seen as providing a still-­influential model of it: Christianity supports a regime of freedom that essentially contributes to the constitution of a democratic social ethos. In stark contrast to Rousseau, Tocqueville highlights the advantages of the separation between the federal state and religion, as well as the advantages of religious pluralism and participation for fostering the civic spirit and moderating individualism and materialism. Tocqueville thinks of the Amer­ican religious ethos as a diverse, non-­instrumental, and pluralist force that animates civil society and has a fundamental function in democracy: a buffer between the individual and the state’s power. Tocqueville approaches otherworldly religion – as opposed to an enlightened, natural religion – as a vital good both for society and for the citizen as a human being, rather than as a political problem to be solved or contained. Religion is vital for every political society, but particularly for democratic society. (Owen 2014: 116) So great is that influence that religion “should […] be considered as the first of their political institutions” (Tocqueville 2000: 280). Religion influences politics indirectly by guiding mores, the single most important cause for maintaining a democratic republic in the United States. The Rousseauian model of state civil religion, together its hostility towards pluralism, has lost a good deal of its appeal in contemporary political thought. However, Tocqueville’s pluralist and transformative understanding of the relationship between religion and politics has remained influential to the point that different schools of thought – liberal, republican, or conservative – regard Tocqueville as one of their own (Owen 2014; Nisbet 1986). Maurizio Viroli’s proposal of a version of civil religion is closer, in broad terms, to the Tocquevillian pole of the spectrum. However, he harks back to the Renaissance period before Tocqueville in order to build his interpretation of the relevance of religion for republicanism.

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b  Civil religion without religion? Viroli’s religione della libertà Religion did not play any significant role in Viroli’s earlier republican perspective. Viroli’s Republicanism (2001) does not even consider religion, while in other writings Viroli sporadically registers what some republican authors have to say about the relation between religion and republicanism. In his more recent work, Viroli articulates a perspective that draws on one of the traditional republican authors mostly associated with an instrumental view on religion: Niccolò Machiavelli. In effect, Viroli’s life-­long development of a specific type of republicanism paved the way for his recent focus on religion as a key element of the revival of the republican tradition. While republicans like Pettit share with Rawls a commitment to the centrality of public reason in politics, Viroli’s defence of republicanism emphasizes much more the centrality of emotions, patriotism, and rhetoric. Just like liberal individualism, the public reason approach contributes to the current disaffection of politics. In reaction to this disaffection, Viroli is concerned with retrieving the significance of “love of country” and separating between a pluralist version of patriotism as the epitome of civic virtue from nationalist self-­aggrandizement and exclusionism (Viroli 1995; Nussbaum and Cohen 1996). In his interpretation, Machiavelli becomes less the cold-­blooded calculator and adept of realpolitik, and more of a figure driven by the amore della patria. For Viroli, the patriotism of liberty does not need social, or cultural, or religious, or ethnic homogeneity. If the fatherland is less than a republic in the classical sense, citizens cannot be virtuous: they cannot love a state that treats them unjustly (though in fact they sometimes do). If the fatherland is more than a good republic – if it is a good republic and a religious or cultural or social community – civic virtue will probably reach its maximum. It may also, however, degenerate into the zealot’s love of oneness, not the citizen’s political love. This implies that to see the right sort of patriotism grow, we need not strengthen homogeneity and oneness but work to strengthen the practice and the culture of citizenship. (Viroli 1995: 184) The focus on religion as a locus of emotions, passions, and imagination carries on in Viroli’s work on a patriotic republicanism: love of God, love of freedom, and love of country can be mutually supportive. Viroli adds religion to his older interpretation of Macchiaveli centred on amore della patria. He argues that Machiavelli was never against the public role of the Christian religion, which he interpreted as a religion of public virtue and engagement for the good of the country (Viroli 2010). The argument is that Machiavelli not only asserts that republican liberty needs a religion that instils and supports devotion to the common good but also that the Christian religion, properly interpreted, is apt to serve this civic task.48 In this interpretation, religion is not merely instrumental to the existing political institutions: the pursuit and defence of political freedom is an integral part of the religious ends in the first place. Religion thus plays a constitutive role by internally defining the republican ethos:  Machiavelli […] called for a religion that was intrinsic “to the soul of the people,” that would translate into a sense of civic duty and a true goodness of soul: not an



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instrumentum regni, but rather an instrumentum libertatis. Religion, then, as means and end. (Viroli 2010: 5–6) Viroli argues that the heirs of Hobbes and the liberal tradition have marginalized the role of rhetoric and virtue in politics to the effect of a fading sense of citizenship and commitment to republican values. Contemporary civil religion has to get away from confessional Christianity to be interpreted again as a religion of freedom, distinct from its specific institutional incarnations. The subject of this religion is the republican citizen: an individual who is free from domination and is committed to the defence of the dignity and freedom from domination of all her fellow citizens as well. Viroli acknowledges the importance of Pettit’s renewed conception of freedom, arguing that non-­domination effectively expresses the fundamental trait of liberty as it appears in the republican tradition.49 But the weakness of Pettit’s republican approach is the exclusive focus on a negative ideal of liberty that does not explain how non-­domination can actually become a factor that positively shapes the agency of citizens. The enforcement of non-­domination is possible in contemporary societies, as it was in the ancient ones, only as a fruit of the virtuous commitment of citizens rather than as a product of institutional design and enlightened policies.50 An abstract morality of rights and duties is not sufficient either. The kind of public dedication and political discourse that moves hearts and minds needs rather to be inspired by the public rhetoric and substantive ethos that is typical of religions, in the same way “as if God existed” (Viroli 2012). Viroli’s republicanism emphasizes (i) the role of civic virtue as a structural condition to avoid the degeneration of democracy into populism and demagoguery. This protection of republican freedom requires from citizens (ii) an overarching moral commitment to liberty that goes beyond mutual respect, to include a dimension of vigilance, self-­ restraint, and testimony that are more akin to the forms of religious devotion than to the formal principles of public morality. Even if Viroli’s diagnosis of the insufficiencies of contemporary political discourse is persuasive, his approach has both practical and normative problems. The focus on civic virtue pursued as a religion of freedom is very demanding and the heavy reliance on Machiavelli’s political vision highlights our distance from his historical context more than it illuminates ours. The transformative adoption of religious and ethical features of ­fifteenth–sixteenth century Christianity is normatively problematic both for religious and non-­religious people. Religious people will contest the use of religious notions and values deprived of their original religious substance: a form of civil religion without religion. Non-­religious people will see, on the other hand, the risk of domination. The heavy reliance on a substantive form of moral discourse that, through the promotion of certain virtues and passions, will end up interfering with civic freedom – assuming that this form of morality is in the best interest of everyone. Norberto Bobbio provides in a critical dialogue with Viroli (2003) a clear articulation of these points by arguing (i) that politics is better understood as a matter of power and coercion, as Hobbes claimed. Political power is necessary since most citizens are not virtuous at all. The starting point of political arrangements is not virtue, but rather the lack of it and the consequent need to justify a legitimate use of power. (ii) The role of religions

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is socially relevant, but it must not be politicized in order not to undermine civic freedom. The containment of the dominating effects of religion cannot be avoided by replacing it with some secular surrogate, since the admirable and dangerous facets of religion are deeply intertwined. Bobbio argues that Catholic charity motivates people to sacrifice themselves to the cause of those whose prospects of a good life appear almost non-­ existent in way that secular ideologies may have imitated, but never replicated to the same scale. Theological faith and eschatological beliefs do not play an accidental role here, but a substantive one, since they provide a hopeful perspective where a secular outlook would see none. This second objection questions the convertibility of religious languages, rituals, and motivations into institutionalized non-­religious forms. Religion is not easily reduced to a mere sum of parts that can be salvaged and used for political ends. Even assuming Viroli’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s view on religion is sound,51 the Christian religion of the Florentines was historically embodied in a whole horizon of practices and beliefs that structured their private and public life in a way that is not reproduced in contemporary democracies. Disembedding and reinterpreting religion to civil purposes in the twenty-­first century is a task that entails a deconstruction of the elements of religion that was not necessary for Machiavelli. When Viroli argues for a re-­enactment of the civic role of religion through new forms of deep secular commitment to republican liberty, he is not just suggesting a different interpretation of Catholicism or Protestantism, but rather an operation of reverse engineering of the Christian religion. The move holds some resemblance to the Habermas’ translation proviso: Viroli aims to preserve the motivational and rhetorical features of religion, while Habermas focuses on the cognitive resources embedded in religious beliefs. Both assume that some components of religion can be preserved while secularizing others, such as the metaphysical background of the core beliefs, the appeal to the authority of the Holy Scripture, or the hermeneutic relationship between religious belief and religious practice within a community. The instrumental appeal to religion and the transformative approach aiming to salvage only its politically useful features disregards the way religion is lived and practised by religious people. Religious references are politically significant as long as they are modelled after the form that those notions assume in actual religions practised by the citizens. Civil religion is dependent on the content, rhetoric, and motivational resources of traditional religions.52 The exclusive appeal to a single comprehensive view is unfit to structure political life in pluralistic settings. However, salvaging some of the ethical and rhetorical elements from multiple views to create a manufactured republican ethos does not solve this difficulty, as it brings about a mixed repertoire that is alien to religious and non-­ religious people alike. Through democratic procedures, citizens seek political arrangements that are compatible, or at least not at odds, with their personal narratives of morality and salvation. Successfully appealing to these narratives through familiar symbols and figures of speech does solicit strong motivational resources, but equally strong is the estrangement provoked by failed attempts. A republican institution that enforces a comprehensive symbolic and rhetorical framework as the backbone of citizens’ allegiance may also put up an obstacle to the integration of minorities.53 Rituals and symbols of political allegiance should be articulated in a variety of ways that accommodates the pluralist nature of democratic societies, while still



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expressing a recognizable ethical commitment. The permanent role played by oaths of office is, in this sense, indicative of a ritual function that adapted to the changing context through diversification rather than reiteration or simplification. The appeal to some binding religious or moral authority that transcends the power of those who are in charge holds an important symbolic value: religious and secular forms express this appeal through oaths or affirmations differently. Further, the underlying normative notion is accessible either way. Moreover, officials belonging to religious minorities are allowed to take their oath on their sacred texts. In a non-­domination perspective, political rituals and symbols are also subject to the right of contestation whenever a group or an individual see them as the expression of a dominating institution.54 Religion can offer a relevant contribution to the practical and representative articulation of fundamental notions of freedom, solidarity, and transcendence. To what extent this contribution can be institutionalized through rituals and rhetoric that refer to a religious sphere of meanings depends on varying historical and social factors.55 Diluting religious references to make them compatible with the increasingly tense and diverse public sphere also ends up making their contribution less significant. Different strategies of religious public discourse – creative interpretations, voice, testimony – are more likely to respect the originality and significance of religious views than the appeal to the generic forms of moralization and institutionalization of a diluted civil religion.

c  A sceptical note: civil religion in the age of pluralism? Even if civil religion remains – with the exception of Viroli – a marginal topic in contemporary republicanism, it continues to be a feature in debates. This is in particular with regard to the United States, which remains a seminal ground for Tocqueville’s hypothesis of religion’s role in preserving civil liberty. In his seminal work on “Civil Religion in America”, Robert N. Bellah (1967) shows how deeply the political discourse in the US is marked by consistent references to God and religion, following a tradition that can be traced back at least to the Founding Fathers. These references are characteristically un-­ confessional and generically monotheist, but substantive in driving some of the most relevant political rituals of the Union.56 Bellah’s initial remarks invoke Tocqueville and are heavily influenced by the political context of the early 1960s, during which John F. Kennedy was president (1961–1963). Bellah points to civil religion as a positive resource that provided critical standards of judgement for national policy as well as a source of inspiration for citizens’ participation in public life. In the early 1970s, with the Watergate scandal and the rampaging war in Vietnam, Bellah took distance from the optimistic tone of his earlier account, arguing that civil religion has become “an empty and broken shell” (Bellah 1975: 142) of what it used to be. This corrupted version of Amer­ican civil religion, in Bellah’s understanding, gradually loses the ability to interpret collective experiences in the light of ultimate values and becomes a form of worship of the nation and its symbols. Still, he argues, the possibilities for the renewal of Amer­ican politics lie with civil religion, since no one has changed a nation without appealing to its soul, without stimulating a national idealism, as even those who call themselves materialists have discovered.

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Culture is the key to revolution; religion is the key to culture. If we win the political struggle, we will not even know what we want unless we have a new vision of man, a new sense of human possibility, and a new conception of the ordering of liberty, the constitution of freedom. (Bellah 1975: 162) As other authors have noted though, the link between civil religion and religiously justified nationalism seems deeper and more persistent than Bellah assumes. Major evidence for this claim includes the long-­standing notion of Amer­ican exceptionalism and the idea that Amer­icans are a people chosen by God to play a special role in the history of the world (Wilsey 2015; Ignatieff 2005). Nationalism, in this perspective, is part of a structural ambivalence of civil religion, where its so-­called misuse may have little to do with error or usage and more to do with the way civil religion works. This would mean that the idolatry of the nation is a natural expression or an inevitable aspect of any civil religion. (Cristi 2001: 213) Recent analysis of the presence of religion in the rhetoric and policies of the Obama presidency show how despite the shifting social conditions and relative weakening of religious belief in the Amer­ican society,57 the influence of the positive notion of civil religion is still alive and influential (Gorski 2010). A closer look at Obama’s keynote at the Call to Renewal’s conference in 2006 reveals a twofold nature of his civil religion. On one side, he moves along the lines of Bellah’s vision when he claims that “the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms” and that political reference to “a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny” (Obama 2006). On the other hand, when addressing the contribution of religious people to public debate, his discourse resonates with Habermas’ translation proviso when he claims: “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-­specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason” (ibid.). This ambivalent address reflects the uncertain future of civil religion in the United States: Is it still a tenable ideal and a viable practice or is what we see today but a remnant of a fading tradition that is to be replaced by a new form of relationship between religion and politics? The symbolic connection between the deepest moral commitments of a significant share of the population and the political life of their country is a powerful source of civic participation. Speaking of the civil role of religion in Tocqueville’s footsteps continues to be persuasive: religion can contribute to democratic ethos and emancipatory politics. A study conducted in the US by the Pew Research Center in 2011 concluded that citizens who are active in a church, religious, or spiritual organization are more publicly engaged than those who are not involved with such organizations. Religiously active Amer­icans “are more trusting of others, are more optimistic about their impact on their community, think more highly of their community, are more involved in more organizations of all kinds” (Pew 2011: 2), including charitable or volunteer organizations, consumer groups,



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neighbourhood associations, support groups, trade associations, and political organizations (Pew 2011: 14–15).58 But taking the idea of civil religion as the central pillar of the republican project is, we believe, unconvincing. Republican theorists look for unifying ideals that can work as a shared normative reference for the political agency of all citizens. Religion does not seem like a fitting candidate to play this kind of role in citizens’ agency even in the US. Even if religion can play a positive role to foster civic participation and solidarity, this role is distinct from the vision of a civil religion as a political project that aims to gather all citizens under a single religious narrative (this seems to be what Bellah refers to by speaking of “revolution” and a “political struggle”). This vision moves away from Tocqueville’s notion of the indirect influence of religion on democratic politics; as a result, this scenario risks turning religion into a political religion. Moreover, even at the level of democratic ethos (of Tocqueville’s “habits of the heart”) Tocqueville’s focus on the positive role of religion in building civil freedom appears today to be over-­optimistic. The Tocquevillian image tends to obscure the uncivil role that religion can play in the public sphere.59 In the US, the increased participation of religious people in the public sphere has contributed to the deterioration of the political climate and to a decrease in the civic friendship so much prized by republicans and egalitarian liberals like Rawls. The polarization and radicalization of political life fostered by some religious groups is rather the expression of an uncivil ethos made of practices of domination, control, and marginalization.

Conclusion In the globalized world, the power of the demos is in crisis, and the moral and cultural resources of liberalism – in particular when centred only on the individual and the market – struggle to foster the active involvement of citizens. Rawls and Habermas (see Chapter 3) perceive the involvement of modernized religion in liberal democracies as a resource against this weakness. To address the same challenge, republican theorists call for a substantive political project than goes beyond the scope of the liberal and multicultural commitment to respect individual freedom and protect minority rights. By focusing on the problem of domination and exploring the link between civic engagement and political liberty, republican theorists highlight the importance of the problem of power and dependence in political practice. Within the various formulations of this republican project, religion takes different places and roles. In the NDA, religions appear problematic since they can foster domination, and are potential counter-­candidates to the republic for the civic commitment of citizens. As a negative notion of freedom, non-­domination seems the ideal candidate for a form of republicanism that demands the engagement of citizens while also respecting the diversity of comprehensive worldviews. But the interpretation of non-­domination is bound to substantive values; and the practices of civic engagement developed by religious citizens rely on their commitment to specific conceptions of freedom and communal forms of life. In a more pluralist conception of non-­domination, republican citizenship and political institutions are not the exclusive guardians of arbitrary power, but play a significant part in the multilateral effort against domination. In contrast to the NDA, a substantive conception of the common good takes the central stage in Sandel’s republicanism. The enforcement of the republican ideal of freedom and the participation of citizens in its realization are based on the assumption

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that the ­conditions of social cooperation exceed the establishment of fair arrangements and require some level of commitment to a common normative vision of what a political society is about. Sandel is right in addressing the shortcomings of a specific form of liberalism that is blind about how debates about the common good are important for the vitality of democracy. But the difficulty of convening over some crucial substantive contents is particularly relevant in pluralist societies. In turn, the republicanism of civil religion reinterprets a tradition of direct involvement of religious ideals, symbols and practices to shape and support the civic engagement of the people. Viroli’s reformulation of Macchiavelli’s religion of liberty is suggestive, but ultimately cannot escape the difficulty of postulating a strong link between the state and a specific rhetorical and ethical apparatus in an age of deep cultural and religious pluralism. One of the main theoretical concerns of the republican tradition is how the classical idea of republican liberty can be transformed to fit into the new historical conditions. In addressing this question, republicans investigate the shifting place of religion through the transformation of the political frameworks from the early modern to the contemporary era. Charles Taylor’s inquiry is concerned with the same historical shift, but suggests a different hermeneutics (see the next chapter). In particular, he focuses on the transformation of religions themselves through the secular age of modernity and analyzes the consequences of this shift for pluralistic democratic arrangements.

Notes   1 “Republic” comes from the Latin res publica. In Roman times it was contrasted with res privatae. Res publica referred to the public realm of affairs that people had in common outside their familial lives; it referred to the institutionally organized public realm. As the traditional Res publica Romana collapsed and was gradually replaced by an empire, it became the normative point of reference up to the French and Amer­ican Revolutions. The main trait of this ideal type Roman republic of Roman res publica was that the people (populus, giving the adjective publicus) had a decisive role in the organization of the public realm, an idea that was revived starting with the period of Italian city-­states.   2 John Stuart Mill advances the most famous definition of negative freedom in On Liberty (1859). For him, “the only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way”. Mill conceived law, which like “all restraint, qua restraint, is an evil”, as a necessary limit on individual freedom so that “we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs” (Mill 2002: 22). It is noteworthy that Berlin does not rule out some form of positive freedom as long as it is instrumental in promoting negative freedom.   3 On the problem of domination, the distance from the liberal perspectives is less remarkable than republican theorists suggest. In particular, egalitarian liberals like Rawls do not ignore structural threats to justice and would not leave undisputed the situation of the benevolent slave master. Rawls’ liberalism attributes a pivotal role to how the principle of reciprocity grounds the terms of cooperation in a society (see Chapter 1). This form of liberalism is committed to equal freedom for all citizens, not only as an occurrence, but also as a permanent status (Saenz 2008: 270). For Rawls, self-­respect or self-­esteem is “probably the most important primary good”: “the parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine it” (Rawls 1971: 73; our italics). This kind of egalitarian-­liberal outlook would thus rule out the master-­slave situations as discussed by Pettit.   4 Pettit (2012: 27) observes that the NDA is concerned with freedom of choice exclusively as a social phenomenon. As a philosophical perspective, it is agnostic towards its metaphysical and psychological conditions.   5 The exercise of free citizenship is hampered even when the individual is not subject to mastery but the practices of governance are displaced beyond her awareness and agency. When matters of public finance are presented as matters for experts or professionals or are entrusted to the governance of depoliticized international institutions that operate without much surveillance



  6   7

  8   9 10

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or public scrutiny, citizens are deprived of a portion of their liberty without being directly subject to domination. In this perspective, Markell (2008) argues that the idea of domination, with its focus on the problem of control, needs to be supplemented by the idea of usurpation, which more directly addresses the lack of public “involvement”. In Markell’s view, usurpation is not meant to substitute domination, but to play a complementary role. As Honohan puts it, “(w)e can understand republicanism as addressing the way in which freedom may be realised among interdependent citizens subject to a common authority” (Honohan 2013: 205). Article 2 of 1958 Constitution states: “France is an indivisible, laïque, democratic and social republic. It ensures equality of all citizens before the law with no distinction made on the basis of origin, race or religion.” Recently, the Stasi Report (2003), an outcome of a “Commission de réflexion sur l’application du principe de laïcité dans la République” established by the President of the Republic, reaffirmed the value of the positive pursuit of a secular political space, “laïcité active”, as a constitutive trait of the French republic, opposed to any passive statement of religious neutrality of liberal sort (Stasi Report, para. 4.3.1.). Pettit argues persuasively that consent is insufficient to discount domination: workers that consent to unfair contractual arrangements because they have no alternative are being dominated. As Talal Asad argues (2003), secular arrangements in Europe emerge out of a process where Christianity was an actor that contributed to the outcome in a way Islam was not, thus making the result less hospitable to the latter than it is to the former. From a historical perspective, Skinner claims that the neo-­Roman conception of freedom is negative (Skinner 2012a, 2012b); but he glosses over the fact that what is domination and what is not cannot be merely severed from the historical context; the neo-­Roman view of freedom as non-­domination understood non-­domination in the context of the Roman civilization, values, and ways of life. By focusing on the problem of double domination, Laborde acknowledges that, in fact, the unbalance of power exceeds a simple dichotomist opposition (see above). Her twofold account of internal and external domination is still, however, influenced by the dichotomist model. In the Presidential Address of 1946, Aung San addressed the monks by underlying their spiritual and political role against any form of domination:  Go amongst our people, preach the doctrine of unity and love [metta]; carry the message of higher freedom to every nook and corner of the country, freedom to religious worship, freedom to preach and spread the Dharma anywhere and anytime, freedom from fear, ignorance, superstition, etc., teach our people to rely upon themselves and re-­construct themselves materially spiritually and otherwise. (Aung San 1946b ‘Problems for Burma’s freedom’ Presidential Address at the First Congress of AFPFL, 20 January)

13 After her release from one of her periods of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi made a comment about the work of an elderly monk, Thamanya Sayadaw, who realized roads and schools through the means of religious inspiration instead of political power: Some have questioned the appropriateness of talking about such matters as metta (loving­kindness) and thissa (truth) in the political context. But politics is about people and what we had seen in Thamanya proved that love and truth can move people more strongly than any form of coercion. (ASSK 1997a:17)

This thought is provoking for both the non-­domination and the public reason approach, as it questions the role that religious truths can play to foster the democratic cause and the focus on the justification of coercion as the central concern of democratic theory. 14 Sandel believes in the major impact of ideas in practice: “philosophy inhabits the world from the start; our practices and institutions are embodiments of theory” (Sandel: 1984b: 12). This is an idealistic view that overstates the importance of philosophy for practice. 15 Sandel states: As Rawls explained, it is precisely because we are free and independent selves, capable of choosing our ends for ourselves, that we need a framework of rights that is neutral among ends […]. As the right is prior to the good, so the self is prior to its ends. (Sandel 1996: 290–291)

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16 Kennedy was the first Catholic to become president in the United States. His statement about Catholicism was a strategic move meant to appease non-­Catholics rather than the expression of some sort of philosophical stand. 17 In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Justice Black expresses as follows the idea of government neutrality:  Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another […] No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions. (Sandel 1989: 600) 18 Cf. Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940). 19 Sandel’s 1989 article “Religious Liberty-­Freedom of Conscience or Freedom of Choice?” is integrated with a few adjustments as a subchapter in Democracy’s Discontent (1996). It is surprising that Sandel maintains his critical assessment of the Supreme Court jurisprudence even after the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). This Act reverses the neutralist stand advanced in the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith (the peyote case) and, reinstates, broadly speaking, the Sherbert approach favourable to religious exemptions (Eisgruber and Sager 1994; Greenawalt 2006; Nussbaum 2008a). 20 Since the state is neutral with respect to religion, the liberal case for religious liberty derives not from the importance of religion, but from the need to protect individual autonomy and the non-­interference of the neutral state with one’s capacity of making choices (Sandel 1996: 66). 21 Conceiving the self as prior to its ends “rules out the possibility of a public life in which, for good or ill, the identity as well as the interest of the participants could be at stake” (Sandel 1996: 45). 22 Sandel is not always clear as to whether he supports a full-­fledged teleological strategy. 23 Sandel states: (D)espite its appeal, the liberal vision of freedom lacks the civic resources to sustain self-­ government […] The public philosophy by which we live cannot secure the liberty it promises, because it cannot inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that liberty requires. (Sandel 1996: 6) 24 The point is not to interpret Sandel as predicating politics on religious substance. It is rather that religion is to play an important role in the public sphere in the US. 25 Note here the overlapping between with the concern with public engagement of liberal authors (see Chapter 2). As we’ve pointed out, the differences between liberalism and republicanism have often been exaggerated. 26 Sandel does not distinguish between the types of engagement of public officials and ordinary citizens with respect to religion (see Chapters 1, 2, and 3). 27 Sandel highlights Obama’s remark that great Amer­ican reformers of the past “were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause” (Obama 2006; Sandel, 2010: 246). 28 Sandel interprets religious freedom as freedom of conscience. However, this is a reductionist view that draws on a specific “Protestant” understanding of religion. The case for smoking peyote is about accommodating a traditional communal practice rather than individual conscience. 29 For Sandel on soulcraft, see Sandel 1996: 319–321 where he rejects Rousseau’s centralist view of it. Rousseau famously wanted to replace Christianity (a religion of slaves equal in front of the supreme sovereign) with a true religion du citoyen, and proclaim it state religion. 30 These two critiques are not specific to republicanism. Habermas and Rawls, for instance, would agree with Sandel on these two points. 31 Sartre’s existentialism, centred on a heroic individual condemned to be free even in the most constraining situations, is closer to Sandel’s image. For an analysis of Sandel’s distorting image of Rawls, see Seleme (2007). 32 Sandel appears sometimes to acknowledge that the self is not simply encumbered (Dagger 1999a: 193).



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33 The distinction between these two kinds of priority is important because some liberals accept the priority of rights in practice (the first kind) but not in justification (the second kind). Mill defended individual rights to freedom of expression and to other forms of liberty as a bar to the tyranny of the majority. But in contrast to Kant and Rawls, Mill justified those rights on the ground that protecting them strictly was the best way to serve the cause of general human happiness. 34 The two claims are different. Mill, for instance, argued that individual rights, such as freedom of speech, are justifiable in relation to utility (the good), while in practical terms it was not subordinated to it. 35 Sandel wants to distinguish his republican vision from communitarianism – a related view still associated with his name. Communitarianism and republicanism propose, in his view, divergent views of the community and the good. Communitarianism is, according to Sandel, premised on majoritarianism, moral relativism, and homogeneity. In contrast to republicanism, the communitarian view is committed to the “prevailing values and preferences in a given community at a given time” (Sandel 1996: 6, 1994: 1767) forgetting that “bad communities may form bad character” (Sandel 1996: 321). Communitarism is based on at least two assumptions rejected by Sandel: (i) moral relativism (ii) homogeneity of the existing political community. The problematic character of these assumptions leads Sandel to a remodelling of his project under the name of “republicanism”. 36 Sandel retorts that “the question is not whether rights should be respected, but whether rights can be identified and justified in a way that does not presuppose any particular conception of the good” (Sandel, 2005: 23). But this argument appears to miss the point. Kant’s and Rawls’ views make precise the familiar moral intuition that the end does not always justify the means, and that there are principles of right – principles that govern how individuals should be treated by the state – that may not be violated on grounds of expediency or attaining what one thinker, a group or a community (Islamic, Christian, republican) believe is the good of society. It is implausible that this common intuition can be completely abandoned; an alternative that legitimates that a majority uses state power to impose the good as defined by a specific religion is a no-­go option in a pluralistic democracy. 37 Nagel suggests that Sandel’s disagreements with liberalism are more theoretical than practical (Nagel 2009: 113). We do not follow Nagel’s reading on this point: Sandel’s defence of the specialness of religion has illiberal consequences. 38 The Mississippi Summer Project was a campaign in the US launched in June 1964; the campaign was meant to register African-­Amer­ican voters in Mississippi, where they had been excluded from politics. 39 United States v. Seeger (1965). 40 Defenders of the specialness of religion point out that the alternative (neutrality) leads to the trivialization of religion. But this is not necessarily so. Neutrality can be defended by arguing precisely from the vital relevance of divergent and un-­reconciling commitments and values existing in society. Protecting individual rights is important because persons are deeply involved with deep questions, and we ought to avoid state imposition by force or indoctrination of ultimate religious or secularist worldviews. 41 See Chapters 5–6 and Okin’s review of Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent (Okin 1997). 42 We do not want to suggest that there can be no reason whatsover for granting a special status to religion. There can be good prudential reasons to grant religion a special status: for instance, in India, any political project that does not acknowledge its special status would lack the power of persuasion and the capacity to improve the democratic practice. 43 Likewise, if two Jehovah’s Witness parents refuse a blood transfusion that is necessary to save the life of their infant, the child’s rights should prevail over the parents’ beliefs. This is not, as Sandel may suggest, the result of reaching the “truth of the matter” with respect to the religious beliefs, but a question of rights. 44 In effect, Sandel himself appears to espouse a notion of neutrality as well, as his comments on McGowan v. Maryland make it clear: for Sandel, since the Nativity exposed in the public square had a religious character (one that was not acknowledged by the Court), the Court should have banned its display (Sandel, 1989: 615, 1996; McGowan v. Maryland, 1961). In this case Sandel does not take issue with neutrality, but with the lack of recognition of the religious nature or roots of the Nativity scene. 45 Sandel developed his views before the NDA became common currency within the tradition of republicanism.

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46 Pettit distinguishes an Italian–Atlantic republicanism and a Franco-­German republicanism. The struggle for freedom of the Italian cities of the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, and the independence of the United States in the eighteenth century, conferred a central place to the law over the ruler and to the value of citizens’ contestation and vigilance. On the other hand, the revolutionary seeds of eighteenth-­century France and the rising prominence of the European nations emphasized communitarian ideas of participation and cohesion. Similar genealogies define the place of religion in the republican framework. Both in the Italian-­Atlantic and French traditions, authors like Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Tocqueville offer elements to articulate a model that conceives civil religion as a necessary element in the realization of republican freedom. 47 We can distinguish different traits between Roman religion and Christian monotheism that are relevant for interpreting the notion of civil religion today (Smith 2014; Assmann: 2008, 2009; Veyne 1988). (i) First, Christianity is focused on the “one true God”, while the Roman religion was a flexible, capacious, and growing polytheism open to tolerating and recognizing new gods. This difference had political consequences. As Smith points out, Greek and Roman “polytheism could be conducive to an easy-­going freedom and tolerance. You can worship your deity in your way; I will worship my deity in mine; and both forms of worship are presumptively valid and authentic” (Smith 2014: 30). (ii) Second, Judeo-­Christian monotheism understands religiosity in terms of truth and falseness (Assmann 2008, 2009; Veyne 1988), which is a novelty with respect to previous religions. As David Hume remarked, polytheism rested “easy and light on men’s minds” (apud Smith 2014: 30). (iii) Third, there is a difference in terms of translatability. In Greek and Roman religions different gods were interchangeable; new gods were accepted in view of their similarities and inter-­changeability with the more familiar ones (such characteristics are, according to Bhargava, found in India as well; Bhargava 2006). In ­contrast, in Christianity faith in one God is exclusive, as other gods are deemed false idols. (iv) Fourth, in the Christian view, religion is not about maintaining civic unity or propitiating the gods with the hope of good harvests or success in battle; while polytheism was generally about human welfare in this world, in Christianity the stakes are ultimate: eternal salvation. The development of Christian spirituality has led to a previously unknown emphasis on inner life and the state of a person’s soul – something that is in his heart or in her mind. Historically, Christians have been concerned with the well being of the community, the assistance to the poor and the ill, and the justification of a just political order. But Christianity is not primarily political in the way Greek and Roman polytheism was. 48 Inspired by Montesquieu more than by Rousseau, the Founding Fathers of the United States similarly drew their inspiration from Christianity rather than seeking a new civil religion; however, they distinctively interpreted it as a religion of virtue and commitment to the community that would have shaped in time the political ethos of the new society. It is the same operation that Viroli sees happening with Machiavelli: calling for a religion that already holds a place in the soul of the people, a religion that they could easily translate into a strong sense of civic duty and love for the country. 49 Addressing Pettit’s Republicanism, Viroli questions the revival of the republican tradition focused solely on non-­domination: The history of republicanism should be reconsidered, in order to give to the religious theme the importance that it had historically. It is entirely legitimate to theorize the republican idea of liberty as liberty from domination, without mentioning that many important republican political writers considered political liberty a gift from God, and the duty to defend it a religious duty. But only an incomplete interpretation would fail to cast light on one of the essential aspects of republican political thought, and Machiavelli’s thought in particular, thus transforming republicanism into a theory poorly suited to teach the true way of conquering and preserving liberty. (Viroli 2010: 26) 50 In his dialogue with Bobbio, Viroli states: It is a civic virtue for men and women to wish to live in dignity and, as they know that you cannot live in dignity within a corrupt community, they do what they can, when they can, to assist the common freedom. (Bobbio and Viroli 2003: 13)



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51 For a diverging view of Machiavelli on religion, see Beiner (2011). Beiner’s interpretation turns upside down Viroli’s reading building a questionable analogy between Islamic fundamentalism and Machiavelli’s defence of religion. 52 Christianity could be an end and not merely a means for Machiavelli because in his society the vast majority of citizens understood the moral good of the individual and the political good of the community in Christian terms in the first place. 53 The residual forms of religious establishment that remain in Europe may also have adverse effects on integration. Laborde points out that “(w)hile it is true that establishment is mostly symbolic and cannot be said to put anyone at a serious disadvantage, symbols do matter when the basic identification of citizens with their institutions is concerned” (Laborde 2008: 90). She thinks mainly of traditionally established arrangements such as the bond between the Church of England and the British Crown or the presence of Anglican bishops as members of the House of Lords (Laborde 2013b). 54 Nicholas Aroney (2015) interestingly points out the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, on a religious basis, refused any oath to the Nazi regime: “For the Christian no earthly obligation is absolutely binding, and any oath which makes an unconditional demand on him will for him be a lie which proceeds ‘from the evil one’ ” (Bonhoeffer 2015: 88). In the case of oaths, similarly to what we have seen in the case of Burma, religious views offer resources that are fitting to contest domination from secular regimes. 55 The role played by monks in Burma’s colonial and post-­colonial history renders their actions both intelligible and inspiring to the general population. Similarly, civil religion in the United States endures thanks to a long tradition of religiously inspired protagonists of the civil and social rights movement that employed religious discourse and symbolism to articulate their engagement. The same kind of religious references would be problematic and incomprehensible in different contexts. 56 Consider the Presidential Inauguration that encompasses the Oath of Office, frequently pronounced over the Bible, and one or more public prayers declaimed by members of the Christian clergy. Similarly, religious undertones influence the representation of the progressive role of the United States in foreign policy and the justification of their international actions as expressive of the higher purpose of progress and liberation in the world. 57 Surveys shows that from 2007 to 2014 the “share of US adults who say they believe in God, while still remarkably high by comparison with other advanced industrial countries, has declined modestly, from approximately 92% to 89%”. Correspondingly, A growing share of Amer­icans are religiously unaffiliated, including some who self-­ identify as atheists or agnostics as well as many who describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular.’ Altogether, the religiously unaffiliated (also called the ‘nones’) now account for 23% of the adult population, up from 16% in 2007. (Pew 2015b: 3) 58 Similarly, a comparative analysis developed in Belgium and the Netherlands on the decade 1996–2006 (Botterman and Hooghe 2010) finds that the positive relation between church practice and civic engagement does not weaken over time, regardless of the increasing secularization, and that religious pluralistic cultures with competition between denominations do not display a more positive relationship between church practice and civic engagement. From these findings, cohesion rather then competition and diversity seem to enhance the motivating push to civic participation. 59 Bellah uses the phrase “uncivil religion” (Bellah 1987).

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CHARLES TAYLOR’S HERMENEUTICS OF MODERNITY Secularization, recognition, and inclusive liberalism

Introduction: liberalism and the critical hermeneutics of Western modernity Charles Taylor’s defence of liberalism aims to provide a methodological and substantive corrective to an influential form of liberalism focused on methodological individualism, individual rights, rigid neutrality, and an abstract conception of reason. Taylor’s goal is to retrieve the relevance of community, common good, and the recognition of difference for the theoretical development of a hermeneutic liberalism with a view to practical conflicts involving national, religious, cultural, and other claims for recognition.1 Taylor’s liberalism is properly understood as a dimension of his comprehensive approach to philosophical problems. In contrast to Rawls and analytical political philosophy in general (see Introduction; Chapter 1), Taylor’s liberalism grows on the soil of ontological and socio-­historical interrogations vis-­à-vis identity, meaning, language, faith, human action, secularization, and modernity. For him, approaching philosophical issues cannot be developed in the abstract, but needs to be done in their socio-­historical context; as a result, philosophy draws on a plurality of disciplines and sources – i.e. social theory, history, linguistics, sociology, religious studies, and anthropology. The scope of the political-­philosophical interrogations becomes broader, and is nourished by ontological and socio-­historical reflections on the modern condition. Properly understanding the political significance of questions such as “what is the place of religion in democracy?” and “to what extent should we recognize and grant accommodations to believers?” becomes part of a hermeneutics of modernity. Two of Taylor’s early landmark books, Hegel (1977) and Hegel and Modern Society (1979), provide a decisive clue into his hermeneutics of modernity that is relevant up to this day. Hegel famously states that “(a)s far as the individual is concerned, everyone is […] a son of his time: in the same way, philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought” (Hegel 1991: 21). Inspired by this insight, Taylor advances a historically rooted interpretation aimed at retrieving the “life of spirit” from a truncated vision of modernity, while abandoning the metaphysical trappings of Hegelianism. This vision builds on reductionist conceptions of rationality and political community that generate atomization, disaffection, and alienation. Taylor criticizes, in Hegel’s footsteps, any modern attempt to build an abstract theory of rationality severed from context and historicity – namely, the procedural rationality of neo-­Kantians, the focus on individual preferences in rational choice theory, or the instrumentalist rationality of utili-



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

tarianism. He argues instead for a hermeneutic view of practical reason that does not reduce it to universal rules, individual preferences, or utilitarian calculus: in Taylor’s post-­Hegelian and holistic approach, practical rationality is dialogically constituted, embedded in socio-­historical relations, and formed in interaction with moral and religious traditions. A central political goal of Taylor’s post-­Hegelian project is to mitigate modern forms of alienation and build a vibrant and inclusive democracy by advocating a liberalism hospitable to the plurality of spiritual and religious options in mutual interaction and communication. Taylor develops his alternative liberalism in two stages as an interpretative answer to practical conflicts and related to significant changes in the political-­intellectual context. First, Taylor’s earlier work, culminating with the Sources of the Self: the Making of Modern Identity (1989) and “The Politics of Recognition” (1994), develops a community-­sensitive liberalism emphasizing the relevance of common good and patriotism, on the one hand, and the “politics of recognition” of collective groups and their rights, on the other. In this way, Taylor also provided a reconciling solution to the conflicts stemming from the request for recognition of Quebec as a distinct national community in pursue of its good. This solution aimed at a form of reconciliation that avoided two opposite answers: either the secession of Quebec or a Canadian society insensitive to the particularity of Quebec. In a second stage starting in the mid-­1990s and culminating with the magnum opus A Secular Age (2007), Taylor develops his liberalism of reconciliation as an answer to a context marked by conflicts involving religion in Canada and other Western democracies, and centring on the individualization of spiritual-­religious life. In the following, we will deal with the two stages of Taylor’s liberalism (1–2) taking into account three different layers of his comprehensive approach to political issues – ontological, socio-­historical, and political. Even if religion is not a central issue at the earlier stage, it is in this period that Taylor lays out key elements of his approach to religion and democracy. At a first level of his comprehensive approach, Taylor outlines a moral ontology in which human beings are “self-­interpreting animals” whose identity is built dialogically in community with others.2 Identity-­formation is characterized by an orientation to the good premised on strong evaluations (Taylor 1989); in more recent work in which religion plays a key role, identity-­formation is also characterized by the vital need for experiences of fullness and transcendence (Taylor 1999a, 2007, 2011a). At the second level of his approach, Taylor provides an original interpretation of the emergence of secularity in the West: secularity does not emerge as a result of the gradual decline of religion but of the historical transformation in which religion itself (in particular Protestantism) plays a significant role.3 At a third level, Taylor tackles crucial legal-­political questions concerning the meaning of secularity in the West, and the reasons for granting recognition and accommodation to religious beliefs. Taylor’s hermeneutic liberalism4 is centred on the recognition5 and reasonable accommodation of religious difference.6 We will examine the legal-­political consequences of Taylor’s inclusive liberalism with a focus on religion; and we will critically analyse his accommodationism by contrasting it with the influential liberal-­neutralist stand generally averse to religious accommodations (3).

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1  Taylor’s early work: from moral ontology to community-­ sensitive liberalism Taylor’s hermeneutics focuses on modernity, yet it is built on a context-­independent moral ontology or philosophical anthropology.7 His ontology is holistic in nature, and is developed in a variety of works from the 1970s until the mid-­1990s, including his most ambitious synthesis, Sources of the Self (1989); this work is a combination of the analytical­transcendental analysis of identity and a reconstruction of the historical stages of the formation of modern identity which underpins his reflection on politics.

a  Moral ontology: identity-­formation, strong evaluations, and the good Moral ontology is, for Taylor, closely tied to the way we philosophize about politics. He argues that one’s stand on ontological issues does not determine a specific stand on advocacy issues. In effect, “either stand on the atomism-­holism debate can be combined with either stand on the individualist-­collectivist question” and the liberal/non-­liberal divide (Taylor 1995: 185). But getting ontological issues right draws attention to vital questions that are overlooked by mainstream procedural and atomistic liberalism.8 The liberal inclination to minimize the relevance of community and the common good can often be traced back to atomistic ontological preconceptions; this inclination is ethnocentric as it reflects an individualistic trend of Western modernity that saps political community from the inside (Taylor 1995: 187). The problems of identity and politics are more adequately addressed by building on a dialogical ontology which considers the vital importance of community, mutual recognition, and communication for identity-­formation. Identity designates “something like a person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental defining characteristics as a human being” (Taylor 1994a: 25). “Dialogical” does not refer to exchanges of abstract arguments (Habermas), but to embedded processes of communicative interaction and recognition. These processes are often mediated through language, and sometimes through argument.9 By engaging in dialogical relations as community members, we “express/constitute different relations in which we may stand to each other: intimate, formal, official, casual, joking, serious, and so on” (Taylor 1985a: 234). These pervasive forms of communication are premised on and articulate the vital need for recognition from others – family members, friends, lovers, and fellow citizens. Even hermits who seem to give up the need for recognition are in a dialogical relation to God as well as in a permanent inner dialogue with themselves (Taylor 1995). The process of identity-­formation involves an orientation to the good; this orientation is premised on making distinctions of worth between higher/lower and better/worse. For Taylor, “a vital part of knowing who I am is knowing where I stand” (Mulhall and Swift 1996: 106). Taylor refers to these distinctions as strong evaluations; they go beyond the scope of individual preferences and cannot be construed merely as the expression of personal desires (Taylor 1989: 34). Strong evaluations are the representation of second-­order evaluations that give content to the conceptions of the good:



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

(w)e experience our desires and purposes as qualitatively discriminated, as higher or lower, noble or base, integrated or fragmented, significant or trivial, good and bad. This means that we experience some of our desires and goals as intrinsically more significant than others. (Taylor 1985b: 220) These conceptions of the good are interconnected to the distinction between two types of human reactions, i.e. natural and moral: nausea, for instance, is an unmediated negative reaction to something repulsive; to the contrary, a moral reaction is mediated by an interpretative vocabulary or moral framework that shapes our experience and orders our values. These inescapable frameworks are essential for what it means to be human, and irreducible to natural reactions. Just as we need coordinates for finding our way in physical space, we need coordinates for finding our orientation in a “space of questions” (Taylor 1989a: 29) and further, for building a coherent narrative of our lives: “because we cannot but orient ourselves to the good, and thus determine our place relative to it and hence determine the direction of our lives, we must inescapably understand our lives in a narrative form, as a ‘quest’ ” (Taylor 1989a: 51–52). Identity, agency, and value frameworks are in a relation of co-­implication; we act from within a “moral vocabulary, building a narration in communication with others”; these are “inescapable structural requirements of human agency” (ibid.). Identity-­formation is, in Taylor’s dialogical ontology, not reducible to a mere aggregation of voluntary choices or subjective preferences (“I want to go to the market”; “I prefer vanilla over chocolate ice cream”). We constantly draw on specific sets of strong evaluations (Buddhist, Christian, Marxist) that we inherit and internalize as community members. These sets of evaluations are not unmovable wholes; as self-­interpreting animals, we can change the frameworks, yet their innovations make sense only in relation and opposition to existing vocabularies and practices. The argument from the vital importance of frameworks is not meant just as a contingently true psychological fact about human beings […]. Rather the claim is that living within such strongly qualified horizons is constitutive of human agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount to stepping outside what we recognize as integral, that is undamaged human personhood. (Taylor 1989a: 27)10

b  Community-­sensitive liberalism and the politics of recognition The dialogical ontology prepares the terrain for Taylor’s advocacy of the vital importance of recognition, identity claims, and the common good. Taylor’s conception provides an answer to, and a justification of, the growing number of claims for recognition by different groups (national, religious, sexual, etc.); at a ground level, these are relevant because of the constitutive link between identity, recognition, and the good. The importance of this bond is not only a matter of the genesis of one’s identity; it is also a matter of justice. Taylor advances the normative argument for recognition by focusing on the damage caused by misrecognition: 

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(s)ince identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being. (Taylor 1994a: 25) The lack of recognition is normatively relevant as it can inflict “a grievous wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-­hatred” (Taylor 1994a: 26). It follows that simply tolerating those claiming recognition is not sufficient to avoid doing harm; due recognition as the positive acknowledgement of fundamental identity claims “is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need” (ibid., our italics). Taylor backs up his argument for recognition by means of historical reflection as well. Reasons for recognition are all the more compelling today because of the historical passage from a traditional-­hierarchical society to a democratic one. In the hierarchical society, identities are fixed by social position. The decline of the hierarchical society makes space for the idea of dignity and the ideal of authenticity – that is, for the call that I live my life in my own singular way and that I am true to myself without following an external model of realizing one’s freedom (Taylor, 1994: 20, 31, 1995). While in both traditional and democratic societies individual identity depends on recognition, in the earlier age  recognition never arose as a problem. General recognition was built into the socially derived identity by virtue of the very fact that it was based on social categories that everyone took for granted. Yet inwardly derived, personal, original identity doesn’t enjoy this recognition a priori. It has to win it […]. (Taylor 1994a: 35) The development of democratic society has led to a split between two claims for winning recognition. With the move from honour to dignity, there emerges a liberal model of the politics of equal dignity. This is a “politics of universalism, emphasizing the equal dignity of all citizens, and the content of this politics has been the equalization of rights and entitlements” (Taylor 1994a: 41). A second type of politics of recognition has emerged out of the first, namely the politics of difference, focused on the individual/collective singularity: (t)here is […] a universalist basis to this as well, making for the overlap and confusion between the two. Everyone should be recognized for his or her unique identity. But recognition here means something else. With the politics of equal dignity, what is established is meant to be universally the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of difference, what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctness from everyone else. The idea is that it is precisely this distinctness that has been ignored, glossed over, assimilated to a dominant or majority identity. And this assimilation is the cardinal sin against the ideal of authenticity. (Taylor 1994a: 41)



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

The distinction between the two meanings of recognition corresponds to different versions of liberalism, namely one that is exclusively based on recognition as equal respect, and the other that adds a concern for difference. The first is procedural and rights-­based liberalism. According to it, the liberal state is purely neutral with respect to conceptions of the good: the state’s role is to provide general procedures that ensure that every citizen is equally free to pursue her conception of the good. While this form of liberalism of equal respect has fought against different forms of discrimination, it has been blind to the ways citizens differ. This liberalism of equal respect “negates identity by forcing people into a homogeneous mould that is untrue to them”; and the claim that liberal rules and principles are neutral is just the reflection of a hegemonic culture: “the supposedly fair and difference-­blind society is not only inhuman (because suppressing identities) but also, in a subtle and unconscious way, itself highly discriminatory” (Taylor 1994a: 43; Kymlicka 1995a). In contrast, the politics of difference advocated by Taylor reacts against additional kinds of discrimination that affect, mainly indirectly, specific groups. Taylor’s elaboration of this second liberal stand sensitive to difference and common good emerges not merely as an theoretical critique of mainstream liberalism, but also as an answer to a political conflict and practical problem regarding the place of Quebec and indigenous peoples in Canada. The bone of contention emerged in the 1980s with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights. The question regarded the possibility of reconciling the establishment of equal rights for all citizens with the claims of distinctiveness posed by Quebeckers and aboriginal peoples: to what extent was their claim to be recognized as different legitimate and compatible with liberalism? Are the claims of pursuing collective goals and common goods compatible with a liberal society? Taylor argues that the liberal governments in Quebec and Canada cannot be neutral on specific issues, but need to recognize the salience of specific collective goals and goods (namely, the survival of the political community; the maintenance of cultural and linguistic singularity in Quebec) that are irreducible to procedures or individual rights. For the government of Quebec, the survival and flourishing of French culture in Quebec is a good. Political society is not neutral between those who value remaining true to the culture of our ancestors and those who might want to cut loose in the name of some individual goal of self-­ development. This resulting politics of difference by pursuing through legislation and policy-­making the goal of survival, integrity and flourishing of the French Quebecker community is not at odds with liberalism. (Taylor 1994a: 58)11 The politics of difference is, for Taylor, only legitimate when fundamental rights – the rights to life, liberty, due process, free speech, free practice of religion, etc. – are fully respected.12 There is an “essential boundary” between these rights and – say – having the liberty to commercial signage in the language of one’s choice.13 No conception of common good can be legitimately pursued if it impinges on this core of liberties and rights; fundamental rights and liberties, however, are different from “privileges and immunities that are important, but that can be revoked or restricted for reasons of public policy—although one would need a strong reason to do this” (Taylor 1994a: 59).

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Taylor’s second version of liberalism has important consequences for religion at two levels: (i) first, the politics of recognition is prima facie hospitable to the claims of religious minorities. Taylor does not, however, develop this idea in his earlier work. But he advocates the requirement of granting recognition to strong evaluations that are constitutive of identity provided that this does not undermine fundamental rights and liberties. (ii) Second, a state cannot legitimately embrace a religious or religiously inspired conception of the common good. Here Taylor agrees with Rawls and Dworkin that a state which supports a religious conception of the good discriminates against those who are not in favour of it. But there is a crucial difference between the state’s support of a religious conception of the good and the state’s support for and allegiance to a particular historical community and its continuity, namely for a conception of the common good. There is a categorical distinction between the common good (the object of patriotism) and particular goods (religious or not): the liberal state must be neutral towards believers and non-­believers as between those with homo- and heterosexual orientations, but it cannot be neutral between patriots and anti-­patriots.14 Patriotism involves more than converging over fundamental moral and constitutional principles, on the one hand, and is different from the allegiance to a specific religious conception of the good, on the other. Patriotism is the “love of the particular” which involves a broadly social “allegiance to a particular historical community”, cherishing and sustaining this as a common good and a shared goal (Taylor 1995: 198). Starting with the 1990s and the change in the political climate, the complexities of the relation between state and religion became increasingly clear.15 In his later work dedicated to religion, Taylor’s develops his earlier ontology and diagnostic of modernity and develops in detail a recognition-­based approach to religion.

2  Taylor’s later work: secularity, immanent frame, and inclusive liberalism Before the 1990s, Taylor occasionally expressed strong views about the relevance of religion for politics, yet he did not clarify the consequences of the politics of recognition for the place of religion in democracy. Divisive questions with respect to religion remained unanswered: what is the significance of secularity and neutrality in the modern state? How far should the secular state go in recognizing religious claims? These questions have become ever more pressing starting with the 1990s, when the focus on patriotism gave way to religion. In the context of difficulties with the secularization hypothesis (see Introduction) Taylor develops the critical hermeneutics of modernity by centring on the meaning of secularity in the West. He articulates his view at three interlocking levels: first, he adds new concepts (fullness; transcendence) at the level of his moral ontology; second, he canvasses a meticulous narrative of the emergence of secular modernity; third, he rejects the view that religion is special and proposes a substantive politics of recognition hospitable to (non)religious difference. We look first into the ontological and socio-­historical aspects of Taylor’s hermeneutics and then move to his inclusive liberalism.



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

a  New ontological elements: fullness and transcendence Taylor’s dialogical ontology acquires, in his later writings, a distinct “spiritual” dimension, articulating more systematically the notion of “epiphanic moments” present in the Sources of the Self (Taylor 1989a: 335–336). In A Secular Age, he starts by pointing out that “every person, and every society, lives with or by some conception(s) of what human flourishing is: What constitutes a fulfilled life? What makes life really worth living? What would we most admire people for?” (Taylor 2007a: 16). In the pursuit of experiences of flourishing life and fullness, human beings are tied to beliefs about the meaning of human reality, good and evil – namely, to core beliefs and evaluations. If we wish to understand ourselves, we cannot abstract from those strong beliefs in order to reach a supposedly neutral or impartial perspective. We fulfil the vital need for human flourishing and fullness when we are able to pursue our own plan of life, and live more or less by our core beliefs and a sense of integrity. “Fullness” refers here to the sense that some part or aspect of our existence is deeper, richer, or more significant and, thus, can provide a form of moral and/or spiritual orientation.16 The experience of fullness comes in different forms, and it is equally open to both believers and unbelievers. It is crucial for Taylor that this experience is not reduced to individual/collective flourishing. The distinction between flourishing and fullness is a relevant change from his earlier view. Taylor argues that, in the modern West, it has become common to equate the two, namely to view fullness exclusively as the affirmation of life and immanence; this equivalence emerges from the widespread concern to preserve life, to bring material prosperity and wellbeing, and so to decrease suffering (Taylor 1999a: 22).17 The efforts to push back the “frontiers of death and suffering” are perceived as having a “supreme value” for the flourishing of life (ibid.: 23). When life is reduced to immanence, suffering, grief, and evil are turned into technical matters to be administered by therapeutic means. Suffering and evil lose their possible moral and spiritual significance for the individual or collectivity. The flourishing of individual/collective life within the “space of immanence” is but one form of achieving fullness. Individuals can search for a fullness that transcends the affirmation of immanent life, be it one’s material wellbeing or the collective flourishing. Taylor posits an “orientation to transcendence” – namely, a longing whose significance is irreducible to pursuit of the good. Taylor’s argument is that we cannot make sense of the continuous and pervasive presence of spiritual-­religious phenomena unless we acknowledge a yearning for “something beyond” and a need “to respond to something beyond life” (Taylor 1999a: 27). There is, he claims, an “ineradicable bent” to answer to a “spiritual reality”18 or call whose denial is stifling. This bent is widespread in the secular age, and can take religious and non-­religious, well-­defined, or fuzzy forms: “religious longing”, for instance, “the longing for and response to a more-­than-immanent transformation perspective, what Chantal Milon-­Delsol calls a ‘désir d’éternité’, remains a strong independent source of motivation in modernity” (Taylor 2007a: 530).19 Taylor illustrates the orientation to transcendence in two ways. (i) He invokes, first, the intuition that “the point of things isn’t exhausted by life, the fullness of life, even the goodness of life” (Taylor 1999a: 20); this intuition can grow into a belief that suffering and death are not merely a negation of life, “but also a place to affirm something that matters beyond life, (something that) doesn’t matter just because it sustains life” (Taylor

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1999a: 21). This sense of things takes various forms: in Christian terms, “God wills human flourishing, but ‘thy will be done’ doesn’t reduce to ‘let human beings flourish’ ” (ibid.); it is rather an invitation to participate in the love (agape) of God for human beings, “which is by definition a love which goes way beyond any possible mutuality, a self-­ giving not bounded by some measure of fairness” (Taylor 2007a: 430). Similarly, in the Buddhist tradition, going beyond the self connects one to the Mahakaruna, or great compassion, a transformation way beyond ordinary flourishing (in-­deed, negating one of the main conditions of what is ordinarily seen as flourishing, viz., the continuing self ); the call to submit to God in Islam which empowers humans in a way unavailable in any other fashion. And so on. (Taylor 2007a: 818, n. 23) Taylor does not argue that this orientation or “desire for eternity” is equally important for everybody – as the necessity to eat, breathe, or acquire linguistic competence. Yet human beings often display a vital need for transcendence; even if it may not always be activated, it is down there. In A Secular Age, he notes:  (p)eople speak of “divine discontent”, of a ‘désir d’éternité’. This may be buried deep down, but it is a perpetual human potential. So even people who are very successful in the range of normal human flourishing (perhaps especially such people) can feel unease, perhaps remorse, some sense that their achievements are hollow. (Taylor 2007a: 134; our italics) (ii) The opening to transcendence can also mean “being called to a change of identity” (Taylor 1999a: 21), and acting on a longing for spiritual transformation. In Buddhism, the transformation brought about by enlightenment is one from self to “no self ” (anatta) while Christianity calls for a thorough de-­centring of the “I” in the relationship with God. Likewise, deep ecology can inspire a conversion to a new way of life shaped by a sense of unity of all living beings. The analysis of these widespread experiences of transformation cannot be satisfactorily pursued from the immanent perspective of the affirmation of human life and wellbeing. Since “most conceptions of a flourishing life assume a stable identity, the self for whom flourishing can be defined” (Taylor 2011f: 17), acknowledging the relevance of transcendence means aiming beyond life or opening yourself to a change in identity. The spiritual-­religious transformation is in tension with the pursuit of individual/ common good, but can nourish and renew our understanding of it.20 Take Gandhi’s life risking “experiments with truth” (Gandhi 1993), which inspired deep reforms in India. Or consider the societal exemplary impact of the bodhisattvas’ karun.ā (compassion and self-­sacrifice for others) in Mahayana Buddhism as recounted in the popular Jakata stories: while ultimately focused on a reality beyond life and community, the bodhisattvas’s devotion nurtures communal ties and solidarity.21 These examples of the dialectic relation between spiritual-­religious search and the pursuit of the good in modern society are not anecdotic. The tension between flourishing and transcendence together with the attempt to mediate between them is common to great religious paradigms. As Taylor argues,



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

(h)istoric religions have […] combined concern for flourishing and transcendence in their normal practice. It has even been the rule that the supreme achievements of those who went beyond life have served to nourish the fullness of life of those who remain on this side of the barrier. (Taylor 1999a: 21) To illustrate, in Buddhist terms, the Enlightenment does not just turn one away from the world; it also opens up to the impact of metta (loving kindness) and karuna (compassion). There is the Theravada concept of the Paccekabuddha – the enlightened (buddha) concerned only with his own salvation; but this form of “saintliness” is ranked below the highest Buddha, who acts for the liberation of all beings (Taylor 1999a: 22).

b  Secularity, immanent frame, and inclusive humanism A second dimension of Taylor’s conception of religion regards his hermeneutics of secular modernity. To get a good grasp of the modern condition, we need to go beyond the conventional definitions of secularity and inquire into the conditions of believing in secular Western modernity.22 Taylor’s socio-historical interpretation of these conditions provide the broader framework of his inclusive liberalism. In A Secular Age, Taylor asks: what does it mean to believe within the context of modernity? What are the background presuppositions of belief-­formation in the modern age, and how have they emerged? What is the place of religious beliefs in the secular state? These questions build on Taylor’s previous investigation into modern identities and strong evaluations: while Sources of the Self interrogates the conditions of identity-­ formation in modernity, A Secular Age focuses on the new conditions of possibility of belief-­formation in the West. Taylor’s view is that to properly understand the emergence of the secular age, we must explain the gap between the experience of believing in 1500 and today. Briefly stated, secular modernity refers to a historically unprecedented shift in “lived experience” (Taylor 2007a: 7), from transcendence to immanence and the affirmation of life. In the West, there came about “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace” (ibid.: 3). While the secularization paradigm depends on a teleological and linear view of history, Taylor’s approach acknowledges the contingency and the historicity of the emergence of the secular age. The modern conditions of belief have not emerged by means of the gradual subtraction and removal of religion, but by a complex process of transformations in which religion played a substantial role. Thereby the modern West has acquired its differentia specifica on religious matters – namely the emergence and generalization of an immanent frame of reference that shapes belief-­formation. The immanent frame is not “mainly a set of beliefs which we entertain about our predicament, however it may have started out; rather it is the sensed context in which we develop our beliefs” (ibid.). The immanent frame refers to what Wittgenstein calls a picture (Bild), a background of our thinking, within whose terms it is carried on, but which is often largely unformulated. Part of this is precisely the affirmation of life, which is largely the unintended result of the Protestant reform and revolt against religious elitism, with its correlate affirmation and

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“sanctification” of ordinary life. The modern scientific revolution is, further, deeply connected with a moral-­spiritual shift towards the disenchantment of the world. The emergence of a disciplined, self-­contained self plays a crucial role: “modern science, along with the many other facets described – the buffered identity, with its disciplines, modern individualism, with its reliance on instrumental reason and action in secular time – make up the immanent frame” (Taylor 2007a: 566). The gradual emergence of the immanent frame does not engender a homogenous space of belief, but a multi-­cornered and tension-­ridden one. Taylor distinguishes three major options or ranges of beliefs: (i) exclusive humanism, (ii) anti-­humanism, and (iii) inclusive or open humanism. (i) The first range is given by exclusive humanism, in which the primacy of life and immanence becomes the only option available. This humanism tends to rely on a truncated version of rationality as merely scientist, calculating, or procedural. There are a great many versions and facets of exclusive humanism – from Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism, individualist liberalism, and Marxism to naturalist reductionism, including widespread popular beliefs permeating the body culture and capitalist consumerism. What they have in common is the belief that there is “no valid aim beyond” immanent life; from their perspective,  (t)he strong sense that continually arises that there is something more, that human life aims beyond itself, is stamped as an illusion and judged to be a dangerous one because the peaceful coexistence of people in freedom has already been identified as the fruit of waning transcendental visions. (Taylor 1999a: 19) The development of the modern universalist idea of freedom and universal rights becomes identified with the rise of an exclusive humanism that does not acknowledge its roots: “in the secularist affirmation of ordinary life, just as with the positing of universal and unconditional rights, an undeniable prolongation of the gospel has been perplexingly linked with a denial of transcendence” (Taylor 1999a). However, although Taylor is critical of the one-­sidedness of exclusive humanism and its resulting hostility of spiritual search and religious needs, he sees the focus on life, universal wellbeing, and flourishing as a great gain with respect to the previous elitist and theocentric society. (ii) Anti-­humanism represents a second range of beliefs. The anti-­humanist rejection of universal ideas of human rights and flourishing is, for Taylor, a danger bred by exclusive humanism itself; it grows out of the dissatisfaction with and the alienation from a truncated vision of modern life (e.g. petty bourgeois, calculating, capitalist, etc.). Nietzscheanism23 and its current intellectual offspring – Bataille’s general economy, Derrida’s deconstruction, or Foucault’s genealogy – are examples of anti-­humanism. Anti-­ humanism debunks the instrumental and calculating reason of bourgeois-­capitalist civilization of the Enlightenment as a symptom of decay and spiritual pettiness; by contrast, it celebrates anarchic violence and a heroic morality (Nietzsche). This pathology of modernity is based on a fascination with the negation of life (Taylor 1999a: 28) and a flight into a negative transcendence (Taylor 2007a: 455). Anti-­humanism is the dark side and mirror image of reason cut down to a calculus: in its most radical political form,



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fascism, represents this anti-­humanist option with its cult of violence, heroic virtues, and the rejection of “bourgeois” individual freedom. (iii) Inclusive or open humanism is situated between these opposite poles. The intermediary space of beliefs stands for a version of Enlightenment that does not pit reason against spiritual and religious search, and eschews scientism, reductionist materialism, and the tendency to limit practical rationality to a question of mere calculus, measure, or procedures. Taylor’s own view aims to reconcile the humanist heritage of the Enlightenment with the quest for spiritual goods embodied by religious traditions. According to this perspective, the moral-­spiritual landscape of human life is three-­dimensional: there is, first, the sense of fullness that reaches beyond our ordinary experience to a depth or power in existence, and can take the form of immanent or transcending experiences. Second, there are moments of exile or brokenness from that fullness; and, third, there is a kind of intermediate space between fullness and exile. One crucial question is, for Taylor, how one conceives and inhabits this middle ground (where most part of human beings live): between the fact of our longing for transformation and our condition of finitude and exile. Exclusive humanism does not acknowledge the complexity of this moral-­spiritual space, as it works with a pruned idea of fullness within the immanent frame. While the current space of belief is pluralistic, exclusive humanism is laying a claim to hegemony. The cult of immanence based on the absolutization of science, instrumental rationality, and materialism has an enormous appeal largely fuelled by the extraordinary success of natural sciences, technology, and the body culture with its focus on material interests and pleasures. For exclusive humanists, science becomes la voie royale to knowledge and truth at the expense of other forms of inquiry and investigation. As Taylor points out, “science, modern individualism, instrumental reason, secular time, all seem further proofs of the truth of immanence. For instance, natural science is not just one road to truth, but becomes the paradigm of all roads” (Taylor 2007a: 566). The current quasi-­hegemony of exclusive humanism represents a reversal of the previously existing conditions of belief. In the West “(w)e have moved from a world in which the place of fullness was understood unproblematically outside or ‘beyond’ human life, to a conflicted age in which this construal is challenged by others which place it […] ‘within’ human life” (Taylor 2007a: 15). A crucial shift in the West is thus the fact that the exclusive humanism based on the belief in a closed immanent frame of experience and the corresponding rejection of any appeal to a spiritual-­religious transcendence has been converted into a generally accessible and enormously prestigious option. Taylor’s diagnostic of the modern age draws attention to the moral and political cost of exclusive humanism.24 As in his earlier writings, he is interested in amending a truncated and self-­defeating view of modernity and calculating reason in order to build a richer view of freedom, rationality, and modern society. The quasi-­hegemony of exclusive humanism in the West disregards in particular the plurality of religious beliefs and the relevance of the spiritual quest for the good they embody; as a result, it leads to an impoverished moral and political life alienated from its moral-­spiritual and religious sources, and lacking in solidarity. The reductio of human understanding to the calculating and procedural aspects of rationality misrepresent and tend to undermine the relations of communality based on solidarity and non-­reciprocity,25 as well as the experience of self-­discovery, transformation,

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and aspiration to fullness. A Secular Age is, then, a plea to retrieve the life of the spirit (Hegel) from the sway of calculating, instrumental rationality, and reconnect to the moral­spiritual sources of religious imagination and solidarity (Gagnon 2014).

c  Inclusive liberalism Taylor’s response to exclusive humanism is the vision of a pluralist “life of the spirit”; his genealogy and diagnostic of modernity grounds the political approach to the on-­going conflicts involving religion, and aims to contribute to the open interaction and reconciliation between different options in times of cultural-­religious “wars” (Bouchard and Taylor 2008; Stepan and Taylor 2014).26 The “myth of the Enlightenment” has established a political and epistemological prejudice that sees religion both as a social threat and an illusory discursive mode. Taylor argues that we need to move past this exclusionary narrative to embrace an open-­ended understanding of political secularism whose main point “is to manage the religious and metaphysical-­philosophical diversity of views (including non- and antireligious views) fairly and democratically” (Taylor 2014: 59). Contrary to Rawls and Habermas, he thinks that religious languages should be equally welcome in the deliberative processes of citizens and elected representatives. The neutrality of the state only requires that the official language with which laws and legal decisions are formulated should not give special recognition to any comprehensive view: it would be equally improper to have a legislative clause stating “Whereas Marx has shown that religion is the opium of the people”, “Whereas Kant has shown that the only thing good without qualification is a good will” or “Whereas the Bible tells us this” (Taylor 2014: 72). This line of argumentation emerges in Taylor’s thought from a particular context – in reaction to the practical conflicts dividing Quebec over the role of religion in the public sphere (Bouchard and Taylor 2008).27 Two models are crossing swords in tackling the “accommodation crisis” in Quebec: French republicanism averse to religious manifestations in the public sphere, and pluralist liberalism recognizing religion as a vital component of democratic life. Taylor’s project of reconciliation in Quebec demands a clarification of the significance of the secularity of the state. The goal of his analysis does not tackle the socio-­historical question of “how have the new conditions of belief emerged?” but the political question “what is the significance of the secularity of the state in the new conditions of a plurality of beliefs?” Laicist republicanism answers the political question by actively pursuing the separation between politics and religion as a central end of the state. Taylor points out that the secularity of the state is irreducible to the principle of separation: not only that separation is but one dimension of secularity, but turning it into an end is normatively questionable and practically pernicious. First, the absolutization of the separation typical of French republicanism is not normatively neutral: by relegating identities and particularities in the background through state activism, laicism undermines the fundamental principles of freedom of conscience and religion. Second, the laicist model generates further frustration and divisiveness by overlooking the fact that social integration is achieved by means of mutual knowledge and exchanges among citizens and not by marginalizing or restricting the other (see Chapter 4 for a more detailed analysis of French republicanism).



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In turn, Taylor argues that the secularity of the state is a multileveled practice that can be characterized by inner tensions and dilemmas (Taylor 2011f ). Two levels are often confused: the moral-­foundational level constituted by the ends of the secular state; and the institutional level composed of the means to achieve these goals. At the foundational level, secularity involves two moral principles that pertain to the realm of constitutive values and basic morality, and echo Taylor’s earlier view of a bifurcated politics of recognition of equal respect and difference. The two moral principles that constitute the ends of the secular state are equal respect and freedom of conscience and religion. These principles are not always in harmony: protecting freedom of conscience can involve the recognition of difference and so go beyond the mere respect of equal dignity (consider cases of exemption from military service on account of religious or secular-­pacifist beliefs). The moral ends of the secular state are realized by way of two institutional principles or arrangements: the separation between state and religion and the neutrality of the state with respect to religious and secular beliefs. Separation and neutrality are means whereby the secular state pursues its goals, and they can be in tension as well. More neutrality does not necessarily mean more separation: the neutral treatment of persons of different beliefs does not always require separation but sometimes includes active public recognition of the specific burdens generated by having specific beliefs. For instance, religious believers can be entitled to exemptions from military service in virtue of their beliefs and freedom of conscience. Likewise, consider the case of Muslims in France who, according to empirical studies, have a substantial handicap in the labour market (Silberman et al. 2007; Connor and Koenig 2015). Fair state policies to remedy this discriminatory situation are premised not on increasing the separation of the state from religion but on its active involvement. The institutional principles are to be used dependent on their utility and fairness in achieving the moral ends of the secular state, and not the other way around. A major drawback of the laicist model is turning the means into goals; the consequence of this reversal is that separation and neutrality as institutional mechanisms become fetishized at the expense of the foundational ends of the secular state. Within this liberal-­pluralist framework, Taylor envisages two types of accommodation corresponding to the citizen and the legal route that is taken (Bouchard and Taylor 2008). The citizen route of accommodations aims at the de-­juridification of religion and the empowering of citizenry. This route of non-­legalistic adjustments relies on negotiation, dialogue, and the search for a compromise. Its objective is to find a solution that satisfies both parties. While sometimes the legal path may be the only answer available, in all other instances the citizen route to negotiation and compromise is preferable (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 19).28 Yet it is not always possible to sidestep the courts. Under the legal route of reasonable accommodations, claims to recognition must conform to formal codified procedures that determine a winner and a loser. “Reasonable accommodation” is a legal term that emerged initially in labour law, and is applicable to different realms, including religion. For instance, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities defines “reasonable accommodation” as the necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons

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with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. (United Nations 2006: art. 2) The definition points to forms of flexibilization of rules whose goal is ensuring the respect for equal freedom, especially with the aim to combating indirect discrimination.29 Taylor provides a philosophical basis of this understanding with respect to core beliefs. The argument largely echoes his earlier politics of recognition. His view aims to counteract certain forms of discrimination that the courts have traditionally qualified as indirect; these refer to general rules (statuses, laws, etc.) that do not a priori exclude, marginalize, or incur an undue hardship or cost on any individual or group, yet have indirect discriminatory effects towards individuals because of specific traits such as a permanent physical disability, age, or religious belief. These cases require differential, not preferential, treatments.30 Consider the rule that prohibits students from bringing syringes into the classroom (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 161). While the rule is entirely warranted, it might threaten the lives of diabetic students: there are strong reasons to make the rule flexible for diabetic students. The same accommodationist rationale prevails with regard to a variety of cases: the relaxation of a compulsory dress code in the case of pregnant workers; the provision of reserved seats and special ramps in buses for disabled. The “harmonization measures” for religious reasons spring from the same logic that concerns indirect discrimination. But are religious claims to recognition on a par to claims grounded on health-­related reasons? Taylor’s affirmative answer is developed a contrario: the lack of recognition of religious difference represents a type of harm. Consider the case of the prohibition on wearing beards for police officers. It seems uncontroversial that someone should enjoy an exemption from the general rule if he has a health condition that requires him to grow a beard to avoid physical harm. But are religious claims for growing a beard on a par with claims that involve health issues? This is the question in the US case Fraternal Order of Police v. City of Newark (1999), in which two Sunni Muslim officers objected to the rule, citing their religious beliefs as a justification. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, at the time a federal appellate judge, ruled in favour of the two officers, citing similar exemptions offered in the past for those with skin conditions. Maclure and Taylor agree with this stance: misrecognition of relevant religious claims can equally result in harm. The nature of the harm is different – it is symbolic or moral – yet harm is harm (Maclure and Taylor 2011a: 77). The thrust of this stance is not that the state should grant special recognition to religion, but that it should recognize core beliefs as vital for the development of identity and a fulfilled life. Taylor points out that religious beliefs per se are not special, but they represent a kind of core beliefs. If religious claims are to be accommodated and recognized, this is not in virtue of their being religious, but in virtue of their being core beliefs – namely, beliefs constitutive to identity, the sense of integrity, and the realization of freedom. Core beliefs are categorically different from subjective beliefs and preferences due to the vital role they play in individuals’ moral identity and integrity; they allow people to structure their moral identity and to exercise their faculty of judgement in a world where potential values and life plans are multiple and often compete with one another. Moral integrity is, for Maclure and Taylor, dependent on the degree of correspondence between one person’s actions and



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what she perceives to be her duties and axiological commitments. Given the crucial importance of recognizing “(t)he more a belief is linked to an individual’s sense of moral integrity, the more it is a condition for his self-­respect, and the stronger must be the legal protection it enjoys” (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 76–77). If a belief is premised on strong evaluations and contributes to “giving a meaning and direction to my life” being a “condition for […] self-­respect”,31 then it can generate an obligation for accommodation either through an enlargement of the existing rule, or through an exemption from it. Therefore, accommodation can be required in order to avoid harm, that is, to enhance moral integrity, fullness, and individual freedom. This space of self-realization and fullness may encompass the respect of religious choices that bracket the development of some personal capabilities, as some religions call for radical transformation and overcoming of the self (think of Buddhism and its focus on anātman – the non-­self ).32

3  Open questions: Taylor’s over-­inclusivism? Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity leads to the advocacy of a humanism sensitive to the “life of spirit” (Hegel), and inclusive to a plurality of (non)religious options. His earlier ontology focuses on the relevance of strong evaluations and the corresponding demands for recognition. On this basis, Taylor develops the idea of a politics of recognition whose merit is the correction of the blindness to difference in traditional political theorizing. But Taylor’s model of inclusion still echoes the Rousseauian dream of reconciliation through mutual recognition. Taylor’s image of society based on the positive and reciprocal acknowledgement of others’ difference is too demanding an ethical and political model for pluralist democracies marked by deep disagreements and conflicts of power.33 The politics of recognition is, in the context of the democratic struggles, a double-­edged sword: including claims of identity/difference in the political domain can engender various interlinked difficulties. First, it can lead to instrumentalization and strategic labelling, as it opens a window of opportunity for ethno-­religious entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs converted into power elites tend to use the language of recognition, identity, and rights so as to obtain protections and privileges. This, in turn, strengthens or creates forms of domination and exclusion. Second, politicizing difference may engender socio-­political polarization and instability and not reconciliation (in accordance with Taylor’s best intentions). The politics of difference is likely to lead to the conflictive juridification of their claims and boundaries (Habermas 1987; 1996). The dynamic of juridification can entail the self-­closure and “fossilization” of religious groups, entailing the potential perpetuation of the domination of women (Okin 2002; Chapter 7) and the exclusion of dissenting voices. In the present-­day context of politicization of religious and nationalist claims, Taylor has abandoned the formula of the politics of recognition developed in the early 1990s. He now emphasizes the importance of dialogical interaction and intercultural exchanges over the politicization of difference;34 likewise, he underscores the relevance of the citizen’s route over the legal one in negotiating identity claims.35 However, the question of recognition/misrecognition remains central for his ontology and political philosophy, and leads him to a strong accommodationist36 approach to religious claims.

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How persuasive is Taylor’s recent proposal of a recognition-­based model of inclusion? We suggest that his proposal raises ontological and normative-­political difficulties related to religion. First, we’ve seen that Taylor stresses the importance of transcendence beyond human flourishing.37 Nonetheless, the polysemy and fuzziness of the term “transcendence” renders unclear the role it plays in Taylor’s conception, as well as its political implications ((a), below). Second, against advocates of pure neutrality, Taylor is right to acknowledge that the state should take into account the moral harm inflicted to religious citizens by norms that discriminate against their core convictions and practices; however, pointing to the sincerity of belief as a compelling reason for granting recognition leads to an over-­inclusive model of recognition and accommodation. Not unlike his earlier politics of recognition, Taylor’s recent proposal is too inclusive, and can undermine the fairness and stability of the legal-­political framework. Adopting more demanding criteria for recognition may mitigate these problems, but not fully solve them. We suggest that we are left with a conundrum: the neutralist stand (e.g. Brian Barry) can lead to indirect forms of discrimination, as Taylor and Kymlikca argue; yet, in the age of hyper-­pluralism, even a moderate or limited approach to accommodation runs the risk of granting a privileged status to specific beliefs and undermining neutrality and legal stability ((b)–(c)).

a  Moral ontology: the question of transcendence Taylor’s use of “transcendence” is ambivalent and fuzzy, as he claims to grasp a commonality of a puzzling variety of phenomena from Christian theism, the Buddhist way to the Nirvana, Benjamin’s and Bloch’s immanent transcendence, Kant’s regulative ideas, Foucault’s and Derrida’s counter-­Enlightenment, and even fascism. Taylor’s “transcendence” can refer to a “desire for eternity”, a “life beyond life” (Taylor 2007a: 726), or to an “extra-­human spiritual reality” (ibid.: 404; 620), but also to more palpable human ideals like a “republic of equals” or perpetual peace (ibid.: 769). All these references of “transcendence” supposedly point “to goals or claims which go beyond human flourishing” (ibid.: 21), and whose pursuit leads to radical transformation. But this plurality of references raises the question of the utility of Taylor’s transcendence, and turns it into a catch-­all concept. It is further not clear why regulative ideals such as “a republic of equals” aim at something beyond human flourishing and even life; nor is it clear when a desire or aspiration stops being immanent and becomes transcendent. In one paragraph, Taylor seems to point to a criterion: “When the bar of normal behaviour is set high enough, ‘immanence’ may no longer seem the right term” (Taylor 2007a: 632). This suggestion for delimiting the space of immanence/transcendence is not very helpful: “high enough” is different from “beyond life” and can refer to ideas of human good; the phrasing is an example of Taylor’s fuzzy language when it comes to the distinction between immanence and transcendence. It is, in fact, unclear not merely the content of transcendence but also the status of Taylor’s argument in its favour.38 In A Secular Age, Taylor does not explicate the status of his argument for the relevance of “transcendence”.39 At times he admits that whether “transcendence” is relevant or not depends on a mere leap of faith:  What pushes us one way or the other is what we might describe as our over-­all take on human life, and its cosmic and (if any) spiritual surroundings. People’s stance on



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the issue of belief in God, or of an open versus closed understanding of the immanent frame, usually emerge out of this general sense of things. (Taylor 2007a: 331) This argument from transcendence can be interpreted as having a negative significance, namely as pointing to a limit and an opening. As Bernstein suggests, Taylor’s immanent frame can be either interpreted as closed or open to transcendence and no conclusive stance can be articulated in this regard (Bernstein 2008: 13–14). The awareness of this limit and opening would lead Taylor to a pluralist perspective equally critical of the militant atheist and the dogmatic believer, as they commit the same error in making unwarranted exclusivist claims. Still, Taylor gives a positive significance to transcendence. In A Secular Age, he argues that this whole book is an attempt to study the fate in the modern West of religious faith in a strong sense. This strong sense I define, to repeat, by a double criterion: the belief in a transcendent reality, on the one hand, and the connected aspiration to a transformation that goes beyond ordinary flourishing on the other. (Taylor 2007a: 510) This strong Western-­Christian characterization of transcendence narrows the vagueness of the concept; nonetheless, it also clashes with the open and pluralistic understanding that Taylor pursues elsewhere (Fraser 2003, 2015). As Casanova notes, if the first parts of A Secular Age “reveal the analytical, hermeneutic, and narrative gifts of a philosopher who can help us as few others to understand our secular social imaginaries”, the final parts reveals instead a more partisan dimension of Taylor’s inquiry: “the romantic soul of Christian love, the will to belief that accompanies the hope for eternity, and the utopian thirst for incarnated divinization and transcendence beyond mere human flourishing” (Casanova 2008: 2). This desire for eternity or a “life beyond life” characterizes religious and non-­religious quests from Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam to Google’s recent project Calico;40 but this desire is not something generally human (a “perpetual human potential”, 621), and a life devoid of it is not necessarily “stifled”. To the contrary, the rejection of such yearning for transcendence is, for some, a necessary act of liberation from an illusory aspiration.41 The vagueness and ambiguity of Taylor’s “transcendence” notwithstanding, his interest in experiences of transformation and de-­centring of identity remains relevant for a difference-­sensitive political philosophy.42 Taylor’s analysis draws attention to a plurality of beliefs, life options, and meaningful experiences of freedom that are irreducible to the liberal or republican views centred on the sovereign subject (be it individual or collective). Even if we don’t hold on the terminology of “transcendence”, Taylor’s hermeneutic sensitivity to experiences that involve (radical) de-­centring, renunciation, or heteronomy can be a corrective for familiar liberal and republican views in Western academia that focus on specific conceptions of freedom that are not generalizable. These perspectives, in Taylor’s terms, are “immanentist”, as they are based on notions of freedom as individual and collective flourishing (as in the early Taylor), freedom as the

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maximization of choice and wellbeing, or freedom as autonomy. Religious and spiritual experiences of freedom irreducible to immanentist perspectives can drive societal change: radical non-­violence (e.g. Gandhi, Martin Luther King), deep ecological interconnection (Arne Næss), transfiguring love for the enemy, sacrifice and devotion in the service of others (B.R. Ambedkar, Arthur Schnitzler, Dorothy Day). In general, argues Taylor,  (h)istoric religions have […] combined concern for flourishing and transcendence in their normal practice. It has even been the rule that the supreme achievements of those who went beyond life have served to nourish the fullness of life of those who remain on this side of the barrier. (Taylor 1999a: 21) Consider two examples. In the recent history of Christianity, Francis of Assisi’s faith and life have been inspiring for the egalitarian social movements associated to the liberation theology or for movements of peace and reconciliation. Taylor asks: “What does one think of Francis of Assisi, with his renunciation of his potential life as a merchant, his austerities, his stigmata?” (Taylor 2007a: 431). Militant atheists will see in Francis only senseless self-­denial and self-­deceit, while others (including Taylor’s inclusive humanist) will be receptive to the transformative call of an ideal of freedom and compassion that justifies the abandonment of the realization of some goods and capabilities, and can fuel personal and societal aspirations. Or take an example from Buddhism. In Buddhist terms, Enlightenment does not just turn one away from the world; it also opens up to the impact of metta (loving kindness) and karuna (compassion). There is the Theravada concept of the Paccekabuddha – the enlightened (buddha) concerned only with his own salvation; but this form of “saintliness” is ranked below the highest Buddha, who acts for the liberation of all beings (Taylor 1999a: 22). This radically egalitarian and compassionate Buddhist ethos has driven Ambedkar’s constitutional reform and social-­political movement of emancipation of Dalits in India (for Ambedkar or Navayana Buddhism, see Queen 2014).43

b  Moral harm, the sincerity test, and over-­inclusion There is, as we’ve pointed out, an essential continuity in Taylor’s work with regard to the role of strong evaluations, recognition, and moral harm at the level of ontology and political philosophy. Strong evaluations or core beliefs44 define the sense of moral integrity; misrecognizing core beliefs is often premised on their spurious reduction to “a mere preference that can easily be forgotten or supplanted” (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 91), and can interfere with freedom of conscience and equal respect, and thus lead to “inflicting excessive harm”. Taylor infers that, in a constitutional democracy, core convictions should be recognized, and laws and rules adjusted (e.g. by means of rule enlargements, exemptions, etc.) so as to accommodate them.45 The accommodationist line of reasoning has been strongly objected by liberal neutralists. For Brian Barry, if a law is legitimate and has general applicability, adjusting it to correct its differential impact on specific groups or individuals cannot but lead to arbitrariness, legal instability, and the undermining of state neutrality (Barry 2001). The state



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cannot and should not correct the effects of a legitimate general law, but only make sure that it does not target specific groups of persons. According to his neutralist stance, liberals should rather be concerned with all instances of coercion, which must be justified by adequate public interests, and not by recognizing and enhancing the value of cultural­religious beliefs and identities. If a coercive norm is justified, it should apply uniformly to all citizens regardless of its consequences on specific groups or individuals.46As a result, supporters of equality of treatment47 like Barry argue in favour of “standard ‘difference blind’ liberal prescriptions” (Barry 2001: 119), that is of uniform rules for all members of political community regardless of their core beliefs. It is, we argue, true that the law neither can nor should correct all its unequal effects. Unequal effects are not automatically unfair: they can, for instance, emerge from personal choices for which we bear responsibility (Nagel 2012b). In virtue of the principles of freedom of conscience and equal respect, the state should – whenever it’s possible and desirable – ensure that general laws do not have a prima facie discriminatory character with respect to specific individuals and groups. Moreover, Barry’s argument from coercion shows that in some situations the principle of non-­interference is sufficient to justify the abolition or adjustment of a rule when it turns out to be unfair. For instance, if wearing the Islamic veil does not hamper a woman from performing her job in a retail store, the law should protect her right to do so not necessarily because the state needs to recognize the value of her religious identity or core beliefs (pace Taylor); instead, it could do so because interference with her freedom of religion and conscience would be unjustified. However, Taylor’s accommodationism captures a normative insight overlooked by neutralists that is relevant for reaching fair and beneficial decisions in religion-­related controversies. As Taylor points out, the state must be neutral since laws and public institutions should not privilege any religious community; but completely ignoring the differential impact of laws and regulations leads to an improper assessment of the role of neutrality and just treatment. Even if they are generally valid and do not target directly any specific group, laws and regulations can lead to moral harm and indirect discrimination.48 Recognizing and tackling this differential discriminatory impact is a matter of justice and, further, can be beneficial for social cooperation and living together. Consider the Australian Aboriginals’ claims for the recognition of their sacred sites. In Australia, private property and tourist regulations can enter in conflict with the Australian Aboriginals’ belief in sacred sites. As such, the generally valid regulations of property rights and free circulation can cause moral harm and indirect discrimination against Aboriginals’ core beliefs and way of life. The Aboriginals’ demand for protection and positive recognition of sacred sites is a fair way of dealing with moral harm; it is also a way to increase the chances of societal cooperation and integration despite Australia’s dark history of discrimination and violence against the Aboriginal population. This case cannot be dealt with by merely assessing the coercion in abstract (according to Barry’s suggestion). First, assessing the coercion is contextual, and depends on evaluating the relevance and worth of their way of life and beliefs. This is the case in many similar situations: for instance, in order to reasonably meet the dietary restrictions of the Muslims in schools, hospitals, and prisons, an assessment of nature of coercion is insufficient, since the question is to recognize or not the particularity of a group, and adjust existing rules (e.g. by offering an alternative to pork). Second, applying only the negative test of coercion neglects the role that positive recognition can sometimes have in building fair,

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fruitful, and stable relations between groups. Barry’s stand turns the principle of neutrality into a goal in itself to be pursued regardless of context and effect, and confuses equal treatment with the principle of one-­rule-for-­all (Patten 2014).49 This liberal neutralism50 ends up being blind to the weight that avoiding moral harm and granting symbolic recognition can have in building relations of fair social cooperation and political stability. The thorny question for Taylor’s accommodationism remains, however, that of establishing when misrecognizing a belief becomes a moral harm and a reason for making an adjustment. For Taylor and Maclure, to properly understand moral harm we need to consider it as equivalent to the physical harm generated by the misrecognition of a special condition (Maclure and Taylor 2011; Maclure and Dumont 2017). Take the general rule that bans children from bringing syringes to school, and the physical harm caused to diabetics unless accommodations are not granted. Likewise, the rule according to which police officers should not grow beards can have an indirect harm on some people who must grow beards due to skin pathology (folliculitis). In these cases, a reasonable accommodation should be introduced so as to avoid indirect discrimination resulting in physical harm. Taylor and Maclure observe that the norm banning the beards has a similar indirect discriminatory effect on people who must grow beards due to their religious belief. For them, in order to avoid moral harm to their integrity and indirect discrimination, Muslim police officers should be granted a reasonable accommodation as well. But the equivalence between the two types of harm is, we argue, far from being self-­ evident.51 Physical harm can be objectively ascertained: in the beard case, having or not a skin pathology does not represent matter of interpretation but one of medical-­scientific evaluation. There is no equivalent testing for the controversial problem of evaluating what is actually a core belief, and whether or when a core belief can be a reason for granting an accommodation. Philosophers and courts greatly disagree on these crucial issues pertaining to the domain of philosophical/legal hermeneutics, and not to the domain of routine scientific testing. Taylor posits a formal and not substantive threshold for recognizing core beliefs – i.e. sincerity. According to the sincerity test, Courts are entitled to make accommodations whenever an individual sincerely supports a belief as vital for her integrity, and the current regulations discriminate against it. He develops this argument by defending a recent trend in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court in Canada, which is tune with his socio-­ theoretical reflections on the present-­day individualization of religious belief (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 81–84; see also Maclure and Dumont 2016). Together with Maclure, Taylor considers in detail the case Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem (2004) of the Supreme Court concerning Orthodox Jews in Montreal. In this case, the Court majority recognizes the religious claim of building a succah in the balcony against the regulations of the private residence on account of the claimant’s sincere belief that the practice is required by his Judaic religion. The two philosphers support the Supreme Court’s reasoning that focuses on the sincerity of the relevant belief. By applying the sincerity test, the Court does not turn into an evaluator of the theological content of the belief; furthermore, by not taking into account whether it is actually a core practice for the religious authority and tradition, the Court rightly assumes the sociological phenomenon of the individualization of religion (in effect, in the absence of a centralized Jewish authority, the authoritative opinions on whether building a succah is an obligation were divided).52 The Court



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thus acknowledges implicitly the claimant’s “subjective conception of religion”, and eschews the risk that stems from giving credence to the majority opinion in a religious community at the expense of minority opinions. While these arguments hold some merit, Taylor’s and Maclure’s low bar for moral harms and accommodations leads them to a strong or over-­inclusive accommodationism that is objectionable for practical and normative reasons. Whether and when a core belief should be a reason for recognition and accommodation is a thorny question. If, for instance, the state allows building a succah on the balcony against the general rule of the compound, it is not clear why an artist could not build his sculptures on the balcony, or why an architect and her child could not use the balcony to play together and build creative structures. The plurality of beliefs, lifestyles, and deep interests entails that the state may well be overrun by claims for accommodation and respect for individual conscience. This practical problem of proliferation is amplified by a tendency to instrumentalize the low bar for accommodation so as to gain privileges and special protections.53 The subjective model of recognition centred on sincerity alone incentivizes the increase in demands for accommodation and the possible manipulation of the language of the right to the freedom of conscience and religion. This line of objection is not a mere slippery slope argument based on an implausible hypothetical situation. A case in point is the exemption to the Muslim policemen who wanted to grow a beard in accordance with their faith. If sincerity is the only test, there is no safe way to distinguish between Muslim claims and the demands of hipsters and other urban tribes for whom the beard is an important part of their lifestyle. In conditions of “galloping pluralism” (Taylor 2007a: 300) and deep disagreement in society, what exactly is a core belief cannot be taken for granted. What for some is a profound belief is mere prejudice for others; this is particularly true for religious claims. These difficulties surface in a variety of cases (Dworkin 2013). Consider the case of the claims of the believers in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or The Temple of the Jedi Order. Such claims are not an eccentric possibility: the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or Pastafarianism) is now able to officiate marriages in New Zealand (in turn, the Temple of the Jedi Order was recently denied the inclusion on the list of charities in the UK). 54 Accommodating all these claims of conscience can become unpractical and undermine the stability and predictability of general laws and regulations.55 But it also poses a normative difficulty. It is arguable that the sincerity test glosses over relevant qualitative distinctions between beliefs and ways of life; there is prima facie a qualitative difference between sincere believers in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and followers of the Aboriginal way of life in Australia. Placing the two claimants at the same level misses something important about the relevance of the Aboriginal way of life, and perpetuates a history of misrecognition, oppression, and marginalization.

c  The conundrum of accommodation One alternative solution to Taylor’s strong accommodationism is to adopt different and more stringent criteria of recognition (call this stance limited accommodationism) that go beyond the mere sincerity test. This multi-­criteria approach is not uncommon in legal practice. For instance, the European Court for Human Rights has sometimes applied, as

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part of its legal hermeneutics, the “Campbell test”, according to which article 9 of the European Convention recognizes only beliefs and manifestations that attain a certain level of “cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance” (Arguelles 2016).56 The complex task of establishing an evaluative framework for filtering core beliefs that deserve recognition and justify the accommodation of religious practices cannot be pursued here in full detail. If persuasive at all, these criteria of evaluation should avoid parochialism, i.e. they should not favour a specific type of (religious) belief and practice. Their definition also inevitably depends on context, due to the variability of pre-­existing legal arrangements and the different place of religion in each political society. Beyond sincerity, considerations of relevance could have a central role in determining which accommodations should be pursued. The criterion of relevance refers to beliefs and practices that play an important role in a community of belief – namely, a community able to articulate a meaningful narrative and attitude in front of existence and the world. Inquiring into the relevance of core beliefs and practices entails the evaluation of their consistency and moral worth. Claims raised by individuals need to be justified based on a coherent set of beliefs articulated by a distinct tradition of religious and moral inquiry. The internal tradition of a community provides a background of debates and ways of life upon which the ethical and existential worth of beliefs and practices can be adequately evaluated. Experts of different orientations can be called to offer their perspective and the group can be asked to consider compromises and adjustments to the entailments of their tradition. In effect, in the Amselem case, the belief about the installation of the succah on the balcony was not only sincere, but also relevant, as it was deemed important and required by some rabbis. Moreover, a tradition of solutions for the construction of succahs in modern urban environments was available for comparison. The criterion of relevance is useful to avoid the conflation between sincerity and substantial burden. As long as individual beliefs have to be taken at face value, the evaluation of the burden imposed by the contested norm is also dependent on the person’s views: should someone argue that she believes the failure at building a succah is morally devastating and will result in her eternal damnation, the court will be hard pressed not to recognize that the burden on her free exercise of religion is indeed heavy. But while “sincerity might be a factual question, in the same way that the credibility of a witness is, substantial burden is a legal conclusion” (Su 2016: 44) and should not be justified entirely based on the claimant’s beliefs. Mere superstitions or personal idiosyncrasies, no matter how sincere, do not offer a sufficient ground for providing a reasonable accommodation.57 Similarly, a group like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, created to poke fun at religion, should enjoy the freedom of expression to do so; humour and parody are a vital part of a vibrant democratic ethos. Similarly, people should be entirely free to join a group based on the convictions “prescribed” by a Hollywood blockbuster like Star Wars. However, these two groups do not appear to provide relevant core beliefs that justify the special accommodation of their practices. Pastafarian articles of faith mocking traditional religion have a limited satirical purpose and cannot be put at the same level with a full-­fledged religious worldview. Similarly, the derivative imaginaries of the Jedi Order do not appear to configure a genuine tradition of inquiry connected to a relevant community of interpreters. In contrast, the claims of the Aboriginals for recognizing their sacred sites are bound to a way of life



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and a narrative of spiritual search and signification that sustained the group identity across a history of oppression and domination. Does a version of limited accommodationism then mitigate the concerns of liberal neutralists? There is, we suggest, no knockdown argument in favour of or against liberal neutralism or accommodationism. The weakness of the neutralist stand is that it can lead to indirect forms of discrimination. On the other hand, in the age of hyper-­pluralism, even a limited version of accommodationism runs the risk of granting special recognition to specific beliefs and undermining neutrality, integration, and legal stability. Even a limited and non-­parochial accommodationism cannot properly deal with all the problems of proliferation and instrumentalization. Various new communities of belief (Osho and other new age communities, the Church of Scientology, the hipsters and other urban tribes) put under pressure the limits of the accommodationist approach; in a condition of increasing individualization and pluralization of belief, defining the threshold of relevance becomes increasingly difficult. At which point of its evolution and expansion should the Temple of the Jedi Order, despite its odd origins, be considered a community of belief? Sandberg takes Jediism merely as a farce (Sandberg 2016). But according to others the Star Wars religious worldview is an expression of belief that genuinely reflects the current postsecular transformation of religion (Caputo 2001). It is not completely unlikely that the Temple of the Jedi Order will grow and increase its public claims for recognition: it is worth remembering that Scientology was also initiated by a writer of science fiction and it is now officially recognized as a church in several countries (see Chapter 7). The second difficulty is that, as Dworkin insists, accommodationism turns courts into evaluators, which can undermine their neutrality and stability. Making qualitative distinctions involves the risk of the arbitrariness and the exclusion of original and heterodox beliefs and practices; moreover, particularly in pluralist and complex democracies, making assessments according to general and stable criteria is inherently challenging and contested. While normative stability and consistency are desirable, the accommodationist approach tends to engender a case-­by-case approach that generates instability and arbitrariness. This is even more the case when the court reflects different political interests. A case in point is the accommodation of the display of religious symbols at the level of the European Court of Human Rights (Mancini and Rosenfeld 2014; Iglesias and Ungureanu 2016). In Eweida and Others v. United Kingdom (2013), the European Court of Human Rights ruled over different cases of employees who contested the prohibition of wearing a visible cross in their workplaces. In the case of Ms Eweida, a British Airways check-­in clerk, the Court ruled that the right to manifest her religious beliefs by displaying a cross had not been protected against the disproportioned interference of the employer. In the similar case of Ms Chaplin, a nursing sister, the cross ban was seen as justified due to health and safety concerns – that is, in order to prevent accidental injuries and infections to the patients. The problem with these two decisions and, in general, with the Court’s approach, is that it fails not provide general criteria to assess similar situations. The balance between the religious claims and the employers’ concerns is evaluated case-­by-case on account of a circumstantial interpretive exercise. As Cranmer points out, in actual practice, courts have been overcharged with conflicts whose resolution depends on the difficult and multi-­layered definition of the criteria of recognition and accommodation of

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difference, which “invite” ad hoc interpretations (Cranmer 2015). The necessity of generally valid rules and the requirement of recognition of difference constitute a conundrum and a tension that cannot be settled once and for all by a philosophical master-­ principle or a pre-­established set of legal criteria.

Conclusion Whereas Rawls and Habermas build their vision of religion and politics on Kant’s procedural notion of rationality, Taylor’s critical hermeneutics of modernity reworks Hegel’s recognition-­based conception that is more sensitive to the embeddedness of rationality and historical context. “Spiritual reality”, “transcendence” and “desire of eternity” are fuzzy concepts in Taylor’s writings, yet he is spot-­on in arguing against truncated versions of rationality and religious dogmatism. It is a strength of his version of liberalism that he does not reduce freedom to any specific conception dominant in the Western tradition (individualism, self-­realization or self-­determination) but is open to different kinds of quests for fullness – centred on the individual self or not. However, Taylor’s too inclusive accommodationism has, in turn, problematic implications as it lacks criteria for filtering relevant claims to recognition and can lead to inoperative courts unable to deal with the increasing plurality of sincere beliefs. Taylor’s vision is intended as a contribution to theoretical understanding and practical reconciliation; but it is also a plea for the retrieval of a spiritual dimension that tends to be stifled in the actual practice of institutionalized religion and philosophy by a fixation on codes and procedures at the expense of experiences of transformation. From this perspective, political philosophizing is not a mere matter of armchair understanding: part of the moral of Taylor’s enterprise is the necessity to avoid the reduction of philosophy as academic discipline, and retrieve it as a transformative practice. The central importance of religion and spirituality for Taylor’s critique of modernity is intimately connected to this understanding of philosophy as practical self-­knowledge and active engagement. The destinies of Saint Francis, B.R. Ambedkar, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi are exemplary of the transformative events at the crossroads between religion, morality, and emancipatory politics. Taylor’s texts celebrate plurality, mutual communication, and call – albeit implicitly – for renewal and transformation.

Notes   1 Taylor incorporates in his view of liberalism concerns that are at the core of republicanism (i.e. common good, patriotism, participation) and makes the passage towards multiculturalism (see Chapters 4 and 6). For Taylor’s relation to communitarianism, see below.   2 See Taylor (1985, 1989, 2007); Mulhall and Swift (1996).   3 Taylor’s genealogy of the secular age is focused on the West. He does not deny that secularization processes occurred in other civilizational spaces. But the emergence and generalization of the immanent frame as a background of belief-­formation is characteristic to the West (see later).   4 Hermeneutics is a philosophical approach that deals, in general, with the problem of the interpretation of meaningful human actions and their cultural products (Mantzavinos 2016). Taylor’s approach to hermeneutics is mostly concerned with the relationship between the prevailing understandings of human subjectivity developed during the modern age and the ethical-­political arrangements of contemporary liberal democracies.



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  5 Taylor reworks Hegel’s comprehensive view on recognition (Anerkennung) (Hegel 1991; Taylor 1977, 1979).   6 Taylor pursues the tradition of Wilhelm Humboldt (Taylor 1995) in combining a holistic ontology and liberalism. This combination has generated a widespread misrepresentation of Taylor as communitarian (Mulhall and Swift 1996). But Taylor is interested in community because he places personal freedom at the centre of his view. Therefore, we prefer to speak of Taylor’s community-­sensitive liberalism rather than of his communitarianism, a philosophical label that he also openly dismissed as misleading: I am unhappy with the term ‘communitarianism’. It sounds as though the critics of this liberalism wanted to substitute some other all-­embracing principle, which could in some equal and opposite way exalt the life of the community over everything. Really the aim (as far as I am concerned) is more modest: I just want to say that single-­principle neutral liberalism can’t suffice. (Taylor 1994a: 250)   7 “Context-­independent” should not be understood in absolute terms. By means of his moral ontology, Taylor does not claim to be able to step out of the hermeneutic game of exchanging reasons in a specific historical context; in turn, he engages in a fallible proposal of interpretation of general characteristics of human condition and identity, context-­dependence being one of them. For more details on the status of the transcendental arguments that constitute Taylor’s ontology, see Taylor (1995; 1989).   8 As Taylor argues in “Cross-­Purposes: the Liberal-­Communitarian Debate”, his theses about identity don’t amount to an advocacy of anything. What they purport to do, like any good ontological thesis, is to structure the field of possibilities in a more perspicuous way. But this does leave us with choices, which we need some normative, deliberative arguments to resolve […] (yet) the ontological does help to define the options it is meaningful to support by advocacy. (Taylor 1995: 183)   9 For Taylor,  The crucial feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression. For my purposes here, I want to take language in a broad sense, covering not only the words we speak, but also other modes of expression whereby we define ourselves, including the ‘languages’ of art, of gesture, of love, and the like. But we learn these modes of expression through exchanges with others. People do not acquire the languages needed for self-­definition on their own. Rather, we are introduced to them through interaction with others who matter to us—what George Herbert Mead called ‘significant others.’ The genesis of the human mind is in this sense not monological, not something each person accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical. (Taylor 1994a: 32) 10 Moral frameworks are not optional, and the moral orientation is inescapable for the constitution of the free human agent:  to speak of orientation is to presuppose a space-­analogue within which one finds one’s way. To understand our predicament in terms of finding or losing orientation in moral space is to take the space which our framework seeks to define as ontologically basic. The issue is, through what framework-­definitions can I find my bearings in it? In other words, we take as basic that the human agent exists in a space of questions. And these are the questions to which our framework-­definitions are answers, providing the horizon within which we know where we stand, and what meanings things have for us. (Taylor 1989a: 29) 11 For instance, Quebec passed a number of laws in the field of language: one regulates who can send their children to English-­language schools (neither Francophone nor immigrant); another requires that businesses with more than fifty employees be run in French; a third

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outlaws commercial signage in any language other than French. In other words, restrictions have been placed on Quebeckers by their government, in the name of their collective goal of survival (Taylor 1995: 53). 12 Taylor refers to basic civic and political liberties that are, broadly speaking, the core of Rawls’ principles of justice (Chapter 1). In his later writings he explicitly supports Rawls’ view of constitutive values and an overlapping consensus (Maclure and Taylor 2011; Taylor 2007a). In contrast to Rawls, however, Taylor espouses a hermeneutic view of reason, and is concerned with the common good (at the centre of republicanism) and the recognition of difference (at the centre of multiculturalism and interculturalism). 13 Taylor’s community-­sensitive view is liberal in that it aims to respect and treat fairly especially those minorities who do not share the public definition of the common good (Taylor 1994a: 59). 14 Suppose that someone objects to the pious tone with which Amer­ican history and its major figures are presented to the young. The parents might declare themselves ready to abide by the rules of the procedural republic and to educate their children to do so, but they will do it for their own hyper-­ Augustian reasons, that is in this fallen world of depraved wills, such a modus vivendi is the least dangerous arrangement. But they’ll be damned (no mere figure of speech, this) if they’ll let their children be brainwashed into taking as their heroes the infidel Jefferson or the crypto-­freethinker Washington, with all their shallow and impious cant about human perfectibility. Or we might imagine a less ideological objection, where parents who espouse an apolitical lifestyle object to the implicit endorsement of active citizenship that flows from the patriot’s view of Amer­ican history.  (Taylor 1995: 198) 15 In today’s secularized Quebec separating between cultural-­linguistic issues and religious ones is largely feasible. But is this always the case? In countries like India or Israel it is very difficult to extricate nationalism from religion, cultural issues from religious ones. It also remains a thorny question whether the pursuit of the common good together with the establishment of the constitutive values of politics need to be so categorically severed from religious tradition and practice (see Chapters 1 and 3). 16 Taylor does not define “spiritual”, even if this is central to his diagnosis of modernity and modern politics. He appears to imply that just as spiritual life needs not be religious, religious life can be devoid of spirituality (as in the mechanical application of religious rules and procedures). Taylor makes a distinction between superficial and profound understandings of spirituality (e.g. New Age movements vs. the spiritual life of Saint Francis) (Taylor 2007a; see Sheldrake 2012: 38–40 and Comte-­Spondville 2012 for a more systematic analysis of spirituality). 17 This is called in the Sources of the Self and other writings the “affirmation of ordinary life”, and is deeply connected to the history of Protestantism. Taylor states: What I was trying to gesture at with this term is the cultural revolution of the early modern period, which dethroned the supposedly higher activities of contemplation and the citizen life and put the centre of gravity of goodness in ordinary living, production, and the family. It belongs to this spiritual outlook that our first concern ought to be to increase life, relieve suffering, and foster prosperity. […] This affirmation, which constitutes a major component of our modern ethical outlook, was originally inspired by a mode of Christian piety. Consider the Reformers’ attack on the supposedly higher vocations of the monastic life. […] The really holy life for the Christian was within ordinary life itself, living in work and household in a Christian and worshipful manner. (Taylor 1999a: 22–23) 18 Taylor states: “A spiritual perspective will suppose that somewhere, deep down, we will feel drawn to recognize and live in relation to what it defines as spiritual reality” (Taylor 2007a: 620). What Taylor means by “spiritual reality” remains, however, undefined. See above. 19 The focus on transcendence and a good beyond life can break with one of the roots of religious, namely the fascination with violence and death. Taylor states:  I am tempted to speculate further and suggest that the perennial human susceptibility to be fascinated by death and violence is at base a manifestation of our nature as homo religiosus.



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From the point of view of someone who acknowledges transcendence, it is one of the places this aspiration beyond most easily goes when it fails to take us there. This doesn’t mean that religion and violence are simply alternatives. To the contrary, it has meant that most historical religion has been deeply intricated with violence, from human sacrifice to inter-­ communal massacres. Most historical religion remains only very imperfectly oriented to the beyond. The religious affinities of the cult of violence in its different forms are indeed palpable. What it might mean, however, is that the only way to escape fully the draw toward violence lies somewhere in the turn to transcendence – that is, through the full-­hearted love of some good beyond life. (Taylor 1999a: 28–29; our italics) 20

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Taylor’s conception of a non-­violent spiritual and/or religious life resonates with Cooke’s reflections on the good (2006) and Derrida’s view of a radically non-­violent and infinite justice (Vattimo and Derrida 1998). Taylor is spot-­on in rejecting Habermas’ over-­rationalistic understanding of the interaction between religion and society (see Chapter 3). Taylor points out that it is more adequate to think of traslatio not as a way of coming closer to Reason by means of a deliberative procedure, but as transformation in new circumstances influenced by religious imagination and practice. To illustrate, in A Secular Age Taylor discusses in detail the parable of the Good Samaritan (Taylor 2007a: 546–548). A Habermasian reading would claim that translating it is a way of rescuing its rational core for a moral-­political practice understood in terms of general procedures. Taylor justly objects to the Habermasian reading for reducing multi-­layered processes of exchange and transformation to explicit reason exchanges. The examples can be easily multiplied. Consider the central role of charity in Islam (the practice of the zakāt, “that which purifies”, is one of the five pillars in Islam) or in Christianity (the “love one another as I have loved you” command inspired countless organizations engaged in education and healthcare). In effect, Taylor connects the experience of transcendence to non­reciprocity suggesting that a close link between religion and solidarity, yet he does not develop this connection.  This vision neglects as well the contribution of the Judeo-­Christian legacy to the constitution of political modernity – e.g. the key idea of unconditional rights as a “prolongation of the gospel” (Taylor 1999a: 56). Nietzsche  rebelled against the idea that our highest goal is to preserve and increase life, to prevent suffering. […] The Nietzschean understanding of enhanced life, which can fully affirm itself, also in a sense takes us beyond life, and in this it is analogous with other, religious notions of enhanced life (like the New Testament’s “eternal life”). But it takes us beyond by incorporating a fascination with the negation of life, with death and suffering. It doesn’t acknowledge some supreme good beyond life and, in that sense, sees itself rightly as utterly antithetical to religion. (Taylor 1999a: 27–28)

24 Taylor develops his idea that a truncated understanding of modernity and rationality (of which mainstream liberalism is a part) threatens the very core of the liberal-­democratic project, namely personal freedom. As Taylor argues, “the metaphysical primacy of life is wrong and stifling […] its continued dominance puts in danger the practical primacy” (Taylor: 1999: 29). 25 In A Secular Age Taylor implies that only religion can “provide” for these experiences of non­reciprocity. But the experiences of gift-­giving, forgiveness and charity are not necessarily religious. Overall Taylor only gestures towards the relevance of non-­reciprocity for the moral practice, an idea that contrasts with Rawls’ and Habermas’ reciprocity-­based paradigms of morality and politics. 26 Solidarity and cohesion remain central to his project: they emerge not from forcing (religious) particularities into the private sphere, but from their mutual interaction, learning and dialogue in the public sphere (Taylor 2011a, 2012; Gagnon 2014). 27 Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor were Co-­Chairs of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences. The Commission was established by the Quebec government to address concerns about the “reasonable accommodation” of religious and cultural practices. The Commission released a report, widely known as the

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Bouchard-­Taylor Report (2008), touching on cultural integration, collective identity, church­state relations, and the procedures for managing cultural and religious harmonization requests. This is good both for principled and pragmatic reasons: it is good for citizens themselves to learn to manage their differences and divergences and avoid congesting the Courts. The “spirit” and values underlying the citizen route (exchange, negotiation, mutual recognition) strengthen political community. This route allows partners to “to engage in negotiations that simultaneously emphasize a contextual, deliberative and reflexive” approach to divisive issues. The contextuality is relevant since it takes into account the “unique nature of individual situations” (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 168). The mutual engagement can nourish reflectiveness and dialogue, while the legal binary logic of winning/losing can breed polarization and lead to communicative breakdowns. The legal accommodation of religion can take at least two forms: enlargements and adjustments of existing general norms and exemptions from general norms. Claims to recognition in Quebec are varied and concern absence for major religious holidays; the wearing under certain conditions of headscarves or kirpans; the reorganization of school work for children weakened by Ramadan fasting; permission for adolescent girls to wear loose clothing instead of shorts in physical education classes, etc. In hospitals, claims related to religious dietary laws, the orientation of the bed towards Mecca for Muslim patients in the last moments of their lives, or the extension of the period that the body of a deceased Jew lies in repose. Taylor’s conception is resonant with Rawls’ overlapping consensus, yet he arrives at it by a different socio-­historical route. Legal and non-­legal claims to accommodation are limited by different factors: the relevant institution’s aims (e.g. workers’ accommodations in the field of healthcare, education, justice, profit or non-­profit organizations, and so on); the financial cost and functional constraints; other people’s rights. To illustrate, a veil that fully covers the face of a teacher is not admissible since it impedes adequate communication between her and the pupils: since communication is not merely verbal, and is essential to the job of teaching, the basic purpose of the educational institution comes in conflict with the request for an accommodation. In addition, rights and freedoms themselves may be limited in the name of other principles: in Quebec, for instance, in relation to “democratic values, public order and the general well-­being of the citizens of Quebec” as stipulated by the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms (Bouchard and Taylor 2011: 63; Maclure and Taylor 2011: 82). For a critique of the recognition model of respect, see Forst (2013, 2014). See Chapter 7 for the shift from multiculturalism to interculturalism. The Bouchard–Taylor report recommends pursuing cooperative accommodations among citizens in the majority of cases, and using the legal route as an exception. But the citizens route is not devoid of difficulties. the citizen route may actually strengthen majoritarianism at the expense of freedom of conscience and freedom. Consider recent cases of conflicts between the logic of rights and the logic of democracy and citizens’ participation: a school in Austria has recently voted in favour of imposing the handshake in school every day; and in Switzerland it is the citizens who voted against building minarets. At a more subtle level, local majorities can enforce informal patterns of domination over minorities and silence them. Silencing minorities makes it the case that they do not reach the level of making a public demand. Therefore, the recommendation to generally pursue the citizen route and regard the legal route as exceptional may actually lead to the undermining of freedom of religious and conscience. There are other versions of strong accommodationism; Taylor’s version is pluralistic; others are conservative – namely, centred on privileging a specific religious institution or community. We cannot enter here into a historiographical debate concerning Taylor’s reconstruction of secularization in the West. Taylor actually acknowledges this vagueness:  Of course, I want to retain the notion of transcendence, along the lines of my original distinction between exclusive and inclusive humanisms, for the purposes of my principal thesis. But here I want to point out how extremely unclear and unsatisfactory is the notion of transcendence. (Taylor 2007a: 632)



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39 In contrast, in the Sources of the Self, Taylor’s moral ontology is based on transcendental arguments (Taylor 1999a: 123), and this is how he seems to argue for the relevance of transcendence as well. A transcendental argument starts from a feature of our experience that is indubitable and then moves to a stronger conclusion concerning the nature of the subject and his position in the world. This move is made by regression “to the effect that the stronger conclusion must be so if the indubitable fact about experience is to be possible (and being so, it must be possible)” (Taylor 1995: 20). In other words, transcendental arguments are a “regression from an unquestionable feature of experience to a stronger thesis as the condition of its possibility” (Taylor 1995: 21). They formulate “boundary conditions we can all recognize” (Taylor: 1995, 32). They are not “empirically grounded, but a priori. They are not merely probable, but apodictic” (Taylor 1995: 27). It is beyond the goal of this chapter to discuss the validity of Taylor’s transcendental line of argumentation. However, we can interpret it as a weak form of the regressive argumentative strategy that does not lead to “apodictic” statements. 40 See also John Gray’s fascinating inquiry in his The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011). 41 Taylor states: A spiritual perspective will suppose that somewhere, deep down, we will feel drawn to recognize and live in relation to what it defines as spiritual reality. We may feel drawn to it, may pine for it, feel dissatisfied and incomplete without it. People speak of “divine discontent”, of a “désir d’éternité.” This may be buried deep down, but it is a perpetual human potential. So even people who are very successful in the range of normal human flourishing (perhaps especially such people) can feel unease, perhaps remorse, some sense that their achievements are hollow. From the perspective of those who deny this supposed spiritual reality, this unease can only be pathological; it is totally non-­functional; it can only hold us back. (Taylor 2007a: 620–621) 42 For a similar argument, see also Abbey (2006). 43 Ambedkar or Navayana (“new vehicle”) Buddhism began on 14 October 1956 in Nagpur, India, when nearly 400,000 Dalits, formerly known as Untouchables, converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. 44 There is a relevant difference in emphasis between “strong evaluations” and “core beliefs” that is connected to a shift from Taylor’s early to his later work. Strong evaluations are embedded in community life, while core beliefs can be merely connected to individual integrity. 45 They should be accommodated as long as they do not enter a conflict with basic constitutional values. 46 Barry states: liberals are not committed to the attempt to eradicate all traditional ways of life in order to further some ideal of free floating personal autonomy […] the complaint made by liberals is not against the objective of remaining true to some ancestral culture but against the coercion of those who do not share that objective. If that position makes liberalism ‘inhospitable to difference’, it is not something to be ashamed of. (Barry 2001: 66)

Barry also sees the concern for the impact of laws on minorities as the result of a fixed and artificial understanding of culture. Religions and culture historically change under the pressure of the demand of equal freedom, and liberals should be unapologetic about this. Should we accept that “each culture constitutes a self-­contained moral universe, it appears to follow that there is no room for any approach to cultural conflict that aspires to transcend the limits of any one culture” (Barry 2001: 280). 47 See the discussion of Barry’s understanding of neutrality in Patten (2014: 117, n. 23). Like Taylor, Patten does not believe that the principle of neutrality is incompatible with significant accommodations. 48 To frame this form of moral harm, Maclure and Taylor speak of “the importance that the spiritual dimension of existence holds for some people and, as a result, the importance of protecting individuals’ freedom of conscience” (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 58).

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49 As Allan Patten points out, “there is more to fair treatment than the uniform application of a single law” (Patten 2014: 117, n. 23). Consider the case of establishment. Barry implies that there is no legitimate neutrality-­based objection to religious establishment so long as the rules and policies that constitute the establishment are uniformly applied to all citizens. Patten objects that, under the neutrality of treatment, the establishment is unfair since the state provides some form of privilege to one particular religion that it does not provide to others. 50 Patten suggests that a liberal perspective centred on neutrality is not necessarily hostile to minority rights and religious accommodations. He argues that cultural rights are in fact justified by a specific conception of liberal neutrality that focuses on the neutrality of treatment rather than on the neutrality of justification and effects (Patten 2014). 51 A traditional liberal objection to Taylor’s equivalence between granting an accommodation for health/integrity reasons is that they are different in nature: one cannot choose to get sick or not, but one can choose whether to wear a beard or not. This liberal-­voluntarist argument is unpersuasive: religious commitments are often non-­voluntary, and personal freedom is irreducible to voluntary choices. This liberal stand (appropriately called by Mark Fisher “magic voluntarism”, Fisher 2016) is not supported by the phenomenology of religious duties and experiences of freedom (see also Chapter 4). 52 Succahs are small dwellings in which Jews live during Succot (a Jewish holiday), in accordance with the Hebrew Bible. The legal conflict arose after an Orthodox Jew in Montreal erected a succah on his balconies in a private residential building. Syndicat Northcrest (the manager of the buildings). claimed the succahs violated by-­laws forbidding structures to be built on the balconies. It is noteworthy that the Jewish religious authorities were divided on this issue. 53 Maclure tries to further specify the sincerity test by highlighting that courts are supposed to probe the sincerity of the claimant’s core beliefs, as they usually probe the sincerity of testimonies. In this sense, freedom of conscience does not apply to any preference a person can have, but only to “conscientious convictions”, which means “strong evaluations and meaning-­giving beliefs that are central to the agent’s moral identity” (Maclure and Dumont 2017: 236). 54 Based on a decision taken on 2016 by the Charity Commission For England And Wales. See also Sandberg’s negative comment on Jediism and the need to redefine religion, in Sandberg (2016). 55 That Taylor’s approach is over-­inclusive and potentially impractical emerges from his treatment of religious symbols as well. Consider his treatment of religious symbols in workplaces and institutional settings. For instance, judges who want to display their religious membership in the court could be allowed to do so: a Muslim defendant could presume the impartiality of a Jewish judge wearing a yarmulke or of a Hindu judge displaying a tilak (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 47). This presumption is based on two arguments. First, what matters is what judges do, and not what they wear. If a judge acts in an impartial way, then wearing or not wearing a religious symbol should not be considered problematic. Second, those on trial still have the right to revoke the judge wearing religious insignia if they suspect that this may entail a bias against them (Maclure and Taylor 2011: 46–48).    These two arguments are not fully persuasive. (1) One can imagine a context in which judges wearing religious symbols are so much part of the usual practice that their appearance does not generate any difficulty. Prima facie, India may be seen as such a case. However, this possibility of distinguishing clearly between what judges wear and what they do remains too distant a prospect in the current circumstances of over-­politicization and over-juridification of religion. Even India, the largest existing democracy, has actually been abandoning the pluralist path for a majoritarian religious nationalism and polarization (Bhatt 2011; Kinvall 2007). It is thus prudentially better (and not as a matter of principle – following Habermas) that judges do not display religious symbols. The likely effect is the increase of symbols of the religious majority in courtrooms, which could result in symbolic domination, animosity, and conflictuality. A judge wearing a turban acts as a public official, and what he does is not entirely detachable from what he wears. Depending on circumstances, symbols can have a performative function: to paraphrase J.L. Austin (1975), judges do things with symbols. Surely, the formal setting and the symbolic-­ritual function of the judge in this case are crucial: a similar ban of the turban would be overly restrictive and unfair towards the employee of a retail store (on the political significance of rituals and symbols, see Chapter 4). (2) The second argument from revocability is not persuasive either since it may overburden vulnerable people. Asylum seekers and immigrants may not know the ­language and have generally little understanding and control of the legal procedures (Bohmer and



Charles Taylor’s hermeneutics of modernity

Shuman 2007; Codó 2011). The burden would be just shifted from the judge to the part that is less powerful and socially integrated. 56 However, the European Court of Human Rights has so far failed to define and apply these criteria. 57 The criterion of relevance is consistent with Taylor’s theory of strong evaluations, as it does not take core beliefs merely as the expression of individual preferences, but puts them in the background of a dialogical and communitarian moral ontology (for an alternative reading of strong evaluations, see Laitinen (2008: 153–156)).

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6

MULTICULTURALISM AND ITS CRITICS From rise to fall?

Introduction With the new wave of populism and nationalism, multicultural political theory has fallen on hard times, and is currently subject to heavy attack from both politicians and academics. Yet the wind was blowing in the opposite direction until recently. Starting with the 1970s and 1980s, the multicultural discourse and policies became widely popular and were adopted in a variety of states such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and the United States.1 International and supranational organizations, including the UN, the EU, the World Bank, and the International Labour Organization, gradually encouraged the adoption of policies that recognized and protected ethno-­cultural minorities and indigenous groups (Kymlicka 2007: Chapter 7; Phillips 2007; Eisenberg 2014). These political-­legal developments were accompanied and supported by the crystallization of multiculturalism centred on the questions: why is cultural difference relevant for political philosophy? What are the nature, the forms, and the limits of recognition of cultural particularities in a constitutional democracy? Depending on the answers to these questions, multiculturalism has developed into “strong” and “thin” versions aiming to correct the blindness to difference of traditional political theorizing focused either on neutral rules or on the common good; to this end, different versions of multiculturalism have justified the adoption of legal regulations and policies corresponding to the aspect of culture in question and the nature of the claim (Kymlicka 1989, 1995a; Parekh 2000; Modood 2007).2 Nevertheless, from the late 1990s on, increasing worries about socio-­economic integration and terrorism, in addition to the problems related to the recent refugee crisis and the upsurge of populism, have turned multiculturalism from an emancipatory tool into a perceived threat. Religion (in particular Islam) has been identified as the most problematic aspect of cultural diversity and the prevailing source of conflict and disintegration. Multiculturalism has rapidly become the culprit and the scapegoat for a broad array of socio-­ political evils, a supposedly misguided approach to cultural-­religious diversity that allows men to beat their wives, communities to collapse into racial violence, and the West to fall into the hands of Islamists. The backlash against multiculturalism is now common currency in Western democracies; in this overcharged atmosphere, prominent leaders such as Angela Merkel went as far as to proclaim “the death of multiculturalism” (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010; Phillips 2007).



Multiculturalism and its critics

This public rhetoric is largely built on a simplified image of multiculturalism and pays lip service to the rise of xenophobic populism and right-­wing nationalism: “speaking and writing about multiculturalism (including academic writing in a philosophical and normative vein) is often based on an imagined (strong) multiculturalism rather than its reality” (Grillo 2007: 993). A strong version of multiculturalism is indeed problematic since it portrays society as a collection of relatively homogenous cultural groups, downplays the problems of domination within groups as well as the importance of the participative integration in the democratic society. But multiculturalism is far from being a single doctrine; it is a family of different views and policies that give a relevant role to the public recognition and accommodation of cultural-­religious identity. The evaluation of multiculturalism and their critiques must, therefore, take into account the significant differences and debates within the multicultural camp itself. Multiculturalists3 have been criticized for undermining the integration of minority groups and migrants in addition to diverting attention away from the battle against socio-­ economic inequalities. But there is no compelling sociological evidence to support this line of objection and the across-­the-board condemnation of the practical impact of multiculturalism. Will Kymlicka, among others, highlights that comparative analysis conducted in countries that extensively applied multicultural policies show no clear-­cut correlation to the diminishing of social capital or the erosion of the welfare state (Banting et al. 2006; Kymlicka 2010). Furthermore, sociological research provides, with respect to the question of integration of minorities and immigrants, a complex picture depending on the type of multicultural policies and the dimension of the integration under discussion.4 Multiculturalists have also been objected to for undermining equal rights and individual freedom. These principles are generally internal to multicultural perspectives, even if under different forms: some defend multiculturalism as an extension of liberal egalitarian concerns to the problem of minorities (Taylor 1994a; Kymlicka 1995a, 2007); others advocate multiculturalism as a response to the shortcomings of traditional liberalism, which overemphasizes the importance of individual freedom at the expense of socio­cultural groups and otherness (Tully 1995; Parekh 2000; Modood 2007a; Malik 2012). In normative terms, the recognition of cultural diversity takes “weaker” or “stronger” guises posing different challenges to the principles of equality and individual freedom; they go from symbolic forms of recognition and the protection of minorities by way of collective rights to the establishment of multiple jurisdictions (Shachar 2001; Williams 2008). While some of these multicultural proposals are objectionable, multiculturalism has contributed to the understanding of the claims of cultural-­religious minorities previously overlooked by mainstream political theorizing. In this chapter we focus on the contribution that multiculturalism has made on the question of religion.5 From this perspective, multiculturalists are primarily concerned with the protection of religious minorities against the tendency of majorities to constrain their practices and gradually assimilate their members into the dominating culture. The concentration on this issue leads some to advocate forms of self-­rule of religious groups, while others focus on the need to counterbalance the risk of insulation of enclosed religious communities by equally protecting the individual autonomy of their members. To explore the different stances expressed on these problems, we start from Bhikhu Parekh’s strong multiculturalism and the problems that it raises: its culturalist-­ontological assumptions

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overstate the homogeneity of cultural-­religious identities and lead to the accommodation of harmful practices (1). Second, we move to two “weaker” versions of multiculturalism that are not centred on sweeping ontological assumptions, but on the compatibility between liberalism and multiculturalism: Chandran Kukathas’ modus vivendi liberalism and Will Kymlicka’s autonomy-­based view of multiculturalism (2–3). Finally, we briefly look into the debate on postmulticulturalism and consider the claims of the interculturalist approach as an heir of multiculturalism: interculturalism is at once a rhetorical re-­ description and a fertile development of some multicultural concerns; with respect to multiculturalism, it introduces a change in emphasis by placing at its core theoretical reflections and policies centred on dialogue, exchange, and integration.

1  Strong multiculturalism and its pitfalls a  From culturalist ontology to religious accommodations (Bhikhu Parekh) The strong version of multiculturalism takes the ethnic-­national and cultural-­religious communities as the building blocks of society and draws substantive political and legal implications that challenge and go beyond the liberal paradigm. Bhikhu Parekh6 best articulates strong multiculturalism and its culturalist-­ontological underpinnings in his Rethinking Multiculturalism (2000); therein Parekh builds his political philosophy within the framework of a “grand vision”7 of human nature, life, and society. On the basis of this comprehensive approach to political philosophy, Parekh starts from a conception of humans as cultural beings that depend on sociolinguistic and symbolic contexts. People create and nurture their own distinct cultures and are at once defined by them: cultures “mediate and reconstitute human nature in their own different ways” (Parekh 2000: 47). Culturally constituted dispositions are so strong that they can override natural instincts (e.g. self-­preservation), shape the character of individuals, and give content and identity to their personality (Parekh 2000: 122; 156). Human beings articulate and construct their search for flourishing and well-­being through culture; culture is not a means to a telos; it has intrinsic value as the way in which well-­being and human flourishing are articulated and expressed. Cultural ideals and models of individual/communal flourishing are different because human desires, capacities, and virtues cannot be combined without loss: some are mutually incompatible; others are in competition for the same resources or depend on a specific social structure (Parekh 2000: 48). In contemporary pluralistic societies, multiculturalism is, for Parekh, the only reasonable approach to organizing social cooperation and allowing human beings to lead their lives without violating the vital bonds to culture. The internal diversity of pluralistic societies, however, generates acute conflicts that cannot be settled by appealing to a shared body of values. It is thus necessary to establish a shared structure of political authority that holds together the society as its different components “become used to each other and build common interests and mutual trust” (Parekh 2000: 207). By defending the integrity of cultural groups as a key to well-­being and flourishing, political authority gains legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and enables the possibility of public dialogue on fair terms. In time, a broadly shared common culture stems as well from the interaction between



Multiculturalism and its critics

groups: some general principle such as avoiding harm are likely to be accepted by all, yet the interpretations of human flourishing and well-­being remain different. This image of unity in diversity is reflected at the institutional level. The state can recognize “several centres of authority exercising overlapping jurisdictions and reaching decisions through negotiations and compromise”; the system of laws need not be homogeneous, for different communities might not agree on them and “legitimately demand the right to adapt them to their circumstances and needs” (Parekh 2000: 194–195). Collective rights represent an important and legitimate tool for gathering communities under the umbrella of state authority, while acknowledging that their culture needs to be protected. Parekh distinguishes and defends two kinds of collective rights: derivative and primary. Collective rights are derivative when they stem from the decision of individuals to pool their rights together to have them defended, say, by an association of a trade union. They are primary when they belong to collectivities that are entitled to them “by virtue of being what they are and not derivatively from their members” (Parekh 2000: 213). A group’s right to their sacred rituals (e.g. ritual animal slaughtering; the ritual use of drugs; specific funeral ceremonies, etc.) falls under this category. In both cases, collective rights are not limitless, since they find their justification from their contribution to human well-­being and flourishing (Parekh 2000: 214). Parekh’s multiculturalism takes religion as a central element of culture, well-­being, and human flourishing; religion plays, as well, a vital role in legitimizing internal group authority. The liberal lack of recognition of cultural-­religious identities tends to generate the radicalization of religion, whose symbols and beliefs become a catalyst for a collective sense of neglect. Parekh admits that religion is sometimes irrational, oppressive, and cruel, but these traits are not exclusive to it: ethnic identity and political ideology can come with similar attributes as well. For him, we should find ways of benefiting from the contribution of religion to public discourse and social cooperation while also minimizing its dangers. Parekh thus advances that an “inclusive and religiously sensitive secularism offers the best basis for a creative and mutually beneficial engagement between religion and political life” (Parekh 2000: 335). This inclusive stance involves the cultural contextualization of the meaning of legal norms and thus the acceptance of the relevance of cultural defence.8 Consider the case of family law. In most societies, marriage is void if contracted under duress, but there is a great deal of variation in the understanding of what counts as duress and how deep the stigma of annulment is. While in the United Kingdom duress was traditionally acknowledged only in cases “when there was a threat of imminent danger to life and liberty” (Parekh 2000: 248), in time the jurisprudence came to recognize the importance of religious and ethnic customs to this evaluation. In Aneeka Sohrab v. Raja Sulman Khan (2002), Scottish courts annulled the marriage of Aneeka Sohrab, who had been forced into marriage at a Glasgow mosque at the age of sixteen after intense emotional pressure from her family. For Parekh, courts rightly considered the shame of refusing to take the vows during a religious ceremony and the menace of breaking the connection with her family and community as grounds for duress even though the life of the girl was not in danger. No practice is above the state’s moral scrutiny based on certain public values of the political community and the universal values embodied by the basic human rights. Yet

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public values can be questioned by minority cultures, and universal rights are always in need of interpretation and cultural contextualization (Parekh 1996). Moreover, moral judgements are not the only criterion in granting accommodation: religious and cultural practices may deserve protection because of their contribution to the cohesion and sustenance of the cultural group. On these premises, Parekh argues that (a)lthough we might find a practice morally problematic or even undesirable, we might decide to allow it because of its binding nature and community sustaining role. The cultural and moral dimensions of a practice need to be balanced and traded-­off, and that depends on how central the practice is to the relevant way of life and its degree of moral unacceptability. (Parekh 2000: 293)9 A relevant case is polygamy. Polygamy is forbidden in Western societies, while polygyny (marriage of a man with several wives) is allowed, with some restrictions, in many Islamic societies. Parekh argues that the practice of polygamy among consenting adults could be allowed in Western states, but only if it is not restricted to polygyny, so that the principle of non-­discrimination is respected. The goal is a form of accommodation of the practice through its adaptation to the fundamental values in the Western context (Parekh 2000: 282–292).

b  The problems of essentializing culture Parekh’s stance on collective rights and multicultural policies reflects a culturalist ontology that underestimates the internal diversity of groups and absolutisizes the role of culture in society (i); this stance can lead to strategic labelling and increased conflictuality between (religious) groups (ii); moreover, strong multiculturalism does not sufficiently consider the mechanisms of domination and control within groups and thus can lead to the acceptance of harmful practice in the name of culture and religion (iii). (i) Culture is a key element for any social ontology, yet Parekh’s culturalism projects society as a collection of cultural groups. Thereby, he minimizes other material/non-­ material aspects of society – political power dynamics, social struggles, economic interests, etc. On one account of this culturalist perspective, groups themselves are defined in a homogenous way that questionably lumps together a variety of distinct elements: language, ethnic traditions, national ethos, religious belief, economic interests, social structures, and so on.10 As Brubaker points out, there is something misguided in this tendency to talk about multiculturalism or the politics of difference in terms of highly generalised notions of ethnicity, culture, identity or difference. It is necessary instead to attend to the specific logic and properties – the specific ‘affordances’ – of differing modes of cultural difference. (Brubaker 2013: 4–5) Consider the request to allow polygamy in the West. A strong multiculturalist approach frames the case as a cultural-­religious request for accommodation of marriage practices



Multiculturalism and its critics

formulated by Muslim immigrants. But accepting polygamy based on the respect of a minority religion is an essentialist move that assumes there is a straightforward religious identity associated with the practice. Empirical research suggests that the socio-­political, economic, and cultural geography is more complex than the strong multiculturalist picture (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Brubaker 2013). Some minority members may at once identify as Muslims, possess a social self-­understanding as economic immigrants, and have a strong emotional sense of belonging to their national origins. Each of these three dimensions – religious, economic, and ethno-­political – tells a different story about their claims (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 14–21), including the accommodation of marriage practices. From a religious point of view, the limits of polygamy are controversial. Some scholars argue that the restrictions articulated in the Quran and Sunna were only meant to allow the practice temporarily (Rehman 2007). From a socio-­economic point of view, the accommodation of polygamy has no link with immigrants’ concern for welfare and job-­market integration. Finally, according to the ethno-­political sense of belonging to their nation of origin, the practice would be a point of contention even among people who share the first two layers of religious and economic identification: Islamic societies enforce different laws on the matter, ranging from full prohibition in Tunisia to permissibility in Egypt (Mashhour 2005).11 Framing the accommodation as an act of religious recognition disregards that the connection between different societal practices and cultural identities is diverse and depends on a complex web of identifications and interests. Seeking the accommodation of polygamy as a way to recognize Muslim immigrants may end up ascribing to several members of the group a predefined religious identity, interests, and beliefs that they may not share.12 By downplaying the importance of internal pluralism of groups, strong multiculturalism undermines the sensitivity to diversity that is supposed to be its greatest virtue. (ii) Defining groups around their cultural “essence” and identity can have pernicious political implications, like the strategic use of cultural labels in order to gain power and dominate others. The application of essentialist labels can further reinforce and institutionalize the role of vocal fundamentalist groups.13 A case in point is the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1988. The publication of the book was followed by violent protests of Muslims all around the world that culminated the following year with Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwā that called for Rushdie’s death because of the allegedly blasphemous contents of the book. The burning of books and the aggressions against people who collaborated with the translation and distribution of Rushdie’s work created a wide sensation and polarized intellectuals, politicians, and public opinion in general. Parekh construes the situation as a reaction of the UK Muslim minority against an instance of defamation. He suggests that the solution should be a compromise, with Rushdie taking a conciliatory stance on the offensive content of his novel in exchange for pacification (Parekh 2000: 304). But, first, Parekh’s claim that Rushdie should take an apologetic and conciliatory stance, stressing his purely literary and unconfrontational intentions is dubious: artists often challenge common perceptions and provoke; protecting their creative freedom is essential in any free society. Moreover, even if a community of believers feel that the novel is offensive, nobody forces them into reading it, and religious offence is too subjective a ground for limiting freedom of speech, or even for demanding self-­ censorship.

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Second, Parekh’s argument is based on the assumption that the protesting Muslims represent a homogenous religious-­cultural group in UK society that shares the assessment of Rushdie’s work. In fact, several Muslim British citizens and intellectuals rose to the defence of creative freedom and Rushdie’s novel. The most vocal protests in the UK, backed by conservative groups abroad, should not be automatically seen as representative of the Muslims in the UK. Parekh’s reading ends up strengthening the position of conservative religious leaders as claiming to express the will of the British Muslims. Assembling together religion, ethnicity, nationality, and language, and other interests fosters collective identities and increases their tendency to clash. Parekh himself cautions that this potential for conflict in multicultural societies needs to be averted by forming a common culture. Strong multiculturalism tends to create and reinforces the boundaries between groups and neglects a more systematic reflection on the conditions for dialogue and interaction among citizens.14 In contrast, postcolonial studies offer cautionary “tales” against the risks of an essentialist culturalist ontology and politics of identity that reifies the internal cohesion of groups and the borders between them. Postcolonial studies are particularly apt in unveiling the games of power, economic interest, and domination behind the language of culture, identity, and modern emancipation. The mixture of politics of identity and strategic labelling can create new relations of domination and increased conflict (Wimmer 1997; Broch-­Due 2004).15 Consider the case of Sudan.16 The essentialization of its diverse landscape of overlapping ethnic identities and tribal allegiances began during the colonial period. For instance, in the 1920s and 1930s, British colonial rule established a “communitarian” policy of Native Administration that created a new hierarchy of tribal administrators and gathered different groups around the same rule (De Waal 2005: 7). After this colonialist period, the Sudanese elites continued on the path of “communitarian” simplification that led to polarization and violence. The political elites were divided with regard to whether Sudan should be Arabic, and consequently part of the Arab world, or whether it should be African, and thereby an ally of African countries. These two national-­ethnic categorizations were increasingly associated with religion, identifying Arabism with Islam and Africanism with Christianity and indigenous beliefs (Mamdani 2004; Madibbo 2012). In time, the expressions of public discontent and political protest also adopted these ethno-­religious cleavages. It was in this context that the hegemonic claims of the North fused with the diffusion of fundamentalist ideologies; the “Arabization” of the South was fuelled by the religious rhetoric of Islamist leaders (Collins 1999). The war in the region of Darfur was especially daunting, as Darfur’s complex identities were radically and traumatically simplified, creating a polarized “Arab versus African” dichotomy that is “historically bogus, but disturbingly powerful” (De Waal 2005: 10). One of the main sources of conflict is the fact that after decades of identity politics, the social relations in Sudan “are characterised by the fact that class and union-­ class contradictions (ethnic, religious, cultural) overlap and are materially and ideologically mutually reinforcing. In the present conjuncture, this has tilted the relations more towards a destructive and disintegrative pole” (El-­Battahani 2007: 55). As a reaction, it is unsurprising that scholars like Madibbo have argued for the possibility of a peaceful multicultural Sudan where “a Sudanese civic identity can be promoted by enhancing people’s commitment to the national interests of the country, transcending differences and focusing on common symbols and values” (Madibbo 2012: 316).



Multiculturalism and its critics

c  Inclusion and harmful practices Strong multiculturalism is based on a political ontology of identity that takes cultural groups as key actors in the social-­political arena. Within some limits, these actors are protected by collective rights, and are entitled to their own legal authority and jurisdiction. But the accommodation of these cultural-­religious practices can violate the rights of community members and undermine their equal access to education, work, social standing, civic engagement, and political representation. Parekh argues that some operative public values (Parekh 1996: 259–260) or a broadly shared common culture (Parekh 2000: 219–220) provide basic criteria to assess the moral significance of cultural practices. These criteria have only limited political implications: when a minority practice clashes with the society’s public values, “it merits disapproval […] (h)owever, that is not a reason to disallow it” (Parekh 1996: 261).17 As the traditionally close ties between territory, sovereignty, and culture loosen up, contemporary democracies are increasingly open to a differentiation of the political structures and a pluralization of legal arrangements (Parekh 2000: 194–195, 1995: 42–45). Nonetheless, this inclusive approach to culture can lead to supporting practices that are harmful to vulnerable minority members. Strong multiculturalism minimizes the importance of mechanisms of domination and control amongst the vulnerable members of society (women, sexual minorities, children etc.), and ways in which collective rights and the cultural defence can be used to enhance the power of (typically male) elites. It is instructive to consider in more detail the case of the sharia courts in the UK. To meet the requests of Muslims seeking arrangements of their family issues in compliance with religious prescriptions, some British Islamic communities have gradually shaped judicial bodies to complement the English court systems. This struggle for recognition has had different sources, and it justified as well by non-­discrimination reasons,18 given that Jewish and Catholic communities already had their own religious tribunals that are not part of the state court system: respectively the Jewish London Beth and the Catholic National Tribunal (Douglas et al. 2011). The Islamic Sharia Council (ISC) formed in 1982 in London to provide legal rulings and advice based on the expertise of members representing all major schools of Islamic legal thought. The Council deals with issues including religious marriages, divorces, and inheritances and has expanded during the years to face thousands of cases. In the following years, other Sharia Councils followed and in 2007 the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) was established to more effectively operate under the Arbitration Act 1996.19 The Arbitration Act allows MAT and other religious arbitration services to function as an alternate dispute resolution organization that deals with Islamic Law within the context of the English Legal System. Its rulings are enforceable if they are legal within their jurisdiction, but they are not binding for British Courts. The idea of Islamic Courts found an ally in Archbishop Rowan Williams. During a 2008 lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice, he argued for a deeper pluralization of the legal system through the establishment of “supplementary jurisdictions”. In tune with Parekh’s support for the recognition of cultural diversity and the pluralization of the systems of authority, Williams notes that the legal monopoly of a secular legal system reflects the notion that equality is achieved by ignoring the differences. The secularist

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approach is objectionable since it underestimates the importance of religious motivations in defining the judgements and actions of religious people. Allowing people to choose between overlapping jurisdictions on selected issues would leave more room to articulate alternative and valuable conceptions of justice (Williams 2008). It is the case of the Islamic refusal of the manipulation of and speculation with interest rates, a religious and legal provision that Christianity contemplated as well but was gradually lost during the sixteenth century, on the threshold of modern times (Williams 2008: 275–276). Developing and enforcing principles of Islamic finance in contemporary societies hold significance not only for Muslims, but also for all those who are concerned about our credit and investment practices. Williams’ stance on the matter sparked an intense controversy and criticism. In the following years, attempts were actually made to limit the autonomy of Islamic courts under the Arbitration Act.20 Even when the outcome of the process is the religious divorce women seek, Islamic Courts seem to enhance a strong imbalance of power.21 As Sabia Bano notes, several cases of women appealing to the Councils suggest that  there are subliminal and covert forms of power and coercion that render the parties unequal and the process unfair. […] In this process of dispute resolution, the women were encouraged to reconcile and to conform to cultural dictates and acceptable patterns of behaviour if they were to be issued with a divorce certificate. (Bano 2007: 20; see also Malik 2012; Shah 2010) The role of Sharia Councils in the UK is contested because of their ambivalent implications, which tend to be underplayed by strong multiculturalists. The Council offers to those members of the community a way to see their reasons recognized based on Islamic law. But it also poses multiple problems, for it shields internal practices from external scrutiny, reinforces the dominance of religious authorities and places the weakest members of the Muslim community at a disadvantage. The main difficulty is the domination of women and of “minorities within minorities” – from sexual minorities to dissenting and transformative voices. As Maleiha Malik argues,22 even if we give credit to the advantages that come from plural jurisdictions, “such as promoting autonomy for minorities, or a greater coalescence between the experiences of individuals in their private lives and their experience of normative political and legal institutions” (Malik 2012: 52), the state is still under an obligation to act to protect vulnerable persons from harm.23 In particular, Muslim women are entitled to equal rights as citizens of the state and not merely as members of a religious community; the exercise of their rights as a citizen requires that they have the skills and knowledge to develop informed preferences and the capacity to reflect on whether their cultural ties are a source of harm.24 However, when charged with the exercise of governance and jurisdiction over their community, conservative-­ patriarchal and fundamentalist groups will tend to interpret the demands of faith in a way that overrides any other moral or political requirement (Beiner 2003b: 52). If political life is centred on such religious-­cultural communities, there is a justified concern that in time “cultural attachments within the political community will overwhelm civic attachment to the political community” (Beiner 2003c: 209–210), leading to the domination of women, sexual minorities, and heterodox and transformative voices.



Multiculturalism and its critics

2  Reconciling multiculturalism and liberalism: the modus vivendi model (Chandran Kukathas) The controversy over the acceptance of harmful practices in constitutional democracy has been central in the evolution of the multicultural debate.25 Chandran Kukathas and Will Kymlicka address the problems of strong multiculturalism by combining liberalism with sensitivity towards different cultural claims. Kukathas elaborates a modus vivendi or minimalist version of political liberalism (a phrase coined by Rawls, see Chapter 1). In conditions of deep cultural disagreements, the legitimacy of the political order can be built on toleration and not on a consensus on a conception of freedom and justice. In turn, Kymlicka draws on Rawls’ earlier work and combines autonomy liberalism and multiculturalism: cultural recognition is required in order to build autonomy; at the same time, when cultural recognition (e.g. through collective rights) is legitimate only when it supports individual freedom as autonomy.

a  Freedom of conscience, toleration, and the state-­as-umpire In The Liberal Archipelago (2003), Kukathas builds his “political liberalism” (2003: 16) in contrast to Rawls’ version of it (Chapter 1). While Rawls articulates a liberal vision that justifies political power on account of public reasons and a conception of justice that all citizens can endorse, Kukathas relies only on minimal moral conception of toleration among citizens and groups (for a maximalist interpretation of political liberalism, see Chapter 6, Section 2 on Martha Nussbaum). For Kukathas, mainstream liberals like Rawls and strong multiculturalists like Parekh fail to properly address the challenge of cultural pluralism and disagreement. Despite their nominal commitment to freedom, liberals are – argues Kukathas – too eager to reject practices and beliefs that do not match their parochial moral-­political ideals. Liberals cherish the unrealistic expectation that religious communities and cultural groups would come, on the basis of the exercise of public reason, to agree on liberal values and a specific conception of individual freedom – be it freedom of choice, rational or political autonomy, or individual self-­realization. In turn, strong multiculturalists like Parekh are more inclined to accept cultures as they are, yet they grant a far too prominent role to the state in protecting community boundaries and evaluating cultural practices (Kukathas 2008: 37–41). The Parekh-­style strong multiculturalism is misleading for relying on the intrinsic and central value of culture for human beings, namely for the way they understand and articulate their individual and communal flourishing. Cultural difference among human beings is not essential but circumstantial; when circumstances are similar, people will act and choose similarly. Since culture and the historical forms that human life has taken are of no value in themselves, what matters is man, who creates culture and whom culture serves. (Kukathas 2003: 42) Kukathas’ alternative multicultural proposal is a reinterpretation of liberalism based on the argument that in conditions of pluralism, all that we can concur is to tolerate each

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other. Toleration is “rooted in a respect for freedom of association and, ultimately, liberty of conscience” (Kukathas 2003: 30). This argument is based on a sort of “Cartesian reductio”: given that contemporary societies are characterized by deep disagreement over the good and the just, the freedom of conscience becomes the “ultimate certitude” and the minimum common denominator between persons. In other words, for Kukathas, individual conscience is the ultimate basis of the constitution of groups (understood as free associations) and of the political edifice; the legitimacy of the political order hinges on it. It results that giving priority to individual autonomy or any other particular value, good, or principle of justice does not protect individual freedom; this occurs only by ensuring that everyone can join or leave a group at will, according to his or her own conscience. Kukathas argues that respect for conscience is a minimum that all humans can understand and share despite their differences; in this sense, the liberal principle of mutual toleration of one’s claims of conscience holds universal value. One of the corollaries of this view is Kukatha’s rejection of the notion of collective rights: since society is formed by groups that change and evolve, establishing minority protections tends to freeze collective identities and social relations.26 Religious communities and cultural groups autonomously form their own living habitats that need to be politically organized as an open liberal archipelago. In this framework, “being liberal” is mostly equivalent to “being tolerant”, that is accepting of the variety of religious and cultural practices articulated by each community. In contrast to Parekh, Kukathas does not envision a common culture, but an archipelago of cultures where people are subject to the authorities of their choice: an anarcho-­multiculturalism (Kukathas 2008). From this perspective, the main role of the state is to ensure the peaceful coexistence of different associative groups. Just as classical liberalism emphasized the protection of individuals from the authority of the state, in a multicultural state the liberal position will be to respect the independence of the “communitarian” authorities that people choose for themselves (Kukathas 2003: 7). The foundation of this loose form of political cooperation is an individualistic and minimal moral view that values highly freedom of conscience and establishes the inviolable right of each citizen to adhere and exit at will from cultural groups and religious communities. From this standpoint, politics has minimal role in the life of multicultural societies, and the state is concerned with matters of legitimacy rather than justice. A liberal political theory is an account of the terms by which different groups can live and cooperate side by side without conflict rather than an account of the terms by which they cohere to form a “single nation” (Kukathas 2003: 19) and reach a consensus over the principles of justice. To expect the state to hold the key to the problem of justice, or to take justice as “the first virtue of political institutions” (Rawls; see Chapter 1) is utopian: justice is interpreted and treated differently by religions and cultures. In a legitimate liberal state, there are different authorities with their own conception of justice and the good, but the state’s authority rests on the acquiescence of subjects and not on the consensus on principles of justice. The role of the state “is to serve as an umpire, who attends to questions that inevitably arise in a society, composed as it is of many communities and associations, and attempts to preserve the order in which these groups can coexist” (Kukathas 2003: 212–213). As an umpire, the state should be neutral towards religions and cultures: “its only concern ought to be with upholding the framework of law within which individuals and groups



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can function peacefully” (Kukathas 2003: 249). Illiberal groups that hold intolerant views should be tolerated but not allowed to infringe on others’ freedom. Toleration is a strict requirement in the relationship between groups, but it would be unreasonable to expect the state to regulate in the same way the internal affairs of ethnic-­national and religious groups. As Kukathas underscores, “while Christians should allow Muslims to worship God as they see fit, this does not mean that they should tolerate Muslim worship in their churches” (Kukathas 2003: 165). The internal affairs of groups and religious institutions, generally speaking, is not a concern of the liberal state: within the archipelago formed by religions and cultures, “liberalism might well be described as the politics of indifference” (Kukathas 2003: 250).27

b  Towards cultural laissez-­faire? Kukathas’ modus vivendi model is premised on questionable empirical assumptions (i); moreover, by uncoupling legitimacy from justice, Kukathas’ proposal – based on the protection of the freedom of conscience and association – is self-­defeating and condones authoritarian and discriminating practices (ii). (i) To begin with, Kukathas’ model is based on dubious sociological premises. His depiction of religious and cultural groups as self-­enclosed communities of belief and practice that aim to be independent and self-­governing is essentializing and conflates social, economic, and ethnic-­religious allegiances and interests (see above Section 1.a). In pluralist democratic societies, most citizens belong to different interest groups and communities of belief. Moreover, they adhere to religion in various ways that are not necessarily consistent. Kukathas does not sufficiently consider the sociological reality of the plurality of ways of living religion that are irreducible to a matter of individual conscience – namely, communal or digital sharing, outer social practice, dissolution and transcendence of individual identity, and so on. Paradoxically, Kukathas relies not only on the image of self-­enclosed groups but also on an abstract notion of autonomous individual free to enter groups or exit from them. As Michael Walzer argues, (t)he ideal picture of autonomous individuals choosing their connections (and disconnections) without constraints of any sort is an example of bad utopianism. It has never made sense to sociologists, and it ought to inspire scepticism among political theorists and moral philosophers, too. No human society could survive without connections of a very different sort. (Walzer 2004: 1) Kukathas’ overconfidence in the sovereign conscience in control of the entry/exit from a community is utopian; part of his liberal utopia is the assumption that people can agree on a common denominator (individual conscience) as the “Cartesian” ultimate ground and unshakeable certitude of political legitimacy. This is way of rehashing the liberal illusion of consensus that overlooks the complexities of the sociological reality of cultural-­ religious allegiances. (ii) On a normative side, Kukathas is rightly sceptical about the practicality and even desirability that the members of a large contemporary democracy all (can) agree on a

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rational or reasonable consensus over the ideal principles of justice (for a criticism of consensualism in Rawls, Audi, and Habermas, see Chapters 1, 2, and 3). Conceiving political activity based on the belief in a consensus over the support and implementation of a set of principles of justice is hopelessly idealistic and neglects the significant role of toleration and political trade-­offs in conditions of deep disagreement. Kantians like Rawls and Habermas downplay the fact that real, existing democratic politics needs a space for modus vivendi compromises between values, interests, and sometimes between evils. When pluralistic democracies are deeply divided, modus vivendi compromises are all the more necessary, especially in order to deal with intractable issues that could ignite ethnic, social, and religious conflicts. That said, there is no need for a rational consensus over an ideal model of justice to criticize injustices that plague contemporary societies at a global level: famine and poverty, violence and discrimination, lack of access to education, religious fundamentalism, gender inequality, marginalization of the disabled, systematic cruelty towards animals, mindless exploitation of the environment, and so on. These injustices can be criticized from a variety of perspectives by resorting to the semantic and motivational resources of different non-­religious and religious views. Dealing with matters of (in)justice is, further, a vital concern of citizens engaged in the public sphere, as well as of the political institutions: justice and legitimacy are not to be confused (a state’s action can be legitimate but unjust or vice versa),28 yet in a constitutional-­democratic state they overlap to a large degree. Devoid of the concern with injustice and justice, the democratic state’s legitimacy becomes void and unsustainable. In a democratic state, more engagement based on education, militancy, and policies addressing global issues is required to tackle unjust realities – not indifference. Given the magnitude of these realities and the global condition of close economic and political interdependencies, advocating a “politics of indifference” comes close to cynicism. By overlooking the importance of the public involvement of citizens and political institutions with matters of (in)justice, and by cutting the umbilical cord between legitimacy and justice, Kukathas undermines the principles of freedom of conscience and association at the centre of his own view. Kukathas is unable to reconcile toleration with the actual protection of individual conscience and the right to exit from a group. The modus vivendi model downplays the structures of informal domination existing in groups (Weyl 2009) as well as the costs of exit in order to preserve the freedom of conscience. As the case of sharia councils shows, even when living in stable democratic society where citizens can appeal to secular civil courts, many women from minority groups will feel compelled to choose religious arbitration to be consistent with their values and keep the bond with their community intact. This is a legitimate choice, but highlights how in the experience of most members, especially vulnerable ones, adherence to religious and cultural practices is not about a single act of entrance or exit, but rather about the constant negotiation with the consequence of belonging to a group and holding cultural and affective ties to it. Kukathas plays insufficient attention to the socio-­political conditions of freedom of conscience and association. He argues that his stand “requires not only a limited state but also one that is not involved in the cultural construction of the society” (Kukathas 2003: 18). The notion of a minimal state that neither fosters some basic values nor enters the



Multiculturalism and its critics

internal affairs of groups but still protects the individual freedom of its citizens hinges on an abstract conception of state neutrality; Kukathas’ conception does not provide the resources to achieve his own goals. The identity of cultural groups is not pre-­existent to political institutions that merely regulate their external relationships: relevant options in matters of public education, civil law, and even international policy influence in different directions the understanding that groups entertain with regard to their relationship to other groups and society as a whole. Kukathas considers the case of Mozert v. Hawkins (1987) to illustrate the implications of his minimalist position. Students’ parents at a public school in Tennessee brought a class action lawsuit against the requirement to read books that illustrated beliefs on witchcraft, prayers to idols, and upheld secular values incompatible with their Christian views. The court ruled in favour of the school allowing the use of those books as long as the children and their parents were free to form their opinion on the matter. Yet, the court also reminded public schools that they must refrain from actively endorsing any religious belief. Kukathas’ view is more radical: the state should preferably stay away from education, but if involved it should respect the parents’ request based on the principle that “it is not for the state to determine what values its members must accept” (Kukathas 2003: 162). Recognizing a right to be raised without entering into contact with any other form of religious or secular belief is, however, not a neutral stance towards a religiously pluralistic society. It rather means embracing a view of society as made of insulated and incommensurable groups. By excluding the state from the education of citizens, Kukathas’ conception leads to the erosion the cognitive and motivational basis upon which the state itself is supposed to seek consensus from citizens in acting as an umpire between groups.29 Likewise, individuals are deprived of the appropriate subjective and objective conditions to be able to exit if necessary; these include basic critical skills, a pluralist education, and a degree of economic independence – all conditions that conservative-­patriarchal and fundamentalist groups do not provide on their own. The state’s authority needs a stronger legitimation than the temporarily shared interests of groups to defend individual conscience. If a shared public culture based on the participation of the community members is ruled out, Kukathas’ assumption that all will recognize the importance of respecting the individual conscience is misguided. A society organized around strong communities will rather cohere around the respect of collective identities.30 Kukathas himself seems to have become aware of the utopian character of his stance; he acknowledges that his liberal conception of multiculturalism “describes the terminating point of multiculturalism. And while no actual regime may be willing, or able to reach (let alone sustain) such a form of society, it may be useful to see exactly where the theory of multiculturalism leads” (Kukathas 2008: 42). But it is not clear why multiculturalism logically leads to a “politics of indifference”; and the idea of a multicultural modus vivendi that does not deal with the reality of a pluralistic society and the existing injustices is of limited use. Kymlicka’s autonomy-­based model of multiculturalism aims to combine the concern with respect for cultural difference and the defence of an egalitarian liberalism.

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3  Reconciling liberalism and multiculturalism: the autonomy-­ based model (Will Kymlicka) a  Autonomy, societal culture, and group rights If Kukathas defends a minimal version of political liberalism, Kymlicka draws on Rawls’ earlier work on autonomy liberalism by incorporating a concern with culture (for an alternative version of autonomy liberalism that builds on A Theory of Justice, see Chapter 7, Section 1 on Okin’s liberal feminism). In several works, starting with Liberalism, Community and Culture (1989), Kymlicka develops his influential argument in favour of multi­ culturalism and group-­differentiated rights for the building of freedom as autonomy (Kymlicka 1995a, 2001a, 2007). Kymlicka’s perspective on the compatibility between liberalism and multiculturalism is at odds with strong and modus vivendi multiculturalism, as he supports minority rights and a vision of a just society that promotes the citizens’ autonomy inside and outside cultural groups. Kymlicka articulates a comprehensive liberalism centred on individual autonomy. Building on Rawls’ emphasis on self-­respect as a primary good that depends upon the respect of others (Rawls 1971: 178) and self-­ esteem as a form of self-­evaluation that can be properly developed only within just social relationships (Rawls 1971: 178), Kymclika argues that individual autonomy cannot develop in a social vacuum. The participation into a “rich and secure cultural structure” (Kymlicka 1989: 165) is, rather, essential both to develop one’s self-­respect and to make informed decisions about how to lead one’s life. In this perspective, what Kymlicka calls societal culture (Kymlicka 1995a: 76) has a vital role in building an autonomous person, that is a person capable of defining her own identity and goals in life (Kymlicka 1995a: 34). Societal culture is indispensable as it provides “members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres” (ibid.). Building one’s identity autonomously requires both the ability to draw from these resources and to contest and innovate them. Given their importance for the life of their members and the disadvantage suffered by minority cultures, societal cultures need to be protected by way of group-­differentiated rights. The kind of group or group-­differentiated rights and their justification depend on the characteristics of the cultural group, but they are generally meant both to provide fairer arrangements and to contribute to the survival of a specific group and/or reconciliation and integration in a broader democratic society. To illustrate, one of Kymlicka’s prime examples is that of the French Quebeckers’ culture existing within a dominant Anglophone economic-­cultural space (Canada, United States). The Quebeckers, as a historical community, demand self-­governing rights in order to protect themselves from the cultural absorption of the hegemonic neighbouring community. Kymlicka is not an advocate of the secession in Quebec – but rather he is an advocate of reconciliation through the recognition of difference. Another example are the requests for autonomy and self-­ determination rights of the Aboriginals in Australia, Native Amer­icans in the US, or indigenous populations from Latin America to India. While there is a concern with absorption and survival by the neighbouring society, the colonizers’ long-­term persecution and abuse of various indigenous populations provides additional political rationale



Multiculturalism and its critics

for their claims to recognition and self-­determination. In turn, immigrant groups cannot generally invoke a similar right to self-­government; yet they can reclaim “polyethnic rights”, which encompass exemptions from laws and regulations concerning dress codes, symbols, and festivities. In Kymlicka’s view, such group-­specific measures help immigrants in maintaining traditional beliefs and practices without burdening their integration and participation into the economic and political institutions of the dominant society (Kymlicka 1995a: 30–33, 1998). In Western societies, the claims of religious minorities are evaluated on account of different rationales – e.g. the type of secularist arrangements that traditionally separate political and religious institutions and the concern with the integration of new immigrant groups (Kymlicka 2009). Kymlicka argues that there is no single best interpretation of the requirements of secularism: European societies lean towards corporatist solutions that engage the state in the active recognition of religious institutions; in turn, in North America, a denominationalist approach prevails, enabling the formation of religious initiatives in civil society, yet denying any form of public funding or representation. Historically, each model has led to successful arrangements; their merits need to be evaluated contextually and not in abstracto. Kymlicka acknowledges that the accommodations reached in different European states, like public funding to religious schools, should be offered today to newer groups such as Muslims in order to grant them equal treatment. However, establishing an institutional pluralism in matters of education and justice with Muslim schools and Sharia courts does not always help the efforts of integration. The North Amer­ican approach seems more successful in this regard, and different options are ultimately to be judged and evaluated based on the actual impacts of policies on basic liberal and democratic values. Just as secularism should not be seen as a veto against institutional pluralism, so freedom of religion should not be seen as a veto against denominationalism. (Kymlicka 2009: 333) A common objection to group rights is that they undermine individual freedom. To meet this concern, Kymlicka distinguishes between group rights as internal restrictions or external protections (Kymlicka 1999; see also Chapter 7). The first kind designates group rights that undermine individual autonomy. These rights limit the capacity of group members to define their own identity and goals in life, and to question traditional authorities and practices; as such, they have no place within an autonomy-­based liberalism. For instance, granting recognition to a religious group’s practice of forced marriages (a legitimate possibility in Kukathas’ model) should be rejected as normatively unacceptable. Kymlicka’s stance is also more restrictive on collective rights than Parekh’s. Strong multiculturalism protects the practice as long as it is justified based on a static culturalist ontology, while for Kymlicka the protection cannot dent the individual capacity of contestation and revision. The group-­differentiated rights as external protections do not commit the members to the integrity of the group culture (Kymlicka 1995a: 37). These group rights neither undermine nor limit individual rights and autonomy; to the contrary, they support them by ensuring the existence of societal cultural as the necessary

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context for making meaningful autonomous choices. Therefore, individual rights/autonomy and group rights are complementary. The corollary of this argument is that, in Kymlicka’s liberal and multicultural society, discriminatory groups are generally neither recognized nor condoned, since they impede making meaningful individual choices – the reason why he is interested in societal culture in the first place. Kymlicka highlights that  people can stand back and assess moral values and traditional ways of life, and should be given not only the right to do so, but also the social conditions which enhance this capacity (e.g. a liberal education). […] To inhibit people from questioning their inherited social roles can condemn them to unsatisfying, even oppressive lives. (Kymlicka 1995a: 92) This condition rules out fundamentalists “of all political and religious stripes” exalting their own community at the expense of others, and who outlaw religious, sexual, or aesthetic practices that are different from their own (Kymlicka 1989: 171–172).

b  Multiculturalism and animal rights Granting recognition to religious minorities has been increasingly objected to, not only because of their harmful impact on individual freedom, but also because of the damage they can cause to non-­human animals. In effect, multicultural theories have largely ignored cruelty and exploitative conducts against animals. In his latest works, Kymlicka aims to address this concern (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011, 2014, 2015). Together with Donaldson, Kymlicka argues that the attention to minority rights led liberals to overlook the critique of widespread religious practices like the preparation of halal and kosher food. For instance, the law in the EU and UK requires that all animals to be pre-­stunned before slaughter to render them insensible to pain, but non-­stun slaughter is permitted in the case of Islamic and Jewish ritual slaughter out of respect for their traditions. This raises an important question: Is multiculturalism bad for animals? (Casal 2003). Xenophobic groups are quick to condemn religious practices of ritual slaughter and sacrifice to further their agenda against religious minorities, especially Muslims. Certainly, the exploitation of animal life is not a prime trait of religious minorities; the West and globalized capitalism (with its origins in the West) excel in the industrialization and “objectification” of animal life (Luxemburg has the highest consumption of meat per capita while India has the lowest).31 In Kymlicka’s view, the debate on animal rights does not turn against multiculturalist commitments in general, but it is at odds with approaches “that endow communities with the right to maintain and reproduce their cultural traditions untouched, regardless of the ethical content or justifiability of those traditions” (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014: 128). Liberal multiculturalism and animal rights can be reconciled. For Kymlicka, liberal multiculturalism is not committed to the protection of practices that involve animal cruelty as much as it is not committed to the accommodation of other harmful practices. Non-­human animals are not characterized by the forms of autonomy developed by humans, but they have an agency of their own that they express in different ways. Domesticated animals contribute to the well-­being of humanity while exercising



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their specific abilities; wild animals have a tendency to preserve their habitat and their group that can be arguably assimilated to some form of autonomy (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011: 175–176). Human beings have duties towards animals that depend on their mutual relationship, but in all cases their traits of autonomous agency need to be respected:  (s)ome animals should be seen as forming separate sovereign communities on their own territories (animals in the wild vulnerable to human invasion and colonization); some animals are akin to migrants or denizens who choose to move into areas of human habitation (liminal opportunistic animals); and some animals should be seen as full citizens of the polity because of the way they’ve been bred over generations for interdependence with humans (domesticated animals). (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011: 15) Based on this analogy with citizenship and differentiated rights, liberal multiculturalism challenges both cultural-­religious majorities and minorities, which are equally required to justify and eventually transform or abandon their cruel and exploitative practices towards animals (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011: 128–129).32

c  Multicultural reconciliations? Kymlicka’s influential project of reconciling multiculturalism and liberalism overcomes some of the difficulties of the strong multiculturalist and the modus vivendi models. Kymlicka’s synthesis neither takes for granted the image of a society made of static and homogenous cultural groups nor does it leave unquestioned their inner structures and mechanisms of domination. Kymlicka has, furthermore, developed his project through constructive dialogues and adjustments throughout almost three decades now; he has adapted multiculturalism by partially shifting the emphasis from the external protection of cultures and multicultural recognition to granting more importance to the critical transformation of inherited cultural practices. As he argues in Multicultural Odysseys, “(t)he liberal view of multiculturalism is inevitably, intentionally, and unapologetically transformational of people’s cultural traditions” (Kymlicka 2007: 99).33 His work on animal rights and the transformative vision of a Multicultural Zoopolis (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011) is the most recent development of his progressive and Leftist multiculturalism. One of the first difficulties with Kymlicka’s understanding of (non-­liberal) cultures is the inclination to consider them as merely instrumental to an individual-­centred view of freedom as autonomy. This instrumentalist view is at odds with the plurality of experiences of freedom, and may run the risk of paternalism (i). Second, Kymlicka’s progressive multiculturalism is aimed at a series of reconciliations (i.e. of multiculturalism with liberalism, social justice, gender equality, and animal rights), yet it does not sufficiently acknowledge the tensions between multicultural recognition and cultural transformation, as well the problems of domination that they both bring about. We will examine these tensions in the context of animal rights (ii) and gender equality (iii). (i) First, according to Kymlicka’s comprehensive liberalism, the state exists primarily to protect individual freedom; different forms of cultural recognition arte justifiable but

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also limited to the extent in which they support the growth of individual autonomy. Since religious-­cultural claims do not serve this purpose they are not worthy of protection; a consequence of adopting this criterion is that the legitimate role of religious-­ cultural traditions is restricted to being a means to the individual pursuit of the good. This instrumentalist inclination is premised on a limited understanding of culture. What gets lost is the view of cultures as living traditions that play a vital role in articulating a variety of meaningful practices and experiences of freedom that have an intrinsic value. Cultural traditions and practices are more than a repository of resources for the autonomous enterprises of the individual; membership in religious and cultural groups shapes one’s identity “through a permanent recourse to a transindividual and transgenerational telos […]” (Salvatore 2007: 86–87). In particular, religious traditions and practices are not reducible to a set of tools for achieving autonomy and building a liberal-­democratic culture. The experiences of freedom and self-­transformation as well as the realization of “transcendent” goals are rather the collective purpose of religious practices (see also Chapter 5). Kymlicka’s liberal interpretation artificially separates culture as a context of choice from culture as the collective articulation of specific claims and conceptions of freedom, justice, and the good, to one-­sidedly protect the former.34 Kymlicka’s limited view of culture is, thus, premised on the lack of recognition of the plurality of valuable practices and experiences of freedom. Consider some examples. According to the African religious-­philosophical practice of Ubuntu, at the core of the experience of freedom are not individuality and autonomy, but reciprocity and sharing (Tutu 2001); these values are irreducible to the cooperation between separated and autonomous individuals – an experiential “mode” emerged in the Western historical-­cultural context. In a similar vein, the Buddhist experience of freedom (nirvana – permanent enlightenment) is not centred on individual autonomy whose condition of possibility is a stable self-­identity; Buddhism is focused instead on overcoming self-­identity and a sense of separated and autonomous individuality; Buddhism cultivates a sense of transcending unity amongst human beings, all living creatures, and the universe. Or take another example the religious tradition that gives a high spiritual significance to animal life, i.e. Jainism, which had a deep impact on Gandhi’s “experiments with truth” (Gandhi 1954; Gandhi 1993). Jainism envisages situations (beautifully represented in the Jain painting and sculpture) in which exemplary Jains are able to endure cruelty and suffering, for instance inflicted by animals, rather than to hit back in defence, injure, and cause them suffering.35 Yet Kymlicka defends such religious-­cultural practices to the extent they support and conform to a specific understanding of Leftist liberalism: if the culture does not promote individual autonomy – an understanding of freedom that is not universalizable and is controversial among liberals themselves – it should be transformed accordingly. This autonomy-­based model does not appear to grant sufficient acknowledgement to the cultural pluralism that it seeks to protect, and runs the risk of liberal paternalism: the recognition of culture is conditional on rationality and “moral scrutiny” (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2015a, 2015b) of the Leftist and progressive multiculturalist; the part of culture that does not comply with these rational standards is to be dispensed with as immoral, prejudiced, if not irrational. From Kymlicka’s Animal Rights perspective, the Jain spiritual saints and life models would not pass ethical scrutiny: they do not have a reasonable justification for sacrificing their autonomy and, on top of that, for risking their



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lives as part of their dedication to (animal) life. From our standpoint, the disposition to take progress, rational justifiability, and ethical worth as one’s own allies is a theoretical gesture and rhetorical weapon that still echoes a Western-­centric outlook. Surely, cultural-­religious traditions should not be exempted from critical engagement, but arguing that their core practices and deep spiritual beliefs are immoral when measured against the yardstick of autonomy places them in an inferior position (with respect to the enlightened progressives); even from a limited strategic perspective, this may be problematic, since it could engender alienation. In dealing with animal cruelty and suffering in general, a combination of multicultural recognition of the intrinsic value of culture, critical engagement, and persuasion may be fairer and fare better than the rhetoric of progress and individual autonomy and self-­realization that has emerged from Western modernity and Enlightenment.36 (ii) Kymlicka and Donaldson convincingly plead for a transformation of the status quo with respect to animal treatment. Consumerism and techno-­capitalism in particular have led to an unprecedented level of instrumentalization of animal life and suffering (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2011; Singer 2005). While some religions are welcoming to animal rights and animal welfare concerns, other religions are in a tense relationship with them; this tension is amplified by the “alliance” between religion and the industrial and capitalist mechanisms of food production. Kylmlicka and Donaldson are further, persuasive in arguing that multicultural recognition and animal rights are not essentially in conflict (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014). Culture and religion per se are not at odds with the emancipation of animals. Some cultural traditions are particularly protective of animals and, more generally, of life. In this respect, the Jain tradition stands out even amongst the religions of India (Overall, India remains the country that consumes the least amount meat per capita in the world). Moreover, there are no reasons to believe that religious traditions would not survive if they are transformed and give up animal sacrifices and ritual slaughter: one can imagine the continuation of the Christian Orthodox community even if its members renounce – by some unlikely ethical transformation – the tradition of sacrificing the lamb, the symbol of Christ and his supreme sacrifice, and serving it at family and communal meals for Easter. Nonetheless, Kymlicka’s prospect of a Multicultural Zoopolis that reconciles cultural recognition and animal rights remains very distant if not utopian since it implies, first, deep structural changes in capitalist consumerism and, second, the abandonment of core beliefs and customs of the most numerous world religions (Christianity and Islam).37 Closer to actual practice, it is less clear what is Kymlicka’s and Donaldson’s approach to decisions that need to be taken hic et nunc when there is a clash between multicultural recognition and animal rights. Kymlicka and Donaldson do not seem to provide specific guidance and decisional criteria: should the state adopt measures of recognition that ensure the bases of self-­respect of minorities even if this means cruelty towards animals and/or their unnecessary suffering? Or should they abstain from recognizing them unless they abandon sacrificial or ritual animal slaughter? Kymlicka wants to reconcile animal rights and multicultural recognition, but it is not apparent what prevails in current cases of conflict where an immanent change of cruel practices is not to be expected. Kymlicka’s idea of cultural transformation relies not on hard legal penalties; it largely relies on the demand for the public justification of ethical import (Kymlicka and Donaldson

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2014: 128). Kymlicka optimistically assumes that both minorities and majorities should begin to publicly justify their practices with animals so as to bring about the desired transformation (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014: 127). First, it is not clear how Kymlicka expects to implement the demand for ethical justification. Who should ask for justification, and on behalf of which authority? The state apparatus? The justificatory game never occurs in a social vacuum, but in a structured space of powers and counter-­powers. If the state (say, through an ethics commission) demands justifications from a minority, the members of a minority for which hunting is a key to their way of life and cultural-­ religious integrity/identity may be felt under the pressure and symbolic dominance of the majority. This transformative push, even if it is not pursued through coercive arrangements, may sometimes lead to “cornering” people from minority groups, and may also undermine the cultural bases of self-­respect that Kymlicka appeals to in his earlier work (Kymlicka 1989, 1996). Second, the idea of cultural transformation places too heavy a weight on the possibility of achieving a consensus through the public exchange of justificatory reasons. A strategy of engagement is indeed desirable: scientists, livestock farmers, and consumers display a low level of interest in seeking information on animal welfare (Te Velde et al. 2002), but an increased awareness about the treatment of animals in farms and laboratories determines a shift in the attitude of a significant share of people (Braithwaite and Braithwaite 1982; Knight et al. 2003), especially if the existence of viable alternatives to animal exploitation is shown (Knight et al. 2010). Nonetheless, Kymlicka and Donaldson’s ambitious call to “think about how animals can be co-­authors of our relationships with them” is too far from practice. Studies conducted both in a developing country like Botswana (Parry and Campbell 1992) and in areas of intense farming such as Wisconsin (Naughton­Treves et al. 2003) show that frequent dealings with wild animals render people more intolerant of their presence because of the damage inflicted to crops and livestock. Political measures, like economic compensation for this damage, do not seem to change people’s attitude either. Third, Kymlicka and Donaldson’s philosophical conviction that multiculturalism and animal rights can be “naturally” reconciled is not entirely persuasive. More specifically, they claim that “multiculturalism and animal rights are not in conflict, but flow naturally from the same deeper commitments to justice and moral accountability, and there are strategies for defending progressive causes” (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014: 128). But religious and cultural considerations further increase the challenge of public engagement. Interpretive questions like the consent of animals to being hunted or the interchangeable nature of hunting with non-­violent practices (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2015) seem more a matter of deep religious-­cultural disagreement rather than a subject for public deliberation. The trigger of cultural transformation is not the exercise of abstract reason in the public sphere, but a difficult shift in the values, ethical sensibility, and imagination.38 Finally, Kymlicka’s and Donaldson’s strategy of justificatory engagement is one-­sided. By considering religions merely as traditions to be amended or respected based on their level of compliance with secularly defined animal rights, their theory of animal rights leans towards a form of comprehensive liberalism that takes the rights of minorities into account, but is not open to engaging in a reciprocal learning process with those cultures



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(see Chapter 3).39 They note that religious and secular traditions are often equally hostile to the cause of animal rights.40 They overlook, however, the ethical and political resources of public justification and deliberation that religious doctrines and practices can offer. The examples are numerous: the protection of sacred animals, especially cows and elephants, in the Hindu tradition; the Christian call to humility and respect of all living beings that emerges in the Franciscan spirituality and inspires parts of the recent Encyclical Laudato si’ (2015);41 the Buddhist practice of tsethar, life release, that encourages saving the lives of beings that are destined for slaughter. The respect and protection of animals may even be a central tenet of religious practice. In Jainism, the principle of ahimsa (non­violence) is extended to all animals and insects. In Gandhi’s interpretation of the role of the sacred cow in Hinduism: (t)he central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution. It takes the human being beyond his species. The cow to me means the entire subhuman world. Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. (Gandhi 1954: 3) These religious arguments do not rely on concepts of animal agency modelled on the liberal conception of autonomy, but still provide meaningful resources to the respect of animals and the critique of cruel and exploitative practices. (iii) A third area of contention is that of gender (see Chapter 7), as Kymlicka’s liberal multicultural model has been objected for undermining gender equality (1999, 2001a). In a trenchant criticism of multiculturalism focused on Kymlicka’s view, Okin argues that the argument for group rights as external protections is misleading: group rights generally undermine gender equality, as they “substantially limit the capacities of women and girls of that culture to live with human dignity equal to that of men and boys, and to live as freely chosen lives as they can” (Okin 1999: 12; for an analysis of Okin’s liberal feminism, see Chapter 7). The problem with Kymlicka’s multiculturalism is that it does not consider the differences among groups rather than within groups, even though inside religious communities differences are gendered “with substantial differences in power and advantage between men and women” (ibid.). For Okin, Kymlicka pays scant attention to the private sphere within groups, especially in domestic and family life where culture is initially transmitted and internalized. The sphere of personal, sexual, and reproductive life functions is a central focus in most traditions – which entails that the protection of cultural-­religious practices that affect more girls and women than boys and men. Or as Okin points out, “(t)he more a culture requires or expects of women in the domestic sphere, the less opportunity they have at achieving equality with men in either sphere” (ibid.). This goes virtually for all cultural-­religious traditions, even if Western liberal cultures fare better in acknowledging women’s rights. Therefore, “far fewer minority cultures than Kymlicka seems to think will be able to claim group rights under his liberal justification” (Okin 1999: 21). This oversight is due to the fact that Kymlicka considers only cultural-­religious traditions that “discriminate overtly and formally against women” as not worthy of special rights (e.g. women denied education, the right to vote or hold office). But control is far less overt: Kymlicka fails to “register […] (that) the subordination

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of women is often informal and private, and that virtually no culture in the world today, minority or majority, could pass his ‘no sex discrimination’ test if it were applied to the private sphere” (Okin 1999: 22). In his reply to Okin, Kymlicka argues that the multicultural and the feminist agenda are not contrasting, but complementary, and part of the same general trend of correcting difference-­blind liberalism: while multiculturalism focuses on the particularities of cultural groups, feminism centres on women’s particularities. Similar to how feminists pay attention to the discriminating structure of societal institutions (e.g. the workplace, family, etc.),  multiculturalists argue that we cannot achieve justice between ethnocultural groups simply by guaranteeing to ethnocultural minorities the same set of formal individual rights which the majority possesses. We must also examine the structure of institutions (e.g., the language, calendar, and uniforms that they use), and the content of schooling and media, since all of these take the majority culture as the “norm.” (Kymlicka 1999: 33) It is true that Okin’s rebuttal of Kymlicka offers an over-­simplified image of both his concern with group rights and the complexities of religion. If Okin is radically dismissive of group rights, this is because she reduces them to mechanisms of overprotection of cultural-­religious traditions that are fundamentally patriarchal. Even if patriarchal ­practices are common to all world religions, religious traditions are complex and changing, and are not essentially patriarchal (see Chapter 7). Group rights are irreducible to the protection of the patriarchal cultural-­religious traditions, and are of different types. As we have argued, Kymlicka is careful to distinguish between different kinds of group-differentiated rights. To illustrate, the great majority of Catalans want more linguistic rights and more autonomy (and around 45 per cent want to secede from Spain). It is difficult to see how granting increased linguistic rights and a more autonomy could undermine gender equality.42 Still, Okin is probably right to be suspicious of the clear-­cut distinction between group rights as internal restrictions and external protections, and to highlight the relevance of mechanisms of informal domination in the private and social sphere. The problem is not so much that Kymlicka would neglect these issues (in time he became more focused on the complexities of the inner life of groups), as Okin assumes. The problem is that there is a structural tension between a good number of religious paradigms and gender equality. In taking decisions, one cannot easily have it both ways: recognize religion as a source of meaningful experiences for women but also as impairing gender equality. Finding a balance in actual political and legal practice cannot be devoid of dilemmas and difficult choices. On this account, Kymlicka’s logic of reconciliation and complementarity is too neat: cultural-­religious recognition can supplement and supplant, correct and endanger, the practices of freedom and equality. In certain situations, this double bind can lead to difficult trade-­offs and are not merely a matter of imperfect implementation of theoretical certitudes and safe principles regarding what means to be a free woman. There are no theoretical recipes to finally solve these tensions, which are not mere empirical difficulties to implement rational certitudes and principles; they need to be negotiated in practice



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through the participation of citizens, including women’s different and contrasting voices, in the struggles for recognition and power. Kymlicka’s strategy of reconciliation between multiculturalism, autonomy liberalism, social justice, gender equality, and animal rights is an ambitious attempt at recalibrating some major themes of contemporary political philosophy. Yet, in this context, the divide between two forms of cultural recognition reflects the tension between freedom and equality: the appreciation of cultural beliefs and practices as contexts of choice and self-­ realization, and the recognition of the intrinsic value of culture for minority members (van Leeuwen 2006). To distance himself from strong multiculturalist accounts, Kymlicka has increasingly focused on the political implications of the first form of recognition at the expense of the protection of minorities against cultural domination (Stjernfelt 2012: 63–68). This transformative drive strains Kymlicka’s twofold normative project, according to which “a liberal view requires freedom within the minority group, and equality between the minority and majority groups” (Kymlicka 1995a: 152). Ultimately, his defence of individual autonomy is in tension with the desideratum of avoiding the domination of religious minorities whose doctrines and practices do not espouse the liberal values.

Final remarks: multiculturalism is dead, long live interculturalism? Multiculturalism has fallen from grace mainly because of its alleged inability to preserve freedom and generate social integration. The “retreat from multiculturalism” (Joppke 2004) and the “return of assimilation” (Brubaker 2001) have been justified based on the notion that the pluralization of society sanctioned by multicultural policies is incompatible with fundamental freedoms that define a liberal society: freedom of individual self-­ determination, freedom for women, freedom from terror, etc. This trend has been labelled “postmulticulturalism” (Bradley 2013) to categorise a renewed emphasis on conformity, cohesion, and national identity that is not entirely severed from the rhetoric of the value of diversity. Postmulticulturalist policies and discourse “seek to have it both ways: a strong common identity and values coupled with the recognition of cultural differences (alongside differences based on gender, sexuality, age, and disability)” (Vertovec 2010: 91). It is unlikely that postmulticulturalism (a stylistic barbarism that should be abandoned) has paradoxical features. The supposed return to the defence of a free and open society against the risk of religious obscurantism and communitarian isolationism is pursued through an increasing emphasis on social cohesion and security. As Gozdecka et al. argue, this paradox is less than surprising if examined through the lens of a Foucauldian understanding of neoliberal governmentality. The primary aim of neoliberal governmentality is to guarantee freedom to subjects by creating – by reference to security and danger – conditions under which individuals can exercise this freedom. Under neoliberalism, freedom constitutes therefore a positive effect of governmental actions and the primary mode of control of subjects. (Gozdecka et al. 2014: 58–59)

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In this framework, minority members are those who must be liberated from religious-­ cultural constraints they are unable to free themselves from (Brown 2003). Liberal subjects, on the other hand, are construed as ruled only by the law and are therefore subject to the freedom that only the liberal-­democratic rule can offer (Brown 2006). Interculturalism represents a more fruitful take on the heritage of multiculturalism. Interculturalists claim that where multiculturalism failed, a new approach to sociological analysis, political theory, and policy-­making should arise: this approach preserves the sensitivity to the role of culture and religion, yet avoids the difficulties of multiculturalism (Powell and Sze 2004; Wood et al. 2006; Dervin et al. 2011). Public institutions and international organizations have supported this shift by adopting the language of interculturalism, and championing a middle way between assimilationist and multiculturalist strategies (Council of Europe 2005a, 2005b, 2008; European Commission 2005, 2006; UNESCO 2005). Interreligious dialogue has been actively promoted as a process of respectful discussion and cooperation between religious communities that complements the political arrangements between public institutions and religious authorities (Council of Europe 2007; UN General Assembly 2007). Prominent public philosophers joined the support of this trend. Martha Nussbaum looks at cultural diversity as a problem for education (Cornwell and Stoddard 1994), and claims that interculturalism is needed to “include the recognition of common human needs across cultures and […] reject the claim of identity politics that only members of a particular group have the ability to understand the perspective of that group” (Nussbaum 1997: 82). The Bouchard-­Taylor report also takes a stand in favour of interculturalism, claiming that, in the context of Québec, “interculturalism seeks to reconcile ethnocultural diversity with the continuity of the French-­speaking core and the preservation of the social link” (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 19). When dealing with religious matters, this approach is reflected in a form of open secularism that does not relegates religious expressions to the background since “the integration process in a diversified society is achieved through exchanges between citizens, who thus learn to get to know each other” (Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 20). Bouchard emphasizes the contrast between multiculturalism and interculturalism by arguing that the former operates under a “diversity paradigm”, in which individuals and groups have equal status and there is “no recognition of a majority culture”, while the latter adopts a “duality” paradigm, according to which “diversity is conceived and managed as a relationship between minorities and a cultural majority that could be described as foundational” (Bouchard 2011: 441–442). On these premises, interculturalism seeks to address key public interrogations raised against multiculturalism: it encourages dialogue and communication between communities, recognizes the fluid and transformative nature of cultural-­religious identities, fosters a shared and unitary public discourse, and address the concern with illiberal religious practices. Interculturalism is, we suggest, a useful call for a more transformative and fluid conception of the relationship between cultures; it highlights the domination and internal persecution that stems from the ossification and juridification of traditional identities. However, it is generally defined as a reaction to the problems of strong multiculturalism, to the point that its claims are better understood as an evolution of the multicultural debate than as a new framework that substitutes multiculturalism. The integration-­ oriented toolbox offered by interculturalists is a helpful contribution to the practice of



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pluralism, but not a full-­fledged alternative political discourse, given how deeply indebted it is to the multiculturalist framing of problems of cultural identity, equality and diversity. The recognition of cultural difference as a key political issue is definitional to interculturalism as well as to various strands of multiculturalism. Interculturalism is, to an important extent, a rhetorical re-­description in times of public devaluation of multiculturalism, and the development of concerns that have emerged already in the multicultural camp. Interculturalism emphasizes that by fixating on equal opportunities and respect for existing cultural differences alone, multicultural policies create insulation and nurture resentment in the majorities. To counteract this risk, “an intercultural approach aims to facilitate dialogue, exchange and reciprocal understanding between people of different backgrounds” (Wood et al. 2006: 9). There is no denying that the promotion of interaction and dialogue between religions and cultures is more central to interculturalists than it has been for multiculturalists. As Meer and Modood (2011) notice, however, there is no lack of resources in the multicultural field to support dialogue between communities and sense of belonging to a common political society. Even if we consider Parekh’s Rethinking Multiculturalism and strong multiculturalism, we find that intercultural dialogue already holds a relevant place. By illustrating the merits of diversity, Parekh argues that:  However rich it may be, no culture embodies all that is valuable in human life and develops the full range of human possibilities. Different cultures thus correct and complement each other, expand each other’s horizon of thought and alert each other to new forms of human fulfilment. […] In order to facilitate the emergence of a multiculturally constituted common culture, both private and public realms need to encourage intercultural interaction. (Parekh 2000: 222) The possibility for cultures to engage is intercultural dialogue and be enriched by it is, in fact, one of the most decisive arguments Parekh offers to justify his multicultural stance. Similarly, interculturalists and multiculturalists share the concern with the protection against harmful minority practices. As Levey notes, “(w)hat we have in the theoretical debates often resembles the narcissism of small differences, where theories are presented in dramatic contrast while the discussion of cases reaches much the same conclusions” (Levey 2012: 222). The different emphasis on interaction and transformation between interculturalism and multiculturalism are reflected in their partially different approaches to policy. The central task of intercultural policies is to support constructive forms of interaction across cultural and religious borders in order to achieve social and political integration at the local level. In this sense, the interculturalist approach is concerned with the task of developing cohesive civil societies by turning notions of singular identities into those of multiple ones, and by developing a shared and common value system and public culture. In building from a deep sharing of differences of culture and experience it encourages the formation of interdependencies which structure personal identities that go beyond nations or simplified ethnicities. (Booth 2003: 432)

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Typical intercultural policies include: implementing reasonable accommodation measures, providing inclusion through employment and education by allowing affirmative actions, facilitating access to citizenship for migrants, supporting civil society organizations, training the staff working for public authorities in intercultural issues, providing instruction in the language of the dominant majority culture for members of minorities, creating urban spaces that facilitate intercultural encounters and dialogue, and mounting public information campaigns to encourage individuals to interact across cultural boundaries (Barrett 2013). Multicultural policies are more associated with state-­level institutional strategies such as: establishing constitutional or legislative affirmations of multiculturalism, adopting multiculturalism in the school curriculum, including ethnic representation and sensitivity in the mandate of public media, granting exemptions from dress codes on religious grounds, funding ethnic group organizations or activities, funding bilingual education or mother-­tongue education, and offering affirmative actions to disadvantaged immigrant groups (Banting et al. 2006). This distinction between the interculturalist focus on local-­level interactions and the multiculturalist focus on state policies should not be overemphasized. The two levels are abundantly interconnected and, to some extent, complementary. As Kymlicka argues, we need both intercultural citizens, who are able to interact constructively across ethnic and religious lines, and multicultural states, which re-­conceptualize national identity and national sovereignty based on the recognition of the diversity of multicultural societies (Kymlicka 2003, 2012). In this sense, pace Bouchard, a crucial contribution of multicultural theorizing has not been the attempt to ignore the recognition of a majority culture, but rather to point out the increasingly problematic nature of this construct in contemporary societies. The focus on culture is, in its different guises, a valuable tool in political thought, especially against a static and isolationist conception of how cultures structure social interactions and norms. The desideratum of cultural recognition is animated by an enduring tension between “the aspiration to be free from the ways of one’s culture and place, to free oneself from oneself […] and the equally human aspiration to belong to a culture and place, to be at home in the world” (Tully 1995: 32). This tension is not easily resolved or transcended, and it “cannot be overcome by a rootless cosmopolitanism on one side or purified nationalism on the other” (ibid.). By stressing the role of culture in people’s social lives, multicultural theorists have enriched the political understanding of freedom and equality. In particular in a context of upsurge of populism and nationalist majoritarism hostile to difference, multiculturalism and intercultural theories and policies remain of vital importance. The adoption of multicultural/intercultural policies should be premised on a systematic reflection on domination, strategic labelling, and ethnic-­religious entrepreneurship. The recognition of cultures that conflates religious, linguistic, and ethnic elements reinforces otherwise porous boundaries and may halt desirable processes of mutual learning and self-­ reflective awareness. To avoid this risk it is necessary to strike a balance between the need to take into account the meaning of the cultural practices from the perspective of their practitioners and the problem of harmful practices and internal balances of power. This inevitably affects the existing views of justice by including judgements concerning the impact that political and legal arrangements exert on the identity of religious groups and other minorities. Nonetheless, the problem of harm and domination of vulnerable subjects, especially women, needs to be addressed more systematically (see the next chapter).



Multiculturalism and its critics

Notes   1 For the genealogy of multiculturalism, see Modood (2007a). For the influence of multiculturalism beyond the West, see Kymlicka and He (2005) and Kymlicka and Opalsky (2001).   2 In international law instruments (human rights treaties; UNESCO Conventions), “culture has been defined broadly to include religion, language, politics, intellectual property, marriage, warfare, child rearing practices, sports, and folklore (or ‘traditional culture’)” (Renteln 2011: 270). See, for instance, Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:  In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language. (UN 1966)   3 Several different practices fall under the category of multicultural policy depending on the kind of minority group they address. Kymlicka divides them in three categories: i. for immigrants: religious accommodations, funding of ethnic organizations, ethnic representation in media, multicultural/mother-­tongue education, affirmative action; ii. for national minorities: official language rights, regional autonomy, consociational power-­sharing; iii. for indigenous peoples: land claims, self-­government rights, customary law, treaty rights (Kymlicka 2010: 260).   4 Ersanilli and Koopmans stress, for instance, that multicultural policies have little effect on socioeconomic integration, positive effects on political integration, and negative impact on sociocultural integration (Ersanilli and Koopmans 2011; Koopmans 2010, 2013).   5 The focus on religion emerged relatively late within a field initially devoted to the problems of other kinds of minorities and dimensions of culture. Taylor’s influential discussion of multiculturalism in The Politics of Recognition (1994) stemmed from the consideration of claims made by the French-­speaking community and the indigenous population of Canada. Similarly, Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship (1995a) addressed mainly the problem of linguistic and ethnic minorities around the world. This “marginalization” of the theme of religion was due to two factors: first, the political situation in the late 1980s and 1990s was more marked by nationalist conflicts; second, multiculturalists used to downplay the problems posed by religion. Kymlicka and Taylor shared the conviction that if the state could be religiously neutral, it could not be culturally neutral (Kymlicka 2001a; Taylor 1996). The argument is that while the state must adopt some cultural measures (e.g. an official or set of official languages, certain educational policies, etc.), it needn’t recognize an official church. This is true, but it is fair to say that in the late 1980s and 1990s multiculturalists underestimated the difficulties of determining what exactly “state neutrality” meant for religion in different contexts.   6 Besides his activity as an academic, Parekh is a Labour member of the House of Lords of the UK. He served as chair of the Commission on the Future of Multi-­Ethnic Britain.   7 We take this phrase from Beiner (2003a).   8 For the broader question of cultural defence, see Okin (1999), Phillips (2007), Eisenberg (2014).   9 Parekh’s defence of strong accommodationism is based on a culturalist argument. But there are different arguments in favour of strong accommodationism: conservatives and some republicans argue for a robust bond between a specific religion and the state (this claim can give religion either a substantive or a mere instrumental role for the maintenance of society). Other authors’ accommodationist stands do not favour religious beliefs. Taylor focuses not so much on culture but on strong evaluations connected to one’s “orientation to the good” (Chapter 5). In turn, Nussbaum argues for the importance of religion (and similar worldviews) as providing answers to the ultimate questions (Chapter 7). 10 Religion and language are both sources of identification for groups that divide the world into distinct, bounded, and self-­reproducing communities (Zolberg and Long 1999; Brubaker 2013). But the differences between the importance of the two dimensions are noteworthy. Religion is more robust intergenerationally: a person can learn to speak different languages, but she is likely to stick to a single religion. Language is a medium of communication, not a structure of authority, and it has no intrinsic normative content. […] These norms do not simply regulate private behaviour. They reach into the public realm, addressing such

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matters as gender, sexuality, family life, education, social policy, the economy and even international affairs and war. (Brubaker 2013: 14) 11 See also the question of polygamy in relation to the Mormons in the US. Most recently, Utah’s polygamy ban was declared unconstitutional on religious grounds. 12 Hall frames the problem effectively when he observes:  It is this over-­determined complexity which constitutes the specificity of the problem requiring analysis. It does not help, here, to depress some factors of this matrix (e.g. ethnicity or class) in favour of others (e.g. culture or religion) and then, analytically to subsume the former into the latter, since it is precisely the generative specificity of each, plus the over-­determined complexity of the whole, which is the problem. (Hall 1978: 152–153) 13 As Geertz notes, religion is a cultural system itself, a system of symbols that act as vehicles of meaning and establish moods and motivations (Geertz 1973: 90). This understanding captures the continuity between religion and other cultural phenomena, but it omits a crucial dimension of authority and power. In religious practices, meaning is central, but so is also their authoritative status that hinges on historically distinctive disciplines and forces. To deal with the social implications of religion we should, as Asad argues, “begin from this point and not, as Geertz does, from a notion of culture as an a priori totality of meanings, divorced from process of formation and effects of power, hovering above social reality” (Asad 1983: 251). 14 Parekh’s stance is overall ambivalent: he supports the importance of intercultural dialogue and the creation of a shared common culture, but his culturalist ontology tends to define and separate social groups based on more or less clear religious particularities. 15 Parekh optimistically assumes that forming self-­contained communities is beneficial for solving integration problems: It is widely conceded that the growing social, moral and economic problems, including those created by a sizeable and increasing underclass, cannot be solved by benign neglect or by throwing more money at them, but only by creating lively, responsible and self-­ disciplinary communities. (Parekh 1991: 194) 16 Parekh sees Sudan as a case of conflict that could be alleviated by giving a pronounced autonomy to religious-­cultural groups: Respecting the autonomy of a cultural community is sometimes the only way to bring or keep the community within the wider political community as in the case of Israel, or to give it the confidence to interact with and evolve its own pattern of relationship with wider society as in the case of India, Niger, Sudan and many other multicultural societies with histories of intercommunal conflict. (Parekh 2000: 205)

He neglects, however, the role played by the legal-­political recognition of religious groups in the genesis and the perpetuation of the conflictuality. 17 Aside from the case of polygamy, that we previously discussed, Parekh is favourable to the accommodation of other controversial practices. He maintains that arranged marriages should be allowed if the young spouses choose the practice or “even if they have made no such conscious choices and are content as a matter of social routine to leave such decisions to their parents” (Parekh 2000: 275). On the difficult case of female genital mutilation, Parekh is more prudent and advocates that we should ban the practice “but make exceptions when the demand for it is genuinely voluntary and based on deeply held moral beliefs” (Parekh 2000: 279). For Parekh, it is important in all these cases to recognize that a society has an obligation to accommodate the minority way of life unless it is outrageously immoral or imposed through coercion. Accommodationist stances do not need to share this culturalist-­ontological approach: for the appraisal of an inclusive stand centred on individual freedom of conscience, see Charles Taylor’s perspective on religious accommodations in Chapter 5. 18 A Parekhian defence of sharia tribunals goes beyond non-­discrimination, and provides a culturalist justification.



Multiculturalism and its critics

19 Section 1 of the Arbitration Act states that “the parties should be free to agree how their disputes are resolved, subject only to such safeguards as are necessary in the public interest”. In this sense, it does not establish a separate legal system, but allows subjects that offer alternative forms of dispute resolution to operate within the framework of English law. 20 This is the case of The Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, introduced into the House of Lords by Baroness Caroline Cox (Independent) and supported by the National Secular Society. The Bills seeks, among other things, to explicitly state in legislation that sex discrimination law applies directly to arbitration tribunal proceedings and to require public bodies to inform women that they have fewer legal rights if their marriage is not recognized by English law. 21 In 2013, a journalistic inquiry followed the story of Sonia, a Muslim woman who appealed to a Sharia Council in order to be granted Islamic divorce. The documentary (BBC 2013) ­reinforced the idea that in many cases the practice of Sharia Councils put women at a disadvantage and press them to accept unfavourable arrangements. 22 Parekh is right to observe that, in some circumstances, culture could play a role in defining who is subject of harm, and what constitutes harm. The relative cultural variance of harm, however, should not be taken as a free pass for every cultural practice premised on violence, domination, and discrimination. From a progressive-­multiculturalist perspective, Malik suggests, “(a) focus on threshold criteria such as ‘significant harm’ could provide a guide as to when the state should intervene in a minority legal order” (Malik 2012: 30). The question is, however, what counts as a “significant harm”; accepting this theoretical strategy runs the risk of tolerating and justifying abuses as “minor” and “insignificant”. 23 Despite the evidence of power imbalance, the vast majority of those appealing to Sharia Councils are women; they find in the authoritative rulings of a religious body a redeeming chance to see their honour and legitimate interests defended within their community. In this sense, a consensual accommodation with the husband may come at a cost if compared to the outcome of civil rulings. But it may also be perceived as less harmful, as it is more respectful of the religious values that guide the woman’s conduct. 24 Female genital mutilation is a case in point. Despite the fact that from a doctrinal point of view female genital mutilation does not belong to Islam, the cultural discourse that conflates religion, customs, and ethnicity determines a dominating trend on women where religion is a reinforcing factor. Once again, focusing on the cultural meaning of practices alone does not offer a complete picture and in many cases lends arguments a misguided politics of identity. The spread of female circumcision “in Darfur in the 1970s and ’80s, at a time when the Sudanese metropolitan elite was moving to abandon the practice, is perhaps the most striking physical manifestation of this process” (De Waal 2005: 9–10). When women are enabled to form their own understanding of personal harm, religious belief, and political agency, they also shift their stance on the practice. Empirical studies on the opinions of Nigerian women belonging to different groups and religions indicate that a higher degree of personal information and education consistently leads to a more critical attitude towards female genital mutilation (Oyira et al. 2015). 25 It is noteworthy that Parekh himself has evolved from the strong multiculturalism of Rethinking Multiculturalism to a more nuanced stance found in A New Politics of Identity (2008). He resolves the internal tension between his culturalist ontology and his transformative idea of a creative common culture by leaning towards the latter. His recent view, in tune with the intercultural trend (see below), dwells on the dialectic nature of cultural identities, the importance of national identity, and the pathologies of collective identity (especially religious ones). 26 The civil war in Lebanon is a case in point: as the demographic structure of religious communities changed over time, some groups felt their new standing was not reflected in the predetermined constitutional provisions and this led to a disastrous conflict (Kukathas 2003: 106). 27 An objector could argue that this modus vivendi model is not stable since it depends on an ephemeral balance of power. But, for Kukathas, the stability of this modus vivendi is not founded on the mere balancing of power between different group interests, but rather on their shared interest of defending civility and civil life, since a condition of complete isolation is not attractive for any community. The open public realm determined by this shared interest “is the product of a convergence which produces a stability and social unity that falls short of the permanence or durability many thinkers seek” (Kukathas 2003: 133) as it deliberately chooses toleration over a conception of justice.

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28 A state institution can take a just decision in condemning a criminal, but without following the proper procedures (which makes the decision illegitimate). Conversely, a Court can take an unjust decision even if all procedures are pursued. 29 On this specific point, Parekh’s view is more persuasive. He argues that a “multicultural society needs to provide not only multicultural education but also a multiculturally based educational system accommodating different kinds of schools within an agreed national framework” (Parekh 2000: 332). He maintains that all schools should respect certain curricular, pedagogical, and disciplinary requirements defined by the state: a necessary shared ground for the pursuit of a multiculturally constituted common culture. Like other multiculturalists, Parekh is interested with issues that are central for so called interculturalism, like education and integration through exchange and dialogue (see below). 30 In this context, the case of Singapore can serve as cautionary tale. Singapore shares some central premises with the vision of the liberal archipelago, and displays some of its questionable implications. Singapore is considered to be the most religiously diverse country in the world (Pew 2014b). Ethnic divisions partially overlap this segmentation. In administrative policies and strategies, the governance of Singapore takes social groups, from family to religious and ethnic groups, as the units to be governed rather than the individuals. The social divisions require the state to set itself “as the neutral umpire” (Huat 2003: 61). The result is a minimalist “harmony”, “one maintained by tolerance of difference without any substantive cultural exchange, deep understanding and even less cultural crossing of boundaries. The government and the population readily admit to this minimalistic understanding of tolerance” (Huat 2003: 75). However, this modus vivendi model is premised on a severe limitation of the freedom of conscience and association. Born out of racial tensions between the Chinese majority and the Malay minority, the country lives on the strict preservation of identity boundaries between the communities. The trade-­off is a severe limitation on the right to exit from groups. In the Malay community, Islam is automatically ascribed to every individual and the religious rule against apostasy inhibits exit (Huat 2005: 192–193). To act as an umpire among illiberal groups, the state needs to anchor its own authority on more than just a politics of cultural laissez-­faire. By guarding the community boundaries and retaining control over education, the current government of Singapore grants the enduring peace between groups but also legitimizes its rule in a non-­liberal way. 31 It is significant that China’s rapid capitalist growth is the main drive behind the global increase in meat consumption. This depredatory dimension of capitalism is based on the permanent stimulation of the desire for the object-­fetish of consumption (Achille Mbembe speaks of capitalism as an “animist religion”, Mbembe 2013). 32 The debate on the conflict between cultural rights and animal rights exceeds the controversy over the preparation of halal and kosher food. The literature focuses on other religious practices, like animal sacrifices in the Santeria religion, but also on traditional practices that have none or little connection with religion, such as in the case of bullfighting in Spain or the consumption of dog meat in Korea (see Casal 2003; Deckha 2007; Oh and Jackson 2011). 33 As Stjernfelt points out, to distance himself from strong multiculturalist accounts, Kymlicka has increasingly focused on the political implications of the individual autonomy at the expense of the protection of minorities against cultural domination (Stjernfelt 2012: 63–68). 34 For Phillips’ critique of the idea of autonomy, see Chapter 7. The autonomy conception of freedom unwarrantedly devalues all that is not autonomously chosen (that is, a great deal of one’s life trajectory) and is overtaxing. In the tradition of capitalist liberalism and the public discourse (in the West) there is also an exaltation of the “free will” and “freedom of choice” that tends to obscure socio-­economic structures and cultural determinants of choice. 35 This attitude stems from a fundamental belief in ahimsa, the principle of non-­violence. Since all living things are manifestations of God, violence against them is considered contrary to the natural balance of the universe. The concept of ahimsa is common in Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, even if it is differently interpreted: for instance, in Jainism eating meat is severely prohibited, while in Hinduism it is allowed in specific circumstances (in effect, 70 per cent of the Hindus are meat eaters). 36 Kymlicka and Donaldson argue that (s)ince humans can lead flourishing lives without eating meat, or wearing leather, or visiting caged animals in zoos or circuses, none of the suffering involved in these practices is necessary. But the discourse of cruelty does not intend to eliminate “unnecessary suffering” in this



Multiculturalism and its critics

sense. Rather, it seeks to ban those forms of animal suffering that violate widely shared social norms about what is acceptable suffering to impose in the pursuit of human enjoyment of animal products and services. (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014: 126–127) 37 Currently, cultural-­religious practices are over-­protected through legal regulations against AR claims. 38 Even when there is an engagement in public justification, the actual change may still remain a distant prospect. The refugee crisis tragically highlights the gap between public justification and real change: for a few years now Europeans have been confronted on a daily basis with arguments about and images of the dire suffering of their fellow humans (the refugees), but to little avail. 39 Embracing a liberal agenda on animal exploitation “would be uncomfortable for minorities (as for majorities), and would require dramatic changes to their established animals practices (as for majorities), but it is not therefore anti-­multiculturalist” (Kymlicka and Donaldson 2014: 128). 40 Empirical research suggests that there is no strong correlation between religious affiliation and the justification of animal suffering based on human purposes (ARDA 2008). Non-­affiliated people and people of different faiths offer similar answers on this topic. There is no denying that religious rights and animal rights can come into conflict, but religious positions are ambivalent on this topic and cannot be associated uniquely with the cruelty and exploitation of animal life. 41 See, for instance: When our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one. It follows that our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to other human beings. (Pope Francis 2015: n. 92) For the role of Christianity in the argument for animal rights, see also Linzey (2016). 42 Incidentally, Catalonia also banned bullfights; however, the Supreme Court in Spain has recently overturned the ban.

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THE CONUNDRUM OF GENDER EQUALITY AND RELIGION Between the autonomy and the capability approach

Introduction: varieties of feminism Many conflicts around religion involve young girls and women: forced marriages, cliterectomy, divorce and inheritance regulations, children’s rights and education, purdah practices, religious symbols (hijab, burqa, niqab), abortion, sexual and reproductive rights, polygamy, equal access to office in religious organizations, and so on. While there are, statistically speaking, more believers and practitioners among women than men (Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012), religion is deeply divisive from the perspective of gender equality: given the gender difference in terms of religiosity, it is somehow paradoxical that religious practices and beliefs are often interwoven with patriarchal arrangements – with complex discourse-­and-power regimes based on the discrimination and domination of girls and women in the private and public spheres. A growing public consensus about prohibiting some of these practices, such as cliterectomy, forced and child marriages, and sex discrimination, has generally developed in Western and non-­Western democracies.1 Yet various issues remain deeply controversial. The UK, Canada, and Turkey recognize that teachers, pupils, or students can wear the headscarf in public schools and universities, while France has adopted a prohibitive stance condoned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Likewise, the UK recognizes sharia tribunals with limited jurisdiction over issues like marriage, divorce, and inheritance; at the opposite pole, the ECtHR has often taken an exclusivist stance regarding Islam, advancing across-­the-board judgements. For example, it has concluded that sharia is at odds with democracy.2 This set of diverse issues opens up relevant questions: Does religion inescapably place women in an inferior position or can it contribute substantially to their identity and experiences of freedom in an egalitarian democracy? What is the role of political authority in bringing about more equality between men and women within different institutions and communities (the family, the Church, the samgha (the Sanskrit term for “community”), etc.)? The current panorama of feminist theories3 is remarkably diverse: some feminists regard the veil as a legitimate manifestation and symbol of emancipation, while others see it as a mark of oppression. Some feminists advocate collective rights and plural jurisdictions (Phillips 2007; Malik: 2012; Shachar 2001), while others intimate that these legal arrangements perpetuate the domination of women (Okin 1999). This complex panorama can be analysed as a three-­cornered debate. Secularist or exclusive feminism refers to a family of conceptions that perceives an essential or quasi-­essential tension between



Gender equality and religion

r­ eligion and gender equality (Becker 1992) and centre on religion as domination overlooking the multidimensionality of religious phenomena (see Introduction).4 Secularism prevails among many feminists, especially in Western academia.5 Secularist feminists of various stripes (radical-­Marxist, socialist, liberal, republican, ecologist, etc.) generally share a comprehensive understanding of freedom as self-­determination and autonomy. Even in its “weaker” versions in which certain religious practices are not in conflict with an emancipatory agenda, secularist feminism views religion as a major obstacle in building an egalitarian society. At the opposite end, communitarian feminism sometimes rejects all that is Western – namely, the appeal to Western values and modern individual rights – as alien and corrupting pristine local values and traditions. Communitarian feminism comes in different forms, from dogmatic-­religious to relativist variants (in the latter version, the Western values are not seen as negative, but as radically different). Part of the intractable difficulty of the communitarian-­feminist stands is their reliance on the myth of a purity of tradition and homogenous context; they mostly ignore the processes of communication, interactive exchanges, and acculturation among traditions; further, they unilaterally focus on religion as source of meaningfulness while minimizing the struggles for power, legitimation, and domination within traditions themselves (see the Introduction). Third, there is an intermediate space of egalitarian approaches that take seriously both gender equality and religious recognition.6 Inclusive feminism acknowledges the salience of the spiritual-­religious search for the human development and the role of religion in emancipatory processes. From this perspective, which acknowledges the plurality of religious phenomena, patriarchy is not an inescapable trait of religion, yet it is sufficiently entrenched to generate deep tensions between religious recognition and gender equality. In the following, we start by analysing secularist feminism with a focus on Susan Moller Okin’s influential version of it. Okin has generated a rich debate by criticizing the place of religion in political liberalism and multiculturalism; she has played a crucial role in the revival of liberal feminism (Baehr 2013b; for her critique of multiculturalism, see Chapter 6).7 Okin reworks Rawls’ earlier version of autonomy liberalism articulated in A Theory of Justice by incorporating feminist tenets and interpreting the institution of family as a “school of justice” (for an alternative reconstruction of autonomy liberalism with a focus on culture, see Chapter 6). She aims to “save” Rawls’ liberalism from his latter political turn and inject new vitality into a comprehensive liberal perspective.8 Her argument is that the dilution of liberalism in Rawls’ later work is at odds with gender equality: his legitimation of religious comprehensive doctrines as “reasonable” and supportive of the overlapping consensus undermines the project of a liberal-­egalitarian democracy. Okin’s stand is critical of religious accommodations and group rights commonly supported by multiculturalists (1). Second, we deal with Martha Nussbaum’s inclusive feminism as part of a wide-­ranging philosophical synthesis that blends influences and ideas from varied philosophical, legal, and literary sources from West and East (in particular from India). In contrast to Okin, Nussbaum develops Rawlsian political liberalism into a universalist capability approach, which she uses to address a variety of moral-­political issues: disability, poverty, immigration, development, political change, and religion. The implications of Nussbaum’s stand

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are remarkably different from Okin’s, as her view does not reduce religion to domination but takes it into account as source of meaningfulness as well. Religious traditions play an important role in inspiring the agency of women and this should be reflected in the feminist understanding of citizens’ public engagement. The capabilities approach deals also with the problem of harmful religious practices by defining a moral threshold of acceptability, but also by allowing substantial religious accommodations (2).

1  Secularist feminism and autonomy (Susan Moller Okin) a  Okin’s feminist reappropriation of Rawls’ autonomy liberalism The main goal of Okin’s feminist approach to political philosophy is the complete development of a “nonsexist, fully human theory of justice” (1989b: 105) able to contribute to the transformation of our gendered-­structured societies. This theory of justice is based on beliefs that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having human dignity equally to men, and that they should have the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely chosen lives as men can. (Okin 1998: 661, 1999: 10) Okin develops this theoretical stand in her landmark Justice, Gender, and the Family (1989a), where she expands on Rawls’ early version of anti-­perfectionist liberalism based on a comprehensive view of freedom as autonomy advanced in A Theory of Justice (Chapter 1). For Okin, Rawlsian liberalism becomes a “tool for feminist criticism” (1989a: 101). She rejects the feminist critique that depicts Rawls’ liberalism as just another version of the “sexual contract” (Pateman 1988), that is as the expression of the implicit agreement of subordinating women that permeates Western political thought and practice.9 From this critical perspective, Rawls’ image of self-­regarding rational contractors in the original position would stand for an example of typical male-­oriented political theorizing. This type of theory is premised on a fictional rational agent, supposedly impartial and detached, and ignores the role of care for concrete others, the emotional drives and attitudes, and the responsiveness to difference (Gilligan 1982; Benhabib 1992; Nussbaum 2007a).10 Okin rejects the interpretation which characterizes Rawls’ theory as proposing an overly-­abstract and rationalistic theory of justice. At a general level, she argues that care for the concrete other and justice based on impartial rules, emotions, and rationality are not incongruent but interwoven and complementary (Okin 1998; Held 2005). For Okin, Rawls’ contract theory of justice brings together rationality and emotions as well as human differences and similarities (Okin 1987, 1999, 2004: 1545). In effect, Rawls’ critics have often turned his contract into a caricature: it is true that the rational agents behind the veil of ignorance are self-­regarding, this does not entail that they are individualists or egoists. The person behind the veil does not know which person they will turn out to be – rich or poor, member of a religious majority or of a minority. Therefore, they will consider “the interests of all possible selves equally […]. In the absence of knowledge about their own particular characteristics […] they must think from the position of



Gender equality and religion 11

e­ verybody, in the sense of each in turn” (Okin 2003–2004: 1545). Empathy, not egoism, is key to Rawls’ construction, since the capacity to empathize is necessary to maintain a sense of justice (Okin 1989a: 21). According to Okin’s disputed interpretation, one goal of Rawls’ contract is to incorporate emotions and the care for others in his conception of justice, even if he was not explicit about it (Held 2005; Benhabib 1987).12 In a similar vein, Okin defends Rawls’ post-­Kantian concept of autonomy or self-­ determination. According to this universalist and comprehensive approach to liberalism, freedom as autonomy refers to the rational capacity to choose and construct one’s plan of life. For Okin, the Rawlsian conception of freedom as autonomous self-­choice should not be confused with individualism or egotism; likewise, it does not entail “atomism” (Taylor 1994a). While it is true that individualism and egotism can sap the bases of sociality and social solidarity, the Rawlsian conception of autonomy is sensitive to the co-­ dependence between individual and society. This co-­dependence emerges from Rawls’ conception of the principles of justice and primary goods (see Chapter 1). These principles of justice – in particular the fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle – require substantial solidarity between persons – not mere formal equality.13 In addition, for Rawls, self-­respect or self-­esteem is “probably the most important primary good”: “the parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine it” (Rawls 1971: 73; our italics). Okin’s defence of Rawls’ liberalism is not devoid of criticism. She questions aspects of Rawls’ earlier liberalism and is especially dismissive of his later political turn. For Okin, Rawlsian liberalism is criticizable for not properly acknowledging the gender biases that plague widespread personal and public arrangements. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls takes for granted that contractors in the original position are “heads of families” rather than persons or adults (Okin 1987, 1989a, 1989b: 92–93; English 1977) and generally overlooks the political relevance of sex and gender: he does not even list them amongst the elements that are placed under the veil of ignorance. Rawls indicates at a later point that sex is one of the contingent characteristics together with religion, social status, etc., that are “arbitrary from a moral point of view” (Rawls 1971, 1993: 25); but, for Okin, Rawls fails to introduce more profound corrections in order to give the proper weight to gendered discourses and practices (Okin 1987, 1989b: 91). The question of family illustrates the pitfalls of the Rawlsian framework. The family is a central concern for feminist political theory, since it is “the lynchpin of gender, reproducing it from one generation to the next” (Okin 1989a: 170). In Okin’s memorable phrasing, family is a “school of justice” (Okin 1989a: 17; our italics). However, in our current societies the institution of the family is shaped by gendered structures (Okin 1989a: 8) that are either overlooked by political theorists or relegated to the domestic sphere (the non-­political sphere, in Rawls’ view). This general objection applies to Rawls as well. His conception remains tributary to the public/domestic and political/non-­ political dichotomies and does not consider the family as a real part of the basic structure of society.14 An objector may point out that Rawls’ conception does include the family among the basic social institutions (Okin 1989a: 92; Rawls 1999a). But the family is “barely visible” throughout A Theory of Justice. In order for the family to be a just institution, Okin argues that the principles of justice should apply to it (as well as to other work and employment

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organizations) so as to transform gendered discourses and practices. To this end, Okin expands on Rawls’ contract-­based theory in order to tackle gender issues at various levels of society. In her view, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle can challenge gendered arrangements (Okin 1989a: Chapter 8); these principles of social justice go beyond the mere formal equality or equality of opportunity and engender women-­friendly egalitarian policies. Policies such as subsidized early child care and after-­school care for children, flexible working hours for parents and other caregivers, gender-­neutral parental and other family-­related leave would incentivize men and women to share the paid and unpaid work and responsibilities in family life. Such policies enable women and men to build equal autonomy and take equal part in various societal spaces (domestic life, work, civil society, politics, etc.).15 Okin’s expansion of Rawlsian liberalism entails the rejection of his political turn. For Okin, Rawls’ famous turn does not correct but aggravates the treatment of gender-­ related issues. In a nutshell, Okin argues that Rawls’ later work sacrifices gender equality for the sake of protecting and accommodating cultural-­religious traditions. Okin stresses that Rawls considers the main historical religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines; as such, they are a crucial part of a stable overlapping consensus over the normative core of the constitutional democracy (Chapter 1). Okin raises both normative and practical objections against this perspective. She questions, in turn, the assumption that the main historical religions are reasonable doctrines (i), the consequences of Rawls’ political liberalism for the issue of the family (ii), and the claim that political liberalism is able to solve the problem of stability (iii). (i) Okin argues that the comprehensive doctrines that Rawls takes as reasonable are in actual conflict with gender equality. According to Okin, Rawls made it “abundantly clear that in his just, pluralist society, reasonable conceptions of the good would include religions that both preached and practiced highly sexist modes of life” (Okin 2004: 1555). Okin sees the basic texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as rife with sexism: the God of all three religions is a male figure; and “the Torah/Bible reverses the reality of reproduction so that the first woman is made from a man, tells a history of the Jews from which women are virtually absent, and advises wives to obey their husbands”. The Quran explicitly advocates beating women “from whom you fear disobedience” and suggests that some barrier be placed between the sexes; this has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, including heavy compulsory veiling and the “seclusion” or socially enforced imprisonment of women in their homes, which Okin argues has been rampant throughout much of the history of Muslim peoples (Okin 2004: 1555–1556). Even if there are reformed variants of the Abrahamic religions (some admitting women to various ministries), not only fundamentalist but also orthodox versions of them discriminate against women and enhance forms of domination inside and outside families as they “not only preach but also practice many forms of sex discrimination” (Okin 2004: 1557). By accepting certain comprehensive doctrines as reasonable, Rawls’ overlapping consensus includes a wide range of cultural-­religious traditions that permit different froms of discrimination against women that he would disallow “if practiced against persons differentiated by racial or ethnic group” (ibid.). There is, then, an inconsistency in political liberalism: Rawls supports an anti-­discriminatory stance, yet his approach to religious comprehensive doctrines contradicts it. As Jean Hampton corroborates, political liberalism is illiberal (Hampton 2007: 177).



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This feminist line of objection implies that one must “rule out many prominent religions as beyond the pale of reasonableness” (Okin 2004: 1558). If these allegedly sexist religions do not accept change, they are “to be discouraged or even excluded altogether from the just society” (ibid.; our italics). For Okin, this would be “no less inconsistent than racist or ethnically discriminatory” groups being excluded in a just society. Sexual discrimination is, for Okin, liable to restriction on a par with racial and ethnic discrimination. Religious groups that, in their public discourses, make sexist claims and engage in sexist practices should be treated on a par with racist groups; further, their freedom of speech should not be seen as unconditional. The Rawlsian differentiation between the political and the comprehensive is but a cover for legitimizing derogatory and discriminatory claims. According to Okin’s interpretation, a religious group declaring that “women have pig souls” would be able to use the tools of political liberalism to justify this belief and express it freely due to its comprehensive source; the belief in question would not pertain to the “domain of the political”. The free expression of such gendered discourses is questionable since it degrades women and undermines their autonomy; the manifestation of this belief should be restricted by law and not protected as the non-­political expression of a comprehensive doctrine (Okin 2004: 1557).16 (ii) Rawls’ downplaying of the pervasiveness of gendered discourses and practices emerges in his later approach to the issue of the family. In his works on political liberalism, Rawls underlines that the family does not pertain to a private space outside of the reach of the principles of justice (Rawls 1999a: 159–160). Yet he claims that these principles are not applied directly to the basic structure of the family. This means that while they apply to the distribution of fundamental rights and duties, and the benefits of social cooperation, they do not apply to the internal life of the family and other similar associations. For instance, just as we do not require churches to be democratically governed, we should not require families to be internally governed by the principles of justice; “the family is not peculiar in this respect” (Rawls 1999a: 158).17 Okin rejects this line of argument. Even if the state should not impose the democratization of internal church organizations (Okin 2004: 1566–1567),18 families should be internally regulated by the same principles of justice that regulate legislatures and courts, i.e. the basic structure of society.19 Given the constitutive role of the family in society, there should be an inner connection to justice: a just society cannot but rely on just families. In Okin’s formulation, the family is a “school of justice”: no sense of justice and autonomy develops without the contribution of the family (Okin 1989a: 97–101). By playing on the first sentence of a Theory of Justice, “Justice is the first virtue of the social institutions” (Rawls 1971: 3), Okin advances that “justice is the primary virtue of family” (Okin 2004: 1564). (iii) Okin not only questions normative aspects of political liberalism but also practical ones – namely, Rawls’ argument for the overlapping consensus as a key to stability (Chapter 1).20 The stability of the just society depends on the cultivation of political values and institutions, such as the family, that are vital to the socialization and moral development of persons. But if these are shaped by unreasonable religious doctrines, then the project of building an egalitarian community is seriously undermined. Therefore, Rawls’ political liberalism runs into a fundamental difficulty: by relying on the dichotomies between the political/non-­political (or comprehensive), and by refusing to see

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family as a place where egalitarian values must be inculcated, Rawls undermines his own liberal project. If the just society is to be stable, the principles of justice cannot be applied only to Rawls’ domain of politics but need to also structure vital institutions such as the family as well.

b  Difficulties with Okin’s secularist feminism Okin’s political theory represents a crucial moment in what Ruth Abbey calls the “return of liberal feminism” (Abbey 2014).21 Liberal feminists like Okin are persuasive in arguing that the background culture and the political arrangements are mutually related, and that sexist comprehensive doctrines are at odds with fair cooperation and togetherness. By bringing into focus institutions such as the family and the issue of subtle forms of domination, she rightly spots a weak point in Rawls’ theory of justice as well as in some forms of multiculturalism (for Okin on multiculturalism, see Chapter 6). Historical religions cannot be considered reasonable comprehensive doctrines without further ado: just as their cosmological claims often clash with science,22 their moral claims and practices can pose normative problems. Rawls’ openness to non-­traditional forms of family could appear to be the result of his defence of liberal values and pluralism, but it is at loggerheads with his stance on religion: historical religions fervently oppose gay marriage and influence the formation of a culture of domination and exclusion towards sexual minorities. For Abbey, Rawls’ liberalism runs into a trilemma: either withdraw the acceptance of gay marriage or deny that historical religions are reasonable or, further, admit that justice as fairness is not a political form of liberalism, but a comprehensive one (Abbey 2014: 80). Okin opts for the second possibility. However, we argue that her interpretative view of religion is one-­sided (i), and her reading of liberalism and the family as a school of justice runs into normative and practical difficulties. From our perspective, while children have the “right to an open future” (Feinberg 1994), this is not at odds with teaching them comprehensive values but only to indoctrinating them (ii).

i  Religion as patriarchy? Okin oscillates between two interpretative stands on religion. The first stand regards the tension between religion and gender equality as essential. This form of essentialism is, we believe, unsustainable: even under the dubious supposition that it’s possible to come up with the essential core of traits of all religious practices, there is no reason to believe that gender inequality is one of them. With some exceptions, male domination is a general trait of many traditional societies and is inherent to many ancestral religious traditions as well. But religion is not essentially bound to sexual discrimination and gender inequality. For instance, it is true that the misogynistic Laws of Manu are part of the tradition of Hinduism and were divinely sanctioned. Nonetheless, Hinduism contain a great deal of variations, including the deeply religious commitments of contemporary advocates of gender equality such as Rammohun Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Ela Bhatt, “all of whom have understood themselves to be representing an authentic Hinduism, freed from historical and cultural distortions” (Nussbaum 2000: 184). Likewise, Islam is not fatally averse to gender equality. Cliterectomy and polygamy – amongst the examples invoked



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by Okin – do not convey anything essential about Islam (Gruenbaum 2001). That the Quran and Hadith regard men and women as sharing a single essential nature is, together with other similar ideas, underlined in current interpretations within the growing Islamic feminism (Kynsilehto 2008; Mernissi 1992). As Azizah Y. al-­Hibri argues, fundamentalism does not exhaust tradition; ironically, religious fundamentalists and anti-­religious “crusaders” equally simplify the complexity of religious texts and practices (al-­Hibri 1999: 41–46). Okin sometimes leans towards a second and more nuanced stance: according to this stance, the tension between the religious background culture and political principles is not essential but structural. This interpretation is, we believe, persuasive: the tension between religion and gender equality is neither minor nor marginal nor purely accidental; it is connected to central religious beliefs and institutions. Examples of such beliefs and practices are familiar in all world religions. In some African religious traditions, cliterectomy is connected to and justified by way of beliefs and images pertaining to a sacred theogony which grant women an inferior status (Stamm 1995; see Chapter 6).23 It is further significant that the three Abrahamic religions construe God on the model of a Father who is absolutely powerful and omniscient; in all three of these symbolic architectures women are – all necessary qualifications notwithstanding – oftentimes granted a secondary or subordinate role. Institutionally speaking, the general rule is that women in the Abrahamic religions cannot have access to important offices – they cannot be priests, rabbis, or imams, although this position has been increasingly challenged. Likewise, in Buddhism, men have a privileged position in the samgha (Keown 2000) and this observation could be extended to Confucianism, Sikhism, Shintoism, and so on. Religions are, from this perspective, discourse-­and-power regimes that often encompass gendered mechanisms of domination and exclusion (see Chapter 4) and not mere conceptions of the good or comprehensive doctrines (Rawls). However, even if we understand Okin as positing not an essential but a structural tension between various religious practices and gender equality, it remains that she champions a one-­sided and sometimes misleading view of religion (we can thus speak of an essentializing tendency in her work) that downplays its multidimensionality: her view centres on religion as domination but neglects other aspects of the religious phenomena (see also Introduction). First, Okin minimizes the fact that religions are internally diverse and historically dynamic. Okin emphasizes that the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions model God on the image of the Father. This is not untrue, but if generalized, the interpretative claim is misleading. In the Abrahamic religions, a good number of believers and theologians insist on the alterity of God: from this perspective, God is neither male (fitting the stereotype of a scary old man with a big beard) nor female – “it” is transcendent. Further, the critique of patriarchy has been articulated from within their religious traditions by Islamic, Christian, African, and Hindu feminists. In the African case, feminists have returned to the pre-­Christian and Islamic spiritual traditions to cast doubt on patriarchal beliefs and practices (Mernissi 1992; Mies and Shiva 1993). In the African religion,24 God or the Supreme being, can be either androgyne or female (Supreme Mother; see Asante and Mazama 2009). Second, Okin’s view of religion assumes an overly marked separation of the West from the rest of the world and between cultures that are more egalitarian and those that

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are more patriarchal. In discriminating between religions, she implies that each reproduces itself in relative isolation; she assumes the superiority of the West rather quickly. Benhabib is right to point out that Okin falls into the “outsider” trap of tending to treat cultures as “unified, harmonious, seamless wholes that speak with one narrative voice” (Benhabib 2002; Volpp 2001; Phillips 2007; Torbisco 2014). Postcolonial thinkers like Homi Bhabha point out that Okin’s view is representative of a hegemonic Western discourse that views non-­Western cultures as, almost by definition, patriarchal; further, this discourse views the women in these cultures as victims in need of protection (Bhabha 1999; Anzaldúa 2007). As Norton points out, Okin tends to read the principles of liberal cultures from their best practices and those of non-­Western ones from their worst: When men in the United States beat their wives, it is an aberration, counter to the liberal principles that govern here. When Muslim men beat their wives, it is an act representative of the principles of Islam – whatever Koran or hadith may say. (Norton 2001: 741) In this simplified picture, women in traditional societies are portrayed as duped into a kind of religious false consciousness that makes them unable to perceive how unjust and repressive the traditions and customs of their society are. While it is true that mechanisms of domination are often internalized, Okin’s essentializing argument positing religion as patriarchy fails to grant sufficient importance to the many ways in which women already contest power hierarchies within their cultural groups; it generally treats minority women, in Shachar’s apt phrase, as “victims without agency” (Shachar 2001). Uma Narayan (1997) argues that the inclination to essentialize is damaging to the feminist perspective as it takes certain practices out of their context and history and makes them definitive of a particular culture or religion; in doing so, it paradoxically mirrors the same interpretive attitude of the religious fundamentalist. In her analysis of sati (the ritual self-­immolation of Hindu widows on the pyre of their defunct husbands), Narayan highlights how the well-­intentioned critique championed by Western feminists fails to frame sati as a practice that is an essential part of an ancient and oppressive religious tradition. However, the foundation of sati in Hindu sacred texts is highly questionable and it was widespread only in certain parts of India. Furthermore, it was typically only performed among the nobility caste. In many ways, this kind of feminist-essentializing representation of sati is similar to the representation which guided the British colonialist power when imposing increasing normative restrictions on the practice. The emancipatory feminist critique becomes the mirror image of Hindu religious extremism defending sati. In the extremist propaganda found at that time, the sati is also presented as an ancient religious tradition that is deeply embedded in Indian identity and embodies the virtues of devotion and submission of the good Indian wife as opposed to the selfish and individualistic models championed by the West. The sati case indicates how the interpretative difficulties of secularist feminism can be connected to pragmatic ones (Nussbaum 1999, 2000). It is often counterproductive to approach religious people with a set of external and “superior” standards that are better than the rules and norms of their religion. Okin appears sometimes to give ultimatums: if sexist religions do not accept change, they are to be “even excluded altogether from the



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just society” (Okin 2004: 1158; our italics). She makes unilateral use of extreme cases to bring her point and advances problematic assertions when claiming that in some cases women would be better off if the culture they were born into were “to become extinct” (Okin 1999: 23). As we noted, Okin’s perspective on religion oscillates and, beyond this extreme stance, there is also a more nuanced voice in her texts. Still, these sharp anti-­religious remarks do not only bring back the ghost of colonial paternalism, but are also likely to be met with indignation and rejection even by those who struggle to change their tradition in the direction of gender equality. This is ironic: Okin claims to provide a better solution to the problem of stability, but such secularist discourse can block any practical alliance with feminist and progressive forces within various religious contexts and traditions (Nussbaum 1999, 2010: 178; Shachar 2001). Depending on context, critics should also rely on inner emancipatory resources that push for a reflective understanding of their historical and religious development. In the case of sati, this means pointing towards the dubious evidence the apologists bring in support of the free agency of the immolated women and towards the economical and political interests that lurk behind these episodes. Particularly in the relatively recent and rare cases, like the tragic immolation of Roop Kanwar in 1987, it is evident that a substantial role was played by economic issues connected with the dowry25 as well as with the exploitation of the sacrificial site that was later established as a place of pilgrimage. This kind of critical reading of the patriarchal practice helps connect the history of sati to the most pressing problem of dowry murders that have increasingly plagued India in recent years. Following this line of analysis, religion appears less central. Taking into consideration the internal critique of patriarchal practices can thus become more plausible for religious people who strongly identify with Hindu traditions.26

ii  The construction of the egalitarian society: free speech and the family as a school of justice Okin persuasively questions Rawls’ rigid distinction between political and comprehensive liberalism. Shielding sexist views under the heading of reasonable comprehensive doctrines or domestic relationships (e.g. the family) from the principles of justice can lead to the domination and marginalization of women, and perpetuate the transmission of questionable political values to future generations. In order to tackle gendered practices, Okin envisages a double approach made of top-­down and bottom-­up strategies: first, the state should play an active role in restricting free speech that affects the “free value of women’s political liberty”; second, at the level of the domestic sphere, the family is meant to be a school of justice; this idea that has generated a rich debate is the educational role of the parents in educate their children into autonomy (Clayton 2006, 2011; Cameron 2011). In the following, we discuss Okin’s stance on the active role of the state in restricting freedom of speech (i) as well as the question of the family in relation to Okin’s idea of freedom as autonomy (ii–iii). (i) Okin argues that the distinction between the political and the comprehensive at the core of political liberalism as supported by Rawls and Nussbaum (Chapter 1 and Chapter 7, Section 2) leads to too broad a view of freedom of speech, which undermines gender

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equality. For Okin, the notion of comprehensive or metaphysical doctrines permits, and thus in a way legitimizes, the manifestation of doctrines that should be excluded from a just society. Okin gives the hypothetical case of a religious group claiming that “women have pig souls”. Should their speech be restricted? For political liberalism, the manifestation of this view should be permitted, in virtue of freedom of conscience and speech, as the expression of a comprehensive “non-­political” stance. In contrast, Okin argues that this stance is unconvincing: freedom of conscience and speech are not unconditional, but should be balanced and restricted when other freedoms are endangered; in this case, the manifestation of the view that “women have pig souls” has serious political implications, and should be restricted since it discriminates women by “distinctly affecting the fair value of women’s political liberty, by preventing them from being taken seriously as political candidates” (Okin 2004: 1560–1561). This reasoning draws on Rawls’ earlier work to defend the “fair value of women’s political liberty” from a merely a formal view of political freedom. To this purpose, in Okin’s interpretation, the state needs to take a more active role in combating the pervasiveness of sexist practices. She applies this stance not only to hypothetical cases, but also to mainstream religious views. Okin takes issue with Rawls’ (and Nussbaum’s) idea that mainstream religions are “reasonable comprehensive doctrines” (while, for Rawls, only fundamentalist views are regarded as unreasonable). In her perspective, since these religions contain sexist discourses and practices, they should be seen as beyond the pale of reasonableness: “unless until they reform themselves […] so as to accommodate sex equality, sexist religions” could be even “excluded altogether from the just society” (Okin 1994, 2002). Okin’s restrictive view is far-­ reaching: sexist jokes, for instance, must be also restricted (She refers to one of Berlusconi’s sexist joke at a meeting in 2003 including European parliamentarians (Okin 2004: 1562, n. 95).27 Such manifestations should not merely be “discouraged”, as Rawls suggests,28 but excluded and treated on a par with racist speech (Okin 2004: 1557). How justified is Okin’s stand? It is, first, doubtful that Rawls and Nussbaum would include among the reasonable comprehensive doctrines discourses such as “women have pig souls” that support a deeply false and offensive view. From their perspective, such discourses would be unreasonable.29 But a state that excludes without further ado all doctrines affirming illiberal ideas becomes an arbitrary state; various doctrines can hold illiberal views without acting in immediate violation of the fair terms of social cooperation. In particular, excluding and labelling mainstream religions as racist is disrespectful to believers for whom religion is a source of meaning that gives content to their self-­ understanding and dignity. Placing on a par racism and mainstream religions stands for a questionable secularist stance hostile to religion that does not acknowledge the complexity of religion as source of meaningfulness. This exclusivist stance is, further, unpractical and has questionable consequences: in her country of origin, the US, Okin’s view would imply the exclusion of the majority of citizens. At a global level, there are more women believers than men; and even if religion can lead to the internalization of mechanisms of dominance and questionable adaptive preferences, a dismissive and punitive approach would not serve the cause of substantive gender equality. Okin’s stance would alienate and possibly radicalize those who attempt to change them from inside; it would trivialize both their spiritual search and practical endeavors. For instance, according to the Pew Research Center, Catholics in the US are in open disagreement with some of Catholicism’s



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central beliefs concerning family and sexuality; these Catholic believers often press for a progressive change within their Church (Pew Research Center 2015d). It is often more reasonable and prudential to discuss and eventually challenge these beliefs and practices rather than treat them with punitive legal measures. There is, further, an inherent danger in inflating the notion of denigration as a reason for limiting the freedom of speech. If we legally restrict people making sexist jokes, then religious jokes and satire in mass media or art that targets believers should be restricted as well. Examples are the Muhammad caricatures and works of art that are deeply offensive to believers from Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, to Michel Houellebecq’s The Platform and Andrés Serrano’s Piss Christ. A recent and much debated case is the controversy over the publication of twelve satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-­Posten in 2005. The culture page editor of the newspaper defended the decision to call for Danish cartoonists to draw Muhammad as a response to a growing atmosphere of self-­censorship on Islam and as a way to include Danish Muslims into a national tradition of satire. Others responded that to evaluate this claim, context and intention are crucial, since the newspaper’s anti-­immigrant rhetoric and the larger anti-­immigrant mood in Denmark and Europe justify a less benign reading of the editor’ initiative (Lægaard 2009; Kahn 2009). Levey and Modood, in discussing this case, find an analogy between religious discrimination and racism: The attempt to target, denigrate and thus exclude members of a cultural group simply in virtue of their membership is a form of racism. It breaches the liberal-­democratic values of liberty, equality and fraternity. It legitimately falls – or should fall – within the terms of racial or religious hatred legislation. (Levey and Modood 2009: 443) But not restricting the freedom of the press or artistic freedom and not construing satire as mere hatred is vital in a pluralist democracy Such restrictions can play into the hands of reactionaries and conservative-­authoritarians: religious majorities and authoritarian states have actually been pressing for the restriction of individual freedom by means of the idea of religious offence and denigration based on the analogy with racism. In a pluralist democracy, religious traditions that retain beliefs and practices that are detrimental to gender equality need to be questioned and scrutinized in the public arena; instead of the wholesale exclusion of valuable comprehensive doctrines this scrutinizing is part of the desideratum of a vibrant democratic ethos (see also Chapter 1, Section 3). In this sense, non-­legal breaks and means are preferable – political stands, campaigning, manifestations, educational measures, etc. – to counter both sexist speech and offensive attacks against religious groups.30 People who do not belong to the targeted groups may have sound ethical reasons to join the peaceful contestation of offensive speech. A newspaper is entitled to disrespect religious doctrines and even mock religious figures and practices without legal restriction or penalty. Still, in general, mockery of religion can become a way of targeting the religious minority through hostile stereotypes and, in specific historical circumstances of domination and persecution; this might be a reason for restricting freedom of speech.31 From the perspective of an ethics of citizenship, people should respectfully engage with others based on the assumption

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that they are autonomous agents who are not only able to respond appropriately to our expressions but who can also contribute with their own, and who must be addressed in ways that do not discourage them from doing so nor disregard their equal ability to live according to their deepest beliefs while respecting others’ equal right to do the same. (Rostbøll 2009: 643) These informal means of restraint should be part of a democratic ethos and be fostered by the active involvement of the state which is not limited to simply discouraging them (Rawls), but by adopting positive measures (e.g. educational policies instilling gender equality, quotas, public campaigns, incentives, etc.). (ii) In challenging political liberalism, Okin focuses not only on the role of the state but also on the central importance of the domestic sphere (e.g. the family), rightly underlining its key role in building an egalitarian society. Her feminist approach stresses the continuity between the family and the political arrangements: family is part of the basic structure of society and citizens acquire their first moral representations and “reflexes” through the family. If this is so, how can political institutions based on the idea of justice as fairness (or other liberal conceptions of justice) be functional if their citizens are raised in patriarchal and discriminating environments? How can religious organizations that do not treat genders equally and preach a degrading image of women provide cognitive and motivational resources that support basic principles of justice? The most common view of the family is that, provided some basic constitutional principles are complied with, parents should be granted a good deal of leverage in deciding whether their sons and daughters are given a religious education. This conception is well-­spread and supported by national and international legal instruments (e.g. the 1989 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child).32 However, this vision about the parental discretion in child education family and religion has been interpreted as contrary to the notion of family as a school of justice. For Okin, one of the aspects of the idea of family as a school of justice is that the educational role of the family should be made consistent with the liberal principles of justice and children should be inculcated with a non-­ perfectionist understanding of freedom as autonomy. But a society in which families are schools of justice that educate children into a specific form of autonomy appears to run the risk of paternalism33 and homogenization: paternalism, because one specific conception of freedom would be inculcated from above, and homogenization, because this idea of freedom as autonomy is regarded as having universal validity. Matthew Clayton draws in more detail the implications of a Rawlsian anti-­perfectionist understanding of justice with respect to the family. He argues for the priority of egalitarian principles of justice in family life while aiming to answer the objections concerning paternalism and homogenization (Clayton 2006, 2011; for a critique see Cameron 2011). His argument is that just as states are impartial with respect to comprehensive doctrines, parents should also be impartial and avoid inculcating any comprehensive doctrines into their children. Instead, parents have the obligation to educate their children with political values (including gender equality). Families are just when parents take steps (e.g. sending them to certain schools) to ensure that their children choose their own conception of the good when they grow up: “(p)arents, like governments […] should be governed by the



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ideal of public reason, which requires them to bring their children up according to principles that do not depend upon controversial beliefs about religion” (Clayton 2006: 3, 2011). Just as citizens have the right to not be coerced by the state in the name of a conception of the good or specific comprehensive doctrine, children have the same right with regard to their parents. This line of argument has the undeniable virtue of challenging a widespread traditional view according to which parents have “sovereignty rights” over their children. Such understanding has gradually lost ground in favour of the increasing recognition of the separate rights and interests of children. Children are right-­holders; according to the 1990 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, “States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Art. 14.1).34 As Joel Feinberg’s argues, children have a “right to an open future” (Feinberg 1994; Mills 2003), which encompasses a set of moral rights children possess which are derived from the autonomy rights of adults. This would imply that parents do not have the right to endanger the life, welfare, and physical integrity of their children on account of their comprehensive doctrines. Parents who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, do not have the right to prohibit their children to have blood transfusions when these are medically recommendable. In addition, inculcating political values (including gender justice) should be part of the educational process both in school and family. Patterns and domination are often rooted and internalized at the micro-­level of family life. To this extent, the view of family as a “school of justice” is a suggestive image that highlights the relevance of justice in family life as one of the pillars of the formation of a democratic-­egalitarian ethos (Chapter 2). However, the anti-­perfectionist argument is ultimately flawed. Neither parents nor schools should indoctrinate their children.35 The 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, in which children were documented spending their summers being taught that they had “prophetic gifts” and that they could “take back America for Christ” by being part of the “army of God”, is a chilling example of radical paternalism in the US. The child’s right not to be indoctrinated is vital for having an open future.36 Nonetheless, instilling and inculcating comprehensive values (that are not racist, totalitarian, etc.) is not necessarily indoctrination.37 Ruling out any form of education inside the family based on non-­ authoritarian substantive values and style of teaching (and as opposed to strong paternalism aimed at indoctrination) is unconvincing. Prohibiting or disallowing parents from transmitting their conceptions of the good is not only practically unfeasible, since children generally take their parents as models, but also ultimately impoverishing and dehumanizing. First, parents excluding children from regular parental activities (going to church on Sundays; joining a Muslim organization to help the needy in the parents’ free time) in order to not influence their children can have emotionally destabilizing effects; children may feel marginalized and rejected.38 Second, transmitting only non-­perfectionist political values is questionable from the perspective of the talents and capacities of the child. Mozart would not have been possible without his father’s inculcating from an early age a way of life driven by practice, sacrifice, and the pursuit of excellence. Educational practices aimed at inculcating models of excellence – be they of artists, scientists, writers, spiritual leaders, historical figures, or politicians – are compatible with children’s rights; moreover, they can be future-­openers. Instilling the admiration and the drive to emulate outstanding models of compassion, justice, solidarity, creativity, bravery, autonomy, or

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spiritual strength is a desirable contribution to their education. Religious and political figures like B.R. Ambedkar, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day are inspiring models in education. Third, the anti-­perfectionist argument gives a truncated idea of the educational relation within the family. Parents help develop their children’ talents, capacities, imagination, affective capacity – not just their capacity to engage in public reasoning. Religious visions can be relevant in providing narratives and arguments concerning moral and social matters, as well as answering ultimate questions (the meaning of life; suffering and evil; the meaning of cosmos; the nature of the good). An education that deprives children of model answers to these questions and from the influences of their parents in tackling them is dehumanizing as it obscures a potential field of ethical-­spiritual flourishing; it also ignores the diverse ways in which comprehensive beliefs can influence one’s social engagement and political participation. The right to an open future is the right to a diverse future. While inquiring into these issues does not necessarily take a religious form, it remains the case that it does so for a vast number of people. The exclusion and misrecognition of modernized spiritual-­religious views (Chapter 3) in education can generate impoverishment and alienation. There is, therefore, continuity and discontinuity between the background culture and political arrangements. It is desirable that families, as places “where both collective identity and gendered relations are reproduced” (Shachar 2014: 121), become permeated by political concerns of justice and gender equality. Family plays an important role in the creation of a democratic ethos (Chapters 1 and 2). Fairness and equality in familial relationships need to be protected by law and encouraged in public discourse. In time, this pressure can challenge the gender biases that religious beliefs and conceptions of the good can generate in the domestic realm. But the family is equally a context in which people pursue their conceptions of the good life, seek affection and intimacy, and cultivate and share personal narratives, areas in which religion can also play an important role. (iii) The variety of women’s experiences and their attachment to different (non)religious self-­understandings should matter in education as well as in drawing the lines between the private and the public – as well as the domestic and the political. Okin dismisses gender distinctions as hopelessly sexist forms of institutionalization of comprehensive beliefs. As Okin states,  [a] just future would be one without gender. In its social structures and practices, one’s sex would have no more relevance than one’s eye color or the length of one’s toes. No assumptions would be made about “male” and “female” roles […]. (Okin 1989: 171) The consequence of this view would be a radical shift in family and school education towards instilling autonomy severed from gender. Okin’s stance rebels against the connection between gender distinctions and relations of discrimination and domination. While it is desirable to sever this link, a world where gender distinctions have the same relevance as the dimension of one’s toes is an impoverished and dystopian world. The desire to radically level differences between traits that are phenomenologically so distinct, and have been valued in a plurality of ways, is diquieting.39 Comprehensive doctrines may acknowledge differences between the sexes



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without involving systematic repression or degradation. Various interpretations (in religion, arts, morality, etc.) of gender distinctions can be imaginative, valuable, and enriching of human experience. Interpretative frameworks that encompass significant differences in characteristics and roles associated with gender are not unreasonable by necessity, in particular if they are voluntarily subscribed to and practised by citizens who are free and equal. As Lu argues, “conceptions of gender, when they are intended to be delivered in a context of children’s education or practice in family daily living, are all required to be compatible with the basic status of citizens as free and equal” (Lu 2013: 37–38) because of their role in shaping the political values of the citizenry. The acceptance of this plurality of perspectives is at odds with the Procrustean bed of Okin’s secularist feminism, which is centred on a comprehensive and universalist notion of freedom as autonomy. Adopting or imposing the same comprehensive understanding of freedom as self-­determination or autonomy is hostile to difference and potentially illiberal.40 Autonomy, as Phillips argues, is a “slippery notion” connected to the compulsion to control one’s life; it can itself be viewed as a trap and a problematic basis for feminism: No one said freedom was going to be a picnic, but when we set autonomy at the center of our moral or political lives, we are forced to assume more responsibility than many of us can cope with for the forces that structure our lives, and we come to regard anything that is not a result of autonomous choice as thereby a failure. (Phillips, 2001: 264) Other authors have made appealing proposals of concepts such as “mutual autonomy” (Held 2005: 55) or or relational autonomy (Di Tullio 2015; Birulés 2014; Chodorow [1978] 2009) as different from individual autonomy. But these autonomy-­based conceptions do not admit of heteronomic or other ways of understanding freedom and meaningful life. As Saba Mahmood has shown in her studies of Muslim women, one can be a good citizen and feminist but, as a religious person, conceive freedom, first and foremost, as obedience to God (for the link between submission and freedom, see Mahmood 2012, 2015). Likewise, consider concepts of freedom that cannot be grasped by the autonomy/heteronomy distinction. In forms of Buddhism, moks.a is the liberation from sam.sāra, the cycle of reincarnations, and involves an overcoming of the distinction between the self (self-­determination; autonomy) and the other (God as the ultimate source of norms) (for the criticism of the autonomy liberalism, see also Chapter 5, Section 3 and Chapter 6, Section 2). The state may pursue a substantive and not merely formal-­legalistic concept of gender equality without trying to impose a uniform way of conceiving freedom as autonomy, yet accepting as equally valid communal, heteronomic and other ways of understanding freedom. By focusing on women’s agency within their cultural and religious traditions, a strand of feminist thinkers has tried to account for this layer of difficulties and move beyond the duality between Rawls’ political liberalism and Okin’s secularist feminism. Nussbaum’s capability approach stands out for its breath, ambition and complexity; we turn now to examine a part of her philosophical synthesis.

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2  Nussbaum’s capability approach to political liberalism a  Capabilities, religion, and inclusion Inclusive feminists argue, in contrast to Okin, that religion can substantially articulate and sustain the free agency and experience of women in the private and public spheres. The landscape of inclusive feminism is varied and dynamic, and it can take non-­religious and religious forms – environmentalist, Islamic, Hindu, Christian, and so on (Phillips 2007; Narayan 1997; Baehr 1996, 2013a; Malik 2009). These feminisms can resort to the semantic resources of the spiritual-­religious traditions themselves with the transformative aim of granting more salience to women’s voice and rights. In doing so, they can challenge specific readings of religion and inherited traditions (Mernissi 1987; 2002; Narayan 1997) as well as the impact of capitalism on women, communal relations, and the proprietorial relation to earth and the environment (Shiva 2002). Within the limits of this chapter, we cannot do justice to this rich panorama of thinkers and social activists aspiring for a transformation of religion and capitalist democracy. We will mainly focus on Martha Nussbaum’s inclusive feminism, which blends influences and ideas from varied philosophical, legal, and literary sources from West and East (in particular from India). The breath, ambition, and richness of Nussbaum’s project stands out: in the age of over-­specialization, she has the merit of articulating a full-­fledged and original philosophical synthesis based on the influential capability approach (Sen 1980). While Okin draws on Rawls’ early autonomy liberalism, Nussbaum ambitiously develops Rawlsian political liberalism into a universalist capability approach in order to address a variety of moral-­political issues: discapacity, poverty, immigration, development, and religion (for an opposite “minimalist” interpretation of political liberalism, see Chapter 6, Section 2 on Kukathas). The consequences of Nussbaum’s political liberalism are remarkably different from Okin’s reworking of Rawls’ earlier work: her view places religion at the centre of her reflections, and is hospitable to substantial religious exemptions and adjustments. In the following, we deal with the theoretical and practical implications of Nussbaum’s capability approach to political liberalism, and then analyse some of its difficulties (2).

b  The critique of Rawls’ liberalism and the role of capabilities The capability approach was initiated by Amartya Sen at the beginning of the 1980s (Sen 1980). Sen’s main goal was to challenge the hegemony of the “quality of life” approach articulated in the reductionist terms of material wealth and gross national product. This narrow economic approach has been deeply influential in national and international policymaking; yet it is problematical since it ignores vital basic goods that are not reducible to wealth and income: life expectancy, infant mortality, educational opportunities, employment opportunities, political liberties, and the quality of race and gender relations.41 As a corrective to this approach, Sen has developed, alongside Nussbaum and others, a wide-­ranging an influential perspective to the quality of life approach that goes beyond



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narrow economic indicators (Sen 1980; Nussbaum 2007a: 71–72). This perspective connects the realization of human capabilities to the pursuit of a variety of goods, and has gradually become influential in the Human Development Reports of the UN Development Programme and policy initiatives (Robeyns 2011; Sen 2009). In particular, Sen focuses on the role of capabilities in assessing quality of life and developing a theory of justice that is alternative to Rawls’ and draws on social choice theory (Sen 2009).42 In turn, Nussbaum takes capabilities as the foundation for basic political principles that should underwrite a post-­Rawlsian political liberalism. Nussbaum’s reformulation of political liberalism addresses three shortcomings of the Rawlsian contract view of society as a mutually-­ beneficial enterprise (Chapter 1).43 First, the notion of a social contract is insufficient to deal with the topic of justice. The selection of principles of justice cannot be limited to the participants in Rawls’ original position (i.e. the fully bodied and reasonable members of the political community), since this excludes disabled persons, refugees, immigrants, and animals. Even when mutually beneficial cooperation is absent (as it the case of refugees, some gravely disabled persons, etc.), justice remains a good for everybody and it extends to the non-­human world. Second, Rawls’ conception of justice builds on a resourcist approach centred on a number of primary goods viewed as resources that should be fairly distributed. This approach overlooks the fact that persons are dissimilar in their needs for resources and ability to employ them into “valuable functionings”, i.e. the specific ways in which capabilities are developed and translated into action. These dissimilarities in terms of needs and resource uses are at play at various levels, including religiosity.44 For Rawls, primary goods are only means to the possible achievement of valuable human functionings; as such, his resourcist approach is unable to offer adequate diagnoses as it does not consider that even when women have resources, they may not be able and willing to “activate” them due to beliefs and mechanisms backed or connected to religion, cultural tradition, or secularist preconceptions and views (Nussbaum 2000: 68–69, 2007a: 74–75, 2011). Thus, if based exclusively on a resource index, the analysis of wealth and quality of life does not go deep enough into evaluating current problems, including those posed by religion’s role in the private and public life. This oversight may enhance inequalities, especially for women who are traditionally placed in situations of vulnerability and dispossession. Third, Rawls’ political liberalism is too context-­dependent.45 Rawlsian political liberalism is explained and justified on account of a reflection on the specific history of the West, and the problems posed by “salvationist and expansionist” doctrines in the age of the wars of religion (Chapter 1). Given the growing pluralization and globalization of democracy, political liberalism is in need of a foundation that goes beyond Western history. When the context is the world, political theorizing needs to be comparative and global in scope. Nussbaum looks for universal standards of moral-­political evaluation without disregarding the diversity of human agents and the relevance of their conditions of agency. In order to meet these difficulties, Nussbaum develops a political liberalism on the basis of “an intuitive idea of a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human being” (Nussbaum 2000: 5). She identifies a universally valid “basic social minimum” focusing not on resources but on what people are actually able to do and to be – namely on a set of capabilities whose realization brings about a dignified and good life. This capability approach “injects” political liberalism with a pluralist and teleological conception of the

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good that places agency rather than a predefined set of goods as resources at the core of political theory. Capabilities are broad categories of vital human functionings that answer the question “what are human beings in a particular context able to do or be?”. The main intuition at the basis of the capability approach is that “certain functions are particularly central in human life, in the sense that their presence or absence is typically understood to be a mark of the presence or absence of human life”, and that these functions make us really human (Nussbaum 2000: 71–72, 2007a: 392–401). Each human being, as an agent, is vulnerable, since capabilities can be lessened and trampled on by circumstances, external interference, and domination; but even in adverse conditions, persons are dignified by the ability of shaping their own life through the human powers of practical reason and interactive sociability (Nussbaum 2000: 72; Nussbaum and Glover 1995). For Nussbaum, the notion of human dignity resonates across cultures and traditions, and grounds at the political level the basic intuition “that certain human abilities exert a moral claim that they should be developed” (Nussbaum 2000: 83). This is, in Nussbaum’s reworking of Rawls, a freestanding moral idea that does not depend on any specific comprehensive doctrine, and is at the core of political liberalism and overlapping consensus (see Chapter 1).46 The list of central capabilities that give content to human dignity is, for Nussbaum, made of ten cross-­cultural universals: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; control over one’s environment (Nussbaum 2007a: 392–401, 2011: 33–34). In Nussbaum’s version of political liberalism, this list of cross-­cultural capabilities can be the object of an overlapping consensus among persons and peoples that have different comprehensive conceptions of the good (2007a: 388–392, 2011: 169).47 Nussbaum gives special emphasis to practical reason and affiliation since these two capabilities “organize and suffuse all the others, making their pursuit truly human” (Nussbaum 2000: 82). Practical reason and affiliation express, in terms of capabilities, the conditions of the twofold notion of what makes up human dignity: the informed and autonomous choice of goods that are cooperatively conceived and pursued. A life worthy of human dignity requires at least a threshold level of these ten central capabilities (Nussbaum 2011: 32–33). This is the basic standard of justice that should be assured to all human beings, but leaves room for capabilities to be developed according to various comprehensive interpretations (religious or non-­religious) of human goods. The central capabilities provide the ground for a list of constitutional and political warranties within which people can freely and equally develop their own comprehensive conceptions of the good (Nussbaum 2000: 74). Constitutional rules and procedures, a system of separation of powers, and a fair economic system are justified on account of the flourishing of human capabilities. Thus, while the legal-­political rules, procedures, and institutions can vary according to context and history, any decent political order needs to secure “at least a threshold level of these human capabilities” (ibid.: 75, 2006: 71). The key issue for Nussbaum’s teleological approach to political liberalism is that persons can fulfil their capabilities by expressing and interpreting them freely.48 If, for Okin, religion is largely a brake to women’s development and an instrument of male domination, for Nussbaum, religion is vitally important as a dimension of agency and human development that is essential to many persons. Religion plays a crucial role in the development of at least three central human capabilities:



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(i) The first relevant capability is being able to use imagination and thought in one’s free activities and creations. This capability is fundamental in dealing with the ultimate questions as a vital part of human existence. While Nussbaum does not deem that the human being is a homo religious, she assumes that humans have a deep “interest” in ultimate questions or fundamental questions of meaning (the sense of life, evil, suffering, social relations, divinity, and so on); in contrast to Okin, Nussbaum underscores that searching for the meaning of life in one’s own manner is a key human ability (Nussbaum 2000: 83), and that religion is the one of the most widespread ways to articulate it. However, the capability approach leaves to individuals the choice to engage their imagination and thinking in religious, non-­religious, or anti-­religious terms. The constitutional guarantees that protect this central capacity are the freedom of expression with respect to political and artistic speech as well as the freedom of religious exercise. The constitutional guarantees (rights and procedures) do not provide solutions for the quest for meaning but conditions that everybody has equal opportunities in their enterprises. (ii) The second central capability is practical reason. This capability refers to being able to “form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life” (Nussbaum 2000: 84). Practical reason has, for Nussbaum, a broad signification; it is the capacity that contributes to building comprehensive doctrines, and which involves critical engagement and not mere dogmatic affirmation. In terms of constitutional guarantees, this capacity is connected, though not exclusively, to the protection of freedom of conscience (Nussbaum 2008a; see below). (iii) The third central capability closely related to religion is affiliation. Affiliation is the ability to “live with and toward others”, to recognize and show concern and compassion for other human beings, to build friendships and engage in social interactions on just terms. This capacity is premised on “(h)aving the social bases of self-­respect and non-­ humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others” (Nussbaum 2000: 79). The legal-­political protection of this capacity is especially related to the freedom of assembly and political speech; but also, more widely, to the protection against racial, religious, and sexual discrimination.49 Religion is part of the domain of central capacities, but it plays – in particular from a gender perspective – an ambivalent role. Nussbaum’s capability approach acknowledges an important tension between religion and women’s development. Religions can disrupt and limit the development of capabilities in particular by systematically placing women at a disadvantage. It is, however, a strategic and substantive mistake to follow secularist feminism in leaving “religion’s moral authority and all its energy of symbol and metaphor to the side of Patriarchy” (Nussbaum 2000: 179). From a strategic perspective, the ambivalent role of religion should, in Nussbaum’s view, be taken as an opportunity for liberals to form alliances with believers who conceive their religion in transformative ways that are consistent with the equal dignity of all, and so with the development of women’s capabilities. From a substantive perspective, Nussbaum argues that the West, and especially the Kantian tradition, has equated dignity and autonomy too closely with rationality (Nussbaum 2012a: 64). This has often lead to the exclusion of a wide spectrum of experiences and activities, including religious ones, from the grounds that define human dignity. But religion is one extremely important way in which general capabilities (imagination and thought, practical reason, affiliation) are realized. Specifically, the exercise of religious capabilities is deeply

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intertwined with these three central domains: people live their religion through forms of contemplation, meditation, narration, and social engagement that entail imagination, practical reason and affiliation. The development of religious capabilities is not a marginal area of human agency but one of the prevailing and relevant ways in which humans articulate their autonomous and cooperative pursuit of what is good and meaningful in their lives. Nussbaum’s argument for the importance of religion is not instrumental. Religion has an intrinsic value for human development, as it is not merely a means to achieving something different (pleasure, happiness, moral virtue, political stability etc.), but a vital way of giving expression and articulating the good life. On this account, Nussbaum claims: To be able to search for an understanding of the ultimate meaning of life in one’s own way is among the most important aspects of a life that is truly human. One of the ways in which this has most frequently been done historically is through religious belief and practice; to burden these practices is thus to inhibit many people’s search for the ultimate good. (Nussbaum 2000: 179)

c  Freedom of conscience and religious accommodations In Nussbaum’s understanding, the notion of conscience is based on people’s ability to search for life’s ultimate meaning in (non)religious terms. Conscience and dignity are closely related: one cannot respect the equal dignity of persons without also acknowledging the inviolability of their conscience (Nussbaum 2012a: 65). Since there are many ways to undertake the quest for meaning and goodness, we should avoid seeing dignity as dependant exclusively on the exercise of reason.50 For instance, people with cognitive disabilities are fully equal in human dignity as they share other meaningful dimensions of our humanity: “the capacity to perceive, the capacity to move, the capacity to feel emotions, the capacity to love and care” (Nussbaum 2012: 64). By articulating different capabilities (rational and non-­rational) of human beings, religion holds a central place in the life of many persons. Individual conscience is vulnerable: in contemporary societies, the freedom of women’s consciences is especially undermined by external circumstances that limit their pursuit of goodness and meaning in life. Given this vulnerability, Nussbaum argues that (w)hen we tell people that they cannot define the ultimate meaning of life in their own way – even if we are sure we are right, and that their way is not a very good way – we do not show full respect for them as persons. (Nussbaum 2000: 180) In this sense, respecting someone’s freedom of conscience requires one to be respectful of her religion, insofar as it plays a relevant role in her quest for meaning. In response to the objection that religion can enhance prejudiced attitudes and propagate false claims, Nussbaum stresses, first, the internal diversity and dynamic character of religion. Whereas secularist feminism tends to offer a rigid characterization of religion as an antiquated structure of authority and male domination, religious traditions are a space for the refinement of



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ideas and arguments, the development of beliefs and practices, and the expression of a plurality of voices, including the voices of women (Nussbaum 2000: 182). Second, even if a certain group of religious beliefs “were nothing more than retrograde superstition, we would not be respecting the autonomy of our fellow citizens if we did not allow them these avenues of inquiry and self-­determination” (Nussbaum 2000: 180–181). To fully respect the conscience of religious people, we need to consider the concrete conditions that actually enable their freedom of belief, expression, and practice. In this sense, toleration or formal acceptance of religion is insufficient to properly respect the equal dignity of persons; religion should be rather treated with deference, even when we are persuaded that people’s religious beliefs are wrong or prejudiced (Nussbaum 2012: 67). This deference to religion is, from a normative point of view, expressed by granting the free exercise of religion a central place among the fundamental liberties, and giving ample space to religiously-­based accommodations (Nussbaum 2000: 190, 2011: 147). An accommodationist stance is especially required to protect religious minorities. In a democracy, political and legal rules are shaped by majorities and naturally reflect majority stands in matters ranging from the choice of work calendar to the legal status of drugs. Requiring religious people to testify in court on their holy day or to perform military service that their religion forbids can unnecessarily burden their liberty of conscience and religious exercise (Nussbaum 2012a: 73–74). The development of capabilities closely related to religion demands that the accommodations are significant enough to shield the freedom of conscience of individuals from majoritarian domination, to guarantee equal opportunies in the development of all different quests for meaning, and to protect minority groups against discrimination. Nussbaum analyses and defends different models of accommodation of religion (especially the US and India), considering, as well, the feminist transformative agenda. Nussbaum defends in particular the exemplarity of the US accommodationist approach to religion as expressed in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) and the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. She interprets and defends the RFRA as a form of protecting the development of capabilities expressed through religion by prohibiting the state or any other agency from “substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” (RFRA 1993; Nussbaum 2000, 2012a: 81ff.). The RFRA was adopted as a restorative reaction to a substantial shift in US jurisprudence with respect to religion and exemptions, namely the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith (also known as the peyote case). This case involved a minority religion in the state of Oregon and the general norm prohibiting the drug’s use. The Native Amer­ican Church claimed that it was essential to their religion to use peyote (a hallucinogenic drug) in a traditional and sacred ceremony; as a result, they asked for an exemption from the drug laws imposed by the state of Oregon. The US Supreme Court challenged neither the sincerity of the religious claim nor the central relevance of the ceremony (and of the traditional use of peyote in it), yet it rejected the exemption by stressing the general applicability of the prohibition of drug use. Before the peyote case, a central question in the so-­called First Amendment jurisprudence was how far laws “of general applicability” may be upheld against a religious group or religious individuals, when those individuals claim that the law imposes a “substantial burden” on the exercise of their religion. The central case of this Supreme Court’s approach was Sherbert v. Verner

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(1963),51 in which the Supreme Court granted the exemption because of the discriminatory impact of the Employee Benefits Laws had on workers who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday. The RFRA was meant – rightly, for Nussbaum – to reverse the anti-­ accommodationist approach adopted in the peyote case, and to restore the Court’s previous approach to religion and religious exemptions. This stance is also in tune with other accommodationist models such as the Indian one. While India has restrictive drug laws, their ceremonial use is allowed during the Holi Hindu Spring festival, when government-­authorized shops sell beverages infused with bhang, an intoxicant made from the leaves of the cannabis plant.52 The RFRA’s protection of religion has specific limits: if the authority can prove that the burden imposed by the general law on the religious claimant “(1) is in furtherance of a compelling government interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest” (RFRA 1993: sec. 3). Nussbaum agrees with these limits to accommodations53 and further argues that, in order to avoid vague and arbitrary interpretations of state interests, these limits should be understood in terms of central capabilities. A principle of moral constraint justifies the imposition of restrictions on religion when it clashes with human dignity and prevents its members or members of other groups from achieving of a minimum level of capabilities (Nussbaum 2000: 190). From this perspective, the state can impose a substantial burden on religions if they severely hamper the development of central capabilities and discriminate certain categories of people by selectively limiting their self-­realization. In these situations, in fact, religions operate as an antagonist rather than a resource for the expression of individual conscience and the development of capabilities of imagination and affiliation. Women are often the main target of this negative impact of religion on the development of human capabilities; a case in point are purdah practices, salient in South Asia (Narayan 1997; Nussbaum 2009). The purdah practices encompass women’s physical seclusion, full covering of the body, and the ban on joining in work activities in public for women of Muslim and Hindu communities in South Asia. Under all circumstances, argues Nussbaum, it is unacceptable for this kind of practice to be imposed or strongly encouraged through education and social pressure. The application of the principle of moral constraint is, however, difficult because of the ambivalence of religion, which often supports the development of certain capabilities at the expenses of others. In some cases, religious women can actively embrace practices like purdah as a choice of conscience that accepts the limitations they impose as a way to realize a meaningful life. In these difficult cases, Nussbaum argues that we must rely on two interconnected strategies: first, to protect freedom of conscience we need to accept the possibility of compromise, by questioning the worth of problematic practices but refraining from outright banning them; second, to support the full expression of freedom of conscience we need to encourage transformative processes that adequately develop the capacity of women to articulate informed desires and determine their lives accordingly. The capability approach acknowledges the difficult tensions between religion and women’s development, and supports practical solutions that balance between capabilities developed through religion and other capabilities. There is, admits Nussbaum, “a tragic aspect to any choice in which citizens are pushed below the threshold in one of the central areas” (Nussbaum 2000: 81; for the role of the tragic choice, see also Nussbaum



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2007a: 401–405). The realm of capabilities is not a fully harmonious space on the model of public reason in Kant and neo-­Kantians. In this sense, Nussbaum’s stance differs from the secularist perspective that limits personal and religious practices on account of moral standards based on a predefined view of individual rights and autonomy. The realization of capabilities brings about difference and disagreement, since the list of capabilities has an “irreducible plurality” that can be realized in multiple ways. Still there is a limit to the trade-­offs that it is reasonable to make (Nussbaum 2000: 81). The harm caused to the development of central capabilities by practices like the purdah justifies the questioning of those practices in social discourse, since their most harmful consequences for women are not true to the potential of human development of religion. But we should acknowledge the difficulty of women’s vulnerable situation rather than outlawing without further ado those practices that they willingly embrace as part of their religious life. On similar grounds, Nussbaum argues against the burqa bans in Europe, claiming that these bans “tacitly favour majority practices and burden minority practices” and are thus “not compatible with a principle of equal liberty” (Nussbaum 2012a: 105). A crucial criterion of discrimination between morally questionable practices and practices that should be legally banned is the plausibility of seeing them as a genuine expression of women’s conscience. Practices that are harmful to the development of women’s capabilities may be legally accommodated only if freely adopted as a matter of conscience. A key difficulty is that wearing the burqa or living a segregated life is often the result of adaptive preferences, i.e. preferences formed by individuals to adjust their desires to the way of life they happen to know and adhere to. This phenomenon of adaptation often involves the internalization of mechanisms of domination that undercut the development of one’s capabilities, and the proper expression of one’s freedom of conscience. A desirable path is then to encourage transformative processes that, by drawing also from the women’s religious sources, empower their role and enable the gradual innovation of traditional practices. To this purpose, the capability approach to religious accommodations aims at respecting the agency of women and their personal quest for meaning while also encouraging that their adaptive preferences gradually evolve into informed desires. The passage from adaptive preferences to informed desires does not necessarily imply abandoning religion, but severing the link between religious life and domination in order to fulfil one’s capabilities. In this sense, argues Nussbaum, the realization of people’s central capabilities creates favourable conditions for them to develop informed desires. To this purpose, social and political actions that promote education, equal respect, the integrity of the person, and so forth, we are also indirectly shaping desires, and desires formed under these conditions are likely to be more adequately informed than those formed under conditions of isolation, illiteracy, hierarchy, and fear. (Nussbaum 2000: 161) A case in point is that of SEWA (The Self-­Employed Women Association) in India. Since 1972, SEWA has gathered hundreds of thousands of self-­employed women to promote their emancipation and self-­reliance in economic terms and decision-­making ability (Nussbaum 2000: 44, n. 20; 174, n. 23). The founders of SEWA draw values and

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build justificatory narratives from their religious heritage. The transformative implications of SEWA for Indian society is not determined by the imposition of a secularist understanding of women’s rights, but rather from the gradual development of their potential based on the re-­appropriation of their own religious and cultural resources. Even in conditions of poverty and discrimination, women have diverse and articulated desires and preferences that go beyond their most basic needs; religion can give shape and expression to their desires and aspirations, and thus demands respect. The preferences women express on account of informed desires provide a good indication of their needs; by integrating their desires, we respect the “persons and their own ability to reach out for the good” (Nussbaum 2004: 200). Still, the pursuit of informed desires finds a normative limit in the respect of basic constitutional principles based on the capabilities approach. Should the majority of Indian citizens desire to replace their pluralistic constitution with one declaring India a Hindu state, this would not be sufficient ground to drop the defence of equal freedom of conscience and religious freedom (Nussbaum 2004: 200–201). The capability approach highlights this complementary relationship between desires and basic constitutional principles. By not centring on abstract rights, it envisages a role for a variety of human aspirations to the good. By grounding the constitutional principles on a freestanding list of human capabilities it resists majoritarianism and addresses the problem of adaptive preferences. This twofold strategy acknowledges the tension between desires and principles, and offers a framework to achieve a balance between the two.

d  Beyond a decalogue of capabilities? Nussbaum’s inclusive approach is a wide-­ranging reformulation of Rawls’ political liberalism that aspires to provide a solid basis to a universalist take on political issues while at once drawing on contextual knowledge. Nussbaum’s perspective is based on the twofold concern of the capabilities approach to seek balanced and context-­sensitive arrangements together with respect for a minimum threshold of basic capabilities that should be granted under all circumstances. Her conception also accounts for the development of personal capabilities within asymmetrical relationships by envisioning a gradual internal transformation of cultural-­religious traditions under the regulative influence of the capability approach – namely, a theory that does not suppress but constrains and orients their internal tensions towards the realization of the good. Nussbaum’s innovative philosophical synthesis runs into theoretical and practical difficulties: at the justificatory level, there are difficulties related to the grounding of the central capabilities and the possibility of achieving an overlapping consensus over them; at a normative level, there is an unresolved tension between the transformative pursuit of gender equality and the political deference towards religion; finally, there are undesirable implications to accommodating religion that can undermine central capabilities.

i  Foundational objections In Nussbaum’s reinterpreted political liberalism, capabilities provide a transhistorical Grund for good politics that is the object of an overlapping consensus from different comprehensive views. This theoretical move is debatable on two accounts: (i) it relies on



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a foundationalist intuitionism to define the list of central capabilities; (ii) it assumes a universal overlapping consensus over an individualistic understanding of the capabilities that is mainly characteristic of Western liberalism. (i) The capability approach is a step forward with respect to the traditional measurements of the quality of life and the secularist comprehensive perspectives that reject or minimize the importance of women’s religious beliefs and practice. Nonetheless, Nussbaum’s political-­liberal project rests on contestable intuitions. She admits that (w)e can agree that the capabilities approach does indeed rely on intuition – although not on uncriticized preferences […]. That is, some deep moral intuitions and considered judgments about human dignity do play a fundamental role in the theory, although they are never immune from criticism in the light of other elements of the theory. (Nussbaum 2006: 83) But, as Jaggar points out, Nussbaum does not display a critical justification of “why the intuitions of those who accept the values on her list of capabilities are more reliable than the intuitions of those who do not” (Jaggar 2006: 316). Nussbaum admits that the list that composes her intuitive philosophical anthropology is open and subject to continuous revision; in her works, she aims to test her intuitions with several interlocutors, including the Indian women whose stories of development and emancipation she carefully illustrates (Nussbaum 2000: 12–24). Still, the list of central capabilities has remained remarkably unchanged over the years (Nussbaum 2000, 2011). The interpretation of the intuitions of others is at risk of being monological as it is meant to remains, ultimately, in the theorist’s hands. Kleist suggests that an open-­ended, participatory approach to the articulation of human capabilities could partially correct Nussbaum’s foundationalist strategy by establishing a process where a wider array of intuitions, reasons, and principles are deemed relevant, thus introducing a more prominent source of revisability (Kleist 2013). Yet Nussbaum makes it clear that a participatory approach could only complement but not substitute her intuitionist method; her concern is that by accounting for every desire expressed by involved parties, including misinformed desires that clash with her notion of dignity, would ultimately provide vague, fragile, or even false and immoral basis for defining the central capabilities. Nussbaum’s monological intuitionism as a basis for an unlikely global overlapping consensus downplays deep disagreements within and between democratic societies, and the role of persons and groups in defining moral and political principles in the democratic struggles for legitimacy and power. (ii) Nussbaum claims that she focuses on capabilities as merely political goals, since they are freestanding with respect to any comprehensive grounding. Still, similarly to how Rawls underestimates how diverse the interpretation of fundamental political values may be across different cultures, Nussbaum assumes too much when it comes to the freestandingness of her list of capabilities. Her political liberalism falls into a similar problem of consensus from unfamiliar doctrines (see Chapter 1), and the understanding of the capabilities appears remarkably in tune with a Western individualistic notion of self-­ realization. Religious capabilities pertain – like all of Nussbaum’s capabilities – to individual people and not to the group or community. It is “the person whose freedom of

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conscience and freedom of religious practice we should most fundamentally consider” (Nussbaum 2000: 188). Her central concepts of capability, dignity, and respect depend on a historical and political context that supposes the notion of individual rights. Religious worldviews may understand the development of human capabilities within a different understanding of personhood and justice (Warner 2014: 444–445). In this sense, her philosophical anthropology is not universalist, as it turns a particular understanding of goods into a transhistorical telos towards which all comprehensive doctrines converge. But some comprehensive conceptions of human flourishing are at odds with Nussbaum’s notion of dignity; and since dignity is the touchstone of the reflective equilibrium that defines the list of central capabilities, the list itself is not as cross-­cultural as she claims it to be. Whereas liberal democracy is mainly committed to self-­determination and flourishing in individual terms, a democratic community influenced by the African Ubuntu value complex or the Confucian ethos is oriented towards community or family flourishing. For instance, the role someone plays in the family development is a source of dignity and respectability, even though it may sometimes entail the limiting or the sacrifice of individual preferences and desires. Despite the recent rise of individualism and self-­interest in China and Korea, the influence of Confucian values on the management of family businesses and career choice remains strong (Hyun 2001; Yang and Rosenblatt 2008; Monkhouse et al. 2013). As Ruiping Fan points out, the differences separating moral visions that give priority to the individual or to the collective “are grounded in competing understandings of human flourishing” (Fan 2010: 40). According to Nussbaum’s perspective, the individual takes priority. Religious capabilities are no exception: [l]ike all the central capabilities, religious capabilities are capabilities of individual people, not, in the first instance, of groups. It is the person whose freedom of conscience and freedom of religious practice we should most fundamentally consider. […] To subordinate the capabilities of some to the organic purposes of the whole is to violate people with respect to a capability that may lie at the heart of their lives. (Nussbaum 2000: 188–189) From a Confucian point of view, this aspect of the capability approach perpetuates an assimilating tendency that is typical of Western liberalism: it is not the fact that the liberal, social democratic state requires that no values be imposed, only that no values or understandings of the good life or human flourishing be supported by the state and public culture, other than those compatible with liberal individualism. […] The liberal, social democratic society is bent on transforming family and personal relationships into its own image and likeness. (Fan 2010: 34) By projecting an individualist understanding of value over religious capabilities, Nussbaum’s political liberalism falls short of appropriately grasping the familial and collective concerns of the Confucian tradition.54 Is it possible to retain the normative and transformative claims of the capability approach while also avoiding the Western-­liberal focus on individual-­centred autonomy?



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From a comparative perspective sensitive to local context, Xiarong Li (1995) argues that the capability approach can persuasively challenge the Confucian tradition by unveiling patriarchal inequalities without replicating the moral ideals of the West. Challenging inequalities does not depend on the primacy of individual autonomy per se, but rather on a focus on the notion of equal opportunities in the development of personal and collective capabilities. The argument is that the problem of the Confucian ethos is not the scheme of familial flourishing and individual self-­limitation in itself, but rather the fact that women are systematically placed in the most humble roles and unfairly excluded from the chance of personally achieving higher education and social prominence. The development of women’s central capabilities, like practical reason, would mean access to awareness and reflectivity concerning tradition without entailing a colonial “invasion” of Western values: the capability to conduct practical reasoning, which is restricted by the Chinese political ideology as well as the Confucian moral doctrines, would provide Chinese women with the power to reflect and criticize the pervasive social norms. Their having not been portrayed as capable of practical reasoning does not imply that they cannot achieve the capability for practical reasoning. What philosophers or ethicists conceive as social norms may not correspond to, nor reflect, what people really are or have in common, especially when philosophers themselves disagree on what the norms are. (Li 1995: 422) From this comparative perspective sensitive to local context, the participation of Chinese women in the processes of critical re-­signification of their tradition may lead to a different understanding of equality; provided that one embraces the capability approach, by articulating the familial ethos of the Confucian tradition, affiliation as capability would be more central in defining human dignity.

ii  Gender equality and religion: deference or transformation? There is a tension between Nussbaum’s advocacy of deference towards religion and her appeal to the transformative and emancipatory implications of the capability approach. She is keen on underlining the plurality, changeability, and openness of religion, and less keen on acknowledging that discriminating attitudes and gender inequalities are deeply embedded and hard to change. Democratic states need not force religion into accepting full-­fledged gender equality and democratizing churches, synagogues, and other religious institutions. But they should foster a democratic-­egalitarian ethos through education, dialogue, and public policies that influence and nudge religious communities towards transforming their inner discourses and power hierarchies. Rather than a deferential attitude, the democratic state must protect the vulnerable and adopt a transformative role by enhancing gender equality. According to Nussbaum’s perspective, the balance between the deference and the transformation of religion is to be achieved through a double strategy: (i) the temporary accommodation of religious practices based on contextual reasons about the vulnerability

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of the subjects involved and the on-­going histories of religious conflict; (ii) the possibility of exit for disadvantaged members of minority groups that are subject to religious normative regimes. Her articulation of both aspects of this strategy is, however, subject to criticism. (i) Nussbaum’s main rationale for developing an inclusive accommodationist stance is the respect for freedom of conscience. In contrast, secularist feminism tends to limit women’s agency to a binary alternative between the independent and affirmative agency of an “egocentric” Western self and the lack of autonomous agency of “sociocentric” non-­Western subjects (Phillips 2007: 150). In turn, Nussbaum seeks a more pluralistic and open-­ended conception of women’s pursuit of meaning and goodness: patriarchal contexts can render women partially blind to their human potential, but this does not devalue their efforts. Speaking of the stories of Indian women that figure in her search for a definition of capabilities, Nussbaum argues that “all to some extent undervalue basic human capabilities that they later come to value, because of social habituation and social pressure” (Nussbaum 2000: 140). Based on lifelong habits of socialization and limited access to information, these women tend to accept the status quo and cultivate adaptive preferences, until they come to understand themselves as citizens who have a right to a better situation. If so, why is the temporary protection of patriarchal arrangements, like purdah practices, supposed to place them in the position of demanding the internal transformation that Nussbaum expects? Nussbaum has good reasons to criticize the religious intolerance and the disguised Islamophobia that have imbued the political controversy concerning the Islamic veil in Europe. Nonetheless, the strong segregation from non-­domestic social interactions that total covering most likely entails is hardly compatible with the development of informed desires and the development of central capabilities (Hélie and Ashe 2012). The European debate on the veil has escalated in the last decades, after France banned the practice of wearing religious symbols in public schools in 2004 and the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public spaces in 2010 (see Chapter 4). In the 2014 the case S.A.S. v. France, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the French ban on burqas and in 2017, in the case Achbita & Anor v. G4S Secure Solutions NV, The European Court of Justice established that any prohibition on employees wearing Islamic headscarves which is derived from a more general company ban does not constitute direct discrimination under EU law. By citing the idea of “living together” as the “legitimate aim” of the French authorities, the ECtHR sanctioned the connection between the ban of religious symbols and the language of integration. This link is, however, ambiguous and should be evaluated by looking at the specific requirements that come with it. Wearing the hijab (the Islamic veil that covers only women’s hair) can be easily appropriated by Muslim women as a sign of identity and belonging in the exercise of their ordinary public lives. In this case, the justification of its ban relies on an assimilationist understanding of integration, which demands uniformity rather than interaction and participation. It is much more difficult, to see how burqas and niqabs, which hide the face and the entire body, can be interpreted as a means for the empowerment of women’s agency. The free exercise of individual conscience requires favourable conditions to be enabled and developed. One of Nussbaum’s stories of success and transformation is the tale of Hamida Khala, an Indian Muslim woman who was strongly attached to purdah practices during her youth. After she



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married a successful civil servant, she started meeting people of different religious and cultural background and came to reinterpret her practices in a more spiritual and flexible form. But can we leave change and transformation to be determined purely by fortunate circumstances, as in the case of Hamida’s marriage? Shouldn’t democratic states actively contribute to this transformation by prohibiting discriminatory practices? Gradual internal developments and transformations are an important trait of religious and cultural traditions, but are also oftentimes either slow or sanctioned unequally for men and women (Narayan 1997). For instance, whereas men in India were able to replace traditional clothes that have been the norm for generations with modern shirts and trousers, a similar change for women has been met with rejection and hostility. As Narayan notes, “a common thread linking what was forbidden to me at various times under the rubric of ‘Westernization’ involved cultural norms relating to female sexuality” (Narayan 1997: 27). Besides freedom of conscience, Nussbaum’s resistance to outlawing religious practices is based on a concern for the domination of minorities. A case in point is her discussion of polygamy in India. In contemporary India, polygamy is practised almost exclusively in Islamic communities. For Nussbaum, the problem with the ban on polygamy is that it would exclusively target the Muslim minority; a context-­sensitive approach recommends the gradual discouragement of the practice instead of its ban. In the recent past, however, Hindu practices were not similarly accommodated. In 1955 the Parliament enacted a Hindu Marriage Act that prohibited polygamy among Hindus. Another relevant case is that of the Hindu caste system, which entails a similar offence to citizens’ central capabilities when compared to polygamy since it puts a large part of the population in a position of structural inequality and domination. Castes have been justly banned without being perceived as the prevarication; the ban was justified and represented a crucial step in the internal evolution of Hindu society through a democratic-­egalitarian society – even if in practice the caste system remains extremely influential.55 Practical compromises need to be sensitive to power relationships within a society leading to accept temporary legal compromises if the interference with the status quo clashes with the ongoing internal transformations of religious groups (Nussbaum 2000: 229–230).56 But what makes polygamy among Muslim Indians acceptable but the Hindu caste ban entirely appropriate? Nussbaum claims that the balance of power in a society plays a relevant role in justifying this difference: in India, Muslims are a religious minority while Hindus enjoy a privileged position as a majority. But note that the caste system was banned by a powerful secularist elite. This ban affected the vast majority of Indians who were in an inferior power position (Walzer 2015). Regarding the castes, Nussbaum chooses not to apply her context-­sensitive approach, even if this case also involves a power asymmetry. The harm to the development of central capabilities caused by the caste system is too serious to be discounted by contextual consideration; but isn’t it the same with polygamy? For Nussbaum’s contextual justification to be acceptable, provisions must be made to ensure that the vulnerable members inside minority groups are capacitated and protected. But it is difficult to see how this can be made given that the polygamy is a root problem in the first place. From our perspective, avoiding the ban on polygamy can be justified, at best, not on account of contextual power asymmetries, but for prudential reasons (e.g. the fear of a backlash; the concern with the rise of fundamentalism; the political necessity of a compromise between majority and minority, etc.).

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(ii) The relevance of exit strategies is highlighted by Nussbaum’s treatment of marriage laws in India. The Indian Constitution supports sex equality, non-­discrimination, and free choice of religion, but it also retains a plurality of religious personal law systems (Muslim, Hindu, Parsi, and Christian). The traditions of personal law raise difficult questions from a feminist perspective. At birth, children are classified into a religious group and, from that moment on, they are governed by the corresponding system of personal law that covers both property and family law. Religious personal laws offer substantive protection to the development of religious capabilities within the relevant communities by granting the transmission and enforcement of some crucial internal practices. These practices, however, may be severely at odds with the constitutional provisions on matters of sex equality and non-­discrimination. A striking example of this contradiction and its difficult solution is that of Shah Bano. Shah Bano was a seventy-­four-year-­old Muslim woman who after forty-­four years of marriage was thrown out of her home by her husband; this event was the result of a family controversy about the inheritance relating to the children of Shah Bano and those of the husband’s other wife. After her husband issued divorce in 1978, Islamic personal law granted Shah Bano nothing more than a modest settlement. She sued her husband for regular maintenance based on the common Indian Criminal Procedure Code, as several Muslim women had done before her. However, while the outcome was ultimately in her favour, the sentence, Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985), issued by the Supreme Court, spurred a violent controversy. The judges strongly criticized the provisions of Islamic personal law in similar cases and even quoted the Quran to argue that those unfair arrangements were inconsistent with the religious tradition they were supposed to represent. Pressured by imminent elections and vehement protests animated by conservative Islamic authorities, in 1986 the Congress Government approved the Muslim Women’s (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, which severely limited maintenance for Muslim women and put them at a disadvantage by depriving them of the protections that were still in place for the women of other religions. Nussbaum acknowledges that the problem of maintenance is connected to women’s central capabilities, and that the Muslim Women Act endangers the principle of religious non-­discrimination (Nussbaum 2000: 173–187; MacKinnon 2006). However, she argues that the Supreme Court acted without appropriate consideration for the autonomy of the Islamic community by questioning the interpretation of their religious texts from an external standpoint. Unintendedly, this disrespectful conduct severely damaged the cause of women’s equality. The capability approach envisages a gradual pursuit of internal change rather than top-­down solutions, especially in the case of minority religions in the Hinduist India (Nussbaum 2000: 223ff.). According to Nussbaum, this kind of temporary and evolutionary arrangement should be undertaken while providing strategies of exit for those who are subject to harmful religious personal laws and are willing to distance themselves from those norms. Offering concrete alternative options without overriding the personal law system can do this. The creation of a comprehensive secular code of civil law that women could opt for would be “one step that would greatly help in addressing both the religious freedom problem and the sex equality problem” (Nussbaum 2007b: 150). The possibility of women’s exit invoked by Nussbaum raises the problem of the mechanisms of power and domination within the religious communities characterized by



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a personal law regime. The introduction of a secular civil code as an alternative to personal laws is only a formal solution insofar as it requires women to exit from their own group membership to grasp its benefits. In Nussbaum’s own account, exit options are not only burdening because of religious, economic, and affective bonds, but also inaccessible to many women as long as their context is pervasively shaped by certain traditional practices. Ayelet Shachar has articulated an alternative approach based on a more flexible idea of multicultural jurisdictions. Her perspective focuses on concretely enabling the possibility of exit by loosening the link between community membership and specific norms, which is typical of the personal law systems (Shachar 2004). In Shachar’s strategy, the state is directly involved in encouraging religious communities (as nomoi groups or holders of normative claims) in making internal changes. Within this transformative and accommodationist approach, the nomoi group and the state, instead of viewing their conflicting interests as a problem, must be brought to consider it as an occasion to become more responsive to their constituents: through an arrangement of non-­exclusive competition for the loyalties of those citizens who overlap both jurisdictions, transformative accommodation seeks to adapt the power structures of both nomoi group and state in order to accommodate their most vulnerable constituents. (Shachar 2004: 117) Similar to Nussbaum, Shachar seeks an internal transformation of religious norms aimed at achieving higher standards of gender equality. In her view, providing a clear-­cut strategy to enable the possibility of choosing and exiting is a crucial leverage to shift longstanding power relationships inside groups. Constituents need clear options to choose, at different stages, between the jurisdiction of the state and that of the nomoi group, effectively putting in their hands the values they want to privilege without immediately sacrificing their longstanding group affiliation over the arrangement of a specific controversy. As a last resort, they can permanently opt out of a jurisdiction if they think the relevant authorities are not meeting their needs. In this way, they also push their group to question its internal norms: “it is precisely the fact that members are no longer ‘locked in’ (within their group jurisdiction or under the monopolist power of the state) that ensures the capacity for ‘change from within’ ” (Shachar 2004: 122). Within this framework, Shah Bano could have questioned the arrangements provided by the Indian Islamic personal law without resorting to the Supreme Court as an external superior authority, but simply by opting for her maintenance to be established under secular norms. The increasing number of Muslim women who could opt for better secular arrangements would push the Islamic religious authorities towards a revision of their own norms to prevent them from becoming irrelevant. From this perspective, the agency of women and vulnerable subjects in general is empowered without the high cost of exiting their social context of affiliation. Shachar provides a clearer picture of how a normative framework can enforce the possibility of exit for vulnerable subjects: through specific legal means and a keen awareness of the role played by existing power structures and feelings of affiliation and dependence. But the transformative potential of these exit strategies is debatable. Shachar’s approach is overly optimistic in assuming that both vulnerable subjects and religious groups will

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operate as rational actors who bargain solutions to defend basic rights on one side and preserve members loyalty on the other (Phillips 2007: 153). Women may be too strongly dominated to actually consider the leverage of exit and groups may be too self-­righteously attached to their notions of purity and integrity to actually care about the loyalty of their lapsed members. For a woman to conceive of exit as an option it is necessary that she can rely on a cultural context that supports the development of a sound sense of personal agency and a social context that does not trap her into relations of economic dependence.

iii  Indeterminacy and over-­inclusiveness In Western liberal democracies, the accommodation of religion is largely realized through rule enlargements and exemptions rather than by the adoption of multiple-­jurisdictions arrangements (Ferrari 1997). Controversies arise mostly about which practices are acceptable out of respect for religion, and which are incompatible with the fundamental constitutional principles. In dealing with the issue of accommodation of religion in the US, Nussbaum’s capability approach clarifies the boundaries of state interest and defines a minimum threshold that is not to be violated in the accommodation of religious practices (see above). It is, nonetheless, unclear how Nussbaum’s decalogue of capabilities does all the work she wants it to do. Both the content and the weight of the capabilities remain indeterminate and a matter of interpretation in the hands of courts or governments; it can be difficult to derive a specific legal orientation from a list of general capabilities. It is also an open question whether Nussbaum’s stand on the accommodation of religious practices is too inclusive when it come to practices that are harmful to the development of children and women’s capabilities. In this sense, Phillips goes as far as to speak of Nussbaum’s illiberal liberalism (Phillips 2001: 250). On this account, then, Nussbaum runs into questions of (i) indeterminacy, and (ii) over-­inclusiveness of the boundaries of her accommodationist stance. (i) Concerning the objection from indeterminacy, consider Nussbaum’s analysis of the Bob Jones University v. United States (1983) case. The controversy regards a discriminatory University policy: in this case, the Supreme Court upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s denial of tax-­exempt status to the Bob Jones University (a private non-­denominational Protestant University) due to its racially discriminatory policies. While part of the purpose of the school is to offer “special emphasis to the Christian religion and the ethics revealed in the Holy Scriptures” in teaching, as stated in its certificate of incorporation, its disciplinary rules also forbade interracial dating and marriage. The Court argued that the government’s fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education substantially outweighs whatever burden denial of tax benefits places on petitioners’ exercise of their religious beliefs. Analogously, argues Nussbaum, if a university undermines gender equality and discriminates on account of sex, like Catholic universities that endorse statutory prohibitions against female candidates for presidency, the tax exemptions should, equally, be withdrawn (Nussbaum 2000: 228–229). Since avoiding sexual discrimination is a compelling state interest, the state should stop sponsoring Universities that adopt this rule. But why shouldn’t the state prohibit this openly discriminatory rule? The mere reference to capacities is too indeterminate to provide guidance to address this question; there



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is no clear step from general capacities to determining a thin/thick understanding of sexual discrimination, and the minimal/active role of the state in preventing it (West 2003: 788). The capabilities offer the ground to define a substantial understanding of gender equality, but Nussbaum’s capability approach to religious accommodations leaves too much room for inconsistent normative applications and temporary acceptance of questionable practices.57 (ii) Nussbaum’s overly inclusive stance has two undesirable practical implications: it allows practices that are harmful to the development of the central capabilities of vulnerable subjects and it discourages the pursuit of more transformative solutions. These implications are illustrated by Nussbaum’s discussion of the Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) case. This case concerns the request from a community of the Old Order Amish religion to be partially exempted from Wisconsin’s compulsory schooling law, which would have required them to send their children to public or private school until age sixteen. The Amish argued that past age fourteen their children should be allowed to retire from school so as to continue their education at home, receiving farming and domestic training that is essential to preserve the Amish traditions. The Supreme Court agreed that the schooling law imposed a substantial burden on the free exercise of their religion, and that the state of Wisconsin had failed to show a compelling interest in these last two years of education for the Amish children. The state did have a “compelling interest” in preparing “citizens to participate effectively and intelligently in our open political system [… and] to be self-­reliant and self-­sufficient participants in society”; yet the evidence showed, the Court argued, that the Amish were quite effective and self-­reliant citizens, and did not “place burdens on society through their educational shortcomings”. The Court’s decision generated a long debate that opposed conservative or some republican supporters of religious exemptions and liberal critics that contested the parental power to decide on their children’s education (Gutmann 1980; Burtt 1996; Arneson and Shapiro 1996; Peters 2003). Nussbaum admits that Winsconsin v. Yoder is difficult both because of the implications of the religious practice over the development of the capabilities of the young Amish, and because of the neglected, but significant, sex equality aspect. While male Amish children learn skills like farming and carpentry that can be more easily practised in the outside world should they want to detach themselves from the community in the future, females only acquire domestic skills that would hardly render them independent. However, Nussbaum leans towards the endorsement of the Supreme Court decision, accepting that, in the Amish understanding of their community life, work is central, and the final two years of the school programme may not prove equally essential to the state interest. But education until age sixteen could be very well considered as a minimum capability threshold for the young citizens in the democratic information society. Elsewhere, Nussbaum argues that building citizens’ capabilities is an essential condition of democracy’s own existence, and affordable public schools are essential to this purpose (Chapter 2). In her plea for the importance of humanities in public education, she argues that ensuring citizens’ ability to engage in critical thinking and the acquisition of basic historical and cultural notions represent a vital defence against the menace of authoritarian, sectarian, and racist trends in society (Nussbaum 2010). Isn’t allowing exemptions in this crucial field just perpetuating a strong insulation that discourages the processes of internal development that Nussbaum encourages in other settings, like India? Moreover, special caution

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is advisable when communities ask for exemptions about practices that involve minors. In this sense, we agree with Phillips in arguing that claims forwarded on behalf of cultural integrity are particularly questionable when they relate to the treatment of minors, who have, by definition, little authority within their cultural group and suffer a double disempowerment by virtue of both sex and age. (Phillips 2003: 520) Some general insight into how to tackle this question comes from Shachar’s approach that is at once transformative and accommodationist. In considering a different context – the religious education in Germany – she points out how Länder governments share their educational authority with established religious communities. By introducing state­funded religious instruction in public schools, German law establishes an arrangement that is sensitive to the demands of religious groups but also keeps the processes of religious education inside the accountable, pluralist, and gender-­equal environment of public schools. In Shachar’s view, this mode encourages the education of children in a setting that overcomes the “either/or” choice between excluding religion altogether from the curriculum (the strict separationist approach) or fully upholding and sponsoring faith-­based schooling (the strict neutrality approach). Joint governance imagines public schools as spaces where children from different backgrounds can learn about their own communities and distinct histories (in a secure and supportive environment), while establishing a minimal level of commonality between them as members of a larger, shared political entity. (Shachar 2004: 155) In the case of Amish children, a similar form of inclusive arrangement could lead to the establishment of a special curriculum that opens up more room for their community training while preserving some school teaching mandatory until the terms defined by the state law. Until the 1950s most Amish families sent their children to public schools and a significant share still does (even if generally only up to 8th grade). With the diffusion of homeschooling in the US, most Amish gradually choose that route or establish community private schools (Fisher 1997; Dewalt 2006). By acknowledging the significance of Amish internal education, the public system could become again an appealing option for the communities. This would ensure that basic education on both humanities and scientific disciplines would not be glossed over. Moreover, besides compulsory teaching, interaction between Amish children and external schoolmates during the time of their adolescence is arguably a relevant part of their social capability building and an indirect contribution to the possible internal transformation of the Amish communities with respect to gender relations.

Conclusion According to the annual World’s Women Report (United Nations 2015), women across the globe are suffering discrimination in most fields. Women account for two-thirds of



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the illiterate people aged fifteen and over, and only account for 18 per cent of the appointed ministers in national governments. Women are more likely than men to be unemployed and one-­third of them worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Feminists like Okin express a valid concern when arguing that “(d)iscrimination against and control of the freedom of females are practiced, to a greater or lesser extent, by virtually all cultures, past and present, but especially by religious ones” (Okin, 1999: 21). Okin’s claim is an over-­generalization; yet patriarchal practices are often supported by religious justifications, and in many countries governed by religiously inspired regimes where women struggle for fundamental rights to free expression, circulation, and education. However, Okin tends to universalize an individualist and secularist self-­understanding; this has played a vital role in the development of the feminist movement, but disregards the importance of different contexts and ways of understanding freedom. The capability approach amends some of the theoretical and practical problems of the secularist view by taking seriously the role of religion in women’s life. It is significant that an estimated 83.4 per cent of women around the world identify with a faith group, compared with 79.9 per cent of men. Women on average are more likely to pray daily and in most countries religion is equally or more important to women than to men (Pew Research Center 2016). As Nussbaum points out, (t)o be able to search for an understanding of the ultimate meaning of life in one’s own way is among the most important aspects of a life that is truly human. One of the ways in which this has most frequently been done historically is through religious belief and practice; to burden these practices is thus to inhibit many people’s search for the ultimate good. (Nussbaum 2000: 179) Nussbaum’s inclusive feminism shows persuasively the importance of acknowledging the complexity of religion, and the tensions between recognition of religion and gender equality. Nussbaum defends an over-­inclusive approach to religious accommodations, yet she poses limits to those agents that undermine equality in terms of men’s and women’s capabilities. By shifting the focus from the principles that regulate the fair terms of cooperation to the capabilities that enable cooperation in the first place, Nussbaum shortens the assumed gap between the religious understandings of the good and the basic political principles. Rawls argues that an overlapping consensus can be found to support the political conception of justice from different comprehensive doctrines but the role these doctrines play in shaping the citizens’ understanding of justice is marginal and undefined (Chapter 1). Nussbaum alleviates this problem by highlighting that citizens’ experience of social cooperation is primarily about the development of their capabilities that realize certain goods. By seeking a form of overlapping consensus on some fundamental human capabilities and by making the protection of those capabilities the central goal of political arrangements and the moral measure of social practices, Nussbaum reconnects justice to basic experiences of desire and vulnerability that define human agency, including religious human agency.

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Nussbaum’s early work on Greek classical thought paves the way to this line of inquiry by showing how Aristotle offers an ethical-­political account based on a tragic understanding of the human good as subject to luck and conflict (Nussbaum 1986). Sophocles’ Antigone famously portrays the clash between Creon and Antigone as a conflict between the norms that govern the city and the sense of normativity that is inspired by religious piety and familial bonds. Nussbaum argues that Antigone, by representing the values as plural and incommensurable, and by condemning the human ambition to master luck through the homogenization and simplification of those values, is deeply relevant for contemporary political theorizing. To prevent political liberalism from becoming a contemporary Creon, stubborn and blind to Antigone’s reasons, the capability approach is meant to integrate the liberal insight with Aristotle’s “insistence that human beings are both vulnerable and active, his insistence on their need for a rich and irreducible plurality of functions, his emphasis on the role of love and friendship in the good life” (Nussbaum 1986: xx). Nonetheless, the capability approach verges on a kind of foundationalism that defines away intractable disagreement. It is paradoxical that Nussbaum’s synthesis is nourished by a deep knowledge of context and of various religious traditions, yet is premised on the projection of the overambitious prospect of a universal agreement over a list of ten capacities. Nussbaum’s project may still develop in Creon’s shadow. The arena of feminism will most likely remain one of variance and difference. Secularist and communitarian feminism run, their opposition notwithstanding, into mirror objections; they stand for a politics of self-­absorption into one’s self-­sufficient context – be it universal or local – overlooking interaction, dialogue, acculturation, and post-­ colonial legacies. Developing a post-­Okinian stand and emphasizing the recognition of difference is all the more necessary in the current political context marked by the backlash against multiculturalism and the re-­emergence of assimilationist policies playing on xenophobic fears. The double bind of recognition of religion and the requirement of substantial gender equality will not disappear any time soon. Arguing about politics and religion without considering gender equality is a no-­go in contemporary political philosophy: no school of political thinking can persuasively disregard or marginalize gender issues and the claims to equal freedom between men and women. At the same time, gender equality cannot be achieved on exclusively secularist terms when religion plays an  important role in the beliefs, motivations, and aspirations of women around the globe.

Notes   1 Still, some liberal authors argue in favour of tolerating forced marriages (Kukathas 1992) as part of a liberal modus vivendi (see Chapter 6).   2 The ECtHR advances this stance in Refah Partisi v. Turkey (2003) (Ungureanu 2015). At the same time, the ECtHR has been overprotective to Christian majorities (ibid.).   3 The tense relation between religion and gender equality has, historically speaking, concerned thinkers and activists of different waves of feminism, from Olympe de Gouges (author of the 1791 “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen”) and John Stuart Mill (The Subjection of Women), to Simon de Beauvoir (The Second Sex).   4 There are other distinctions in feminism that we cannot account for here due to reasons of space. One of these is the “continental”/analytical divide in contemporary feminist discourse.



  5   6   7   8   9 10 11

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The so-­called continental feminists reflect on and retrieve elements of religious experience by drawing on schools of thought such as phenomenology, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis (e.g. Luce Irigaray, Maria Kristeva, and Judith Butler). These contributions are of unequal value. From our perspective, Butler interestingly builds a valuable reflection on Judaism and political theory. In contrast, Irigaray’s perspective posits a radical difference between men and women and is made of idiosyncratic and apodictic pronouncements whose contribution to (political) philosophy we fail to see. In Western academia secularist humanism is prevailing (Di Tullio 2017). See Nussbaum (2000, 2012a); Phillips (2007); Shachar (2002, 2014); Malik (2012). See Okin (1998, 1999, 2002, 2004). For Rawls’ political turn, see Chapter 1. For some of the relevant feminist literature on Rawls, see English (1977); Green (1986); Exdell (1994); Mallon (1999); de Wijze (2000), Card (2001), Nussbaum (2003), McKeen (2006); Baehr (2013a); Abbey (2014). Okin’s interest in bringing together the ethics of care and justice, impartiality and responsiveness to difference gets lost in her treatment of religion (see later). Okin argues: Those in the original position cannot think from the position of nobody, as is suggested by those critics who then conclude that Rawls’ theory depends upon a ‘disembodied’ concept of the self. They must, rather, think from the perspective of everybody, in the sense of each in turn. To do this requires, at the very least, both strong empathy and a preparedness to listen carefully to the very different points of view of others. (Okin 1989a: 101; italics in the original)

12 Even if one accepts Okin’s critique of oversimplified interpretations of Rawls’ contract, her claim that there is deliberation in the original position is not backed by Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Dumitru 2007). 13 For more details about Rawls’ theory, see Chapter 1. 14 Some critics of Rawls influenced by Okin have extended this criticism beyond gender. G.A. Cohen interprets the feminist slogan “the personal is political” to advance the idea of an an “egalitarian ethos” in a just society (Cohen 2000). See also our reflections on a democratic ethos (Chapters 1 and 2). 15 Okin refers to a second type of policies protecting those women (and also men) who choose to undertake the bulk of unpaid family work, from the vulnerabilities they now incur. Such policies include equal division of the earner’s paycheck between the earning and the non-­ earning spouse, and family law ensuring that, in the event of divorce, both post-­divorce households would have the same standard of living (Okin 1989a: Chapter 8). 16 Okin develops this argument as a criticism of Rawls’ political liberalism and Nussbaum’s version of it (see later). 17 Rawls’ view according to which “the nature of the family” belongs to the basic structure, yet the sphere of the political is “distinct from […] the personal and the familial, which are affectional […] in ways the political is not” (Rawls [1993] 2007; Okin 2004). 18 In her final article, Okin does not develop reasons as to why this should not be the case. 19 Okin critizes also Sandel’s view that the family is “beyond justice” (Okin 1989: 22–33). For our stand, see later. 20 The problem of stability is fundamental for Rawls, and his main reason for moving from his earlier theory of justice to political liberalism (see Chapter 1). 21 See Baehr (2013a) for a comprehensive bibliography and Di Tullio (2015). 22 That a cosmological myth clashes with scientific evidence does not necessarily annul its meaningfulness and beauty. 23 Female genital mutilation comprises a set of cultural practices that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-­medical reasons. These practices are traditional especially in Sub-­Saharan regions, but their influence is well attested also in Gulf countries and South-­East Asia. Estimates say that at least 200 million girls and women have undergone such procedures at some point of their life, with more than half of them living in Indonesia, Egypt, and Ethiopia (UNICEF 2016). In general, the connections between female genital mutilation practices and religions are diverse and debated. The practice is highly correlated with ethnicity and culture. It is performed by women of diverse religious affiliations

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based on the notion that it holds religious significance but religious authorities have issued contradictory statements about the acceptability of the practice, especially in the Islamic tradition (Abu-­Sahlieh 1994; Osten-­Sacken and Uwer 2007). Despite its diverse and weak religious foundations, in some contexts the practice has become a marker of dominating ethno-­religious identities. As De Waal observes: The Darfurian Sudanised women is (ideally) circumcised, secluded at home, economically dependent on her husband, meek in her behavior, and dressed in the thoub. The spread of female circumcision in Darfur in the 1970s and ’80s, at a time when the Sudanese metropolitan elite was moving to abandon the practice, is perhaps the most striking physical manifestation of this process, and yet another illustration of how identity change is marked on women’s bodies. It is also an illustration of the regency of a “traditional” practice. (De Waal 2005: 9–10) 24 25 26

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Studies conducted on the opinions of Nigerian women belonging to different groups and affiliated to different religions show that higher degrees of information and education consistently lead to less positive attitudes towards female genital mutilation (Oyira et al. 2015). There is a debate whether we should speak about African religions or religion (Asante and Mazama 2009). In particular, Asante and Mazama (2009: i–xix) argue that there is an African religion that should be considered among the world religions. In many cases, violence against women in India stems from controversies over the dowry. The sati has been banned since 1829 and the Indian Sati Prevention Act was passed in 1988 after Roop Kanwar’s death. The act was expansive and criminalized any kind of support or apology of the practice, which has now substantially disappeared. Murders of women as a consequence of pressures and violence inflicted to obtain higher dowries, on the other hand, are still extremely frequent, despite the fact that in India a Dowry Prohibition Act has been in place since 1961. According to Okin’s rendition of Berlusconi’s joke, “since the discussion of the matter on the agenda is not progressing, those present should instead discuss ‘women and football’ ” (Okin 2004: 1562, n. 95). See Rawls ([1993] 2007: 170, n. 64). Okin notes that Rawls suggests that the discouraging of discriminatory conceptions of the good should be done “in ways consistent with liberty of conscience and freedom of speech” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 195) but he refrains from saying whether, or how, the exclusion of any that are impermissible can be accomplished in such a manner. Nussbaum makes the distinction between reasonable comprehensive doctrines that say women are metaphysically unequal or dissimilar without questioning their status as citizens and sexist comprehensive doctrines that are unreasonable due to their denial of equal rights of citizenship to women (Nussbaum 2003: 507–511). In a text written just before her untimely passing, Okin advanced a twofold critique of the distinction between the political and the comprehensive: first, Rawls’ own prioritization of the fair value of political liberty along with the other basic liberties means that he must be concerned with protecting more than just formal political and legal equality for women. Although we agree that Rawls downplays the pervasiveness of sexism, there is more continuity between Rawls’ earlier and later liberalism than Okin admits; political liberalism is well-­centred on an interpretation of equality that goes beyond formal or legal equality; this interpretation can be developed to pursue the feminist agenda. Second, she claims, Rawls’ distinction between the realm of the political from that of the non-­political is false. This distinction echoes the dichotomy that has been systematically questioned by feminists, namely that between the public and the private sphere. Okin argues that “There is no way of separating out and isolating women’s political equality from all the other aspects in which women are unequal in a sexist society” (Okin 2004: 1561–1562). As we’ve suggested, Rawls’ strict delimitation of the domain of the political is unsustainable (Chapter 1). However, by delimiting the area of the political, Rawls is mainly interested in the state, and the justification of the commonly binding decisions; from this perspective, abolishing the border between state’s intervention and personal freedom (religious or not) leads to an arbitrary state. We do not want to suggest that freedom of speech is unconditional. In specific historical-­political circumstances, restricting grave offences may be recommendable. As Rawls points out, “no one liberty can expect unconditional protection” (Rawls [1993] 2007: 356). In particular, when there is a recent history of crime and grave abuses against a specific group (religious, ethnic, etc.), the



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restriction of speech targeting this group may be well justified. The legal constraints on the denial of the Holocaust in Germany are a case in point. For a recent discussion of the limits of the freedom of speech, see Waldron (2012). 32 Article 14 stipulates as follows:  […] 2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child. 33 For an older defence of weak paternalism (although not with respect to religion), see Goodin (1991). Nussbaum argues that the Indian Constitution is paternalist in establishing that, from now on, it is illegal to use caste or sex as a discriminatory ground (Nussbaum 2002: 45–47). 34 As laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, (UNCRC), a child is any human being below the age of eighteen. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU guarantees the protection of rights of the child by EU institutions, as well as by EU countries when they implement EU law. Whilst the whole Charter applies to children, Article 24 specifies the rights of children and Article 31 specifies the prohibition of child labour. 35 In current international law, there is an asymmetry between the family and the school. There is no law from stopping indoctrination at the level of the family (this would give too much power to the state), while Courts have taken a stand banning indoctrination in public schools (e.g. the ECtHR; according to the jurisprudence of the ECtHR, the public education should be “objective, critical, and pluralistic”). 36 Our interpretation of the idea of open future is not reduced to the liberal ideology that reduces freedom to the maximization of choice. That the future is open does not mean that it is chosen by a subject “in control”. 37 Some unreasonable comprehensive doctrines (racism, Nazism or other totalitarian ideologies, etc.) should be excluded. Note, further, that education is not merely a question of transmitting abstract ideas. One can indoctrinate children with Rawls, rational choice, and so on. Indoctrination does not refer only to the content of certain comprehensive doctrines, but also to a style of education. 38 This can be objected by arguing that the parents should do their best to find impartial strategies. The analogy between the family and the impartial state is unpersuasive: there are no moral-­legal reasons to ask parents not to go to the church on Sundays; but there are compelling reasons for asking, metaphorically speaking, that the state not advocate Church attendance on Sundays, but be separated with respect to different communities of belief. See later. 39 For an alternative view that highlights the importance of pursuing a normative gender-­neutral perspective to counterbalance the pervasiveness of gender injustice, see Gheaus 2012. 40 It is also to be noted that the borders that separate the comprehensive and the political are not set in stone, but depend on struggles for power and legitimation. As Baehr suggests, Okin and Rawls attempt to starkly define these boundaries at a theoretical level, prior to the actual political engagement of the parties involved (Baehr 1996, 2013, 2013a; Abbey 2013). Participation in democratic conversations and interactions shapes a process that establishes cognitive, affective, and imaginative connections between religious views of the good and the morality of human rights (Habermas 2008a: 270). Internal processes of transformation ranging from the Catholic aggiornamento and the endorsement of religious freedom during the Second Vatican Council, to the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion or the increasing number of Muslim women acting as Imams that lead their community in prayer can be all read as instances of this trend of internal adaption and transformation. A participative approach to the problem of the boundaries of the political has a feedback effect on the non-­political realm, leading to processes of redefinition in the citizens’ understanding of their moral and religious traditions. 41 The traditional economist approach of ranking nations is also objectionable since it does not even ask about the distribution of wealth and income; furthermore, countries with similar aggregate figures can exhibit great distributional variations. For instance, South Africa was closest to the top of the developing countries despite its gross inequalities (Nussbaum 2007a: 71). 42 In A Theory of Justice, Rawls draws on elements of social choice theory (e.g. Kenneth Arrow’s work), but this is not central to his theory of justice. 43 The most complete discussion of Nussbaum’s political liberalism is contained in Nussbaum (2006). The book deals mainly with three questions: impairment and disability, nationality, and species membership.

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44 Some dissimilarities are basic and physical, as nutritional needs vary with age, occupation, and sex – e.g. a lactating woman needs more nutrients than a non-­lactating woman does, just as a new-­born needs more protein than an adult. Other differences depend on social categorizations and traditional hierarchies, such as with the role of women as informal caregivers of children, sick, and elderly people. 45 Rawls’ theory is criticizable for being too context-­dependent (this is Nussbaum’s persuasive point) and at the same time ignoring the complexities of the context (for the second criticism, see Chapter 1). 46 Nussbaum follows Rawls in supporting a distinction between the political and the comprehensive: respect for each person’s quest for flourishing entails that everyone should be free to pursue and choose their own understanding of the good, and develop their own capabilities accordingly. At a political level, dignity has to remain a relatively vague notion that is not substantially bound to any specific philosophical or religious understanding: Dignity is a difficult idea to define precisely, and we probably should not try to do so in the political realm, since different religions and different secular views have varying accounts of it, and we don’t want to play favorites. (Nussbaum 2012a: 62) 47 For the ideas of freestanding public reason, overlapping consensus, and comprehensive doctrines, see Chapter 1. 48 In this sense, the idea of human capabilities is resonant of Rawls’ list of primary social goods (Chapter 1). Just as Rawls understands primary goods as those goods that all persons desire whatever else a person pursues or chooses (Rawls 1971: 62), Nussbaum argues that capabilities have value in themselves, and for any human life regardless of one’s enterprises; they make “life that includes them fully human” (Nussbaum 2000: 74; Nussbaum 2011). However, she highlights that tradition and context can have a fundamental role in constructing desire and preference that the language of primary goods and individual desires neglects. 49 Here is the list of the other central capabilities. All these can be, in various degrees, connected to religious capabilities or to conflicts with religion.    Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.    Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.    Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign, i.e. being able to be secure against assault, including sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.    Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by overwhelming fear and anxiety, or by traumatic events of abuse or neglect. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.)    Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.    Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.    Control over One’s Environment. A. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association. B. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), not just formally but in terms of real opportunity; and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure  (Nussbaum 2000: 78–80, 2011: 33–34) 50 On this ground, Nussbaum states that animals should be respected, as they have a dignity of their own based on their specific capabilities. She also observes that animals do not seem to engage in religious practices, even though they can come close, such as in the case of the grief behaviour of elephants, which seems to have ritual aspects. Should we come to understand that



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some species have in fact religious behaviour, “then those species too deserve an appropriate type of protection for the exercise of that ability” (Nussbaum 2012a: 65). In the landmark Sherbert case, a woman pertaining to the Seventh-­day Adventist community refused to work on Saturday, given that she saw this as being in contradiction to her religious beliefs. As a consequence of her refusal to work, she was fired and the state refused to grant her employment benefits with the justification she was the one to reject employment. The woman alleged that the state authorities had violated her religious free exercise. The Supreme Court agreed to claim. The Court held that to attach to a benefit a condition that required the violation of a religious duty imposed a substantial burden on her free exercise of her religion. Nussbaum envisages other kinds of legitimate accommodations as well: the wearing of yarmulkes in the military and of religious jewellery in prisons, providing for the dietary needs of religious prisoners, etc. For a discussion of the problem of accommodations, see also Chapters 1 and 5. A first level restriction for Nussbaum is the selection of what should count as religion. A relevant distinction she makes is between reasonable comprehensive doctrines that say women are metaphysically unequal or dissimilar without questioning their status as citizens and sexist and comprehensive doctrines that are unreasonable, and deny the equal rights of citizenship to women (Nussbaum 2003: 507–511). Another important distinction is between religions and cults. Cults whose beliefs and activities are clearly incompatible with the moral understanding of dignity embodied by the political conception, Nussbaum suggests, should not be recognized as religions. For instance, satanist groups in the US have been rightly refused religious status. By linking religious capabilities to some of the defining features of human dignity, Nussbaum endorses a morally charged notion of religion. Self-­description is thus not sufficient to define the religious nature of groups, and the applicability of the principle of freedom of religion is subject to the moral-­political evaluation of their practice. Evidence of systematic abusive behaviour and commercial exploitation of religious claims (charges commonly raised against Scientology, for instance) can very well justify civil authorities in not recognizing it as religion, and refusing the applicability of the religious freedom. When it comes to major religious traditions, the assessment of the conduct of the entire communities of belief is not viable given their scope, history, and longstanding social acceptance. In these cases, Nussbaum argues that the assessment should acknowledge the complexity of the religious phenomenon, and focus judgement on specific beliefs and practices. That Nussbaum’s takes individual autonomy as a universally desirable goal is criticisable from within the Western liberal-­feminist tradition itself. Reliable access to contraception is a source of liberation and gender equality, yet the social demands of performance and self-­fulfilment project a stigma over the wish that the possibility of having a child could be left to chance (Phillips 2001: 257). The compulsion to be in control of individual self-­realization and resist external influences is as much a moment in a process of liberation as it is the formation of an alternative regime of power and domination. Article 17 of the Indian Constitutions reads as follows: “ ‘Untouchability’ is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of ‘Untouchability’ shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” To give effect to this article, the Indian Parliament made an enactment regarding Untouchability (Offences) Act in 1955. The Act was amended in 1976 to make its provisions more stringent and it was renamed as the Protection of Civil Rights Act. The conclusion of the Shah Bano controversy went along these lines. Likewise, in the sentence Danial Latifi & Anr v. Union of India (2001), the Supreme Court refused to declare the Muslim Women Act unconstitutional yet provided instead a normative interpretation of it that tried its unfair implications for the maintenance of Muslim women. To this purpose, the Court introduced two interpretive principles: first, that statutes should be interpreted in the light of current social conditions, including male domination, and second, that problems pertaining to horizons of “basic human rights, culture, dignity and decency of life and dictates of necessity in the pursuit of social justice” should not be addressed based on religious, sectarian or racial constraints. Nussbaum notes that, based on these principles, “on the one hand, the system of plural establishment is respected, up to a point”; but, “on the other hand, the religions’ area of control is now sharply bounded” (Nussbaum 2008: 149). Moreover, Nussbaum doesn’t provide a ranking of capabilities or how to weigh them against one another when they conflict.

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DEMOCRACY AND POSTMODERNISM Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo

Introduction Postmodernism as an influential cultural phenomenon has, in recent decades, generated deep divisions in Western academia. For a good number of critics, postmodernism is a derogatory term that designates a relativist cultural trend leading to moral-­intellectual confusion and an “anything goes” mind-­set (Bloom 1987). This trend has often been perceived as dangerously playing in the hands of anti-­democrats and neoconservatives (Habermas 1990). Nevertheless, “postmodernism” remains, like many “post-” terms, difficult to pin down.1 In political philosophy, postmodern thinkers generally agree that the grand narratives of Western modernity and Enlightenment focused on universal progress, reason, and truth have led to the legitimation of new forms of violence, conquest, and domination. They centre instead on local rationalities and knowledge, historical contingency, the fragmented “nature” of identities and the irreducible plurality of ways of looking at “reality”. Yet beyond this general agreement postmodernism acquires at least two different meanings: in the first sense, it describes a stance that collapses the heritage of modern critique, universalism, and Enlightenment into radical or, alternatively, fictional effects. This view is shared by influential thinkers such as François Lyotard (in The Postmodern Condition), Michel Foucault (in early works such as The Order of Things), and Jean Baudrillard (The Gulf War Did Not Take Place). Even though a good number of critics reduce postmodernism to the formulaic “anything goes” sapping the foundations of knowledge and democracy, this radical relativism or “fictionalism” as philosophical stands are marginal (but see Invernizzi 2015).2 In a second sense, postmodernism can be attributed to a diverse group of historians, philosophers, and social scientists who do not reject in toto the heritage of modernity and the Enlightenment, and advance transformative visions of contemporary societies as emancipated from grand narratives and metaphysical illusions. This chapter examines two such influential postmodern philosophers who systematically deal with religion in their later writings – Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo. Rorty and Vattimo reject what they take as the grand narratives and metaphysical tales of modern progress and advancement of universal reason in history; under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, they affirm instead the radical multiplicity of “language games”, fluid identities, and local rationalities. The very belief in public reason as the foundation of democratic consensus in Rawls and Habermas (see Chapters 1, 2, and 3) echoes, for them, the



Democracy and postmodernism

Western metaphysics inaugurated in Ancient Greece and continued by modernity and the Enlightenment (Rorty 2009; Vattimo and Zabala 2011). These narratives portray human history as linear progress and emancipation as the gradual evolution of universal reason and freedom. Methodologically, Rorty’s and Vattimo’s postmodern approach to the problematic of politics and religion is – to use Rawlsian terminology – comprehensive; this is because it does not claim to bracket substantive philosophical issues; it challenges instead the bond between metaphysics and relations of domination at the level of the whole of society – thus including religious life. Rorty and Vattimo started to reflect systematically on religion relatively late in their philosophical careers, after they developed anti-­foundationalist approaches on epistemological issues such as reality, rationality, and truth. For Rorty and Vattimo, reality, universal reason, and truth are “myths” premised on the metaphysical illusion of subtracting beliefs from their socio-­historical contexts of formation and use. In contrast, beliefs are habits of action (in Rorty’s pragmatism) or interpretations (in Vattimo’s hermeneutics) embedded in particular vocabularies and communal practices. Rorty’s and Vattimo’s anti-­foundationalist critique is at once epistemic and political: the refutation of metaphysics involves the questioning of its connection to practices of domination and violence; this leads him to the alternative proposal of a “democracy without foundations” and “weak religion”. Their postmodern vision of the democratic community is premised on an open conversational engagement liberated from any absolutes and “conversation-­ stoppers” (truth, reality, essence), and the embracement of a plurality of perspectives (Rorty 1999; Vattimo 1992). In the following, we start from Rorty’s pragmatic critique of the metaphysical yearning for foundations, reality, and truth in politics and religion. Rorty champions an ethnocentric perspective aimed at the expansion of Western “bourgeois liberalism” (Rorty 1989, 1998a). From the perspective of this form of liberalism, religion should be privatized: politics deals with the need for social cooperation and pertains to the public sphere, whereas religion provides answers to the personal need for self-­creation, and thus pertains to the private sphere (1). Second, Vattimo develops the idea of a pensiero debole (“weak thought”) – a hermeneutic approach centred on the historical embeddedness and interpretability of beliefs. Vattimo’s weak hermeneutics takes, in his later writings, a religious turn: he now reads the formation of weak thought as part of a broader shift in the secularizing history of the Christian West (Vattimo 1999; Vattimo and Caputo 2007). By making an original synthesis between different influences (Nietzsche’s nihilism, René Girard’s anthropology of religion, and Christian theology), Vattimo argues that the process of secularization-­asweakening has two interrelated dimensions: a secularized or weakened Christianity liberated from absolute truths and power hierarchies that reveal themselves as a religion of caritas (love, charity); and an alternative democratic politics (hermeneutic communism), which places weak thought at its centre (Vattimo and Zabala 2011) (2).

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1  Pragmatism, bourgeois liberalism, and the privatization of religion (Rorty) a  Pragmatism, anti-­foundationalism, and liberalism “In the beginning was the act (Tat)”: the first line of Goethe’s Faust is the maxim of philosophical pragmatism. Rorty’s version of it is centred on a critique of metaphysics and foundationalism developed first in a series of works dedicated mainly to epistemological issues: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991a). Rorty follows Martin Heidegger and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein in criticizing the view that beliefs and enunciations are true to the extent that they “mirror” or correspond to an independent, objective reality (Rorty 1979, 1991a). In contrast to the mirror view of knowledge,3 Rorty argues that justified beliefs are habits of action that we develop in socio-­historical contexts; they are formed through the engagement in particular contexts of human cooperation and conflict (Rorty 1991a: 151–161; 4ssq), and expressed through colective vocabularies.4 Vocabularies are always context-­specific, and represent sets of social tools for solving problems and answering our needs, interests, and concerns. What human beings cannot do is transcend their collective vocabularies and forms of sociality so as to “encounter” reality or truth in an unmediated way. Metaphysics is premised on the belief that human beings have access through reason, senses, or intuition to an objective or deeper reality – natural, human, or divine.5 As Nietzsche argued, there is no access to reality beyond specific vocabularies embedded in concrete contexts. Metaphysics is thus the hopeless dream of transcending the context so as to reach the essence, the truth, and the reality; this is no more possible than stepping out of one’s skin: we cannot place ourselves outside of the limits of particular vocabularies and determine the correspondence between language and external reality no more than we can find a trans­contextual criterion of the linear progress towards the truth. As a consequence of this critique, Rorty provocatively argues that theism and scientism are but two analogous forms of foundationalism: they both share the metaphysical belief in reality (as nature or God) as a foundation beyond community, socio-­historical context, and existing vocabularies (Rorty 1991a, 2009). Rorty summarizes his anti-­foundational stance as follows: (pragmatism) criticizes the pretence of a scientific or ecclesiastical community to have access and impose an objective truth; truth is never objectivity but depends on interpersonal conversation that takes effect in the sharing of a language and agreeing on some preferences. As there is no access to a philosophical foundation that is ahistorical and transcontextual, the metaphysical quest of what are things in themselves is a chimera; instead, the neo-­pragmatist philosopher is interested in what people do with them or what they mean for people. While knowledge does not mirror an external reality, it is “just the ability to solve problems”. (Rorty 2005: 77; see also Rorty 1989, 2009)6 If vocabularies provide tools to cope with problems, the shift to novel vocabularies provides “rhetorical re-­descriptions” of ways in which a community is able to deal with



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familiar or emerging problems in a new way. Shifting from one vocabulary to another on account of sustained inquiry and open conversation (from classical physics to the theory of relativity, from medieval political theology to modern human rights), does not embody the progress of reason. Yet human beings can make progress even if they don’t get closer to uncovering “what’s out there”; they can progress by improving and changing the vocabularies and the solutions to the problems they face. This pragmatist notion of progress is premised on continued inquiry and keeping open the conversation between the plurality of perspectives. Rorty’s epistemic stand is continuous with his anti-­foundational version of liberal democracy. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), Truth and Progress (1998) and Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), Rorty argues for a liberal understanding that replaces questions of objectivity, truth, and rational deliberation with those of intersubjectivity, historical contingency, and open conversation. Rorty is sceptical about all grand narratives (including the liberal ones) of politics centred on universal emancipation, rational progress, and the realization of human essence (Rorty 1989, 1998a, 1999). He argues that the grand narratives are versions of the same metaphysical yearning of stepping out of our socio-­historical limits, and claiming to have access to the essence of liberty and emancipation, human nature, or the meaning of history. In contrast, Rorty acknowledges and celebrates the historical contingency of our communal and value attachments; the role of philosophers is to engage in polyphonic conversations where various stands are on a par, without pretending to have access to a privileged epistemic position: philosophy’s role is not to ground liberal democracy on a master principle. In Rorty’s memorable formulation, democracy has priority over philosophy.7 This means that liberal democracy is not inferable from philosophical principles but is the product of contingency. Philosophy does not enjoy a privileged epistemic status; it is but a voice in the democratic conversation. From this perspective, Rawls’ and Habermas’ endeavour to find a rational foundation for democracy echoes metaphysics and the misguided idea of bestowing a privileged role on philosophy (Rorty 2009: 47–49, 52–53). Philosophy can be only useful for improving the re-­descriptions of the historically contingent emergence of the democratic practice, and not for claiming to ground it on a principle of reality, rationality, progress, human nature, and so on.8 Rorty’s emphasis on contingency and historicity does not lead, in his view, to political defeatism. He champions the expansion of liberal democracy without the appeal to a supposedly objective reality and truth that could liberate us from the contingency of our acculturation (Rorty 1989, 1998a). What we are left with after the death of metaphysics is the affirmation of the values and practices of our “ethnos”, namely – from Rorty’s perspective – with the bourgeois liberalism that emerged in the Western context. This bourgeois liberalism aspires at enlarging the circle of conversation, solidarity, and at diminishing cruelty and violence; its imperative is not the quest for truth through deliberation but the broadening of an ethnocentric liberal understanding that emerged in the West. The expansion of the liberal view is based on persuasion, conversation, and co-­ opting through “sentimental education” and “broadening of moral imagination” (Rorty 1989, 1999).9 Conversation and persuasion are not dependent on rational constraints and rules; they appeal instead to particular examples and re-­descriptions aimed at unveiling others the advantages of being part of the liberal “ethnos”.

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Human progress means the improvement of existing communal agreements and the expanding the solidarity amongst strangers. Progress is not measurable by the standards of a chimeric neutral and universal reason; its sign is the enlargement of the circle of the “we”. Rorty argues that moral progress is in the direction of greater human solidarity. But that solidarity is not thought of as recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation – the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of “us”. (Rorty 1989: 191)10

b  Liberalism and the privatization of religion In his earlier works, Rorty’s remarks about the place of religion in liberal democracy are scattered and generally dismissive. A self-­confessed atheist, Rorty rejects religion as being at odds with the liberal project (Rorty 1989). He argues that the decline of religion is favourable to the “social hope which characterizes modern liberal societies – the hope that life will eventually be freer, less cruel, more leisured, richer in goods and experiences, not just for our descendants” (Rorty 1989: 85). The waning of the religious faith is beneficial for moral progress and the constitution of a more liberal society. Rorty explains his stand as follows: the decline of people’s ability to take the idea of postmortem rewards seriously, has not weakened liberal societies, and indeed has strengthened them. Lots of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries predicted the opposite. They thought that hope of heaven was required to supply moral fibre and social glue – that there was little point, for example, in having an atheist swear to tell the truth in a court of law. As it turned out, however, willingness to endure suffering for the sake of future reward was transferable from individual rewards to social ones, from one’s hopes for paradise to one’s hopes for one’s grandchildren. (Rorty 1989: 85) These remarks debunking religion as a pernicious illusion are not supported by a systematic reflection on the religious phenomenon. His short essay “Religion as a Conversation-­stopper” (1994; republished in Philosophy and Social Hope 1999), is his first systematic intervention on religion and generated a debate that would lead Rorty to the development of a sustained pragmatist approach to religion that breaks away from his earlier secularism. Rorty’s essay is a review of Stephen Carter’s The Culture of Disbelief. How Amer­ican Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion” (1994), which criticizes the influence of liberalism in the public sphere in the United States. In a nutshell, Carter argues that liberalism goes against the grain of the US legal-­political tradition by reducing religion to a “personal hobby” and driving it out of the public square. Apart from distorting the Amer­ican political tradition, the liberal view of religion as private preference is



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misleading on two accounts: it leads to a trivialization of religion that misunderstands and disrespects its fundamental importance in the life of the faithful; and it overlooks the relevance that religion can have in developing moral values in family, education, and in contributing to moral debates in public square (Carter 1994). Rorty rejects the argument for the trivialization of religion and pleads for its privatization. Key to his argument is the diagnosis of religion as a conversation-­stopper. Conversation plays, for Rorty, a central role in a vibrant liberal democracy: from a pragmatic perspective, it is vital to keep conversation alive and open “for we will always have new problems, and will always find new ways to solve them” (Rorty 2005: 77, 1999). The problem with religion is that it undermines conversation as it appeals to absolute truths, ultimate authorities, and blind faith. Religious discourse is essentially non-­conversational and, therefore, anti-­democratic. Rorty asks: “What is a specifically religious ‘form of dialogue’, except perhaps a dialogue in which some members cite religious sources for their beliefs?” (ibid.). Saying in the public square that “The Old Testament states […]” or “Don’t ask me for reasons. It is a matter of faith” means stopping the game of conversation and persuasion, the heart beat of liberal democracy. As religion undermines liberal politics, it’s preferable to keep it in the private sphere. The privatization of religion is, further, adequate since religious life corresponds to personal and not to public concerns. Rorty provocatively claims that religious life is no more a matter of public or political concern than is the preference for vanilla ice cream or for men with blue eyes.11 The privatization thesis can be objected to for trivializing religion. This objection central to Carter’s argument is, for Rorty, misleading (1999: 170). Trivialization is not inferable from privatization. Personal or private matters (including religious ones) can be of utmost importance: examples of private but non-­trivial matters are easily available – namely, love, cultivating friendship, and writing poetry.12 Rorty’s stand has been objected to for assuming that religion is essentially anti-­liberal (Wolterstorff 2012b; Stout 2004) and for neglecting that religion can be a “conversation­starter” as well (Merdjanova and Brodeur 2011). As a result, Rorty reformulated in more detail his pragmatist approach to religion and politics in a series of texts (Rorty 2005, 2009). In these later works, Rorty abandons his life-­long atheism and previous secularist hostility to religion as essentially illiberal. He rejects his earlier stand for being metaphysical: first, atheism is problematic because it claims to answer a hopeless metaphysical question about objective reality: does God exist or not? Atheism and theism are two faces of the same coin: their supporters are equally trapped in a metaphysical quest that needs to be forsaken. The death of metaphysics entails that one should stop treating religion as having epistemic value – namely, as providing knowledge and true beliefs about reality. Propositions such as “God exists”, “God does not exist”, “God created the world”, “Homosexuality is against nature”, answer metaphysical questions about the cosmic and moral reality. Religion is instead a matter of “musical ear” and education (Rorty 2005: 33). For Rorty, some people (like himself ) are “religiously unmusical” and are not tuned in by education (Rorty 2005: 54). Second, Rorty later comes to reject the thesis of religion as conversation-­stopper for being metaphysical, given that it wrongly assumes that religion is essentially something. It is only from a metaphysical perspective that religion has an “essence” (Rorty 2003: 148). As Rorty acknowledges in “Religion in the Public Sphere: a Reconsideration”, “instead

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of saying that religion was a conversation-­stopper, I should have simply said that citizens of a religion should try to put off invoking conversation-­stoppers as much as possible” (ibid.). Rorty is not hostile to religion per se but against any form of foundationalism and authoritarianism that blocks conversation, whether religious or secularist. Despite these changes, Rorty stands by his previous privatization thesis, which is meant to lead to a profound transformation of religion. Echoing Rawls’ terminology (Chapter 1), he claims now to provide a political and not a metaphysical defence of it.13 He develops two theses to support his reformulation of the argument from privatization: first, he develops a distinction between private and public needs; assuming this distinction has transformational implications for religion (i); second, he posits an incompatibility between clericalism and liberal democracy. (i) For Rorty, religion provides answers and solutions to personal or private needs, and not public and political ones. Religion and art deal with matters of self-­creation and self-­ fulfilment: the plurality of artistic and religious vocabularies develop as a response to the non-­political problems and concerns of the individual; in contrast, the political vocabulary deals with the problems and concerns related to the sphere of social coordination and the search for intersubjective agreement (e.g. science, law, politics). The separation between the two spheres and needs is not rooted in an abstract reason, but has contingently emerged in the historical context of modernity and the Enlightenment. Rorty argues: (t)he battle between religion and science conducted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a contest between institutions, both of which claimed cultural supremacy. It was a good thing for both religion and science that science won that battle. For truth and knowledge are a matter of social cooperation, and science gives us the means to carry out better cooperative social projects than before. If social cooperation is what you want, the conjunction of the science and the common sense of your day is all you need. But if you want something else, then a religion that has been taken out of the epistemic arena, a religion that finds the question of theism versus atheism uninteresting, may be just what suits your solitude. (Rorty 2009: 101) Assuming this separation between public and private matters entails a profound transformation of religion, and of its relation to religion. Religion becomes, in Rorty’s vision, directed only at satisfying personal needs, and abandons the claims to truth, authority, and power in the public sphere. Rorty conveys the idea of this transformation by speaking of the passage from monotheism to polytheism. “Polytheism” does not refer to the belief in the actual existence of multiple deities: for Rorty, embracing polytheism entails that individuals pursue the fulfilment of their personal needs (religious or not) in their own way, without trying to impose their values on others through politics and law. Polytheism represents the acknowledgement that there is an incommensurable multiplicity of goods, and no single public authority (e.g. the church; the state) and standard to rank them. Rorty states: (y)ou are a polytheist if you think that there is no actual or possible object of knowledge that would permit you to commensurate and rank all human needs. Isaiah



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Berlin’s well-­known doctrine of incommensurable human values is, in my sense, a polytheistic manifesto. To be a polytheist in this sense you do not have to believe that there are non-­human persons with power to intervene in human affairs. All you need do is abandon the idea that we should try to find a way of making everything hang together, which will tell all human beings what to do with their lives, and tell all of them the same thing. (Rorty 2009: 30) Polytheism thus involves disconnecting the religious quest from authoritarian images and power mechanisms, i.e. God as the supreme legislator in moral matters; the revelation as the ultimate source of moral-­legal truths, or the alliance between religious revelation and political authority. Rorty’s point is not to reject monotheism; he hopes for a transformed monotheism concerned with charity and love, embracing the plurality of interpretations, and confined to the private sphere. Echoing Vattimo (see later), Rorty underscores the relevance of charity over the metaphysical quest for absolute truth (Rorty 2005: 56) and unique authority. He sketches an optimistic picture of the historical transformation of Christian monotheism: (c)utting oneself off from the metaphysical Logos is pretty much the same thing as ceasing to look for power and instead being content with charity. The gradual movement within Christianity in recent centuries in the direction of the social ideals of the Enlightenment is a sign of the gradual weakening of the worship of God as power and its gradual replacement with the worship of God as love […]. The transition from power to charity and that from the metaphysical Logos to postmetaphysical thought are both expressions of a willingness to take one’s chances, as opposed to attempting to escape one’s finitude by aligning oneself with infinite power. (Rorty 2005: 56)14 (ii) Rorty defends the privatization of religion through an argument from anticlericalism as well.15 By claiming that religion, poetry, literature, love, or friendship correspond to the domain of personal needs, Rorty does not deny the right to religious manifestations in the public sphere. However, the overall impact of public, institutionalized religion on liberal democracy is negative: for Rorty, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Osama bin Laden, and the like, prevail in influence over Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day. The problem is not religion per se but clericalism: when organized in large institutions and movements playing a public-­political role (the Catholic Church, the Moral Majority), religion becomes a threat to conversation and liberal democracy. The main religious menace in long-­established democracies like the US is not war but phenomena such as the domination of and cruelty towards sexual minorities and women by massive religious institutions as well as influential clerics relying on mass media (e.g. tele-­evangelists).16 Rorty argues that his anticlericalism is a political view, not an epistemological or metaphysical view. It is the view that ecclesiastical institutions, despite all the good they do – despite all the

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comfort they provide to those in need or in – are dangerous to the health of democratic societies. Whereas the philosophers who claim that atheism, unlike theism, is backed up by evidence would say that religious belief is irrational, contemporary secularists like myself are content to say that it is politically dangerous. On our view, religion is unobjectionable as long as it is privatized. (Rorty 2005: 33)17 Rorty does not argue for the desirability of dismantling ecclesiastical organizations. He rather pictures religious organizations devoid of their clerical macrostructures, and reduced to their parish level. Rorty remains thus loyal to the Enlightenment critique of the clerical forms of authoritarian power and domination, while accepting the role that religion can play in processes of self-­creation and personal life plans.

c  Difficulties of Rorty’s liberalism Rorty’s combination of pragmatism and polytheism is an original philosophical vision that can appeal to believers and unbelievers alike. His anti-­foundationalist liberalism goes beyond the secularist hostility to religion while rejecting its politicization and entanglement with mechanisms of domination and exclusion. Nevertheless, the privatization thesis at the centre of Rorty’s liberal agenda in conjunction to his ethnocentrism fails to persuade. We suggest that the privatization thesis is based on a questionable aestheticization of religion and dichotomization between public and private needs (i). The idea of privatizing religion based on an anticlerical strategy is, further, implausible and counterproductive (ii). Finally, Rorty’s liberal-­ethnocentric strategy depends on the ideological fiction of a Western “we” that is premised on a limited perspective on conversation that does not sit well with the condition of global pluralism (Rorty: 2009: 55) (iii). (i) While Rorty is critical of Rawls’ public reason approach, he equally circumscribes the domain of the political, but in a different “categorical” way: politics deals with social coordination and religion deals “with our solitude”.18 However, his favoured view of religion as a question of “musical ear” is biased in favour of a type of Western religiosity that fuses (Protestant) individualism and Romantic aestheticism. From this perspective, religion is construed by analogy with poetry19 and the religious believer is characterized as a solitary artist involved in self-­creation.20 This construction denies the moral and social relevance of religion is aestheticizing and unrepresentative of the majority of believers (in the US and elsewhere), who are not Romantic individualists and “self-­creationists”.21 For most people in the US (Rorty’s context of reference), religion is not reducible to a private answer to a personal need but has a public dimension; for them, religion is both a matter of personal freedom, living together, and social coordination. Rorty conflates the fact that religion has private relevance to individuals with its being an exclusively private and individualistic enterprise (Barthold 2012: 870).22 Since for the majority of believers religion has a moral and social dimension, reducing it to a matter of personal self-­creation is, at worst, a form of trivialization and, at best, premised on a one-­sided approach to religious life and options.23 Religion becomes crystalized in traditions that orient human beings with respect to personal and public problems, needs, and issues:



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(t)o the extent to which a worldview gives meaning and direction to an individual life it can be considered private. But given its emergence out of a people’s history and its concern with the social, it is not only “private” as Rorty construes it – where “private” means only what needs no justification and remains purely individual. (Barthold 2012: 869) Religion is, for a good number of people, a question of engagement with both ultimate and daily questions, and articulates a practical attitude in front of existence and its fundamental problems; it is implausible to expect a disentanglement of moral and socio-­political beliefs from one’s attitudes towards existence and background answers to questions about good, evil, society, and life.24 Moreover, by confining religion to the domain of private needs, Rorty runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathtub water: if citizens do not engage with moral and political truth in the public sphere and opt for an Rortyan individualistic “live-­and-let-­live” attitude, it is likely that the democratic life becomes undermined by fundamentalists and political saviours.25 It is significant that Rorty himself does not pursue a rigid distinction between self-­ creation and social coordination, private and public needs. Self-­creation is relevant both in the private and the public sphere, which is rooted in his belief that “imagination has priority over reason” (Rorty: 2009: 122). His very idea of reforming and expanding liberal-­bourgeois democracy is not limited to the pragmatics of cooperative interactions tackling, in a piecemeal manner, specific political problems. Rorty combines pragmatism with “utopian” Romanticism: he advocates value transformation of the current terms of social cooperation itself by the expansion of solidarity and compassion through imagination and sentimental education (Rorty 1999). (ii) In times of global upsurge of religious fundamentalism and nationalism, the desideratum of depoliticizing religion is especially compelling.26 However, anticlericalism as a basis for privatization does not necessarily follow. According to one criticism, Rorty’s anticlericalism contradicts his anti-­essentialism: “(j)ust as the original version of his secularism appeared to presuppose that religion is essentially a conversation-­stopper, his current anti-­clericalism appears to presuppose that ecclesiastical organizations and the professionals associated with them are essentially disposed to create ill-­will” (Stout 2010: 536). Stout’s line of objection misconstrues Rorty’s stand, which does not assume anything essentially bad about ecclesiastical organizations; Rorty rather assumes that they are generally prone to build authoritarian mechanisms of domination and exclusion. Still, he does not provide clear evidence to substantiate this critique. Admittedly, we doubt that a purely neutral assessment of the overall impact of the institutionalization of religion can be made; but we can safely point to instances of a positive/negative role played by institutionalized religion, and to the danger of the ossification and bureaucratization of the role of clerics as “specialists of the sacred” (Eliade [1949] 1958). There is a valid concern with the role that clerical structures can play in perpetuating domination, but an across-­ the-board privatization and de-­clericalization is not inferable from it.27 Pursuing a privatizing anti-­clerical strategy can, in fact, be counterproductive. In the absence of exposure to broader societal challenges and social integration, religious communities could turn inward and become sectarian. Away from the public square, religious groups can become over-­protective, closed, and intolerant. Alternatively, the attempt at privatizing them

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may have the backlash effect and lead to defensive politicization and radicalization. In contrast, the presence of religion mainly in the social public sphere exposes the faithful to the changing problems of contemporary democracy. Religious communities can, in this way, be spurned and even pressured to adapt, modernize, and reformulate creative solutions to new problems (e.g. ecology, technology, financial capitalism). The use and abuse of appeals to absolute truths, sacred texts, and revelations so as to legitimate discrimination can be openly challenged and subjected to public scrutiny. Responding to these appeals “simply by arguing that religious premises have no place in public discussion has the effect, ironically, of stopping the conversation before the point at which the flimsiness of the reasoning is brought fully to light” (Stout 2010: 532). According to this perspective, the “privatization” of the religious communities is not necessarily linked to decreasing domination and violence. Depending on context, the “parish religion” can be more dominating and exclusivist than large religious organizations whose teachings and leaders interact and are subject to scrutiny in the public square. Consider Stout’s sharp vision of the world of small village or town communities in the US: (c)rucially, people living in rural communities, small mid-­Western towns, and deteriorating inner city neighbourhoods are experiencing their way of life as threatened. These are precisely the social circumstances in which one would expect to find a good deal of scapegoating and a heightened symbolic concern for the inner purity of the group. The resulting behaviour is often cruel; of that I have no doubt. But vilifying the people living under these conditions as sadists is unlikely to do much good. If the global economy is in the process of restructuring society everywhere, we need to find effective ways of minimizing the anomie, cruelty, and enmity that will be generated in communities that take themselves, quite rightly, to be crumbling. (Stout 2010: 534) The “private” religious communities are not fairer by necessity, and are unlikely to become the predominant religious form. In a globalized world where the number of believers is statistically increasing (Pew 2015a),28 the generalization of the form of parish religion is as plausible as the spread of parish nationalism. But even if de-­clericalizationcum-­privatization is an unlikely occurrence, it is fair to acknowledge with Rorty that, especially in the current context of mutual instrumentalization between religion and politics, the entanglement between clerical structures and power mechanisms is a hurdle in constructing an egalitarian democracy. (iii) Rorty builds his defence of liberalism as part of a specific re-­description of the Western context. There is, for Rorty, only a binary choice: opting either for ethnocentrism or for a transcendent, pure reason hovering above historical context. The second option of a God’s perspective is unavailable since it is a form of metaphysics or foundationalism. Rorty claims that when confronted with an Al Qaeda terrorist, we do not have any compelling reason against him since we do not have access to a purely neutral or rational standpoint (Rorty 2009: 31–32). All we can do is to defend our ethnocentric perspective, if need be, by making use of our guns (Rorty 2000). We are left, in Rorty’s view, with the decision of affirming “our” liberal-­bourgeois ethnocentrism and doing our best to export it. To this end, Rorty maintains that 



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the rhetoric we Westerners use in trying to get everyone to be more like us would be improved if we were more frankly ethnocentric, and less professedly universalist. […] In making this suggestion, I am urging, as I have on earlier occasions, that we need to peel apart Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism.  (Rorty 2009: 55; our italics) This stance strikes us as misleading. Especially in times of global interdependence and accelerated pluralization, the existence of a self-­identical Western “we” emerges as an ideological phantasy. Rorty replaces the myth of pure reason with the myth of a total context – “we, the Westerners”. He overstates the identity of the “we” and, therefore, the alterity of the other – the non-­Western, non-­bourgeois, non-­liberal, and non-­ conversational. The inaccessibility of God’s viewpoint and pure rationality does not lead to the resignation of reason, but to the recognition of a plurality of voices in conversation in interlocking local, national, and global arenas.29 Rorty overlooks that conversational practices are not the exclusive product of the Western context – an export product into the backward non-­Western world. Different traditions (Hindu, Islamic, Confucian, African etc.) have their own moral-­religious argumentative and rhetorical traditions to draw on and enrich conversation. It is possible to build on the moral reasons and knowledge of a variety of Western and non-­Western traditions to criticize and reject as abominable the Al Qaeda terrorist (this does not exclude having to use force: since becoming a terrorist involves complex socio-­psychological processes, presenting an Al Qaeda terrorist with good reasons is unlikely to change his mind). By championing his version of liberalism, Rorty aims at a progressive paradigm shift in public vocabularies, but Rorty’s own mix of ethnocentrism and contextualism denies access to the normative resources that could justify such a shift. During a paradigm shift the fundamental elements of a given vocabulary are questioned and justificatory practices are problematized. Consistency requires Rorty to present such disputes as arational, as their outcome cannot be determined or shaped by public argument, but only by strategic will, subjective preference, or imagination.30 As a result, Rorty’s radical contextualism “denies him any perspective from which paradigm shifts could be construed as nonarbitrary. To see them as such would be […] to grant it (rationality) some purchase outside of […] local practices of justification” (Cooke 2006b: 35). Rorty’s plea for ethnocentrism is the ricochet of the metaphysical quest for the absoluteness of reason at the hour of its downfall. Ethnocentrism echoes, in the final analysis, the grand narrative of colonialism focused on a providential mission of turning the non-­ Westerner into the civilized “we”. While it renounces the claim to rational superiority of the West, Rorty’s missionary ethnocentrism whereby the other turns into the “same” is not a fully persuasive model of conversational democracy. The idea of making others in the liberal bourgeois’ image has sinister undertones; to the contrary, the conversation between different cultural and religious voices can be useful in correcting ethnocentric biases (including those of bourgeois individualistic liberalism), and challenging the limits of any existing local consensus.

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2  Religion in the “age of interpretation”31 (Vattimo) a  Weak thought Vattimo grew up in a Catholic environment and started his philosophical trajectory under the influence of Catholicism (Vattimo and Paterlini 2009; Woodward 2002). He was exposed at a very early age to the double impact of the hermeneutical critique of Western metaphysics centred on the historical situatedness and the interpretability of beliefs (L. Pareyson, W. Dilthey, M. Heidegger); and of Nietzsche’s nihilistic perspectivism that rejected the ideas of neutral reason and external reality, and defended instead the existence of a plurality of discourses and powers. Vattimo turned away from Catholicism and has gradually developed a hermeneutics that radicalized the break with Western metaphysics; as we will see, he advocates a “postmodern nihilism” drawing on Nietzsche’s affirmative nihilism.32 “Weak thought” designates a postmodern reinterpretation of hermeneutics that challenges metaphysical beliefs and structures perceived by Vattimo as central to philosophy, politics, and religion in the West. Beliefs in strong or ultimate foundations are at the centre of grand narratives that have shaped Western history and have served to legitimize the exercise of religious and economic-­political domination. Consider the examples of the belief in a supremely powerful God as the source of authority, hierarchy, and meaning in society; or the belief in the people’s will as the ultimate foundation of politics; or of the belief in liberal-­capitalistic rationality as “end of history” and key to human progress (Vattimo 1992, 2004; Vattimo and Caputo 2007). The Enlightenment advanced the promise of emancipation and rational society freed from the shackles of old metaphysics and religious prejudice. Yet the Enlightenment carried on metaphysics with different means and generated novel myths: for example, the grand tale of rational progress substitutes older myths and the promise of emancipation succumbs under the “authoritarianism of reason” (Vattimo 2005: 37).33 Like Rorty, Vattimo regards metaphysics as premised on the unwarranted claim that human beings have access to objective reality, essence, or truth. In particular, Vattimo follows Nietzsche in arguing that there is no access to reality beyond particular interpretations and struggles for power. Beliefs are but interpretations articulated and validated from within concrete historical contexts. The notions of a freestanding public reason (Rawls) or a context-­transcending truth (Habermas, Derrida) hold on the metaphysical illusion of overcoming the limits of interpretive pluralism and power dynamics. Weak thought thus assumes our finite embodied condition and that “all is interpretation” (Nietzsche). According to a common epistemic objection, the all-­is-interpretation thesis entails radical relativism. Vattimo rejects this objection. Deriving radical relativism from anti-­ foundationalism is a non sequitur. Radical relativism is a form of metaphysics as it is premised a non-­relative claim about the nature of knowledge; relativism is but the mirror image of metaphysical objectivism. For Vattimo, the critique of metaphysics entails pluralism, not the abandonment of criteria of validity and truth. Rather than forsaking the notions of validity and truth per se, Vattimo’s weak thought is premised on a coherentist understanding of them. According to the argument from coherentism, we have access to criteria of



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validity internal to intersubjective contexts of meaning, “the truth of which consists above all in their being shared by a community” (Vattimo 2005: 50). Human beings can surely challenge existing communal arrangements and validity claims, yet they can never question them outside of existing interpretive vocabularies and based on the pretence to have unmediated access to an external objective reality. In questioning validity claims, interlocutors rely on some elements of the context, and act as “interpreters rather than as objective recorders of facts” (Vattimo 2005: 46). Nor is it possible to build vocabularies and criteria purely subjectively and from scratch: when human beings innovate, they use and transform materials and criteria of validity pertaining to their environments. Vattimo argues: (t)here are some differences between arbitrariness and agreement. Agreement is always related to a sort of continuity: we agree on what we find true and to find something true is to apply criteria of some kind, paradigms that are not completely arbitrarily chosen but that are somehow found […] but it is hermeneutics that tries to make evident and clarify the historicity of the rules. So, even if there is no objective Logos of the nature of reality, every time we agree on something we actually give a sort of testimony, we realize a sort of continuity of the Logos, which is the only criterion we actually have. (Vattimo 2005: 58–59, 2003) The agreements resulting from hermeneutical processes are thus neither arbitrary nor subjective; from the perspective of weak thought, they develop within structured intersubjective settings, and are based on criteria that are tried out and refined in time though conversation and social cooperation.

b  Weak thought and secularizing Christianity In his earlier writings, Vattimo explores the implications of weak thought without granting a central role to secularization and religion (Vattimo 1998). Initially, he interpreted the task of hermeneutics in Heidegger’s footsteps, as independent from theological reflection.34 In the 1990s, however, Vattimo underwent a gradual religious turn (accompanied by his reconversion to Catholicism), which led him to a reassessment of the historical context of the formation of weak thought. By drawing on Girard’s anthropology of religion and violence, he has reinterpreted key tenets of Christian heritage and developed the idea of a non-­violent, hermeneutic community. The focus on Christianity and secularization becomes indispensable for understanding Vattimo’s hermeneutics and his idea of community. According to Vattimo’s new thesis, hermeneutics results from the process of secularization inherent in the development of Christianity itself. The advent of “weak thought” and the “age of interpretation” are, for Vattimo, the late product of growth from the seed planted by the Christian revolution, yet obliterated by the alliance of Christianity with metaphysics and worldly powers. Vattimo’s thesis is not merely that the development of Christianity is relevant for investigating the roots of weak thought but also that weak thought makes sense only within the Christian context. Vattimo argues in an exchange with Rorty:

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I do maintain that – as in the case of Nietzsche and Heidegger […] (Rorty’s) […] nonfoundationalism is possible – presentable as a reasonable thesis – only because we are living in a civilization shaped by the biblical, and specifically Christian message. If this were not the case, Rorty would, paradoxically, be obliged to supply demonstrative proof for his nonfoundationalism as an “objective” thesis, that is, to argue that in reality there are no foundations – forgetting the additional clause in Nietzsche’s sentence: “there are no facts, only interpretations; and this is an interpretation”. (Vattimo 2005: 51–52) In other words, by means of the novel focus on Christian history and secularization, Vattimo aims to eliminate the metaphysical residues from his own previous conception, which glossed over its historical context and conditions of possibility. If all beliefs are contextual interpretation, this goes for weak thought as well: weak thought or postmodern anti-­foundationalism is not inferable from an abstract philosophical argument; it is instead the “development and maturation of the Christian message” (Vattimo 2005: 46–47). Weak thought becomes “a sort of testimony” of secularized Christianity. Vattimo’s comprehensive approach to secularization and Christianity is indispensable for his vision of weak politics and religion. His view is at odds with dominant interpretations of secularization as an exit from religion (Bruce, Gauchet) or as the interplay between the transformation of religion and the partial exit from it (Taylor). Vattimo’s interpretation echoes a long-­standing reflection in Western and Christian tradition on the tension between spiritual life and worldly power, Christianity as religion of love and Christendom as religion of power.35 Secularization represents, for Vattimo, the gradual separation of the religion of love from the religion of power, and of Christianity from metaphysics. Far from representing the exit from religion, secularization is the fulfilment of its original significance, the historical opportunity for the renewal of a Christianity centred on its essential message: caritas (love, charity). Secularization is an internal Christian affair – it is the weakening of Christianity. Secularization-­as-weakening is the historical process whereby Christianity reveals its non-­violent essence and original message as love, replacing the metaphysical quest for ultimate truth and reality. The key of this reading of the emergence of a “weak religion” centred on caritas is, for Vattimo, the central event of Christianity – Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as an act of supreme love. The development of secularization brings to realization the significance of its central event – God’s loving self-­sacrifice on the cross – by gradually undoing two “alliances”: the Constantine alliance with imperial political power and the theological alliance with metaphysics. God’s self-­sacrifice “explodes” metaphysics and the link between community building and violence as it replaces an almighty and revengeful God with its opposite: a vulnerable and doubtful god who gives up his power and sovereignty out of love for mortal human beings. Vattimo’s reading of the central event of Christianity builds on Girard’s anthropology of religion, the sacred, and violence (Girard 1987, 1991). Girard famously develops two theses that are of interest for us: (i) the role of the scapegoat mechanism in traditional communities; and (ii) the world-­historical significance of Christ’s self-­sacrifice for overcoming the violence central to traditional communities by opening up the perspective of a radically non-­violent community.



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(i) First, by means of a wide-­ranging comparative analysis, Girard argues that traditional communities control the perils of the irruption of unlimited and destructive violence by means of setting up scapegoat mechanisms and rituals. Traditional communities are based on the “hidden truth” of the ritualization of violence necessary to domesticate it, and construct bonds among its members (Girard 1987, 1999). The cyclical acts whereby a person or a group is turned into a sacred scapegoat – into a target condensing impurity, guilt, evilness, etc. – are ritualized ways of preventing violence and keeping it in check: exerting violence against the scapegoat is the price of building and keeping safe a community from its mimetic rivalries. This process of sacralization that controls violence by way of violence has a crucial political significance, as it binds together community members, and is enforced by the powers that be. (ii) Girard’s second thesis grants an epochal significance to Christianity. Christian religion is unique in posing at its centre a sacrifice meant to overcome the scapegoat mechanism and the sacrificial logic that supports the powers that be. In the innovative Christian narrative, the scapegoat (Christ) is devoid of the ambivalent attributes of the sacred in traditional communities: he is neither impure nor guilty. Quite to the contrary, the scapegoat is absolutely pure and innocent – he is the innocent lamb. As a result, his crucifixion reveals and leads to the condemnation of the unjust nature of the violence of the sacrifice and the powers enacting it. Christ’s sacrifice is thus foundational for a new type of community; it has a revolutionary significance as it opens up a new logic and promise: the overcoming of sacrificial violence, and the creation of a radically non-­violent community. Girard does not deny the conspicuous fact that the history of Christianity has been marked by violence: some of the worst atrocities were enacted in the name of Christ. Yet Christianity has the great merit of putting at work an alternative logic of non-­violence and love, an anarchic seed that has the effect of (potentially) subverting the violence of the existing powers (Girard 2008).36 In the present “secular” age, this Christian logic is more relevant than ever, regardless of whether its Christian nature is recognized or not (ibid.). Human beings can “choose” to carry on with the mimetic rivalry and the violence against scapegoats or it can choose to be inspired by the Christian promise of a non­violent community. Vattimo’s view of secularization and Christianity draws imaginatively on Girard’s theses (Vattimo and Girard 2010). The significance and specificity of Western history as shaped by Christianity is, for both, the (imperfect) emancipation from the bond between sacred, violence, and community. For Vattimo, the violence of sacralization (Girard) is akin to the violence of metaphysics: they both rely on analogous “strong structures” and power mechanisms. For both, the Christian event of God’s self-­sacrifice unveils and overcoming the economy of sacrificial violence. As Vattimo points out, “Christ himself is the unmasker, and […] the unmasking inaugurated by him […] is the meaning of the history of salvation itself ” (Vattimo 2005: 66, 1999; Depoortere 2008). However, while Girard’s theory centres on anthropological notions (sacred, the scapegoat mechanism, mimetic rivalry), Vattimo reflects on the Christian moment by reinterpreting the heritage of Christian theology and philosophy (Depoortere 2008; Zabala 2007; Vattimo 1999, 2007). In Belief (1999), After Christianity (2002), and After the Death of God (2007),37 Vattimo interprets the incarnation and God’s loving sacrifice through the

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closely related notion of kenosis, a term used in the Bible to refer to the “self-­emptying” of Christ (Philippians 2:7) (Vattimo 1999; Harris 2015).38 The Christ’s incarnation as kenosis has, for Vattimo, wide-­ranging consequences. Incarnation is a sacrifice, interpreted as “God’s renunciation of his own sovereign transcendence” (Vattimo, 2005: 51, 1999, 2002, 2007).39 The incarnation of God and his death anticipate what Nietzsche calls “the death of God”: God dies as Being and source of Absolute Power and Knowledge, as well as his Otherness and Transcendence. The “death of God” refers to the incarnation, the kenosis with which Paul alludes to the “emptying out of itself ” accomplished by the divine verbum that has lowered itself to the human condition in order to die on the cross (Vattimo 2007; Depoortere 2008).40 The self-­sacrificial “lowering” whereby God gives up his absolute power and transcendence and turns into a weak mortal is, for Vattimo, fundamental for understanding revelation as a hermeneutic process, as it anticipates the vision of a democratic community of interpreters (Vattimo 2005: 59; Vattimo and Zabala 2011). The kenosis is the act in which God turned everything over to human beings: the power and the production of meaning are handed over to human beings. The secularization-­as-weakening of Christianity is the realization of the kenosis as an act of caritas or love, and of giving up sovereign power and the authority over Truth, and acknowledging the plurality of interpretations. The “unveiling” of the Christian message opens up the possibility of hermeneutics as weak thought as well as that of a post-­foundational “community of interpreters” (religious or political). In short, secularization-­as-weakening is the unfolding of the message of the kenosis of God whereby he shows his love for his creatures by emptying himself of his power and authority, and by calling us to be friends rather than masters or servants.

c  Emancipation, nihilism, and post-­foundational democracy Vattimo’s genealogy of weak thought does not claim to be a neutral analysis; it regards itself, as we’ve pointed out, a testimony within a specific context; furthermore, it is a performative intervention in the current context, a plea for the transformative weakening of religion and politics (Vattimo and Zabala 2011). In contrast to the mainstream secularist account that either opposes or categorically separates the domain of politics from faith, the secular from the religious, there is for Vattimo a profound continuity between religious and political emancipation: both are analysed in close connection to the secularization-­as-weakening. Weak thought aims to severe the bond between religious life and metaphysics (and the metaphysics-­related structures of domination). This leads Vattimo to a critical approach to religion, in particular to Christianity and the Church (in particular with Catholicism). As a Catholic himself, Vattimo is concerned with the authoritarianism of the Church, which is illustrated by a theology imbued with metaphysical claims, and backed by a strongly hierarchical power structure. Vattimo argues that “the Christian church, being the head of the Roman Empire, could not abandon this structure of power and was not able to develop all the antimetaphysical implications of Christianity” (Vattimo 2005: 62). He takes, for instance, on the position of the Catholic Church on sexual ethics (namely, the prohibition of homosexual acts and the use of artificial contraception), medical and



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bio-­ethics (namely, prohibitions against euthanasia and stem-­cell research) an example of arguments based on metaphysical grounds. In Vattimo’s view, we do not have access to anything like the universal and eternal nature that works as a foundation of sexual ethics. Likewise, God is not an absolute sovereign who legislates about eternal ethical truths and rules to be enforced by his powerful representatives on earth (the Church, the monarch, the priests). This religious metaphysics is misleading and also pernicious given that it legitimizes the exclusion of and violence against sexual minorities. The weakening of religion entails its severance from the metaphysics of truth and mechanisms of domination and marginalization. Vattimo’s alternative religious community is one of “half-­ believers” that gives up the fixation with absolute truths and power, and lives charitably. As Vattimo states: (t)he traditional Aristotelian slogan “amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas” can no longer hold good for Christians. A character in Dostoevsky says, if I had to choose between Christ and truth, I would choose Christ. But the alternative vanishes if we grant all the consequences of the biblical message. The truth that, according to Jesus, shall make us free is not the objective truth of science or even that of theology: likewise, the Bible is not a cosmological treatise or a handbook of anthropology or theology. The scriptural revelation was not delivered to give us knowledge of how we are, what God is like, what the “natures” of things or the laws of geometry are, and so on, as if we could be saved through the “knowledge” of truth. The only truth revealed to us by Scripture, the one that can never be demythologized in the course of time – since it is not an experimental, logical, or metaphysical statement but a call to practice – is the truth of love, of charity. (Vattimo 2005: 50) Vattimo’s idea of weak religion has been interpreted as involving its privatization (Rorty 2005: 77). In Rorty’s reading of Vattimo, the weakening of religion is meant to emancipate the domain of politics from the domain of religious needs that are, by nature, private (see above Section 1). This reading is, we suggest, misleading. Rorty projects on Vattimo’s weak thought his dichotomist view of religion and politics, whereby religious experience attends to needs of personal self-­creation that are not publicly relevant. Yet Vattimo neither proposes the privatization of religion nor a clear-­cut separation between religion and politics. Religion can legitimately play a public role in democracy when it becomes weak or secularized. Weakening is not privatizing: as we’ve pointed out, what is crucial for Vattimo’s transformative conception is severing religion from metaphysics and the correlate power mechanisms, and not to exclude religion from the public sphere or the domain of the political. As long as religion is secularized or weakened, its manifestations (symbols, values, arguments) can be part of public life and the democratic conversation. Consider Vattimo’s approach to religious symbols. For him, displaying the crucifix in public institutions in Italy is legitimate because the symbol has been secularized. The crucifix has become a cultural symbol severed from strong religious identities and metaphysical beliefs. In contrast, wearing the chador is questionable: it is connected to an affirmation of strong identity as opposed to a shared cultural and political belonging (Harris 2015).

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There is a deep continuity between weak religion and post-­foundational democracy. Secularization-­as-weakening has a political significance since it opens up the possibility of emancipation as a freeing from the bond between metaphysics and power, truth and violence (Vattimo and Zabala 2011). Vattimo states: I have the tendency now to bring back all these (metaphysical) stories to the relations of power, which is not, I think, a case of ingenuous naive Marxism, but it is a matter of considering the ancient society in which just a small group of people had power and the others were slaves. Metaphysics has survived because (and together with) the ancient structure of “power” has survived. (Vattimo, 2005: 62; Vattimo and Zabala 2011) The historical process of weakening Christianity is meant to inspire and connect to an alternative politics of nihilism as emancipation. At first sight, bringing together emancipation and postmodern nihilism is a contradiction in terms. But emancipation is, for Vattimo, nihilistic to the extent that it affirms a free and creative life liberated from metaphysics and the correlative structures of domination (Vattimo 1988a, 2004). Vattimo’s “postmodern nihilism” is a critical reformulation of Nietzsche’s view devoid of the elitist celebration of the will to power (Vattimo 1988, 2004); it is at the core of his democratic egalitarianism. Vattimo outlines this view by critically reinterpreting Nietzsche’s contrast between life-­denying and life-­affirming nihilism. Nietzsche famously distinguishes between two types of nihilism: reactive nihilism as the expression of the incapacity to affirm life in its exuberant plurality, differences, and inequalities. The paradigmatic example of this life-­denying nihilism is the Judeo-­Christian metaphysics, and its modern offspring (democracy, liberalism, socialism) that conceal the “natural inequalities” amongst human beings (Nietzsche 2006; Deleuze 1983). This homogenizing vision is rooted in the negative emotions (resentment, envy) of the weak, namely of those incapable of affirming power, creativity, and plurality; incapable of affirmation, the weak regiment, equalize, control, and undermine life by ingenious inventions (God, humility, sin, guilt, democratic equality, compassion, pity). Nietzsche’s proclamation “God is dead” does not stand for the emancipation from the illusion of religion and the unveiling of an objective reality and truth, but signals the emancipation from negative nihilism represented by Christian civilization of the West. Freed from God as the creator and ultimate source of power and meaning, we finally become our own creators. Affirmative nihilism is the liberation of the human potential from those (metaphysical-­religious, -political, -moral) perspectives that undermine life. Not all human beings are, however, capable of assuming the death of the Christian God: democratic equality is the offspring of Christianity (we are all equal in front of God) and is the metaphysical illusion of the weak. From Nietzsche’s elitist perspective, only a few – Nietzsche’s (in)famous overmen – are capable of this difficult freedom: those who have the will to power and strength to affirm creativity, plurality and, whenever necessary, engage in conflict. Nietzsche’s conception is critical of the fixation on objective truth and reality, yet it runs the risk of reproducing it under the form of metaphysics of power (Heidegger 1991). This Heideggerian reading and objection to Nietzsche leads Vattimo to a postmodern reformulation of nihilism. This postmodern version is a democratic idea based



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on the rejection on the intimate connection between metaphysical and political authoritarianism; nihilism resides in overcoming strong discourses and the corresponding power practices, and affirming a plurality of interpretations and lifestyles (Vattimo 1997). Emancipation and freedom are not the result of fulfilling the real essence of human beings, given that there is no such essence. Being free does not depend on a hidden and mysterious essence that we need to fulfil. Vattimo’s nihilistic affirmation of life is more like staying at the “surface of things”. The world is this surface. And being free is living in this world-­as-surface: like an acrobat, the freeman makes use of and plays creatively with the ropes and devices provided by our community and context (Vattimo 1992; one recognizes here the similarity with Rorty’s postmodern emphasis on self-­creation; see above, Section 1). This conception claims to be radically democratic and pluralistic in that it delegitimizes as arbitrary and authoritarian any attempt to impose one interpretation of the “nature” of emancipation and freedom even in the “thin” version of Habermas’ or Rawls’ rationalism. The philosopher is not the “guardian of reason” in the public sphere (Habermas), but a participant in the conversation with other free community members. Like Rorty, Vattimo argues that the “responsibility of the philosopher” (Vattimo 2010) is bringing community members back to the historicity and diversity of their perspectives, and thus participating in and maintaining the “conversation of mankind” (Vattimo and Zabala 2011: 105; Rorty 1999). Most recently, Vattimo has developed his idea of post-­foundational democracy as “hermeneutic communism” (Vattimo and Zabala 2011). Vattimo was a Marxist in his youth, yet he gradually moved away from it due to its authoritarian and violent consequences (Vattimo and Paterlini 2009). This disenchantment drove him towards developing his hermeneutics in the direction of weakening metaphysical strong structures of all forms, including Marxist “ultimate truths”. In contrast to classic Marxist scientism, hermeneutic communism gives up the objectivistic notion of truth and reality in favour of caritas lived in a community of interpreters. The agents of this new democratic communism are, for Vattimo and Zabala, the weak or the “losers” of history; the weak are now under the dominance of the alliance between global capitalism and neoliberalism with its claims to scientificity, universal rationality, and progress (Vattimo and Zabala 2011). While Marx claimed to overcome Christianity as a form of alienation through “scientific” communism, Vattimo retrieves the connection between the Christian revolution and communism (Vattimo 2000). Communism understood as a non-­violent “community of interpreters” is the coming of age of secular Christianity: caritas replaces Marx’s deterministic laws of history as the core of the new communist society. There is, for Vattimo, no internal dynamic, no laws of human history, “only the hope that love may prevail” (Rorty 2005: 35). The idea of communist democracy is a Romantic utopia (Vattimo and Zabala 2011) – the continuation of the weakening of religion and politics – the growth of the seed planted by the kenotic event of God’s sacrifice of Jesus. The communist society does not spring from the laws of history and is not fixated on ideological certitudes; it is instead a non-­violent community living in difference and caritas.

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d  Difficulties of weak thought Vattimo’s plea for weakening is attractive in an age where religious absolutism and nationalist-­populist metaphysics (the ideology based on the belief that the People/Nation is the ultimate source of truth) are on the rise. Weak thought is rightly suspicious of metaphysical claims of access to ultimate reality and truth, and their link to political and religious practices legitimizing exclusion and violence. Vattimo can provide a useful counterweight to views of politics that overlook or downplay the interpretability of beliefs and the socio-­ historical nature of rationality and dialogue (e.g. the neo-­Kantian conceptions of Rawls and Habermas). Moreover, his transformative view of democratic politics and religion overcomes Rawls’ artificial methodological restraint that rigidly circumscribes the domain of the political as distinct from religion, and imaginatively revisits the relation between Christianity, postmodern nihilism, and communism. Vattimo’s original theory of secularization and weak religion centred on caritas is, further, evocative when strong religious hierarchies have largely lost their credit: by placing caritas at its centre, weak thought can appeal to Christians and non-­Christians, believers and atheists alike. Vattimo’s postmodern nihilism raises, nonetheless, interpretative and normative interrogations at the religious and the political level: we suggest, first, that Vattimo advances a new and questionable grand narrative (i); second, that weak thought has ambivalent and indeterminate implications for rethinking weak religion and politics (ii–iii). (i) To begin with, it is ironical that, while Vattimo has spent a great deal of his intellectual life in criticizing grand narratives and championing philosophy as an “adventure of difference”, he has ended up proposing one. Vattimo’s interpretation of secularization as an internal Christian affair appears as a grand narrative that is over-­speculative and parochial (see Introduction). Christ’s self-­sacrifice is, in this vision, a strong foundational event that explains the specificity of the West and grounds its general significance. By means of a giant hermeneutic leap, Vattimo posits that the gradual unfolding of the meaning of this foundational event results in the age of interpretation. Despite the emphasis on the eventfulness of history (Vattimo and Zabala 2011), this reading echoes a familiar teleological saga centred on the West: the telos is gradually unveiled during the Western history by means of the development of the original essence of Christianity as caritas. Vattimo strikingly claims: “The essence of the [Christian] revelation is reduced to charity, while all the rest is left to the non-­finality of diverse historical experiences” (Vattimo 2005: 77). Weak thought is thus the culmination of the process of “cleansing” the essence of Christianity of the “external” layers of historical experience. This reading echoes a familiar Western parochialism: the secularized Christianity developed in the West has pre-­eminence over other (non)religious voices as the real ground of post-­foundational democracy and religion. Vattimo strikingly claims that Christianity provides our “only chance for survival”. He states: “We cannot not call ourselves Christians” because in a world where God is dead – where the metanarratives have been dissolved and all authority has fortunately been demythologized, including that of “objective” knowledge – our only chance of human survival rests in the Christian commandment of charity. (Vattimo 2005: 53–54)41



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Vattimo’s grand narrative assuming that secularization is a “logical” development within Christianity overlooks, further, that secularization is a struggle against Christianity as well. Secularization involves both the transformation of Christianity and the exit from it. Secularization in the West is, moreover, a multi-­causal process, and not merely an inner-­religious one (Taylor 2007a; Asad 2003). Secularization is not specific to the West (or the Christian West): even if secularism has been theorized and developed most fully in the West, processes of secularization are characteristic of the non-­Western world as well. As Olivier Roy argues, secularization is an important trait in the history of Muslim societies, developing independently of Western modernization and the Enlightenment (Roy 2007); likewise, Amartya Sen points to different secular political-­religious arrangements in the history of India (Sen 2006, 2009: Chapters 1 and 7). The pre-­eminence of Christianity is questionable also in relation to anti-­foundationalism as the key to his epistemology and democratic politics. In his debate with Rorty, Vattimo defends his focus on the Christian religion: the critique of foundationalism cannot occur in abstract, but grows on the specific Christian soil.42 This argument from anti-­ foundationalism runs, at a conceptual level, into a genetic fallacy as it collapses the difference between the context of emergence and the context of justification.43 Moreover, there is no reason to believe that the critique of the claim to have access to the absolute truth can be pursued only from within the Christian context. Instances of radical epistemic scepticism can be encountered independently of the Christian context, such as in Ancient Greece, India, and China. (ii) Like Rorty, Vattimo is concerned with religious absolutist claims, and their potential pernicious moral-­political effects.44 But the implications of weak thought for the religion-­politics nexus are indeterminate and ambivalent. First, despite the secularization of Christianity, the vision of a weak Christianity remains a philosophical exercise far-­off from the way people generally experience religion. Discarding central religious concerns and anxieties – e.g. is God real or not? Does Allah exist? Did Christ actually resurrect after three days? and so on – as metaphysical and thus flawed is far from the common religious experience.45 The separation between the experience of God as caritas and the question of his real existence strikes as adequate for academic conferences or, maybe, for a small circle of believers. Even in the exceptionally secularized context of Europe (Davie 2000), many people who are neither “hot believers” nor even occasional religious participants still believe in the reality of spiritual life, energy, or divine entities. It is unlikely that more than a few believers would be driven and motivated to create a religious community on account of such an intellectualized view of religious experience. And it is equally unlikely that democratic nation-­states (the predominant democratic form today) would be feasible without the belief in the existence of national and religious realities that unite the community members. Vattimo’s weak thought is meant to be more inclusive and pluralistic than the mainstream liberal approach; yet it is unclear whether the result of the over-­intellectualized vision of weak religion fosters more inclusiveness and recognition of plurality of interpretations. This concern emerges with regards to his approach to emancipation and democracy. Methodologically, this approach lacks a comparative perspective that seriously takes into consideration the voice of others. He does not conceive pluralistic democracy as a meeting point among a plurality of voices, but as an experience internal to Christian

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history. From a comparative viewpoint, other religious and philosophical discourses can inspire a radically tolerant and non-­violent politics: consider Buddhism as a source of inspiration of Aśoka’s non-­violent politics (Sen 2005, 2009) or – if we are to grant caritas such a key role – consider Mo Tzu’s utopian philosophy of universal or undifferentiated love ( jiān ài). The difficulty of Vattimo’s weak thought with acknowledging pluralism emerges also in the rare moments when Vattimo reflects on concrete conflicts involving religion. Take the example of religious symbols. We’ve seen that, for Vattimo, displaying the cross in Italy is not problematic any longer since the crucifix has been secularized, and is now part of Italy’s cultural heritage. This is not, he continues, the case with wearing an Islamic dress (e.g. the chador), which is expressive of a strong identity and, thus, undermines the ideal of a democratic “community of interpreters”. Women who wear this veil and those who support them are, Vattimo argues, incapable of reading “the signs of the times”. Wearing the chador is “an affirmation of a strong identity” (Vattimo 2002a: 101), which is interconnected to metaphysics and authoritarianism. Weak thought allows only for the expression of non-­authoritarian, weak identities; from this perspective, it should not be legally permitted to express strong identities through dress codes. Vattimo’s argument contrasting the two types of symbols – Christian (secularized, cultural) and Muslim (unmodernized, deeply religious) is commonplace in the European public sphere. At the level of the European Court of Human Rights, the final decision in Lautsi v. Italy (2011) establishes that the obligation Italian public schools have to display the crucifix is compatible with the European Convention; this is, in part, because of being secularized, that is a “passive symbol” pertaining to the Italian culture. In striking contrast, in a long series of rulings starting with Dahlab v. Switzerland (1990), the European Court has supported the ban on wearing the veil in different environments (schools, Universities, hospitals, etc.). This preferential treatment of Christian majorities over Muslim minorities is democratically problematic. Vattimo’s argument is a version and the echo of this double standard approach. Vattimo’s specific argument from weak/strong identities does not obtain: First, women wear the veil or the chador for a variety of reasons, and not necessarily in relation to a “strong religion” or a metaphysical stand. Conversely, the claim that placing the cross on the walls of a public school is acceptable given that it’s a secular-­cultural symbol part of a broader heritage is questionable, in particular in countries like Italy, where the Catholic Church has an active impact in the private and socio-­political sphere. Thus, for a significant number of people, the crucifix remains a religious symbol.46 Second, it is not only that the metaphysical claims and strong identities per se are not authoritarian, but it is not up to states, judges, and tribunals to evaluate the metaphysical nature of beliefs. State institutions and authorities are not in the business of deciding matters that are open to technical philosophical debates – namely whether an identity is based on metaphysical assumptions or not. Even if we suppose that there is a transparent way to establish this, a state that does not allow practices because they are metaphysical verges on authoritarianism. Ironically, weak thought may thus lead to intolerance and strong exclusions. In fact, some beliefs deserve respect and protection precisely because they are rooted in strong identities. To illustrate, by the standards of Vattimo’s postmodern critique, the belief in sacred sites of the Aboriginal people in Australia is metaphysical (since it assumes a spiritual



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reality). Yet the protection of these sacred sites is vital for the maintenance of dignity and the freedom of religion of the long-­oppressed Aboriginals. The role of the courts in such cases is to respect and protect the rights and dignity of the Aboriginals, and not to evaluate whether their beliefs are metaphysical or not. Banning or disrespecting religious manifestations because they give expression to strong identities and metaphysical beliefs is undesirable and counterproductive. Religious or spiritual people often make claims for recognition of their symbols or practices as deeply religious or spiritual; conditioning the acceptance of their claims on whether they are culturalized or not is potentially disrespectful to their concerns in the first place: the Aboriginals demand respect for their sacred sites because of the active role they play in their lives. In sum, weak thought seems too unspecified and ambivalent to provide a proper understanding of the principles of equality and justice for a modern, pluralistic society. Vattimo’s caritas may drive private ethical options and social enterprises and thus contribute to a democratic ethos (Chapter 1, Section 3), yet it is too scarce a motivational resource to provide a key to shaping and regulating politics in large, complex societies. Weak thought gestures towards hermeneutic communism, but it lacks the reflection the positive principles and concrete economico-­political mechanisms that regulate a radically alternative society. Rather than caritas, we should mainly expect justice from the institutions of society, namely a “system” of rules and practices that allows and enhance the flourishing of a plurality of weak and strong beliefs.

Brief conclusion Under the influence of postmodernism, Rorty and Vattimo articulate a philosophy aiming to discard any version of foundationalism, including that of the post-­Kantian projects of taking public reason as the ground that secures political consensus (Chapters 1, 2, and 3). Vattimo’s hermeneutics and Rorty’s pragmatism as shaped are spot-­on in moving beyond Rawls’ methodological restraint47 so as to tackle comprehensive doctrines, and the entanglement between religion and authoritarian practices. They also articulate a suggestive philosophy of religion that claims to sever the relation between the spiritual-­ religious search and the exaltation of ultimate non-­human/transcendent power.48 If we admit that philosophy has an edifying function (Nagel 2009), Rorty’s Romantic polytheism and Vattimo’s weak thought can be, for some, an original and inspiring vision. In times when religion is often associated with violence and domination, Rorty reminds us of the affinity between religion and poetry, spiritual search and charity. Rorty constructs an appealing humanism centred on human solidary and avoidance of authoritarianism and violence, one that is not fixated on the secular/religious dichotomy. But Rorty replaces Vattimo’s Christianity as a “total context” with ethnocentrism and replaces Rawls’ idealized consensus with an ethnocentric consensus. Rorty’s strategy of privatizing religion is based on an aestheticization of religion (religion as a question of “musical ear”) and a questionable “theory” of needs that ultimately reformulate parts of the old secularist narrative. His strategy of privatization based on the dichotomy between private and public needs, self-­creation and social coordination reflects a cultural trend in the West rather than a Western-­ethnocentric consensus. Privatization is not inferable from the desideratum of disentangling religion from power politics and the current over-­politicization; likewise,

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Rorty’s plea for the enlargement of the ethnocentric consensus is not inferable from the desideratum of open conversation beyond secular/religious authoritarian and conversation­stopping strategies. The conversation between different cultural and religious persons and groups may actually lead to the correction of ethnocentric biases. Vattimo ventures into territories left uncharted by the public reason approach. In his later writings, Vattimo’s trajectory comes full circle bringing together weak thought, Christianity, and communist democracy. Vattimo envisages a new “pact” between a transformed Christianity and democracy, secularized religion and communist politics. Nonetheless, his imaginative synthesis remains too speculative and unpractical. Secularization has complex historical and sociological causes that cannot be traced back to the unfolding of the significance of a single event. Political philosophy must overcome methodological parochialism: it is ironical that this archenemy of grand Western narratives has ended up proposing a new one. Weak thought is too abstract to provide a general orientation for religious and economic-­political experience at a large scale. Vattimo’s criticism of the metaphysical beliefs that plague religious and economic-­political practice is suggestive, but the concrete consequences of Vattimo’s hermeneutics are ambivalent or vague. Vattimo’s interpretation is appealing to the extent that it taps in an older tension between the Christianity of love and the Christendom, and emphasizes the relevance of genealogical investigations into moral-­political reason. Vattimo’s weak thought may thus be inspirational for some left-­wing Christians who long for a non-­violent overcoming of the capitalist society. Nonetheless, the “derivability” of postmodern nihilism from the essence of Christianity requires quite a leap of imagination. Vattimo’s vision centred on non-­violence and love remains no less speculative than Žižek’s and Agamben’s exaltation of a violent Christian­like (or Messianic) event meant to destroy capitalism. The consequences of Vattimo’s weak thought for politics are, to an important extent, either too indeterminate or misleading; despite his politics of non-­violence, weak thought can lead to intolerance towards those who have strong beliefs. As we’ve pointed out, weak beliefs can be discriminatory and exclusivist, and strong beliefs are not necessarily fundamentalist or discriminatory. People motivated by strong identities, beliefs rather than postmodern half-­beliefs, may be needed to seriously challenge the destructive dimension of global capitalist arrangements. However, the democratic state should not be the arbiter of identity that actively undermines strong identities but should respect religious freedom and difference.

Notes   1 Some authors speak of a postmodern political philosophy (White 2011), but this remains highly contested given the diversity of stands advocated by the so-­called postmodern thinkers. From our perspective, it is more convincing to speak of the influence of postmodernism on some political philosophers rather than of a specific political theory on a par with liberalism, communism, or republicanism.   2 Radical relativism is not a trait of the usual suspects associated with postmodernism (Nietzsche, Derrida, the later Foucault, Slotedijk, Vattimo) but rather a polemic label used in academic wars.   3 E.g. all versions of the correspondence theory of truth or, more generally, of any claim to have a direct access to reality.   4 Rorty uses Donald Davidson’s term “conceptual scheme” as well (Rorty 1991a, 2009).



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  5 “Metaphysics” is polysemic concept with a complex history. Vattimo and Rorty use it in a negative sense (see Chapter 1); for an alternative positive use of metaphysics in relation to religion and law, see Dworkin (2013). Dworkin argues that religion is valuable in virtue of its “metaphysical core” (2013; see Introduction).   6 In a different text, Rorty argues: nobody is under any constraint to seek Truth, nor to care, whether the earth revolves around the sun or conversely. Scientific theories become, as do theological and philosophical ones, optional tools for the facilitation of individual or social projects. Scientists thereby lose the position they inherited from the monotheistic priesthood, as the people who pay proper tribute to the authority of something “not ourselves”. (Rorty 2009: 40; see also 76; 152)   7 One of Rorty’s famous papers is suggestively titled “The Priority of Democracy over Philosophy” (Rorty 1991a: 175–196).   8 Rorty does not claim to infer his political view from his epistemological critique. The role of philosophy is not to provide foundations, but to improve self-­descriptions: the claim that liberal culture needs an improved self-­description rather than a set of foundations. The idea that it ought to have foundations was a result of Enlightenment scientism, which was in turn a survival of the religious need to have human projects underwritten by a nonhuman authority. (Rorty 2009: 51)   9 Rorty aims to fuse pragmatism and Romanticism: At the heart of pragmatism is the refusal to accept the correspondence theory of truth and the idea that true beliefs are accurate representations of reality. At the heart of romanticism is the thesis of the priority of imagination over reason – the claim that reason can only follow paths that the imagination has broken. These two movements are both reactions against the idea that there is something non-­human out there with which human beings need to get in touch. (Rorty 2009: 105) 10 In speaking about avoiding harm and suffering, Rorty does not rely on a universalist anthropology of the human. 11 Rorty does not rule out that there are secular conversation-­stoppers as well; his point is that arguments in a democratic conversation should be political. See later. 12 As Rorty states, “(t)he search for private perfection, pursued by theists and atheists alike, is neither trivial nor, in a pluralistic democracy, relevant to public policy” (1999: 170). 13 Rorty’s privatization thesis is different from the (ideal-­typical) French laicism (Chapter 4). For laicism, the privatization of religion is necessary in order to create a homogenous public sphere free of religious divisions, and where republican values and virtues reign above any particular allegiance. From a Rortyan perspective, laicism is a version of foundationalism that undercuts polyphonic conversation. 14 Rorty is, at times, against religion when centred on faith in Transcendence or a nonhuman force. For instance, he states: We think otherworldliness dangerous because, as John Dewey put it, “Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing”. (“A Common Faith”, in Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 9, [Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986], 31, apud Rorty 2005: 40–41, n. 2) 15 Rorty’s anti-­clericalism is the heir of the Enlightenment criticism of clerical power. For a historical survey of anti-­clericalism that traces the critique of clericalism before the Enlightenment as well, see Sánchez (1972). 16 At times he speaks of the desirability of the disappearance of institutionalized religion as such (Rorty 2005: 40–41, n. 2). 17 He continues: “[…]as long as ecclesiastical institutions do not attempt to rally the faithful behind political proposals and as long as believers and unbelievers agree to follow a policy of live and let live” (Rorty 2005: 33).

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18 This stance is a reflection of the Western context, and is not based on a general theory of human needs; proposing such a theory would be a foundationalist gesture. 19 In Cultural Politics, Rorty states: “So the attempt, by Tillich and others, to treat religious faith as ‘symbolic’, and thereby to treat religion as poetic and poetry as religious, and neither as competing with science, is on the right track” (Rorty 2009: 102). 20 The idea of self-­creation is a topos among the thinkers considered postmodernists (e.g. Foucault). 21 Even fewer Amer­icans would probably agree with Rorty’s claims that questions such as “Does God exist?” “Is there salvation?” are hopeless metaphysical questions that should be abandoned. Rorty’s version of religion is highly intellectualized (see our critical remarks on Vattimo as well). 22 For Rorty, privatizing religion is worthwhile, since it contributes to human happiness. This utilitarian view of religion, construes the religious phenomenon in a limited way: it focuses on the role of religion as a pursuit of happiness at the expense of the understanding of religion as a quest for meaning (Smith 2005). 23 There is a deep tension in Rorty’s conception: politics is about piecemeal changes anchored in common-­sense beliefs emerged in liberal countries. On the other hand, his bourgeois-­liberal ideal aiming to privatize religion and bracketing the question of the existence of God and moral values is at odds with the “common sense” of most of his compatriots. 24 Religious beliefs and practices are, moreover, not isolated expressions of personal taste, but have content by virtue of inferential relations to other beliefs; it is hard to disengage them from that interlocking web of beliefs without rendering them meaningless and vacuous (Frankenberry 2014: 208). 25 The merits and limits of Rorty’s view are given by the fact that he generalizes on account of a specific context, namely the right-­wing politicization of religion in the US in the past decades. 26 Broadly speaking, the politicization of religion refers to the sustained direct interventions of religious forces in political power game; or, conversely, to the systematic instrumentalization of religion by political forces. We agree with Rorty that the problem is not “public religion” per se, but authoritarianism in all its forms, whether they are religious or secular. 27 Criticizing privatization as a general strategy does not mean that we are against privatization in all contexts. Here we express doubts about privatization as a general strategy. 28 Pew Research Center, April 2, 2015 (2015a), “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050”. 29 For some liberals, exporting the liberal-­bourgeois values may be against those very values. These liberals would point out that the normative conclusion to draw from the liberal understanding of toleration is that liberals should not impose/export their way of life on others. From this perspective, Rorty’s view could be associated with a comprehensive liberalism. 30 As Cooke further observes, in his radically contexualist view, there is no perspective from which the rationality offundamental shifts in vocabulary could be assessed. Presumably, therefore, his efforts to get us to revise our normative intuitions and expectations should be seen as poetic rather than political, as appealing to our imaginative as opposed to rational capacities. (Cooke 2006b: 29) 31 This is Vattimo’s own phrase (2005). 32 For more details on the complexity of the sources and influences on Vattimo’s thought, see Borradori 1987–1988; Zabala 2007; Vattimo and Zabala 2011. 33 This argument echoes Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1956).  34 Vattimo’s return to writing on religion was gradual, comprising only brief mentions in his works in the late 1980s, but appearing prominently in the 1990s. 35 This tension has sometimes been presented as the difference between the God of Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. 36 The following passage condenses Girard’s view of the world-­historical significance of the sacrifice of Jesus. He argues: if the powers, meaning the powers of this world, had known what would happen, they would have never crucified the Lord of Glory – because it meant their destruction.



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Because when you crucify the Lord of Glory, the trick of the powers, which is the scapegoat mechanism, is revealed. To show the crucifixion as the killing of an innocent victim is to show the collective murder and to make it possible for people to understand that it is a mimetic phenomenon. Therefore the powers are ultimately going to perish from this truth. And all of history is simply the realization of this prophecy. Those who say that Christianity is anarchistic are somewhat right. The Christians are destroying the powers of this world, in the sense that they are destroying the legitimacy of all violence. From the point of view of the State, Christianity is a force of anarchy. (Girard 2008: 25) It is probably significant to note that Girard is, like Vattimo, a Catholic believer. 37 Vattimo’s notion of secularization as the “self-­weakening” of Christianity is centred on kenosis and caritas. Vattimo argues that kenosis is the abasement of God, and act of caritas or godly love. This can be understood as him emptying himself of power and of otherness (Philippians 2:7), or as Christ calling humans to be friends rather than servants (John 15:15). Again utilizing theological terminology, Vattimo regards “salvation” as reinterpreting Jesus’ words, and that we now feel free to reinterpret his words is evidence of salvation manifesting through history. 38 Kenosis comes from the verb kenóo (I empty). Vattimo refers to a variety of biblical passages in support of his understanding of kenosis. He quotes Hebrews 1:1–2 in Beyond Interpretation in one of the earlier extended pieces of writing in his return to religion (Vattimo 1997). 39 Marcel Gauchet also argues that there is an “essential” relationship between Christianity and secularization, but interprets it differently. The Christian religious matrix contains the seed of secularization as its own demise: in Gauchet’s famous formulation, Christianity is “religion of the exit from religion” (Gauchet 1999). 40 We cannot enter all the details of Vattimo’s philosophical history of secularization. It is noteworthy that a key element in the history of Christian secularization-­as-weakening is the introduction of the principle of interiority. Vattimo states: According to Dilthey, it is the advent of Christianity that makes possible the progressive dissolution of metaphysics that, from his perspective, culminates in Kant but that is also Nietzsche’s nihilism and Heidegger’s end of metaphysics. Christianity introduces into the world the principle of interiority, on the basis of which “objective” reality gradually loses its preponderant weight. What Nietzsche’s statement that “there are no facts, only interpretations” and Heidegger’s hermeneutic ontology actually do is to draw the extreme consequences from this principle. So the relationship between modern hermeneutics and the history of Christianity is not limited to the fact that reflection on interpretation has an essential nexus with the reading of biblical texts, as has often been observed. (Vattimo 2005: 46–47) 41 Here Vattimo comments on a 1942 pamphlet by Benedetto Croce; the words “We cannot not call ourselves Christians” are Croce’s. 42 It is true that what philosophers take as “pure” reasons and justifications can be conditioned by specific historical contexts; for instance, a universalist argument can turn out to reflect an implicit parochial bias. But Vattimo’s argument is not compelling: it is one thing to examine how the context of emergence can condition a justificatory discourse; and quite another to abolish – as Vattimo does – the distinction between justification and genesis. 43 Likewise, if persuasive at all, weak thought could be developed from within other traditions than Christianity (for this argument in relation to Islam, see Harris 2015). 44 The challenges to the naturalist metaphysics central to Catholic theology, and its discriminatory impact (e.g. the belief that homosexuality is against nature). For a systematic application of Vattimo’s hermeneutics to theology, see Carmelo Dotolo’s various works (Vattimo and Dotolo 2009). This critique resonates with current tensions and changes within the Catholic community: a growing number of Catholics in the US, for instance, are open and reformist with respect to a variety of moral and sexual issues (Pew Research Center 2015d). 45 Compare Vattimo’s and Taylor’s stands on Catholicism. Taylor is less concerned with the metaphysical contamination of Catholicism, and more with the tendency to stifle moral and religious experience under an excessive number of rules and regulations (for instance, rules regiment sexuality). See Chapter 6.

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46 This argument is contextual. Religious symbols can be culturalized (consider the Christmas tree in many European countries) and, most likely, the crucifix in Italy has been partly culturalized. On the other hand, the culturalization of a symbol is not a compelling reason for the state to impose its presence in public schools. 47 That is, his claim to deal only with political problems, and to bracket philosophical ones. See Chapter 1. 48 The question of the general contribution of postmodernism to political theory is beyond the limits of this chapter.

9 GLOBALIZATION AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF RELIGION

The many facets of globalization – capitalism, Internet, mass media, the techno-­scientific revolution, the ecological crisis, global governance, and the transnational social movements – have had a deep transformative impact on religion and have changed the “conditions of belief ” (Taylor 2007a). Already in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels pointed out that in the globalizing capitalist society “(a)ll that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” (Marx and Engels 1998: 38). By compressing space and accelerating time, globalization has strained particular religious beliefs by uprooting community life and tradition. A series of displacements puts traditional forms of adherence and transmission of faith under pressure, thus generating counter-­globalizing defensive and sectarian reactions: the upsurge of religious fundamentalism, nationalist populism, and the resentful rejection of the “fact of pluralism”. At its most extreme, this reaction takes the shape of the wave of global terror driven by Al-­Qaeda and Daesh. The result of this radicalization is that while “Islam is a world religion, Islamism has become a globalized ideology and movement” (Moghadam 2009: 61). Paradoxically, Islamism is at once globalizing (it has universalist ambitions and it relies heavily on Internet and capitalist mechanisms) and a reaction to globalization and its alternative universalist messages (e.g. capitalism and its rhetoric of universal growth and progress; universal human rights; the idea of democratic rule). A different reaction, no less ambivalent, has been the formation of ever-­increasing religious markets. Forms of belief and affiliation get in line with the dominating techno­capitalist society, undergoing a process of deterritorialization and deculturation that renders them apt for global consumption.1 In these religious markets supported by mass media and new technologies (Internet, religious apps, etc.), a good number of people tend to approach belief and practices as customers motivated by individual spiritual (or less spiritual) needs (Roof 1999).2 In times of growing digitalization of religion, doctrinal contents adapt by becoming streamlined and simplified: conservative and fundamentalist views are particularly successful at gathering new adepts at a quick pace; alternatively, through the spread of positive thinking, the religious body of wisdom and knowledge turns into “spiritual” fast food. The popularity of the courses in Zen meditation in the CEO culture is symptomatic of a broader trend. But the relation between globalization and religion is not merely reactive or adaptive. Universalistic religions drive globalization by nourishing trans-­regional forms of life and belonging. Globalization offers new windows of opportunity to religion – in terms of communication, acculturation, and conversion. The global arena becomes a fertile

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ground for complex and meaningful interactions between followers of different faiths, and between religious and non-­religious persons. Religion provides, further, resistance to the logic of commodification, radicalization, and deculturation: religious voices raise powerful critiques of financial capitalism (Petito 2016: 82), the museification of spiritual­religious heritages, the proprietorial approach to the earth and the environment, the treatment of refugees and immigrants, and global injustices.3 In this divided global context, philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers have interpreted the role of religion in the global arena in different and opposite ways: at one extreme, an influential thesis emphasizes the incommensurability between ways of life and communities, and the inevitability of violent conflict between them. We call this the divergence thesis (Section 1). Carl Schmitt’s political theology, which has been witnessing a revival in the last decades, is the most radical expression of the vision of divergence. For Schmitt and his followers, cosmopolitanism is a fallacy and an illusion; in reality, we live in a “pluriverse” made of various “existential communities” among which conflicts erupt, like a miracle, ex nihilo. The contemporary echoes of this antagonistic view are best transfigured into Samuel Huntington’s formula of the clash of civilizations; his vision is premised on the belief that the differences in civilizations (defined mainly through religion) are the determinants of the new global conflicts (Huntington 1993). Huntington’s formula has remained in vogue largely due to the global wave of Islamist terrorist attacks, the increase in global instability, and a sense of the fragility of democracy. A second narrative defends, in contrast, the “realist utopia” of a Law of Peoples as an international justice regime bringing together reasonable peoples (Rawls 1999a). In particular, Rawls articulates an older idea rooted in the Enlightenment of a convergence, at the international level, over the best political model (for Rawls, this is political liberalism). We call this the convergence thesis (Section 2). These mirror images are one-­sided and problematic: they either overstate the incommensurability between religions, ways of life, and civilizations, or minimize the plurality of paths to constitutional-­democratic arrangements (Ungureanu 2008b). Comparative approaches to political theory highlight that there are various routes to building constitutional-­democratic arrangements, a process that can be shaped by religious traditions and cannot be measured against one benchmark (Dallmayr 1997, 2004; Bell 2006; Sen 2006; March 2009a; Bhargava 2006a, 2013; see also the Introduction). Moreover, the divergence/convergence theses downplay the urgency of problems of justice that have a global dimension and cannot be tackled only at the state or international level (e.g. ecology and natural resources, religious terrorism and persecution, migration, famine, gender violence, and global inequalities) (Sen 2009). Religions can contribute to global justice, yet they also maintain a deep ambivalence in relation to the principle of equal freedom pivotal for contemporary political philosophy. In approaching the complexity and multi-­dimensionality of the religious phenomenon (see Introduction), political philosophizing is characterized by a double bind of equal respect and critical transformation: first, a requirement of respect towards religious people, with their beliefs and practices; second, a focus on the critique of religion-­related violence and mechanisms of domination (Section 3).4



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

1  The Divergence Thesis a  From Schmitt’s pluriverse to the clash of civilizations The current crisis of globalization condones a conflictive vision of world politics. Terrorism and regional conflicts dominate the political debate, while the global rise of populism leads even traditional democracies towards polarization and authoritarianism. These recent events fuel the popularity of a view of world affairs that places conflict and incommensurability at the heart of politics. Carl Schmitt’s influential conception of the political (das Politische) and political theology represents the most uncompromising version of this image; and Samuel Huntington has rearticulated another bellicose image of politics with different theoretical tools. Schmitt develops his antagonistic view in the aftermath of WWI and the breakdown of the Western civilization into a global conflict. Under the impact of this unexpected collapse, Schmitt mounts a scathing criticism of liberal universalism, human rights, and the project of building global institutions (e.g. the League of Nations). The very ideas of humanity and universal morality at the core of the liberal belief in human rights are inventions that mask the reality of radical diversity and unavoidable irruptions of war between political communities. In actual practice, human beings live not in a universe, as liberal cosmopolitans claim, but in a “pluriverse” (Schmitt 1996: 53) made of various “existential communities” and ways of life. Liberal universalists neglect that violence and conflict between political communities are a “real possibility” (Schmitt 1996: 37, 64)5 that cannot be domesticated and eliminated by economic treaties and international or global institutions. This “real possibility” of confrontation with the enemy unveils the “essence” of the political. In contrast to liberalism, Schmitt defines the political not in reference to rational discussion and agreement over a set of human rights, duties, and procedures, but in terms of the exaltation of sovereignty. Sovereignty is the monopoly on the decision (Schmitt 1985: 13) of a political community to recognize and confront its enemy in moments of emergency. The decision to face the enemy in the moments of utmost difficulty cannot be regulated by means of general constitutional norms;6 in moments of emergency or exception, where the “essence” of the political is revealed, constitutional norms central to the liberal understanding of politics are temporarily abolished. Schmitt claims that his purpose is not to exalt war, but to make a neutral analysis, and point a crucial mistake of liberal universalism. Liberal universalism misses this specificity of the political, namely the life-­and-death confrontation with the enemy in exceptional moments of the exercise of sovereignty.7 Schmitt reads this “neutral” analysis of the political through the lenses of political theology. His interest in political theology is both historical and structural: in his influential Political Theology ([1922] 1985), Schmitt argues that  (a)ll significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development – in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent god became the omnipotent lawgiver – but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. (Schmitt 1985: 36)8

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Interpreting Schmitt’s political theology is a notoriously difficult exercise due to the ambivalences of his texts (McCormick 1994; Meier 1995; Strauss 2007; Agamben 2007).9 For instance, the relation between the historical and the structural dimension of Schmitt’s political theology is a matter of debate: is his concept of sovereignty just a particular historical chapter in the history of Western-­monotheistic theology? Or does his analysis in terms of political theology convey the nature of the political? An influential line of interpretation highlights that the relevance of Schmitt’s notion of God’s sovereignty transcending the norms is not merely religious, since it conveys an essential lesson about the nature of sovereignty and the political in general. In Schmitt’s vision, the sovereign is a god-­like figure who has the power and will to confront the other (the enemy) in moments of exception. Schmitt explicitly conveys his preference and affinity for such moment of violence confrontation. As he states in Political Theology:  The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition. (Schmitt 1985: 13)10 From our perspective, Schmitt hyperbolizes the otherwise valid insight that sovereignty cannot be dissolved in impersonal rules and procedures à la Habermas (Ungureanu 2008); the exercise of sovereignty is rooted in concrete power and discursive relations between groups and individuals. Yet granting this insight is a far cry from embracing Schmitt’s postulate that the exception is superior and represents the “essence” of the political. Even tragic “sovereign” decisions in times of outmost hostility (e.g. Churchill’s decision to bomb German civilians in the WWII) can and must be assessed on account of existing emergency procedures, available evidence, and reasoning.11 While Schmitt does away with the notion of a divine foundational substance or force, he projects a vision of clashing earthly sovereignties and collective ways of life. We can oxymoronically characterize Schmitt’s conception as a “secular political theology”: the secular sovereign replaces God, and the decision replaces the miracle. The sovereign has, in Schmitt’s vision, god-­like properties: by transcending public discourse and reasoning and intervening and taking decisions ex nihilo, it acquires a mystical quality. As Galli notes, (t)he key to understanding Schmitt’s aims is the analogy between sovereignty as a decision on exception and the miracle in the traditional sense; in Politische Theologie the sovereign decision is the secularization of miracle, indeed: just like the miracle, decision suspends the law of normality. (Galli 2001: 471) In Schmitt’s vision, the God of monotheism is replaced by a number of sovereigns constituting the pluriverse of political life. His political theology is but the mirror image of the rationalist attempt to reduce sovereign decisions to impersonal procedures. As such, Schmitt’s exaltation of sovereign decision that transcends any reasoning and dialogue stands, in the final analysis, for a mystique of absolute power and a celebration of antagonism; it is an open door to the arbitrary use of power and self-aggrandizement.



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

The contemporary echoes of Schmitt’s vision of conflict are captured by recent familiar buzzwords – the “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996), the “new cold war” (Juergensmeyer 1993) or the “revenge of God” (Kepel 1994). The representation of the global arena as a battle of gods and demons was advanced at the beginning of the 1990s, but it remains highly influential. Huntington’s antagonistic scheme echoes, in certain ways, Schmitt’s bellicose view, yet it differs in others: for Huntington, major religions and not a specific Western theological tradition play a central explanatory role. According to his narrative, after the fall of communism, a new type of antagonism takes the place of the epic battle between capitalism and communism: the conflict between civilizations. With an essentializing move, Huntington argues that religions are the most defining trait of world civilizations (Huntington 1993, 1996).12 Because of the fundamentally incompatible religious foundations upon which they are developed, these civilizations are frequently clashing over the course of history. While for Schmitt war is fundamentally unpredictable (it occurs as a miracle), for Huntington civilizational differences are the key predictor of global conflicts after the fall of communism. Huntington sees Islam rising as a major antagonist to the West, side by side with Orthodox Russia:  For forty-­five years the Iron Curtain was the central dividing line in Europe. That line has moved several hundred miles east. It is now the line separating the peoples of Western Christianity, on the one hand, from Muslim and Orthodox peoples on the other. (Huntington 1996: 28)13 Not unlike Schmitt’s “neutral” analysis of the political, Huntington’s clash-­ofcivilizations hypothesis is premised on tacit normative assumptions.14 Huntington’s implicit political ideology emerges clearly in his later book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (2004). Therein Huntington pursues his antagonistic civilizational argument with a focus on the United States. Huntington claims that the “Anglo­Protestant culture has been central to Amer­ican identity for three centuries” (Huntington 2004: xvi). This identity is in deep crisis, as it is threatened by mass immigration, especially of Hispanics, that carry a different civilization shaped by Catholicism and the denationalization of elites. Not unlike Schmitt, for Huntington the other (the immigrant) is the enemy Democracy requires […] – says Schmitt – first homogeneity and second – if the need arises – elimination or eradication of heterogeneity […]. A democracy demonstrates its political power by knowing how to refuse or keep at bay something foreign and unequal that threatens its homogeneity. (Schmitt 1985: 9) In similar vein, Huntington argues that multiculturalism represents an “anti-­European civilization […]. It is basically an anti-­Western ideology” (Huntington 2004: 171). The ultimate consequence of multiculturalism is, for Huntington, the destruction of the consensus of Amer­ican political values of democracy, individual rights, and liberty, since the US political creed itself is the product of a specific Anglo-­Protestant heritage.15

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b  The globalization of religion and the challenge of violence The clash-of-civilizations narrative nourishes explanations that focus on essentialist religious justifications, thus supporting the notion of a world once again shaken by “holy wars” between factions that identify themselves as the “faithful” waging battle with the “infidel”. One of the most contentious issues in current debates concerning religion has been the interpretation of terrorist conflict and violence. Consider Strenski’s interpretation of suicide bombing. By looking at the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Strenski argues that, even beyond the first layer of propaganda, religious imaginaries play an essential role in the justification and motivation of violence. Suicide bombers perform a religious act of sacrifice with no “one-­for-one correspondence between what is given and what is gained” (Strenski 2003: 26). According to this view, religious motivations that drive terrorist actions rely on the prefiguration of an otherworldly logic of exchange. In the minds of the attackers, the self-­sacrifice of the “martyr”, and the consequent death of infidels, tramples any realist and utilitarian consideration, which are identified with the corrupt Western way of doing politics. The role of monotheisms, and especially Islam, in justifying this kind of act is ambivalent but crucial. While “(h)uman sacrifice is precisely what Abraham finally did not do, and what the Abraham-­inspired religions eventually declined to engage in at a certain point” of their history, nonetheless “these suicides […] are sacrificial gifts of an extreme sort, offered to attain something in exchange – Palestine – to keep it alive, to realize it, to create it, in return for the sacrifice of young lives” (Strenski 2003: 27). From our perspective, this line of analysis frames ab initio suicide bombings as an essentially religious act; however, this is a hermeneutic move that is more deceiving than revealing. The idea of religious immolation is a narrow framework that readily identifies the ancestral culprit in the religious sources of the violent act but loses the larger current picture. Non-­religious factors concur in the understanding of the causes of present suicide bombing: the domination of occupying forces, the pressure of the social environment, and a condition of extreme poverty that pushes the desperate to seek economic help from terrorist organizations.16 Still, explanations of a religious nature are favoured, partly because they provide a model that combines psychological elements (familiar from criminal trials) and cultural signs (distinguishing them from us), a model that lends itself to the discourse of the protection of civilization (committed to life) against barbarism (a love of death). (Asad 2007: 56) The focus on the religious nature of violence and the overall clash of civilizations narrative go hand in hand, thus providing a convenient rationale for the state’s extension of securitizing measures and military warfare. Dismantling this stereotypical picture based on essentialist premises does not amount to downplaying the relevance of religious factors in examining violent acts, and focusing exclusively economic, psychosocial, or military explanations.17 But the role of religion in the production and justification of violence is changing within a condition of global interconnection that renders unusable the interpretive scheme of a world divided in macro-­regional spheres of influence with homogenous religious, cultural, and political traits. In Roy’s words,



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

what we are witnessing today is the militant reformulation of religion in a secularized space that has given religion its autonomy and therefore the conditions for its expansion. Secularization and globalization have forced religions to break away from culture, to think of themselves as autonomous and to reconstruct themselves in a space that is no longer territorial and is therefore no longer subject to politics. (Roy 2010: 2) Under the pressure of globalization, the conditions of religious belief are undergoing a paradoxical transformation. Traditional forms of religious practice – Catholicism, Hanafi Islam, and classic Protestant denominations – lose ground to more fundamentalist and charismatic forms of religiosity – Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Salafism, Wahhabism. However, despite their appeal to the purity of the origins, these fundamentalist movements are all relatively modern phenomena. Neo-­fundamentalism emerges as the religious form that is most suited to globalization, because “it accepts its own deculturation and makes it the instrument of its claim to universality” (Roy 2010: 5). This increasing distance between belief and culture diminishes the capability of religious groups to interact dialogically not only with actors coming from different frameworks, but even with dissenting interlocutors belonging to their own tradition. Ironically, religious fundamentalism fosters at once the idea of the clash of civilizations and destroys from the “interior” the conditions of the interaction between religion, culture, and society that articulated the great religious civilizations of the past. The clash-­of-civilizations image has been widely and convincingly criticized for turning complex civilizations and religions into historical macro-­subjects, and for constructing them as homogenous and incommensurable entities (Asad 2003; Roy 2004; Bottici and Challand 2006; for a partial re-­appropriation, see Petito 2007).18 As Bottici and Challand (2006, 2010) point out, the clash-of-civilizations thesis is not an abstract academic narrative but plays a performative role in contemporary politics.19 It is a self-­fulfilling prophecy that fuels the polarization of world religions with their most fundamentalist components and fosters both secularist and religiously justified reactions in the form of anti-­migration and anti-­Islamic practices. While the explanatory power of the divergence paradigm is weak in accounting for the complexity of global religious phenomena, its performative effects provide evidence to its supporters in all opposed camps. Even if the political-­theological or the civilizational explanations are unconvincing, their popularity captures the Angst in the face of the possible advent of a new age of disorder. To form a contrast with the current crisis, public intellectuals, religious leaders, and politicians have sought an alternative narrative, arguing in favour of the possibility of reconciliation between different religious-­cultural identities and voices in the global arena. This background nurtured initiatives such as the UN Dialogue among Civilizations and the articulation of a discourse based on an image of reconciliation and convergence.

2  The convergence thesis a  Rawls’ The Law of Peoples In The Law of Peoples (1999a), Rawls develops his political liberalism at the international level by extending his contractualist approach to justice to what he calls the “Society of

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Peoples” (Rawls 1999a: 54; for Rawls’ political liberalism, see Chapter 1).20 The resulting view of the international political order projects a significant convergence over the liberal model (or, better, over Rawls’ political understanding of it). This model is, for Rawls, the culmination of historical and political progress.21 The central question of Rawls’ view of the international arena is analogous to the problem raised at the domestic level: What can be the basis for a contract or consensus among peoples,22 given the reasonable differences between them in terms of histories, languages, religions, and cultures? (Rawls 1999a: §6.1. 54–55).23 The answer to this question is partly distinct since the differences between the sphere of international relations and the domestic one make reaching consensus more difficult.24 The first difficulty is that there are unreasonable interlocutors: given the complexity of an international arena marked by cruel dictators, historical conflicts, and failed states, the stipulation of a just political contract cannot rely on all peoples (whereas the contract at the domestic sphere binds all the members of the political community).25 An international justice regime is unattainable for some peoples; hence these need to rely on less ambitious arrangements (e.g. a peaceful modus vivendi). The second difficulty derives from the different scope of reasonable pluralism: at the international level, the divergences in the conceptions of the good are even more pronounced than at the domestic level, where the principles of justice are distilled out of a common political culture.26 Despite these difficulties, Rawls believes that it is reasonable to hope for the convergence of the liberal and decent peoples of the world around fair terms of cooperation based on the principles of justice, no matter how different their religious, ethical, and cultural perspectives are. With this “realistic utopia”,27 Rawls envisions a principled international order and rejects the notion that only a modus vivendi is feasible and stable at the international level (Rawls 1999a: 44–45). Establishing (i) the interlocutors and (ii) the nature of the intended political arrangement is crucial for determining the terms of the contract. (i) Rawls argues that in the international arena only two kinds of “well-­ordered peoples” can be parties in the contract: reasonable liberal peoples and non-­liberal but decent peoples, or “decent hierarchical peoples” (Rawls 1999a: 4). Outlaw states, societies burdened by unfavourable conditions, and benevolent absolutisms are to be excluded.28 Less familiar yet relevant for us is the second accepted party: decent hierarchical peoples. Rawls’ image of a decent society is a communitarian society in which a comprehensive, usually religious, community is hegemonic, while other communities are reasonably tolerated.29 Rawls conveys his idea by way of analysing an imaginary case: a non-­liberal Muslim people that form a state named Kazanistan (Rawls 1999a §§8–9).30 Kazanistan is not aggressive against other peoples and follows the Law of Peoples; it honours and respects basic human rights (what Rawls calls human rights proper, and which are not parochial or specific to a liberal political culture as in the US);31 and its basic structure contains a decent consultation hierarchy, thereby giving a substantial political role to its members in making political decisions, and allowing a right to dissent (Rawls 1999a: §9.3. 75–79). Kazanistan’s legal system does not institute the separation of church and state: Islam is the hegemonic religion and only Muslims can hold the upper positions of political authority. Yet other religions are tolerated and may be practised without fear or loss of most civic rights, except the right to hold the higher political or



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judicial offices. In a society like Kazanistan, the state religion may be the ultimate authority within society and may control government policy on certain important matters, but it is not “fully unreasonable” (Rawls 1999a: 74). Not being “fully unreasonable” means that the hegemonic religion admits of sufficient measure of liberty of conscience and freedom of religion and thought, even if these freedoms are not as extensive nor as equal for all members as they are in liberal societies (Rawls 1999a: 74).33 (ii) Once the peoples capable to join in are defined, Rawls lays out the international contract. The relevant peoples join the hypothetical contract behind the veil of ignorance so as to ensure the fairness of the outcome. The principles of justice are chosen by reasonable liberal peoples in a first stage. Then non-­liberal but decent peoples join the contract at a second stage; they do so on account of public reason, whose principles are “not expressed in terms of comprehensive doctrines of truth or of right, which may hold sway in this or that society, but in terms that can be shared by different peoples” (Rawls 1999a: 55: our italics).34 All religious and non-religious doctrines are hidden behind the veil of ignorance in order to ensure that the contract – and the resulting principle of justice – is fair. By analogy with the domestic contract (Chapter 1), the central nerve of the international justice as fairness is the reciprocity among peoples: (i)t is part of a people’s being reasonable and rational that they are ready to offer to other peoples fair terms of political and social cooperation. These fair terms are those that a people sincerely believes other equal peoples might accept also; and should they do so, a people will honor the terms it has proposed even in those cases where that people might profit by violating them. (Rawls 1999a: 35) All peoples have specific interests that can bring them to conflict; only when these interests are reasonable, that is congruent with a fair equality and a due respect for all peoples, can democratic peace become a possibility (Rawls 1999a: 45). The family of reasonable conceptions of political justice defines the terms of fair equality and constitutes the terrain of consensus amongst parties over the Law of Peoples.35 Without convergence on this shared ground, peace between states is at best a modus vivendi, an ephemeral balance of forces between peoples that pursue diverging interests. Similar to how a liberal society is to respect its citizens’ comprehensive doctrines, it must also tolerate non-­liberal societies, provided that its basic institutions meet certain conditions of political right and justice and lead its people to honour a reasonable and just law in the Society of Peoples. For Rawls, tolerating alternative non-­liberal arrangements is a matter of strategy: if liberal peoples are tolerant, it is more likely that non-­liberal societies in time will join the club of liberal ones. Rawls states: Liberal peoples must try to encourage decent peoples and not frustrate their vitality by coercively insisting that all societies be liberal. Moreover, if a liberal constitutional democracy is, in fact, superior to other forms of society, as I believe it to be, a liberal people should have confidence in their convictions and suppose that a decent society, when offered due respect by liberal peoples, may be more likely, over time, to

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recognize the advantages of liberal institutions and take steps toward becoming more liberal on its own. (Rawls 1999a: 62, our italics)

3  From Rawlsian convergence to global pluralism Rawls does not develop a full-­fledged end-­of-history thesis that assumes the actual convergence of the world order around the rational principles of liberalism (Fukuyama 1992). In contrast to Fukuyama, who secularizes an eschatological myth and projects the triumphant march of reason in history, Rawls is concerned with a “real utopia” that accepts the limits of reconciliation among peoples. Nonetheless, Rawls’ qualified convergence thesis articulates a view of the international arena centred on self-­contained sovereignties that is inadequate to account for the multiple models of democracy and the global issues in the age of interdependence. Rawls draws, to a large extent, on a specific political culture and historical tradition so as to theorize an idealized model of international relations and assess the plurality of political arrangements. To better grasp the role of religion during globalization it is necessary to forsake the image of (the desirable) convergence of peoples over one political model (Western, liberal, secular). In a global plural landscape marked at once by secularization trends and the persistence of a diversity of religious forms in the public sphere, there is no one-­size-fits-­all narrative, centred either on convergence or on divergence, that appropriately frames the answer to the question of religion in democracy and its role beyond the state borders. Political philosophy has a double-­bind relation to the Protean religious phenomenon, and which cannot be properly articulated by the Rawlsian internationalism centred on the “best model” of democracy: on the one hand, it clarifies normative principles, taking into account the role of religions in shaping multiple democratic routes and dealing with global issues (i); on the other hand, it analyses critically the religion-­related forms of domination and violence, and its alliances with populism and nationalist authoritarianism that threaten the future for democracy (ii). (i) Rawls’ internationalist model is too narrow to deal with the complex relationships between societies and peoples in a globalizing world. The problem is methodological and substantive, and is related to Rawls’ specific contractual construction based on questionable idealizations. In developing the Law of Peoples, Rawls’ first step is to work out the principles of justice for domestic society. At this level, “the original position takes into account only persons contained within such a society, since we are not considering relations with other societies. That position views society as closed: persons enter only by birth, and exit only by death” (Rawls 1999a: 26). At the second level, Rawls considers the politically organized peoples and their relations; he projects peoples as units of moral concerns with their own states, and not made of ethnic or national groups, religious minorities, and indigenous groups (Buchanan 2000: 718). This two-­tiered picture still echoes a Westphalian understanding of international relations, in which the protagonists are nation-­states conceived as morally and culturally homogeneous political actors as well as self-­sufficient economic units (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Such a reading is empirically and normatively inadequate: by means of idealizations, Rawls excludes crucial traits of states, peoples, and persons in times of interconnectedness and migration.



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

“Peoples” are not homogenous and institutionalized in Rawls’ sense; the composition of peoples is shaped by cultural-­religious traditions and the impact of global migration flows;36 the economic fortunes of peoples are, further, under the impact of global economic interdependences: a change in patterns of consumption in London can change the life of villagers in Ecuador or a stock market crash in South-East Asia can create a global financial storm.37 Economic relations, global migration, environmental crisis, world hunger and inequality, terrorism, ethnic-­religious cleansing, natural resources, and gender violence and discrimination are issues whose tackling requires actions and agreements whose scope is beyond the sovereignty of the nation-­state (Risse 2012; Arneson 2014). The proper political motivation and capacity to collectively coordinate in order to deal with these problems is largely lacking. However, the perception of a global community, concerns, and common humanity has been enhanced by the rise of transnational social movements, global institutions, and the activity of world religions as global actors. In addition, the democratization trend and the emergence of a (fragile) global consciousness centred on common concerns have led to the partial constitutionalization of international law and the passage to global law and regulations (Habermas 2010). In this global context, the difficulties of Rawls’ internationalist approach are also reflected in the way it constructs the relation to religion. First, Rawls accepts as part of the Law of Peoples religious authoritarian societies under the label of “decent hierarchical societies”. This highlights a limit of Rawls’ perspective that we already noted at the level of the nation-­state: namely, that he does not satisfactorily problematize the practices of exclusion and domination of what he takes as reasonable religious doctrines (Chapter 1, Section 3 and Chapter 7, Section 1). Analogously, when it comes to peoples, the historical model for Rawls’ “decent consultation hierarchy” is the Ottoman Empire (Rawls 1999a: n. 17, 76), an Islamic regime that implemented a model of religious toleration (the millet system). The millet system was, however, quite far from what we would expect from a constitutional democratic regime, as it combined relative inter-­group toleration with authoritarian practices and hierarchies. While in the international arena compromises are made with states that implement authoritarian practices, these compromises often need to be reached for the sake of peace and cooperation. Justice demands that national, international and global actors act, within prudential limits, to promote human rights and avoid evils like gender violence and discrimination, grave social inequality, religious intolerance, violence, and so on. On account of strategic reasons and a minimalist perspective of human rights, Rawls claims that decent authoritarian societies should not be offered incentives to develop a more liberal democratic constitution (Rawls 1999a: 84);38 yet it is unclear why states where, for instance, practices are deeply gendered or which do not fully respect religious minorities should not be given incentives and even pressured to do so. The violation of human rights around the world constitutes an offence against the dignity of all peoples, as it puts in question the due respect to shared humanity.39 The human rights agenda should be central in the negotiations and discussions between different between political, economic, and religious authorities of the global arena. Second, Rawls’ internationalist view is open to the coexistence of a variety of non-­ liberal regimes, but it is scarcely receptive of inputs coming from alternative moral-­ religious worldviews and political experiences.40 There is a strong analogy between the  domestic accommodation of diverse comprehensive doctrines in Rawls’ political

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liberalism and the accommodation of decent societies and their political cultures under the Law of Peoples (see Chapter 1). At the international level Rawls implies that decent societies are not on equal footing with the liberal ones, and hopes that all human beings will eventually live under a liberal regime (Pogge 2001: 249).41 All other societies and regimes are to be judged against the ideal standard of Rawlsian political liberalism. Other peoples are placed on an evaluative scale according to their proximity to the liberal model (Pogge 2001: 248). From our perspective, Rawls’ preference for a political conception of justice is ultimately premised on a substantive moral evaluation in favour of a liberal model, and rooted in a specific historical context. Notwithstanding the centrality of pluralism in Rawls’ view, it lacks granting more relevance to the diversity of moral-­religious views for theorizing and the constitution of practice (for further details, see Chapter 1). In this sense, his stance is in line with the main tradition in international relations theory that has understood religion based on the church-­state model of the modern West, i.e. as an institutional and individual phenomenon inside national societies (Wilson 2012). This understanding has been increasingly challenged by the global “fact of pluralism” and the transformation of world religions in global actors developing stands on world poverty and inequality, capitalist consumerism, ecology, social justice, solidarity, and so on (Pope Francis 2015; Dalai Lama 2012; Tutu 1999; Williams 2008). The Law of Peoples consists of political principles that bracket, to an important extent, the relevance of such contributions of religion. Rawls extracts “intuitions” mainly from one specific context, idealizes them, and then projects them at an international level. From a genealogical point of view, this confidence in a global convergence is a by-­product of the Western Enlightenment and of a conception of politics as founded on a rational consensus,42 and transcending ethical and cultural-­religious allegiances. But the role of religion in the global landscape exceeds that of the established comprehensive doctrine that adds an exotic flavour to the political arrangements of non-­liberal societies – as it is the case with Rawls’ fictional Kazanistan. Significant differences about rights and duties are the outcome of debates, compromises, power struggles in which rival conceptions of the good play a role;43 the vision and principles of the international order make no exception. Consider the first two principles of Rawls’ internationalist view: “Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples” and “Peoples are to observe a duty of non-­intervention”. Rawls’ understanding of peoples has strong analogies with the liberal image of the autonomous and sovereign individuals in the original position: self-­determining entities that rationally pursue their plan of life, whose identity is protected by fixed external boundaries and whose mutual relationship ought to be inspired by criteria of respect and reciprocity. The normative content of the Law of Peoples is not entirely independent from this interpretive framework. Beyond their context of origin, religious traditions can contribute to the cause of justice and democratization by stirring the moral and the political imagination in new directions. As King notes, a religious-­political culture can embrace many of the underlying themes of a liberal democratic project like Rawls’ (e.g. the overall aim to provide favourable conditions for peace and the respect of basic human rights) while supporting normative implications that are more desirable from the perspective of global justice and pluralism. Consider the case of Engaged Buddhism, a tradition that gathers a variety of Buddhist inspired political movements like those lead by the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam,



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

(King 2006). Their differences notwithstanding, these movements display a rather consistent pattern of values, including (1) emphases on the preciousness of human life, compassion, social engagement, and nonviolence; (2) an approach shaped by the traditional Buddhist philosophical principles of interdependence, causality, and no-­self (anatman); and (3) Buddhist self-­ transformative practices such as mindfulness, meditation, and moral self-­discipline. (King 2006: 638) Engaged Buddhists’ focus on interdependence, compassion, and the transcending of the individual self are at odds with the focus on the defence of national selfhood and non-­ interference expressed by internationalist projects like the Law of Peoples. A keen awareness of one’s interaction and bond with all other living beings (idappaccayatā) suggests that a duty of non-­intervention is misleading if it makes a person blind to how substantially she already influences the lives of others by conducting her domestic business the way she does. From a Buddhist point of view, our habit of thinking of the world as a container, itself inert, of separate objects is an important part of our difficulty in determining how we can best live together. It would seem that in order to think through this problem in any kind of adequate way we need to be able to see the extent to which the world is constructed of interdependent, mutually constructive parts. (King 2006: 648) When facing the challenge of global injustices, the comprehensive outlook of Engaged Buddhists provides elements that are more persuasive at framing the problem of political interdependences and responsibilities than Rawls’ liberal internationalism. Third, a pluralist approach in political philosophy should not only be receptive to the moral and imaginative richness of religious worldviews, but also to how they shape religious-­political arrangements. Rawls’ postulate of the convergence of the diversity of political arrangements over the liberal model does not properly acknowledge the relevance of the global “fact of pluralism”. Different democratic models are rooted in cultural­historical experiences and political compromises that are neither fully comparable nor transposable from one context to another. Each model emerges in specific socio-­cultural circumstances, and is based on compromises and substantive value orientations. Political projects are also shaped by practices of discussion and cooperation that have an intrinsic merit, as they embody traditional understandings of human relations. In this sense, democratic models are not the aggregation of abstract principles and traits to be measured against an ideal yardstick and so to be placed on a hierarchical scale. For instance, the Indian pluralist system (Newbigin 2013; Subramanian 2014; Harel-­Sharev 2017), along with the “wall of separation” between church and state in the US constitutional tradition, are normative “experiments” that grow on a different historical, religious, and political soil. The general outcomes of these “experiments with democracy” are intrinsically valuable, even if specific dimensions of them can be partially measured, improved, and sometimes dispensed with (see especially Chapter 7). A pluralist perspective, sensitive at once

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to contextual and global concerns is thus methodologically and substantively more promising: rather than conceiving the road to democratization as guided by a specific model of liberalism, it is more realistic and normatively profitable to analyse the multiplicity of democratic arrangements and, further, to recognize their historical openness (democracy is, as Derrida insisted, “to come”).44 It is the case of a constitutional democracy like India, based on a combination of individual liberties and communitarian arrangements (see Chapter 7), or a society like Bolivia that incorporates individual liberties but accepts the salience of perfectionist values to the point of including them into its constitution and organic laws (see Chapter 1). The Law of Peoples deems these solutions inferior to the model of Rawlsian anti-­perfectionist liberalism that gives an absolute lexical priority to a set of civic and political liberties. The convergence thesis relies too heavily on a “parochial universalism” (see Introduction) that, no matter how diluted, bears the echo of colonialism. A pluralist approach that abandons the presupposition of convergence includes a form of comparative inquiry that assesses how these different models deal with specific issues from family law and children’s rights to minority rights and education. Comparative judgements are, as Amartya Sen points out, not dependent on an ideal model or unique measure (Sen 2009: 105). They are instead receptive to plurality of practices and the limits of translatability from one context to another, as well as to valuable exchanges and learning processes between practices and vocabularies. From the perspective of comparative political theory (see also Introduction), the difficulties of Indian personal law can become a cautionary tale for the implementation of Sharia Courts in the UK (Shachar 2008); likewise, the practices of faithful Muslim women provide, as Saba Mahmood argues, a useful corrective to the Western secularist feminism often centred on the individual rational autonomy; alternatively, the Indian practice of the “principled separation” can provide, according to Rajeev Bhargava, a useful lesson for Westerners to better understand how to deal with religion centred on communal practices rather than individual faith. (ii) The relation between democracy and religion remains, as we’ve underlined throughout this book, structurally ambivalent (e.g. Chapter 7, Section 1). Not all religious forms encompass an orientation to the common good, a commitment to respect moral pluralism, or the idea of legitimate rule as resting on the consent of the governed and the equality of the citizens (Ferrara 2014: 140). Moreover, religions are more than diverging doctrines of the good or sources of meaningful answers to the ultimate questions of existence. Resilient boundaries separate the understanding of a religious doctrine from the genuine and commitment due to the connection between belief and social practice, meaningful discourse and power relations (Bush 2014; see Introduction). Andrew March points out that religions articulate traditions of thought that are not identified “just by their conflicting substantive value commitments (such as what characterizes conflicts between liberals, libertarians, Marxists, feminists, and conservatives), but by their mutually incompatible (possibly incomprehensible) sources of authority” (March 2009b: 554).45 The religious sources of authority are embedded into communal relations and affective bonds that are internalized and transmitted from generation to generation. Therefore, religious differences are often resistant to purely intellectual assimilation through abstract moral reasoning and deliberation. This can make religious resources



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

resilient against global trends of commodification and homogenization; but religious effects and hierarchies are also prone to be mobilized so as to constitute regimes of power and domination. Thereby the richness of religious imagination and the pluralism of tradition are often frozen into dogmatism, and the relations of spiritual guidance and authority turn into authoritarian practices of disciplining the mind and the body. To address these tensions, a pluralistic approach in political philosophy is in a double­bind relation to religion: it clarifies the normative principles by taking into account as well plurality of contexts and religious specificities; however, it does not stop at the gates of “reasonable” religious doctrines (Rawls), but it has a critical and transformative approach with respect to religious-­related phenomena of discrimination and domination.46 The two “moves” are mutually related, since the problem of religious domination is also embedded in political claims that, taken at face value, are motivated by a legitimate concern for the respect of the importance of religion in people’s lives. In this perspective, the threat of religious domination is not to be searched exclusively among the “usual suspects”, such as religious terrorism, the combination of nationalist populism and religion, and gender inequality and discrimination justified on religious grounds. A case in point is the global debate concerning freedom of speech, and the apparently innocuous appeal to respect and protect religion from defamation. Under the banner of the freedom of religion, various states – mainly members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – repeatedly pressed for the adoption of UN Resolution 7/19 “Combating the Defamation of Religions” between 1999 and 2010, aiming to impose a sort of “international blasphemy law” laying in the hands of religious majorities and authoritarian regimes. This initiative is a troubling attempt to instrumentalize global institutions in order to strengthen religious majoritarianism and curb dissenting and critical voices (Leo et al. 2011). At a state level, blasphemy laws in Pakistan have been reportedly used to imprison minority members or political adversaries based on their religious beliefs. Similarly, in Egypt, the government has raised allegations of blasphemy against unorthodox Muslims and individuals, including bloggers who have called for political and religious reforms (USCIRF 2009). Western liberal democracies are hardly immune to this concern. Blasphemy laws were upheld in the UK until 2008, when the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were finally abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. It is also noteworthy the ambivalent stance of the European Court of Human Rights on the problem of freedom of expression and freedom of speech in Europe granted special protection to Christian majorities and acknowledged the legitimacy of restrictions on freedom of speech in a series of cases starting with Otto Preminger Institut v. Austria (1994). After a long controversy, in 2011, the UN Human Rights Council abandoned the “defamation approach” and finally shifted the wording of Resolution 16/18 (2011) from the protection of religious beliefs to the protection of believers: “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.” The Resolution 16/18 prescribes, among other things, the protection of minorities “in particular (when) condoned by their Governments”. This final resolution correctly reaffirms the necessary distinction between freedom of religion and protection against defamation. The UN Human Rights Committee followed this in July 2011 with the adoption of General Comment 34 on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

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1976 that binds signatory countries concerning the freedom of expression and opinion. The document made it clear that “Prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the Covenant”. This principled position is not dependent on adopting a liberal approach to public justification, and it can be defended from a variety of secularist and religious perspectives.47 Religious tradition offers arguments for toleration and practices of dialogue (see also Chapter 7, Section 1), yet upholding both the importance of respect for religious persons and protection of free speech is likely to generate tensions. The double bind of political philosophy with respect to the tensions generated by the multi-­dimensional phenomenon of religion can be neither finally reconciled nor easily negotiated by means of a master-­principle. It invites instead complex and sometimes dilemmatic judgements, as well as exercises of public reasoning and social imagination based on democratic participation involving believers and non-­believers. Philosophers like Rawls and Habermas assume that reason plays the leading role in the process of reconciliation between religion and democracy and conducting the political affairs. But this intellectualistic faith in reason and reconciliation cannot be taken for granted in a global situation marked by a crisis of democratic representation and scarce moral-­affective resources. The current historical moment is one of uncertainty if not of existential treat to democracy: a plurality of voices, beliefs, and practices meet, interact, and clash on the moving sands of globalizing and anti-­globalizing forces. Contemporary nihilists like Slavoj Žižek appeal to an “apocalyptic” political theology that exalts the Event – namely the happening of the violent destruction of capitalism and the creation of the new communist society. Unsurprisingly, Žižek resorts to the image of the “clash of civilizations”. Contrary to this plunge into a post-­Schmittian celebration of violence and historical discontinuity, modernized world religions can provide, their ambiguities notwithstanding, support for stabilization of democracy and resistance against the rise of populism and xenophobic nationalism capitalizing on global inequalities and disempowerment. In the current global scenario, religions play a significant role in influencing democratization processes, authoritarian regressions, strategies of civil resistance, and violent conflicts. In times of uncertain democracy, political philosophy combines the normative clarification of the general principles that regulate the relation between religion and politics with a concern with the analysis of specific contexts and religious traditions; as such, it contributes to and places its hope in non-­violent communicative exchanges between believers and unbelievers.

Notes   1 Roy emphasizes the separation of religion from its traditional cultural background: in order to circulate, the religious object must appear universal, disconnected from a specific culture that has to be understood in order for the message to be grasped. Religion therefore circulates outside knowledge. Salvation does not require people to know, but to believe. (Roy 2010: 6)   2 By drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben argues that the central element of the shifting relationship between religion and capitalism is the rising influence of capitalism as a religious logic. In his analysis of the theological premises of the modern era, he notes that Benjamin’s prophecy about the rising of “capitalism as religion” is now truer than ever.



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

We could say – suggests Agamben – that capitalism […] generalizes in every domain the structure of separation that defines religion. […] This process is entirely indifferent to the caesura between sacred and profane, between divine and human. […] In its extreme form, the capitalist religion realizes a pure form of separation, to the point that there is nothing left to separate. (Agamben 2007: 81)

By transferring every product, but also every human body or any language, into the sphere of potential consumption, the mercantile logic of capitalism conquers a hegemonic position over the way people deal with each other and their environment. A position that traditionally only religions could aspire to hold. Agamben’s claim is questionable, as the definition of religion around the sacrificial form of separation is reductive and narrow. For an alternative reading of capitalism as an animist religion, see Mbembe (2013).   3 In various Islamic countries from Indonesia to Morocco there has been an increase in the number of Islamic banks that prohibit speculation and enhance mechanisms of co-­responsibility in front of risks.   4 Held and McGrew characterize globalization as follows: “Globalization can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power” (see Held and McGrew et al. 1999). This process determines four types of change. First, it involves a stretching of social, political and economic activities across frontiers, regions and continents. Second, it is marked by the intensification, or the growing magnitude, of interconnectedness and flows of trade, investment, finance, migration, culture, etc. Third, it can be linked to a speeding up of global interactions and processes, as the development of worldwide systems of transport and communication increases the velocity of the diffusion of ideas, goods, information, capital and people. And, fourth, the growing extensity, intensity and velocity of global interactions can be associated with their deepening impact such that the effects of distant events can be highly significant elsewhere and specific local developments can come to have considerable global consequences. In this sense, the boundaries between domestic matters and global affairs become increasingly fluid. Globalization, in short, can be thought of as the widening, intensifying, speeding up, and growing impact of worldwide interconnectedness (see www.polity.co.uk/GLOBAL/globalization-­ oxford.asp). From the literature on globalization and religion, see for instance Beck (2010).   5 According to Schmitt, “the political” is not found “in the battle itself […] but in the mode of behaviour which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation” (Schmitt 1996: 37).   6

The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. (Schmitt 1996: 27)

  7 See also Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth (2006) for his criticism of human rights and universalism. He claims the World Wars were due to fact that the League of Nations was too contradictory to constitute a real nomos. The decline of the jus publicum Europaeum into a universal world law lacking distinctions no longer could be stopped. The dissolution into general universality simultaneously spelled the destruction of the traditional global order of the earth. It was replaced by an empty normativism of allegedly recognized rules, which, for a few decades, obscured consciousness of the fact that a concrete order of previously recognized powers had been destroyed and that a new one had not yet been found. (Schmitt 2006: 227)   8 We cannot get here into the evolution and the difficulties of interpretation of Schmitt’s view. For a wide-­ranging reading of Schmitt’s position in modern political theory, see Galli (1996, 2015).

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  9 A fully-­fledged interpretation remains beyond the limits of these brief reflections. Some scholars consider Schmitt a political theologian; others emphasize the morality or the metaphysics at the core of his understanding of the political (Strauss 2007: 97–122). 10 As Leo Strauss suggests (Strauss 2007: 97–122), Schmitt’s antagonistic vision of a pluriverse is based – his explicit statements notwithstanding – on a moral view. He sees in the threatened status of the political a risk to the seriousness of human life (Strauss 2007: 117). Schmitt’s supposedly neutral analysis of the political is premised on the affirmation of a serious, manly morality that glorifies military virtues, glory, and violence that was common in his period. This hypothesis is borne by Schmitt’s prison diary, Ex Captivitate Salus in which he exalts freedom as emerging in the moments of recognition as mortal confrontation with the other (see Schmitt 2002). 11 See for instance Walzer’s reflections on “Emergency Ethics” (1988) and Asad’s pertinent critique of Walzer’s stand (Asad 2007). 12 Huntington states: “Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions” (Huntington 1996: 42). 13 Within this analytical framework, Huntington briefly sketches the proposal of a multicivilizational system as a normative solution to avoid the impending clash. This world order is envisioned as multipolar, and is governed by core states whose conduct should be determined by a minimalist ethics of non-­interference. This solution, however, leaves the world with a precarious balance of powers between civilizational blocks ready for collision (Petito 2016: 85). Despite the intentions of Huntington’s brief normative proposal, his clash of civilizations picture remains a structurally conflictive one. 14 Schmitt influenced profoundly and directly the founder of the realist school in international relations, Hans Morgenthau (Koskenniemi 2001). It is arguable that Schmitt’s conception emphasizing the difference between existential communities is closer to Huntington’s neo-­ realist vision than to Morgenthau’s emphasis on the maximization of state interest. 15 “Throughout Amer­ican history, people who were not white Anglo-­Saxon Protestants have become Amer­icans by adopting America’s Anglo-­Saxon Protestant culture and political values” (Huntington 2004: 61). 16 Even the religious or secular characterization of terrorist groups is often controversial, let alone the religious or secular motives of their members. It is the case, among others, of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, one of the groups that more extensively adopted suicide bombing tactics and whose primary characterization as a Marxist-­Leninist or Hindu group is contested:  Do the Tamil Tigers want their own homeland because they are Hindus in a Muslim nation or because they are Tamils in a Sinhalese country? Divining terrorist intentions in these cases is all but impossible. Even distinguishing the religious from the political runs into considerable difficulty at times, usually when state-­sponsors become involved. Iraqi bombings in Iran and Iranian bombings in Iraq could be expressions of either centuries-­old religious animosities or more recent political battles for regional hegemony. Similarly, Pakistani bombings within India reflect both a religious and a political battle over Kashmir. (Quillen 2002: 288) 17 Studies conducted on the background of radicalized subjects in France show quite striking results that seem to rule out the hypothesis that their process of radicalization could be explained exclusively in terms of poverty and failed integration. A significantly high share of young man and women that in 2013–2014 were recruited or nearly recruited by radical Islamic groups, including Daesh, came from Atheist families with middle or high income. In most cases, their grandparents were also born in France (See Bouzar et al. 2014). 18 Huntington’s culturalist determinism overlooks that current conflicts are multi-­causal and erupt inside and outside religious-­and-civilizational borders (Roy 2007; Bottici and Challand 2010). 19 Huntington’s essentialist discourse about the US identity startlingly anticipates the current anti-­migration and anti-­multiculturalist rhetoric (Chapter 6). 20 Just as Rawls’ “domestic” political liberalism draws on the Kantian idea of an original contract in which citizens are co-­legislators, his view of a Law of Peoples loosely follows Kant’s lead as sketched by him in Perpetual Peace (1795) and his idea of foedus pacificum.



Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

21 We might not know all the details (Rawls does not deny change and novelty), but we pretty much have it. 22 Rawls focuses on peoples and not on states. As opposed to states, peoples have a definite moral nature (Rawls 1999a §2.1). This nature includes a certain proper pride and sense of honour; they may be proud of their history and achievements, as a proper patriotism allows. Yet the due respect they ask for is a due respect consistent with the equality of all peoples. People also have interests protected by basic human rights; this element is crucial for Rawls’ design of the second contract. 23 Rawls’ question mirrors the hope of a peaceful international order that characterized the genesis of the League of Nations and the United Nations. His answer aims to take equally into account the shortcomings of those projects, which proved unable to avert WWII, the Cold War and the horror of mass genocides that punctuated the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the “demonic possibility”, Rawls admits, can never be entirely eliminated. 24 Rawls’ answer makes use of the familiar conceptual tools of his political liberalism – justice as fairness, original position, overlapping consensus, stability for the right reasons, reasonable pluralism, public reason, reciprocity (see Chapter 1) beyond the state borders. 25 Outlaw states and burdened societies are not parties to the society of peoples which is why they are covered under the domain of non-­ideal theory. See later. 26 Rawls argues: If a reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines is a basic feature of a constitutional democracy with its free institutions, we may assume that there is an even greater diversity in the comprehensive doctrines affirmed among the members of the Society of Peoples with its many different cultures and traditions. Hence a classical, or average, utilitarian principle would not be accepted by peoples, since no people organized by its government is prepared to count, as a first principle, the benefits for another people as outweighing the hardships imposed on itself. Well-­ordered peoples insist on an equality among themselves as peoples, and this insistence rules out any form of the principle of utility. (Rawls 1999a: 40) 27 Rawls states that  political philosophy is realistically Utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just constitutional democracy existing as a member of a reasonably just Society of Peoples ... [In this process] ... we have to rely on conjecture and speculation, arguing as best we can that the social world we envision is feasible and might actually exist, if not now then at some future time under happier circumstances. (Rawls 1999a: 11–12) 28 An example of outlaw state is probably North Korea; Afghanistan can be regarded as a society burdened by unfavourable conditions (consider the deep ethno-­religious strife and conflicts); China may be a benevolent absolutism since it honours some basic rights and provides its citizens with some limited forms of political voice. 29 Rawls’ only real-­life example is the Ottoman Empire and its millet system, where persons are primarily viewed as responsible and cooperating members of their respective groups or communities. Another real-­life example that comes somehow close is Chua’s depiction of a communitarian multiculturalism that draws on the practice of the city-­state Singapore (Huat 2007). 30 Postcolonial theorists would be quick to object the Orientalism of this counterfactual example, and not without reason. Kazanistan is, we suggest, an example of othering that erases a whole range of possibilities between Rawls’ liberal model rooted in a Protestant, individualistic political culture and the reality of a hierarchical communitarian society. It is, however, mistaken to infer that Rawls sees Islam as incompatible with constitutional democracy. See the “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” §3; and 1999a: n. 46, 151, with references to Abdullahi Ahmed An-­Na’im’s work (An-­Na’im 1990). 31 These basic human rights are, for Rawls, the following: the right to life (to the means of subsistence and security); to liberty (to freedom from slavery, serfdom, and forced occupation, and

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to a sufficient measure of liberty of conscience to ensure freedom of religion and thought); to property (personal property); and to formal equality as expressed by the rules of natural justice (that is, that similar cases be treated similarly). As Rawls points out, these human rights “cannot be rejected as peculiarly liberal or special to the Western tradition. They are not politically parochial.” (Rawls 1999a: 65). For instance, notes Rawls, it is acceptable (or tolerable) that freedom of conscience be limited. The liberty of conscience becomes “liberal” when it is equal for all members of society; however, in a decent society as Kazanistan where the Muslim community is hegemonic, other religions, though tolerated, may be denied the right to hold certain positions. 32 This exclusion marks a fundamental difference between Kazanistan and a liberal democratic regime, where all offices and positions are, in principle, open to each citizen. 33 The question might arise here as to why religious or philosophical doctrines that deny full and equal liberty of conscience are not unreasonable. I do not say that they are reasonable, but rather that they are not fully unreasonable; one should allow, I think, a space between the fully unreasonable and the fully reasonable. The latter requires full and equal liberty of conscience, and the former denies it entirely. (Rawls 1999a: 74) 34 Rawls endorses the general idea that, between societies, notions of social or distributive justice are inappropriate. 35 The principles are:  1 Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples. 2 Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings. 3 Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them. 4 Peoples are to observe a duty of non-­intervention. 5 Peoples have the right of self-­defence but no right to instigate war for reasons other than self-­defence. 6 Peoples are to honor human rights. 7 Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war. 8 Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime. (Rawls 1999a: 37) 36 In this scenario, there is a need for principles that apply to individuals across borders and specify their rights beyond their national belongings, to reflect their independence from a particular society (Buchanan 2000: 698–701). In a global world, a significant number of persons do not live their whole lives in their society of origin, but move in search of better conditions. 37 The examples of this increasing political interconnection are countless. The elections in the US can have a deep impact on a whole world and the patterns of consumption in Western Europe can have devastating consequences for farmers in Ecuador. Indeed, globalization has created the need for state cooperation across national boundaries in a way that the predominantly agrarian societies of old regime Europe never did (Brown 2008). 38 In Rawls’ instrumentalist view, tolerating these states and setting an example may lead to them becoming liberal and well-­ordered. See later. 39 Veit Bader has lamented how “liberal nationalists”, despite consideration for the political significance of communities and cultures, “seem to rely too much on state hierarchy and enforcement, overlooking or underestimating the development of various forms of transnational voluntarism. In addition, they seem unwilling to reconceptualise democracy to make it suit the vexingly new EU polity” (Bader 2007: 120). 40 Non-­liberal can refer to hierarchical and authoritarian regimes. But, from our perspective, non-­liberal can also refer to political experiences that are different with respect to the liberal individualist democracies emerged in the West. It is last perspective that Rawls does not take into account. 41 According to Rawls, any decent hierarchical society does not treat its own members reasonably or justly as free and equal citizens but should be nonetheless accommodated within the



42 43

44

45 46

47

Globalization and the ambivalence of religion

international order to encourage in time its development in a liberal direction (Rawls 1999a: 61–62). No other models of constitutional democracy are envisaged. Here we use “rational” in a general sense (for Rawls’ contrast between “rational” and “reasonable”, see Chapter 1). Gray argues: “A strictly political liberalism […] is an impossibility. The central categories of such a liberalism – ‘rights’, ‘justice’, and the like – have a content only insofar as they express a view of the good” (Gray 2000: 19). The problem with Gray’s interpretation is that it tends to collapse the distinction between right and good. But it is not as if “rights” were, for instance, just a recipient to be filled with “the good”. For instance, while freedom of speech is shaped by different conceptions of the good, historical events, and political compromises in the US, Canada, and India, there are broad areas of agreement. The relation between “right” and “good” is dialectical. Derrida overstates the openness of existing constitutional democracies (Derrida 1992; 2001). Our point is that, as the historical development of democracy suggests, values and principles that are marginal and even eccentric can move to the centre of the public sphere (Chapter 1). Note, however, that March is overgeneralizing. In some religious traditions and practices (e.g. India), this is not the case. Even in India, the heritage of the pluralism and syncretism of the religious traditions has, due to the politicization of religion, become ever more diluted. Paul Weithman argues that churches are (in particular in the US context) “schools of democracy” (Weithman 2002). This is, however, an over-­optimistic view. A good amount of evidence shows that religion provides consistent ideological justification to the mere preservation of the existing social order, with its longstanding institutions and unfair arrangements (Jost et al. 2014). In the US, evangelical Protestantism is a strong predictor of whether people will hold biases against female political leaders (Setzler and Janus 2016) and adherence to biblical literalism is associated with lower political participation among women (Cassese and Holdman 2016). Religious leaders can favour some voices over others, by manipulating the political orientation of groups rather than enabling a process of engagement and will formation. In Evangelical churches, volunteer lay leaders tend to be more conservative than other members of their community as they stress the value of internal political uniformity rather than the importance of learning and debate (Bean and Martinez 2015). The public emphasis on the religious identity of citizens and public officials also nurtures phenomena of interreligious distrust and delegitimation. And the constituents are more favourable to the use of extraordinary detention practices and harsh interrogation techniques against people identified as Muslim terrorists than they are in the case of terrorists with a non-­religious characterization (Piazza 2014). As Amartya Sen argues, support for religious toleration predates the affirmation of the modern European notions of liberalism and human rights (Sen 2009). For arguments against blasphemy law from different religious perspectives, see Tomasi (2011), Kutty (2014), Smith (2014).

297

CASES

European Court of Human Rights Dahlab v. Switzerland, App No 42393/98 (1990) Otto Preminger Institut v. Austria, App No 13470/87 (1994) Refah Partisi v. Turkey, App Nos 41340/98, 41342/98, 41343/98 and 41344/98 (2001) Lautsi v. Italy, App No 30814/06 (2011) Eweida and Others v. United Kingdom, App No 48420/10, 59842/10, 51671/10, 36516/10 (2013) S.A.S. v. France, App No 43835/11 (2014)

Supreme Court of the United States Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940) Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961) Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) United States v. Seeger, 380 U. S. 1643 (1965) Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983) Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990) Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. ___ (2014)

Supreme Court of Canada Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem, 2 S.C.R. 551 (2004)

Supreme Court of India Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum SCR (3) 844) (1985) Danial Latifi & Anr v. Union of India, 7 SCC 740 (2001)

Court of Justice of the European Union Achbita & Anor v. G4S Secure Solutions NV, EUECJ C-­157/15 (2017)



US Courts of Appeals Mozert v. Hawkins, 827 F.2d 1058 (1987) Fraternal Order of Police v. City of Newark, 170 F.3d 359 (1999)

UK Courts Aneeka Sohrab v. Raja Sulman Khan, SLT 1255 (2002)

Cases

299

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335

Index

Abbey, R. 171n42, 212, 243n9, 245n40 abortion 48n28, 51, 69, 78, 85, 126, 127, 206; controversy over personhood 34, 35 Abraham 282; Abrahamic faiths/religions 19n8, 210, 213 Abu-Sahlieh, A.A. 244n23 accommodations 16, 17, 110–116, 120, 123, 138n28, 142, 170n29, 170n32, 170n35, 170n36, 175, 189, 200, 201n3, 201n9, 203n23, 208; crisis in Quebec 154, 169n27; critique of 143, 160, 161, 171n47, 172n50, 172n51, 207; of harmful/controversial practices 176, 181, 190, 202n17; limited 163–166; Nussbaum’s religiously-based 226–229, 233, 234, 238–241, 247n52; of polygamy 178, 179; Rawls’ political 287, 288; Shachar’s transformative 237; Taylor’s and Maclure’s reasonable 143, 155–158, 160, 162 Achbita & Anor v. G4S Secure Solutions NV (2017) 234 Ackerman, B. 36 Adorno, T.W. 100n6, 274n33 Afghanistan 295n28 African Religion 5, 42, 213, 244n24 Agamben, G. 272, 280, 292n2 Ahmed, S. 4, 5 Al Qaeda 3, 258, 259, 278 Albania 1 al-Hibri, A.Y. 213 Allah 169 Allen, A.L. 123, 127 al-Qaradawi, Y. 50n40 Ambedkar, B.R. 4, 160, 166, 171n43, 220 Amish 126, 239, 240 Analects 4 analytical/Continental divide 3; as highlighting differences 10; as a misleading construct 8–9 Aneeka Sohrab v. Raja Sulman Khan (2002) 177 Anglicanism 141n53; Church in Virginia 31; ordination of women in 245n40 animal 7, 18n1, 37, 53, 91, 223, 246n49; cruelty towards 7, 186, 190, 193, 205n40; humans as self-interpreting 143, 145;

Kymlicka’s and Donaldson’s theory of animal rights 190–195, 197, 204n36, 205n39; Nussbaum’s on protection of 246n50; religion 18n13; religious protection of 12, 192, 195, 205n41; rights 35, 61, 90, 204n32; ritual slaughtering of 177, 190, 19 An-Na’im, A.A. 10, 14, 43, 295n30 anticlericalism 255–257, 273n15 Antigone 242 Anzaldúa, G. 214 Appleby, R.S. 19n12 Aquinas, T. 55 Arab spring 19n9 Arabism 180 Archard, D. 34 Arendt, H. 9, 105 Arguelles, E.E.V.I. 164 Aristotle 242, 265 Arneson, R.J. 239, 287 Aroney, N. 141n54 Asad, T. 3, 5, 18n2, 20n15, 106, 107, 113, 137n9, 202n13, 269, 282, 283, 294n11 Asante, M.K. 213, 244n24 Ashe, M. 234 Aśoka 4, 270 Assmann, J. 91, 140n47 Audi, R. 7, 48n24, 51, 52–63; ethics of citizenship 52, 56–60, 63, 67, 71n2; principle of religious rationale 56, 59; principle of secular motivation 56, 60; principle of secular rationale 46n5, 54–56, 62, 65, 67, 71n6, 71n8, 95; theo-ethical equilibrium 56, 102n26 Aung San 119, 137n12 Aung San Suu Kyi 17, 119, 137n13, 289 Austin, J.L. 100n11, 172n55 Australia 161, 163, 174, 188, 270; Aboriginals 161, 163, 188, 270 Austria 170n35, 20n18 Azmanova, A. 108, 109 Babich, B. 8 Bader, V. 74, 99n1, 296n39 Baehr, A.R. 207, 222, 243n9, 243n21, 245n40



Bailey, T. 33 Balagangadhara, S.N. 5, 6 Bano, S. 182 Banting, K. 175, 200 Barbato, M. 104n39 Barrett, J.L. 2, 60 Barrett, M. 200 Barry, B. 158, 160–162, 171n46, 171n47, 172n49 Barthold, L.S. 256, 257 Bataille, G. 152 Baubérot, J. 113 Baudrillard, J. 248 Baumeister, A. 103n31 Bean, L. 297n46 Beck, U. 2, 293n4 Becker, M. 207 Beckford, J.A. 74 Beiner, R. 106, 127, 141n51, 182, 201n7 Belgium 141n58 belief 7, 19n11, 19n13, 20n14, 29, 33, 36, 40, 48n21, 49n30, 57, 60, 62–64, 67, 69, 70, 72n17, 75, 83, 93, 105, 114, 122, 125, 132, 139n43, 149, 157, 158, 177–180, 183, 186, 189, 197, 204n35, 208, 211, 217, 218, 223, 242, 247n53, 249, 250, 253, 254, 260, 262, 265, 268–272, 273n9, 274n23, 274n24, 275n44, 278, 279, 290, 295n27; Catholic 217; Christian 21; communities of 44, 48n19, 83, 185, 245n38; comprehensive 220; conditions of 153, 154, 277, 283; core 156, 160–164, 171n44, 172n53, 173n57, 193; eschatological 132; -formation 151, 156n3; in God 46n3, 151, 159; ideological 1; moral 24, 57, 102n26, 202n17, 257; patriarchal 213; philosophical 1, 2; in public reason 248; religious 4, 5, 11, 24, 29, 39, 40, 44, 57–61, 70, 70n1, 89, 91, 103n35, 111, 113, 123, 126, 132, 134, 139n43, 143, 151, 153, 156, 161, 162, 164, 165, 178, 187, 201n9, 203n24, 206, 213, 219, 220, 226, 227, 231, 238, 241, 247n51, 256, 274n24, 277, 278, 291; secular/nonreligious 40, 57, 59, 102n26, 187, 155; spiritual 193; system 292; theistic 54 Bell, D. 10, 13, 14, 19n5, 49n35, 278 Bellah, R.N. 1, 2, 19n5, 127, 133–135, 141n59 Ben-Gurion, D. 19n9 Benhabib, S. 208, 209, 214 Benjamin, W. 93, 95, 100n6, 103n38, 158, 292n2 Bentham, J. 46n6, 152 Berger, P. 2, 3, 81 Berlin, I. 106, 136n2, 254–255 Berlusconi, S. 216, 244n27 Bernstein, R. 159 Bettiza, G. 104n39

Index

Bhabha, H.K. 214 Bhargava, R. 1, 5, 10, 15, 16, 20n16, 140n47, 278, 290 Bhatt, C. 172n55 Bhatt, E. 212 Bible 21, 25, 58, 84, 89, 90, 92, 141n56, 154, 172, 210, 262, 264, 265, 275n38, 275n40; interpretation 57, 72n12, 297n46; see also Gospel Bilge, S. 115 bin Laden, O. 255 Birulés, F. 221 Black, H. 138n17 Bloch, E. 95, 158 Bloom, A. 148 Bob Jones University v. United States (1983) 238 Bobbio, N. 131, 132, 140n50 Böckenförde, E.W. 101n19 Boettcher, J.W. 68 Bohman, J. 100n6, 109 Bohmer, C. 173n55 Bolivia 37, 49n36, 290; constitution of 37 Bonhoeffer, D. 141 Booth, T. 199 Borradori, G. 274n32 Botterman, S. 141n58 Bottici, C. 283, 294n18 Bouchard, G. 154–156, 169n27, 170n28, 170n32, 198, 200; Bouchard-Taylor report 169n27, 170n35, 198 Bouzar, D. 294n17 Bowker, J. 20n17 Bradley, W. 197 Braithwaite, J. 105, 194 Braithwaite, V. 194 Brandom, R.B. 100n10 Brazil 174 Brennan, G. 112 Brink, R.A. 58 Broch-Due, V. 180 Brodeur, P. 253 Brown, C. 296n37 Brown, W. 2003 198 Brubaker, R. 178, 179, 197, 201n10 Bruce, S. 2, 19n6, 19n7, 206, 262 Buchanan, A. 286, 296n36 Buddha 4, 91, 151; Paccekabuddha 151, 160 Buddhism 4, 7, 16, 20n14, 26, 41, 42, 96, 112, 118, 145, 150, 151, 157, 158, 160, 192, 204n35, 213, 221, 270; Ambedkar or Navayana 260, 171n43; Engaged 35, 288, 289; Mahayana 150; monks 118, 119; practice of tsethar 195; Tibetan 27 Burma or Myanmar 119, 137n12, 141n54, 141n55, 289 Burtt, S. 239 Bush, S. 290 Butler, J. 93, 243n4

337

338

Index

Calhoun, C. 73 Cambridge School 9 Cameron, C. 215, 218 Campbell B. 194 Campbell test 164 Canada 57, 113, 147, 174, 188, 201n5, 206, 297n43; Charter of Rights 147; Supreme Court of 162 Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940) 121, 138n18 capitalism 3, 11, 74, 81, 98, 101n18, 152, 190, 204n31, 222, 272, 277, 281, 292; as driving consumerism 152, 193, 288; financial 258, 278; liberal 120, 204n34, 260, 267; global 98, 190, 272, 277; as religion 292n2; society 272, 277; techno- 193 Caputo, J.D. 165, 249, 260 Card, R. 243n9 Carter, S.L. 252, 253 Casal, P. 190, 204n32 Casanova, J. 2, 19n6, 81, 159 Cassese, E.C. 297n46 Catalonia 196, 205n42 Catholicism 22, 29, 48n28, 96, 104n39, 106, 127, 128, 132, 138n16, 172n52, 216, 217, 260, 261, 264, 275n36, 275n45, 281, 283; Academia of Bavaria 101n18; aggiornamento 245n40; Catholic Social Doctrine 27; charity 132; Church 42, 106, 113, 129, 255, 270; communities 181, 275n44; doctrine 48n21; faith 121; National Tribunal 181; theology 275n44; universities 238; Vatican Council II 42, 245n40 Challand, B. 283, 294n18 Chambers, S. 103n31 Chaney, J. 125 Chin, C. 8 China 13, 19n8, 204n31, 232, 269, 295n28; as cultural-ethnic group 204n30; national political ideology 233 Chodorow, N. 221 Chomsky, N. 49n32 Christ 83, 92, 193, 217, 219, 262–265, 268, 269, 275n37; Jesus 219, 265, 267, 274n36, 275n37 Christian Science 63 Christianity 5, 6, 19n8, 23, 31, 34, 42, 48n25, 49n36, 55, 72n12, 78 80, 92, 102n23, 102n27, 106, 125, 128–132, 137n9, 138n29, 139n36, 140n47, 140n48, 141n52, 141n54, 141n56, 145, 150, 160, 169n21, 169n22, 180, 182, 185, 193, 195, 205n41, 210, 213, 222, 236, 238, 261, 265–272, 275n36, 275n39, 275n41, 275n43; beliefs/ views 21, 187; civilization 20n16; community 23, 79, 93; conservativism 38; establishment 113; majorities 242n2, 270, 291; monotheism 128, 140n47, 255; mysticism 20n14; piety 168n17; secularized

4, 268; secularizing 261–264; theism 158; theology 249; weak 269, 275n37; Western 159, 249, 269, 281; see also Anglicanism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism civil religion 105, 106, 119, 127, 128, 131–133, 136, 140n46, 140n47, 140n48; of antiquity 106, 128; Machiavelli’s 106, 132; Rousseau’s 128, 129; Tocqueville’s 129; uncivil 141n59; in the United States 133–135, 141n55 Civil Rights Movement 42, 51, 58, 70, 93 civilization 6, 15, 18, 96, 152, 262, 294n12, 294n13; areas/spaces 18, 37, 166n3; Christian 20n16, 266; clash of civilizations 2, 14, 45, 74, 97, 278, 279, 281–283, 292; Roman 137n10; transformation 93 Clayton, M. 215, 218, 219 clergy 58–60, 72n13, 141n56; anticlericalism 255–257, 273n15; clerical authority 6, 59; clerical domination 256; clericalism 72n13, 254, 255, 273n15; de-clericalization 258; structures 256–258 cliterodectomy 4; see also female genital mutilation Codó, E. 173n55 Cohen, G.A. 38, 243n14 Cohen, J. 46n1, 130 Comaroff, J. 103n36 communism 1, 3, 9, 14, 33, 91, 267, 268, 272, 272n1; fall of 81, 281; hermeneutic 249, 267, 271; Marxist 25, 267, 277; society 2, 267, 292 comparativism 3, 9, 11–12, 18, 127, 223, 233, 269, 270, 278, 289, 290; analyses and studies 94, 96, 141n58, 175, 263, 290; in a communitarian perspective 13; judgement 290; in a liberal perspective 14–15; in a pluralist perspective 16; in a postcolonial perspective 15 Confucianism 4, 6, 13, 14, 34, 42, 49n35, 96, 213, 232, 233, 259; ethos 232, 233; filial piety or xiào 12, 13, 37, 118 Connor, P. 155 constitution 11, 13, 26, 48n19, 53, 76, 101n22, 121, 200, 252; of Bolivia 37; constitutional court 101n19; constitutional democracy 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 17, 28, 33, 36, 37, 42, 49n34, 66, 76, 77, 88, 101n19, 160, 174, 183, 186, 210, 278, 285, 287, 289, 295n26, 295n27, 295n30, 297n41, 297n44; constitutional essentials 13, 22, 26, 30, 47n18, 62–63; constitutionalism 14, 26, 27, 43, 47n17; constitutionalization of international law 287; of France 137n7; of India 236, 245n33, 247n55, 289; liberal 43; practice 1; principles 1, 82, 103n37, 148, 218, 230, 238; project or design 37, 38, 45, 65; provisions/norms 203n26, 236, 279; reform and amendment



36, 68, 160; regime 75; separation between Church and State 7; unconstitutional 202n11, 247n56; of the US 123, 289; values 171n45; warrants/guarantees 117, 224, 225 Cooke, M. 49n34, 74, 76, 91–93, 98, 100n8, 103n31, 103n35, 104n40, 169n19, 259, 274n30 Cooper, F. 179 Cornwell, G. 198 Cox, C. 203n20 Cranmer, F. 165, 166 Creon 242 Cristi, M. 134 Critchley, S. 8 Critical Theory 9, 10, 78, 99, 100n6, 113 Croce, B. 275n41 Croce, M. 103n32 Crouch, C. 105 Cuneo, T. 46n5, 48n24 D’Agostino, F. 51, 72n16 Daesh 3, 277, 294n17 Dagger, R. 124, 138n32 Dahlab v. Switzerland (1990) 270 Dalai Lama 27, 288 Dalits 160, 171n43 Dallmayr, F. 20n20, 278 Danial Latifi & Anr v. Union of India (2001) 247n56 Daoism 20n14 Darfur 180, 203n24, 244n23 Davidson, D. 100n10, 272n4 Davie, G. 269 Dawkins, R. 18n4 Day, D. 4, 160, 220, 255 de Beauvoir, S. 242n3 De Koster, W. 37 De Roover, J. 5, 6, 15, 20n17 de Sousa, B. 5 De Waal, A. 180, 203n24, 244n23 De Waal, F. 1, 2, 18n1, 19n5 de Wijze, S. 243n9 Deckha, M. 204n32 deep ecology 33, 35, 150 democracy 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19n6, 19n8, 25, 29, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 46, 46n4, 49n36, 50n38, 54, 56, 59, 63, 69, 71n3, 74, 75, 77, 78, 87, 88, 92, 96–98, 100n7, 103n32, 105, 106–109, 119, 124, 125, 127, 129, 132, 134, 136, 142, 148, 185, 206, 223, 227, 239, 248, 258, 265, 273n7, 281, 290, 292, 296n39, 297n44; capitalist 81, 222; communist 267, 272; constitutional 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 17, 28, 33, 36, 37, 42, 49n34, 66, 76, 77, 88, 101n19, 160, 174, 183, 186, 210, 278, 285, 287, 289, 295n26, 295n27, 295n30, 297n41, 297n44; conversational 259; deliberative 22, 29, 65, 74, 89; direct 67; disaffected/crisis of 86, 87,

Index

119, 120, 122, 124, 131; egalitarian 206, 207; experiments with 289; fragility of 278; genealogies of 104; Indian 172n55; liberal 3, 13, 14, 32, 36, 44, 51, 53–57, 135, 232, 251–255, 257, 258; logic of 170n35; multiple paths to/models of 11, 13, 16, 17, 38, 94, 96, 286; pluralistic 35, 49n34, 99, 139n36, 217, 269, 273n12; post-class 75; post-foundational 264, 266–268; postsecular 17, 82, 85, 87; practice of 42; radical 35; reflexive 95; representative 52, 64, 66, 70; schools of 297; spirit of 16, 49n38, 96; vibrant and inclusive 143; without foundations 249 Denmark 217 Depoortere, F. 263, 264 Derrida, J. 9, 95, 102n28, 103n38, 152, 158, 169n19, 260, 272n2, 290, 297n44 Dervin, F. 198 desecularization 2, 3, 81; see also secularization Dewalt, M.W. 240 Dewey, J. 273n14 dharma 20n17, 137n12 Di Tullio, A. 221, 243n21 Dilthey, W. 260, 275n40 Dionigi, F. 104n39 Donaldson, S. 190–194, 204n36, 205n39 Dostoevsky, F. 265 Dotolo, C. 275n44 Douglas, G. 181 Dumitru, S. 243n12 Dummett, M. 20n18 Dumont, I. 162, 172n53 Durkheim, E. 19n13 duty of civility 22, 29, 32, 34, 38–40, 49n29, 55, 59, 95 Dworkin, R. 19n5, 19n14, 20n19, 51, 125, 148, 163, 165, 273n5 Eberle, C. 46n5, 48n24 Ecuador 287, 296n37 Egypt 179, 243n23, 291 Eisenberg, A. 174, 201n8 Eisenstadt, S.N. 12 Eisgruber, C.L. 138n19 El-Battahani, A. 180 Eliade, M. 257 Emmett, R. 19n11 Employment Division v. Smith (1990) or the peyote case 121, 138n19, 227 Engel v. Vitale (1962) 31 Engels, F. 277 English, J. 243n9 Enlightenment 1, 22, 45, 75, 80, 85–87, 98, 99, 106, 129, 152, 153, 193, 248, 249, 254–256, 260, 269, 273n8, 273n15, 278, 288; Buddhist 26, 150, 151, 160, 192; counter- 158; Liberalism 46n4, 259; myth of 154; spiritual 93

339

340

Index

Enoch, D. 33 Ersanilli, E. 201n4 Espinosa, G. 51 ethics 4, 20n17, 57, 61, 74, 92, 194, 243n10, 294n13; bio- 265; Confucian political 49n35; discourse 80, 100n16; emergency 294n11; religious 36, 238; sexual 264, 265 ethics of citizenship 40, 58, 69, 217; Audi’s 52, 56–60, 63, 67, 71n2 Ethiopia 243n23 ethos 140n48; Buddhist 160; Chinese political 13; Confucian 232, 233; critical 81, 99; democratic 8, 35, 36, 38–40, 49n38, 58, 93, 126, 129, 134, 135, 164, 217–220, 233, 271; egalitarian 243n14; national 178; religious 129, 131; republican 130, 132; uncivil 135 European Court of Human Rights or ECtHJ 165, 173n56, 206, 234, 242n2, 245n35, 270, 291 European Court of Justice or ECJ 234 European Union 174, 190, 245 euthanasia 69, 85, 265; physician-assisted suicide 67 Everson v. Board of Education (1947) 121, 138n17 Eweida and Others v. United Kingdom (2013) 165 Exdell, J. 243n9 faith 3, 5, 14, 19n14, 29, 31, 48n19, 48n21, 57, 62, 83, 85, 92–94, 99n2, 128, 138n27, 140n47, 142, 159, 160, 163, 182, 205n40, 252, 253, 264, 273n14, 274n19, 277, 278; Abrahamic faiths/religions 19n8, 210, 213; act of 64; blind 91, 253; Catholic 121; communities of 91; dogmatic 63, 81; group 241; individual/personal 4, 6, 21, 46n1, 290; intellectualistic 292; inter-faith dialogue 101n18; knowledge and 102n29; leap of 158; Pastafarian articles of 164; people of 57, 101n17; reason and 18, 45, 75, 80, 101n18, 106; -based schooling 58, 240; theological 132 Falwell, J. 255 family 7, 21, 37, 45, 48n20, 50n42, 51, 110, 118, 122, 125; of political conceptions 29, 35 Fan, R. 232 Fanon, F. 5 Fascism 91, 153, 158 Feinberg, J. 212, 219 female genital mutilation 202n17, 203n24, 243n23 see also cliterodectomy feminism 3, 7, 17, 22, 32, 35, 46, 49n31, 51, 99, 188, 195, 196, 206–247, 290; Islamic 213; secularist 206–221, 225, 226, 229–231, 234, 235, 241, 242, 290; see also Nussbaum, Okin

Ferrara, A. 16, 38, 49n38, 96, 290 Ferrari, S. 238 Fisher, M. 172n51 Fisher, S. 240 Flying Spaghetti Monster 4, 163, 164; see also Pastafarianism Forst, R. 70, 72n14, 170n33 Foucault, M. 9, 118, 152, 158, 248, 272n2, 274n20 France 3, 39, 101n21, 106, 113–115, 137n7, 140n46, 155, 206, 234, 294n17 Francis of Assisi, St. 160, 166, 168n16; Franciscan spirituality 195 Frankenberry, N.K. 274n24 Fraser, I. 159 Fraternal Order of Police v. City of Newark (1999) 156 freedom of conscience 1, 121–123, 125, 127, 138n19, 138n28, 154, 155, 160, 161, 163, 170n35, 171n48, 172n53, 183–186, 202n17, 204n30, 216, 225–230, 232, 234, 235, 296n31 freedom of speech 24, 30, 31, 48n22, 92, 139n34, 179, 211, 215, 217, 244n28, 244n31, 291, 297n43 Freeman, S. 27, 47n9, 47n10, 47n15, 49n30 freestandingness 10, 15, 44, 224; of the list of human capabilities 230, 231; of the political conceptions of justice 25, 34, 42; of public reason and justification 22, 33, 36, 45, 49n34, 87, 246n47, 260 Freud, S. 1, 10 Fukuyama, F. 286 Gagnon, B. 154, 169n26 Galli, C. 280, 293n8 Gamper, D. 81 Gandhi, M. 4, 16, 150, 160, 166, 192, 195, 220, 255; Gandhian non-violence 35 Gauchet, M. 106, 129, 155, 262, 275n39 Gaus, G. 34, 36, 40–42, 52, 63; convergence model 64–69, 72n15 Geertz, C. 202n13 Gentile, V. 33 Germany 58, 74, 75, 140n46, 240, 245n31, 280; Constitutional Court 101n19 Ghannouchi, R. 97 Gheaus, A. 245n39 Gilligan, C. 208 Girard, R. 249, 261–263, 274n36 Gledhill, J. 83 Glendinning, S. 8 Glick Schiller, N. 286 Glover, J. 224 God 2, 4, 5, 25–27, 36, 46n3, 48n21, 54, 55, 57, 63, 72n11, 72n12, 79, 80, 83, 84, 93, 103n35 106, 120, 125, 128–130, 133, 134, 140n47, 140n49, 141n57; death of 1, 2;



existence of 62, 99n2, 103n31, 131; faith in 19n14, 21; man created in the image of 89, 90, 95 Goethe, J.W. 250 Göle, N. 4, 107 Goodin, R.E. 245n33 Goodman, A. 125 Google 159 Gordon, P.E. 101n19 Gorski, P.S. 134 Gospel 152, 169n22; see also Bible Gozdecka, D.A. 197 Gray, J. 3, 14, 171n40, 297n43 Greece 102n27, 128, 242, 249, 269; Greek religion 4, 106, 128, 129, 140n47 Green, K. 243n9 Greenawalt, K. 31, 69, 138n19 Grillo, R. 175 Gruenbaum, E. 213 Gutmann, A. 239 Haakonssen, K. 105 Habermas, J. 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 18n3, 19n5, 36, 48n23, 55, 71n8, 74–104, 135, 138n30, 144, 154, 157, 166, 169n20, 169n25, 172n55, 186, 245n40; early secularism 78–81; postsecular democracy 17, 82, 85, 87, 94–97; postsecularism 20n20, 70, 81, 82, 85–93; reconstructive approach 47n10; theory of communicative action 74–78; translation proviso 46, 50n39, 116, 132, 134 Hall, D.L. 202n12 Hamoudi, H.A. 50n42 Hampton, J. 210 Harel-Sharev, A. 289 Harrington, A. 98 Harris, E.M. 264, 265, 275n43 He, B. 201n1 Hedrick, T. 99 Hegel, G.W.F. 10, 86, 142, 143, 154, 157, 166, 167n5 Heidegger, M. 102n27, 250, 260–262, 266, 275n40 Held, D. 293n4 Held, V. 208, 209, 221 Hélie, A. 234 Hennig, A. 95 Henry, P. 31 Hiemstra, J.L. 58 Hinduism 4, 6, 16, 19n8, 22, 42, 79, 96, 159, 171n43, 172n55, 204n35, 212, 213, 222, 236, 259, 294n16; caste ban 235; cow protection 195; Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) 19n9; Holi Spring Festival 228; Laws of Manu 212; Marriage Act 235; sati 214, 215; state 230 Hobbes, T. 23, 131

Index

Holdman, M.R. 297n46 Holocaust 21, 74, 245n31 Holy or Sacred Scriptures 41, 54, 57, 72n11, 214, 238 homosexuality 62, 253, 264, 275n44 Honneth, A. 100n6 Honohan, I. 108, 137n6; on non-domination and toleration 110, 111 Hooghe, M. 141n58 Horkheimer, M. 100n6, 274n33 Houellebecq, M. 217 Houtman, G. 119 Huat, C.B. 204n30, 295n29 human rights 11, 13, 14, 79, 85, 86, 156, 177, 245n40, 247n56, 251, 277, 279, 287, 288, 293n7, 295n22, 295n31, 296n35, 297n47; European Convention on 68, 164; European Court of 163, 165, 173n56, 206, 234, 270, 291; proper 284; Quebec Charter of 170n32; rejection/violation of 152; support from religious views 42, 43, 52; treaties 201n1 Humboldt, W. 167n5 Hume, D. 140n47 Hunter, J.D. 21, 51 Huntington, S. 2, 45, 278, 279, 281, 294n12, 294n13, 294n14, 294n15, 294n18, 294n19 Hutterites 58 Hyun, K.J. 232 ideal theory 9, 10, 70; see also non-ideal theory Ignatieff, M. 134 India 1, 3, 6, 12, 14–16, 19n8, 19n9, 20n17, 37, 94, 96, 103n32, 139n42, 140n47, 150, 160, 168n15, 171n43, 172n55, 188, 190, 193, 202n16, 207, 214, 215, 222, 227–231, 234, 235, 239, 244n25, 244n26, 269, 290, 294n16, 297n43, 297n45; Constitution of 236, 245n33, 247n55, 289; personal law/ plural legal system of 1, 5, 236, 237, 289, 290 Indonesia 1, 243n23, 293n3 Inglehart, R 2 inheritance 7, 102n27, 181, 206, 236 interculturalism 96, 113, 157, 168n12, 170n34, 176, 197–200, 202n14, 203n25, 204n29; see also multiculturalism Invernizzi, C. 248 Iran 116, 294n16 Iraq 294n16 Irigaray, L. 243n4 Islam 3, 4, 6, 16, 18, 19n8, 34, 42, 50n42, 96, 97, 106, 125, 137n9, 139n36, 150, 159, 193, 203n24, 204n30, 206, 210, 212–214, 217, 222, 244, 259, 275n43, 277, 281, 282, 284, 293n3, 294n17, 295n30; affaire du voile in France 114, 115; anti- 283; authorities

341

342

Index

Islam continued 236, 237; as burqa 4, 115, 234; as chador 265, 270; communities 235, 236; Courts 181, 182; Declaration of Human Rights in 42; divorce 203n21; dress 270; feminism 213; finance 182; fundamentalism or Islamism 3, 19n9, 97, 141n51, 277, 278; Hanafi 283; as hijab 114, 234; Islamic headscarf/veil 114–116, 161, 234; Islamization 50n41; Islamophobia 234; minarets 68; as niqab 115, 234; Organization of Islamic Cooperation 104n39, 291; personal law 236, 237; reappropriation of 115, 116; regime 287; religious-legal tradition of 43; ritual slaughter 190; Rohingya Muslims 119; Sunni 44 Israel 3, 19n9, 94, 96, 168, 202n16; Israeli– Palestinian conflict 282 Italy 265, 270, 276n46; Italian–Atlantic republicanism 105, 140n46; public schools 270; self-ruling cities 136n1, 140n46 Jackson, J. 204n32 Jaggar, A. 231 Jainism 192, 193, 195, 204n35 Janus, A.B. 297n46 Janzen, R. 58 Jaspers, K. 96 Jediism or Jedi Church or Temple of the Jedi Order 4, 163–165, 172n54 Jefferson, T. 168n14 Jehovah’s Witnesses 139n43, 219 Joppke, C. 197 Judaism 4, 72n12, 78, 123, 162, 170n30, 172n52, 210, 213, 243n4; community 181; London Beth 181; Orthodox 162, 172n52; ritual slaughter 190; succah 162, 172n52; yarmulke 123, 172n55 Juergensmeyer, M. 19n9, 94, 281 Junker-Kenny, M. 103n31 Kahn, R.A. 217 Kant, I. 23, 46n7, 71n9, 72n10, 80, 81, 120, 139n33, 139n36, 154, 158, 166, 229, 275n40; autonomy 25, 26, 41, 59, 209, 225; categorical imperative 100n16; comprehensive view 22; consensus-oriented image of citizens as co-legislators 28, 32, 33, 40, 55, 98; deontology and transcendental subject 120; idealized image of politics 45; legitimacy 38, 87, 97; metaphysics 76, 80; neo-Kantian 45, 100n5, 143, 186, 229, 268; practical reason 74, 76; purity of reason 36; reconciliation between Enlightenment and religion 75; secularism 98; on social contract 21, 23, 294n20; teleological rationalism 88; tribunal of reason 40; union of hearts 89

Kashmir 294n16 Katzenstein, P.J. 11 Kazanistan 284, 285, 288, 295n30, 295n31, 296n32 Kennedy, J.F. 101n20, 121, 122, 133, 138n16 Keown, D. 213 Kepel, G. 2, 281 Khala, H. 234, 235 Khomeini, R. 179 King, M.L. 4, 58, 60, 93, 160, 166, 255 King, S.B. 288, 289 Kinvall, C. 172n55 KKK 63 Knight, S. 194 Koenig, M. 155 Koopmans, R. 201n4 Koskenniemi, M. 294 Kristeva, M. 243n4 Kukathas, C. 47n14, 176, 203n26, 222, 242n1; modus vivendi multiculturalism 183–189 Kutty, F. 297n47 Kymlicka, W. 7, 32, 47n9, 47n11, 47n14, 124, 147, 167n6, 174–176, 183, 187, 200, 201n1, 201n3, 201n5, 204n33, 204n36, 205n39; autonomy-based multiculturalism 188–197; and Davidson’s theory of animal rights 190–195, 197, 204n36, 205n39 Kynsilehto, A. 213 Laborde, C. 18, 106, 109, 125, 137n11, 141n53; critical republicanism 113–117 Lægaard, S. 217 Lafont, C. 63, 68, 74 laïcité 37, 113–115, 137n7, 154, 155, 273n13; republicanism 1, 19n9, 39, 106, 113–117, 125, 154 Laitinen, A. 173n57 Langer, L. 68 Larmore, C. 118 Lautsi v. Italy (2011) 270 League of Nations 279, 293n7, 295n23 Leustan, L.N. 74 Levey, G.B. 199, 217 Levinas, E. 95, 104n38 Li, X. 233 liberalism 1; autonomy 21, 51, 183, 188, 197, 207, 208–212, 221, 222; comprehensive 25, 26, 31, 188, 191, 194, 207, 215, 274n29; democracy 3, 13, 14, 32, 44, 53–56, 232, 251–255; see also political liberalism Linzey, A. 205n41 Locke, J. 23 Lomasky, L. 112 Long, L.W. 201n10 Lovett, F. 106, 108; on non-domination and toleration 110–117 Lu, P.-F. 221



Luckmann, T. 3 Luxemburg 190 Lyotard, F. 248 McCarthy, T. 10, 47n10 McCormick, J.P. 280 McGowan v. Maryland (1961) 139n44 McGrew, A. 293n4 Machiavelli, N. 106, 130–132, 140n46, 140n48, 140n49, 141n51, 141n52 McKeen, C. 243n9 MacKinnon, C.A. 236 Maclure, J. 1, 156, 157, 160, 162, 163, 168n12, 170n32, 171n48, 172n53, 172n55 Madeley, J.T.S. 74 Madibbo, A.I. 180 Madison, J. 31 Mahmood, S. 221, 290 majoritarianism 67, 68, 139n35, 170n35, 230; religious 3, 95, 291 Malik, M. 175, 182, 203n22, 206, 222, 243n6 Mallon, D. 243n9 Mamdani, M. 180 Mandela, N. 17 Mantzavinos, C. 166n4 March, A. 14, 43, 44, 50n42, 278, 286, 290, 297n45 Marcuse, H. 100n6 Markell, P. 137n5 Markoff, J. 127 marriage 7, 163, 177–179, 181, 201n1, 203n20, 235, 236; child, forced and arranged 7, 189, 202n17, 206, 242n1; Hindu Marriage Act 235; same-sex or gay 51, 62, 69, 212 Martí, J.L. 105 Martinez, B.C. 297n46 Marx, K. 1, 2, 10, 36, 79, 80, 100n6, 154, 267, 277; Marxism 100, 145, 152, 207, 266, 267, 290; Marxism-Leninism 294n16; Marxist communism 25, 267, 277; postMarxist theory 81, 99, 102n30; secularist critique of religion 74, 81 Mashhour, A. 179 Mazama, A. 213, 244n24 Mbembe, A. 5, 204n31, 293n2 Meer, N. 199 Meier, H. 280 Mendieta, E. 74, 118 Merdjanova, I. 253 Merkel, A. 174 Mernissi, F. 213, 222 Mies, M. 213 Mill, J.S. 46n6, 49n31, 124, 136n2, 139n33, 139n34, 242n3 Miller, D. 9, 68 Mills, C. 219 Mo Tzu 270

Index

modernity 1, 2, 11, 16, 21, 44, 74, 81, 87, 97, 136 142, 144, 148, 149, 152–154, 168n16, 169n24, 248, 249, 254; critique of 10, 166; hermeneutics of 142, 148, 151, 157, 166; late 11; multiple (programmes of) modernities 11, 96; political 100n15, 169n22; Western 74, 75, 86, 142, 144, 151, 193, 248 Modi, N. 19n9 Modood, T. 44, 174, 175, 199, 201n1, 217 Moghadam, V.M. 277 Mogobe, B.R. 37 Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985) or the Shah Bano case 236, 247n56 Monkhouse, L.L. 232 monotheism 2, 6, 79, 80, 91, 102n27, 128, 133, 254, 255, 272n6, 280, 282; JudeoChristian 128, 140n47 Montesquieu 140n48 Monti, P. 71n2, 102n25 Moral Majority 255 Morgenthau, H. 294n14 Mormons 202n11 Morocco 293 Mozart, W.A., 219 Mozert v. Hawkins (1987) 187 Muhammad 217 Mulhall, S. 47n15, 144, 166n2, 167n6 multiculturalism 3, 22, 32, 113, 115, 135, 166n1, 168n12, 170n34, 174–205, 207, 212, 237, 242, 281, 295n29; anti- 294n19; autonomy-based 188–197; modus vivendi 183–189; strong 176–180; see also interculturalism, Kukathas, Kymlicka, Parekh Næss, A. 160 Nagel, T. 19n5, 21, 22, 46n1, 46n3, 139n37, 161, 271 Nandy, A. 5, 6 Narayan, U. 214, 222, 228, 235 nationalism 3 Native American 123, 188; Church 227; spirituality 35 Naughton-Treves, L. 194 Nazism 75, 141n54, 245n37 Nehru, J. 19n9 Netherlands 141n58, 174 Neuhaus, R.J. 45, 52 neutrality 1, 15, 35, 49n34, 71n4, 89, 111, 112, 128, 129, 137n7, 139n40, 139n44, 142, 149, 158, 167n6, 174, 240, 257; analysis 264, 279, 281, 294n10; Barry’s understanding of 171n47, 172n49; critique of laicist/secularist 114, 120, 122–124, 127, 138n19, 162, 165; gender 210, 245n39; justificatory 27, 68, 81; neutralist critique of accommodations 143, 160, 161, 171n47,

343

344

Index

neutrality continued 172n50, 172n51; non-domination as content 116–119; Patten’s understanding of 172n50; of political institutions towards religion 41, 54, 57, 75, 82, 83, 85, 88, 98, 101n21, 104n40, 113, 115, 116, 138n17, 138n20, 148, 154, 155, 184, 187, 201n5; of procedures 121; of public spaces towards religion 110, 115; reason 252, 258, 260; with respect to comprehensive doctrines 27, 31, 147; of rights 137n15; of treatment/ effect 27; umpire/third party 204n30, 293n6; value 53, 54, 57, 71n4, 83 Newbigin, E. 289 Nietzsche, F. 10, 127, 152, 169n23, 248, 250, 260, 262, 264, 266, 272n2, 275n40; Nietzscheanism 152; nihilism 249, 260, 275n40 Niger 202n16, 203n24, 244n23 non-ideal theory 10, 295n25; see also ideal theory non-violence 35, 160, 169n19, 194, 195, 204n35, 261–263, 267, 270, 272, 289, 292 Norgaard, R. 19n11 Norris, P. 2 North Korea 1, 295n28 Norton, A. 214 Norval, A.J. 103n36 Nozick, R. 20n19, 49n32 Nussbaum, M. 2, 19n5, 47n12, 108, 125, 130, 138n19, 183, 198, 201n9, 207, 208, 212, 214, 215, 241, 242, 243n5, 243n6, 243n9, 243n16, 244n29, 245n33, 245n41, 246n45, 246n46, 246n48, 246n50, 247n53, 247n54, 247n56, 247n57; capabilities approach and religion 222–226, 230–233; on freedom of conscience and accommodations 226–230, 233–240, 247n52; version of political liberalism 215, 216, 222–224, 231–233, 245n43 oath 133, 141n54, 141n56 Obama, B. 101n20, 122, 123, 134, 138n27 Oh, M. 204n32 Okin, S.M. 4, 7, 8, 32, 45, 49n30, 51, 139n41, 157, 188, 201n8, 206, 207, 222, 224, 225, 241, 242, 243n7, 243n10, 243n11, 243n12, 243n14, 243n15, 243n16, 243n17, 243n18, 243n19, 244n27, 244n28, 244n3, 245n40; autonomy liberalism 208–212; critique of multiculturalism 195, 196; secularist feminism 208–221 Opalsky, M. 201n1 Orientalism 295n30 Orthodoxy 46n4, 106, 128, 281; community 193; Russia 281 Osho community 4, 165 Osten-Sacken, T. 244n23

Otto Preminger Institut v. Austria (1994) 291 Ottoman Empire 287, 295n29; millet system 295n29 overlapping consensus 14, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 41, 43, 44, 48n19, 51, 168n12, 170n31, 207, 210, 211, 224, 230, 231, 241, 246n47, 295n24 Owen, J.J. 129 Oyira, E.J. 203n24, 244n23 Pakistan 291, 294n16 Parekh, B. 174, 175, 183, 184, 189, 199, 201n6, 201n9, 202n14, 202n15, 202n16, 202n17, 202n18, 203n22, 203n25, 204n29; on accommodations 181, 182; strong multiculturalism 176–180 Pareyson, L. 260 Parry, 194 Parsi 236 Parsons, T. 1 Pastafarianism 163; see also Flying Spaghetti Monster Pateman, C. 208 Paterlini, P. 260, 267 Patten, A. 162, 171n47, 172n49, 172n50 Pentecostalism 3, 283 Perlin, J. 63 Peters, S.F. 239 Petito, F. 11, 278, 283, 294n13 Pettit, P. 18, 47n14, 105, 106, 107–110, 112–114, 117, 130, 131, 136n4, 137n8, 140n46, 140n49 Phillips, A. 99, 174, 201n8, 204n34, 206, 214, 221, 222, 234, 238, 240, 243n6, 247n54 Piazza, J.A. 297n46 Plato 265 pluralism 17, 19n9, 25, 37, 61, 75, 81, 85, 95, 96, 124, 126, 129, 133, 163, 183, 192, 199, 212, 260, 270, 290, 291, 297n45; as an approach to comparativism 16; fact of 23, 25, 26, 46, 70, 91, 103n37, 127, 277, 288, 289; global 256, 286, 288; hyper- 158, 165; inner/internal 103n34, 179; institutional 189; problem of 6; reasonable 18, 25, 66, 284, 295n24, 295n26; religious 44, 102n29, 129, 136; value 45, 49n34 Pocock, J.G.A. 105, 106 Pogge, T. 288 Poland 3, 94 political liberalism 14, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25–33, 36, 37, 39, 43–46, 46n4, 47n16, 48n28, 49n33, 61, 71, 86–88, 116, 183, 188, 207, 230, 242, 243n20, 244n30, 278, 283, 284, 288, 294n20, 295n24, 297n43; Nussbaum’s version of 215, 216, 222–224, 231–233, 245n43; Okin’s critique of 210–221, 243n16; see also liberalism, Rawls Pollack, D. 2, 3



polygamy 4, 178, 179, 202n11, 202n17, 206, 212, 235 polytheism 140n47, 254–256, 271 Pope Francis or Bergoglio, J.M. 205n41, 288 populism 3, 38, 43, 91, 92, 94, 131, 174, 175, 200, 279, 286; nationalist 268, 277, 291, 292 postcolonialism 5, 9, 14, 180, 214, 295n30; comparativist critique 15, 16 postmodernism 10, 46, 51, 75, 98, 248, 249, 260, 262, 266–268, 270–272, 272n1, 272n2, 274n20 postsecularism 2, 17, 20n20, 70, 74, 81, 82, 85–93, 97–99, 99n1, 101n18, 104n39, 165; democracy 17, 82, 85, 87, 94–97; society 18n3, 70, 74, 75, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 94, 95, 97; turn 75, 81, 89 Powell, D. 198 practices 4, 5, 17, 19n7, 19n13, 19n14, 36, 37, 42–45, 115, 132, 137n14, 145, 147, 151, 160, 164, 169n21, 169n25, 172n55, 177, 189, 190, 192, 197, 200, 201n3, 217, 220, 227, 265, 270, 290; accommodation of religious 16, 17, 110–116, 120, 123, 138n28, 164–166, 168n15, 169n20, 169n27, 178, 179, 189, 233, 234, 239; antimigration and anti-Islamic 283; argumentative/of reasoning/discursive 10, 37, 289, 292; authoritarian 13, 17, 37, 185, 287, 291; Buddhist 118, 119, 195, 289; child rearing 201n2; Christian 92; of civic engagement 135, 136; conversational 259; core 158, 193; cruel against animals 191, 193, 195, 205n36, 205n39; deliberative 16; democratic 50n38, 90, 101n22, 251; detention 297n46; of domination and exclusion 7, 13, 110, 111, 135, 249, 267, 268, 287; educational 219; of freedom 26; gendered 7, 209–211, 215, 287; of governance 136n5; harmful/controversial practices 176, 181–183, 190, 199, 202n17, 203n22, 203n24, 208, 229, 243n23; Hindu 235; justificatory 259; legal 163, 196; nonviolent 194; patriarchal 115, 215, 241; political 11, 17, 196, 272; purdah 7, 206, 228, 234; religious 5, 6, 10, 12, 17, 96, 110, 111, 115, 162, 164, 175, 178, 184, 186, 190, 192, 195, 198, 202n13, 204n32, 205n37, 206, 207, 212, 213, 226, 229, 231–233, 236, 238, 246n50, 247n53, 271, 274n24, 277, 278, 283, 297n45; ritual 20n17; of ritual slaughter 190; sati 214, 215, 244n26; secularity as multileveled 155; sexist 211, 216; of Sharia Courts 203n21; social/ communal 6, 118, 119, 249, 290; transformative 166, 289; value 33, 35, 36, 43; veiling 116 Prado, C.G. 8

Index

Pragmatism 10, 249, 250–253, 256, 257, 271, 273n9 principle of religious rationale 56, 59 principle of secular motivation 56, 60 principle of secular rationale 46n5, 54–56, 62, 65, 67, 71n6, 71n8, 95 Protestantism 4, 20, 49n33, 106, 128, 129, 132, 138n28, 143, 168n17; Anglo-Saxon 281, 294n15; denominations 283; Evangelical 51, 297n46; faith 46; individualism 118, 256, 295n30; reform 151; university 238 proviso Rawlsian 18, 22, 29–32, 38–41, 43, 46n5, 49n34, 50n40, 56, 59, 65, 67, 75, 116; Habermasian translation 18, 20n20, 46n5, 50n39, 71n8, 75, 81–88, 98, 132, 134; Laborde’s provisos 114 public education 57, 58, 61, 71n3, 114, 187, 239, 245n35 public justification 14, 22, 27–36, 38, 39, 41–43, 47n7, 50n39, 52, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65–70, 72n15, 87–90, 93, 95, 97, 103n33, 112, 116, 117, 193, 195, 205n38, 292; burden of 60; epistemic and moral requirements of 62, 63; pro tanto 64 public reason 7, 11, 14, 51, 52, 63, 64, 70, 99n3, 102n22, 102n25, 116, 117, 130, 183, 219, 229, 246n47, 248, 271; approach 51, 59, 69, 74, 75, 130, 137n13, 272; Audi’s version of 52–56; convergence model 64–66; Habermas’ version of 75, 81–88, 96, 98; Rawlsian 22, 26–31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39–43, 45, 46, 46n5, 47n17, 48n20, 48n28, 48n29, 49n34, 55, 62, 67, 69, 73n19, 103n33, 116, 130, 256, 260, 285, 295n24, 295n30; reasoning 3, 16, 49n28, 65, 220, 292 Quebec 143, 147, 154, 167n11, 168n15, 169n27, 170n30, 170n32, 188, 198 Queen, C. 160 Quillen, C. 294n16 Quong, J. 33, 64 Quran 25, 83, 179, 210, 213, 214, 236 Ramadan fasting 170n30 Ramadan, T. 43, 44, 50n40 Ratzinger, J. or Pope Benedict XV 101n18 Rawls, J. 4, 7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19n5, 20n19, 21–50, 52, 53, 56, 62, 63, 65, 71n4, 74, 75, 81, 84, 85, 87, 90, 99n3, 100n5, 100n7, 102n22, 102n28, 108, 119, 120, 124, 125, 135, 136n3, 137n15, 138n30, 138n31, 139n33, 139n36, 142, 148, 154, 166, 168n12, 169n25, 183, 184, 186, 188, 207, 216, 218, 231, 243n8, 243n9, 243n11, 243n12, 243n13, 243n14, 243n16, 243n17, 243n20, 245n37, 245n42, 246n45, 246n48,

345

346

Index

Rawls continued 249, 251, 254, 268, 271, 278, 295n21; comprehensive doctrines 7, 22, 25, 27, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 45, 46n5, 47n17, 48n19, 49n29, 49n33, 52–55, 62, 63, 116, 207, 210, 213, 216, 224, 244n28; duty of civility 22, 29, 32, 34, 38–40, 49n29, 55, 59, 95; justice as fairness 24, 46n1, 108, 212, 218, 285, 295n24; law of peoples 283–292, 295n22, 295n23, 295n24, 295n26, 295n27, 295n29, 295n30, 295n31, 296n33, 296n34, 296n35, 296n38, 296n40, 296n41, 297n42; overlapping consensus 14, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 41, 43, 44, 48n19, 51, 168n12, 170n31, 207, 210, 211, 224, 230, 231, 241, 246n47, 295n24; political liberalism 14, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25–33, 36, 37, 39, 43–46, 46n4, 47n16, 48n28, 49n33, 61, 71n2, 86–88, 107, 116, 208–213, 221–223, 230, 294n20; project of reconciliation 51; proviso 18, 22, 29–32, 38–41, 43, 46n5, 49n34, 50n40, 56, 59, 65, 67, 75, 116; public reason 22, 26–31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39–43, 45, 46, 46n5, 47n17, 48n20, 48n28, 48n29, 49n34, 55, 62, 67, 69, 73n19, 102n25, 103n33, 116, 130, 256, 260, 267, 285, 295n24, 295n30; separation between the political and the comprehensive 32, 35, 39, 58, 215, 244n30, 245n40, 246n46 Refah Partisi v. Turkey (2003) 242n2 referendum 30, 38, 39, 68; Oregon on physician assisted suicide 67; Swiss on minarets 40, 68 Regan, D. 127 Regan, Jr., M.C. 123, 127 Rehman, J. 179 religion: African 5, 42, 213, 244n24; animal 18n1; belief 4, 5, 11, 24, 29, 39, 40, 44, 57–61, 70, 70n1, 89, 91, 103n35, 111, 113, 123, 126, 132, 134, 139n43, 143, 151, 153, 156, 161, 162, 164, 165, 178, 187, 201n9, 203n24, 206, 213, 219, 220, 226, 227, 231, 238, 241, 247n51, 256, 274n24, 277, 278, 291; Capitalism as 292n2; civil 105, 106, 119, 127, 128, 131–133, 136, 140n46, 140n47, 140n48; civil majoritarianism 3, 95, 291; as comprising social-communal practices 6; and democracy 10, 11, 46n4, 74, 75, 87, 88, 92, 94, 96–98, 143, 268, 290, 292; Greek 4, 106, 128, 129, 140n47; as instituting relations of power and authority 6–7; multidimensionality of 3–5, 7; practices 5, 6, 10, 12, 17, 96, 110, 111, 115, 162, 164, 175, 178, 184, 186, 190, 192, 195, 198, 202n13, 204n32, 205n37, 206, 207, 212, 213, 226, 229, 231–233, 236, 238, 246n50, 247n53, 271, 274n24, 277, 278, 283, 297n45; public 274n26;

religious atheism 19n14; religious minorities 4, 16, 17, 68, 109, 113, 114, 125, 133, 148, 175, 189, 190, 197, 217, 227, 235, 286, 287; religious pluralism 44, 102n29, 129, 136; Roman 4, 106, 128, 129, 140n47; as a source of meaningful discourses 6 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) 38, 138n19, 227, 228 religious minorities 4, 16, 17, 68, 109, 113, 114, 125, 133, 148, 175, 189, 190, 197, 217, 227, 235, 286, 287 Renteln, A.D. 201n2 republicanism 3, 17, 18, 22, 29, 105, 106, 137n6, 138n25, 138n30, 139n35, 140n49, 166n1, 168n12, 272n1; of civil religion 106, 127–135; of the common good 119–127; critical 113–117; Franco-German 140n46; French laicist 1, 19n9, 39, 109, 113–117, 125, 129, 137n7, 154; Italian–Atlantic 140n46; of non domination 106–119; see also Laborde, Pettit, Sandel, Viroli Risse, M. 287 Robertson, P. 255 Robespierre, M. 129 Robeyns, I. 223 Rohingya muslims 119 Romania 14 Romanticism 257, 273n9; aestheticism 256; individualism 256; polytheism 271; soul 159; utopia 267 Roof, W.C. 277 Rorty, R. 4, 8, 10, 45, 51, 72n13, 248, 249, 260–262, 265, 267, 269, 271, 272, 272n4, 273n5, 273n16, 273n17, 274n19, 274n21, 274n22, 274n23, 274n25, 274n26, 274n29; pragmatist liberalism 250–252, 256, 257; privatization and depoliticization of religion 252–256, 257–259 Rosenblatt, P.C. 232 Ross, W.D. 71n9 Rostbøll, C.F. 218 Rousseau, J.-J. 23, 127–129, 138n29, 140n46, 140n48, 157 Roy, O. 2, 3, 18n2, 113, 269, 282, 283, 292n1, 294n18 Roy, R. 212 Rushdie, S. 179, 180, 217 Russia 281 S.A.S. v. France ECHR (2014) 234 Saenz, C. 112, 136n3 Sager, L. 138n19 Said, E.W. 15 Salafi 283; Sunni 44, 156, 179; Wahhabism 283 Salafism 283 Salvatore, A. 96, 192 Sánchez J.M. 273n15



Sánchez, J.O. 63 Sandberg, R. 165, 172n54 Sandel, M. 101n20, 105, 106, 135, 136, 137n14, 137n15, 138n17, 138n19, 138n20, 138n21, 138n22, 138n23, 138n24, 138n26, 138n27, 138n28, 138n29, 138n30, 138n31, 138n32, 139n35, 139n36, 139n37, 139n41, 139n43, 139n44, 139n45, 243n19; republicanism of the common good 119–127; republicanism as soulcraft 120, 123, 124, 127, 136n29; unencumbered self 120, 121, 124 Sanders, L.M. 89, 95 Santeria 204n32 Sartre, J.-P. 138n31 Scalia, A. 123 Schmitt, C. 278–281, 292, 293n5, 293n6, 293n7, 293n8, 294n9, 294n10, 294n14 Schnitzler, A. 160 Schoepflin, R. 63 Schwerner, M. 125 Scientology 4, 165, 247n53 secularism 1, 5, 6, 11, 15, 18n3, 25, 283; affirmation of ordinary life 152; anti- 6; as empirical hypothesis 2; feminism 206–221, 225, 226, 229–231, 234, 235, 241, 242, 290; as hostile to religion 39, 55, 61, 74, 75, 78–81, 83, 85, 91, 96–99, 101n21, 113, 114, 125, 139n40; humanism 243n5; justificatory 116, 117; Kantian 98; Marxist 74, 81; narrative 98, 271; open or inclusive 2, 177, 198; as philosophical and ideological belief 1, 181, 182, 223, 252–254, 256, 257, 264; as political arrangement 1, 10, 154, 189; varieties of 11, 12, 292; Western 5, 20n16; see also laïcité, postsecularism, secularization, secularity secularity 2, 143, 148, 151, 154, 255 secularization 3, 15, 81, 94, 132, 141n58, 142, 166, 170, 249, 261, 272, 280, 283, 286; as a Christian internal dynamic 6, 95, 262–264, 266, 268, 269, 275n37, 275n39, 275n40; myth of 3; standard theory/hypothesis 148, 151 Seeger, D.A. 125 Seleme, H.O. 29, 48n21, 124, 138n31 Sen, A. 2, 13, 18n2; capabilities approach 222, 223; pluralist comparativism 16, 17, 269, 270, 278, 290, 297n47 separation of Church and State 1, 6, 15, 69, 71n6, 82, 96, 101n20, 284, 289 Serrano, A. 217 Setzler, M. 297n46 Seventh-day Adventists 247n51 SEWA or Self-Employed Women Association 229, 230 sexual minorities 33, 38, 45, 126, 181, 182, 212, 255, 265

Index

sexuality 7, 197, 202n10, 217, 235, 275n45; homo- 62, 253, 264, 275n44 Shachar, A. 99, 175, 206, 214, 215, 220, 237, 240, 243n6, 290 Shah, P. 182 Shapiro, I. 239 Sharia 43, 206; courts or tribunals 181, 182, 186, 189, 202n18, 203n21, 203n23, 206, 290 Sherbert v. Verner (1963) 138n19, 227, 247n51 Shintoism 42, 213 Shiva, V. 213, 222 Shuman, A. 173n55 Sikhism 110, 213; Irish Council 111; turban 110, 111 Silberman, R. 155 Singapore 203n30, 295n29 Singer, P. 46n6, 193 Skinner, Q. 9, 105–107, 117, 137n10 Sloterdijk, P. 5, 272n2 Smith, D. 128, 129, 140n47, 297n47 Smith, M.N. 115 Smith, N.H. 274n22 Smith, S.D. 106 Smith, W.C. 5 socialism 33, 35, 36, 207, 266 South Africa 92, 93, 245n41 South-East Asia 7, 12, 37, 243n23 South Korea 204n32, 232 Soviet Union 3 Spain 2, 196, 204n32, 205n42 Specter, M.G. 75 Sri Lanka 294n16 Stamm, A. 213 Stanton, M. 58 Stasi Report (2003) 137n7 Stepan, A. 154 Stjernfelt, F. 197, 204n33 Stoddard, E. 198 Stout, J. 253, 257, 258 Strauss, L. 280, 294n9, 294n10 Strenski, I. 282 Subramanian, N. 289 Sub-Sahara 243n23 Sudan 180, 202n16, 203n24, 244, n23 Sufism 20n14 suicide bombing 282, 294n16 Sun, Y.-S. 16 Swift, A. 47n15, 144, 166n2, 167n6 Switzerland 40, 170n35 Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem (2004) 162, 172n52 Sze, F. 198 Tagore, R. 212 Taliban 125 Talisse, R. 44, 62 Tamil Tigers 294n16

347

348

Index

Tamimi, A. 97 Taylor, C. 1, 2, 10, 11, 18, 93, 136, 142, 143, 166n2, 170n31, 175, 198; Bouchard-Taylor report 169n27, 170n35, 198, 209, 262, 269, 275n45, 277; on fullness and transcendence 149–151, 168n16, 168n19, 169n21, 170n38, 171n41; hermeneutics of the secular age 151–154, 166n3, 166n4, 168n12, 168n13, 168n17, 168n18, 169n22, 169n24, 169n25, 170n37; inclusive accommodationism 160–166, 170n28, 170n32, 170n35, 170n36, 171n47, 171n48, 172n51, 172n55, 201n9, 202n17; inclusive liberalism 154–157, 166n1, 167n6, 167n8, 168n13, 169n20, 169n26; moral ontology 144, 145, 158–160, 167n7, 167n9, 167n10, 169n23, 171n39, 171n44, 173n57; politics of recognition 145–148, 167n5, 167n11, 168n15, 201n5 Te Velde, H. 194 Thamanya Sayadaw 137n13 theism 19n14, 250, 253, 254, 256, 273n12; Christian 5, 158 theo-ethical equilibrium 56, 102n26 theology 6, 14, 20n20, 44, 61, 62, 72n12, 84, 94, 95, 99n2, 162, 213, 262, 264, 265, 273n6, 275n37; Catholic 275n44; Christian 15, 61, 249, 263; debates 81; faith 132; liberation 160; political 97, 101, 129, 251, 278–280, 283, 292, 294n9; principles/ premises 6, 103n31, 292n2; reasoning/ reflection 72, 261; tradition 57; Westernmonotheistic 280, 281 Thich Nhat Hanh 288 Thomassen, L. 8, 76, 99n1, 100n6 Tillich, P. 274n19 Tocqueville, de A. 2, 126–128, 129, 133–135, 140n46 toleration 4, 16, 38, 61, 72n14, 91, 103n34, 110–112, 183–286, 203n27, 227, 274n29, 287, 292, 297n47; liberal model of 5–6 Tomasi, S.M. 297n47 Torah 210 Torbisco, N. 214 Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) 31 translation proviso 18, 20n20, 46n5, 50n39, 71n8, 75, 81–88, 98, 132, 134; burden of 95 Trzebiatowska, M. 206 Tully, J. 175, 200 Tunisia 96, 97, 179 Turkey 3, 19n9, 94, 105, 113, 206, 242n2 Turner, L.P. 1 Tutu, D. 92, 192, 288 Ubuntu 37, 42, 192, 232 Ungureanu, C. 20n14, 86, 89, 99n1, 101n18, 113, 165, 242n2, 278

United Kingdom 163, 174, 177, 179, 180–182, 190, 201n6, 206, 291; Sharia Courts in 181, 290 United Nations 104, 156, 174, 223, 240, 245n34, 283, 291, 295n23 United States 3, 31, 129, 138n16, 140n46, 140n48, 141n56, 174, 188, 214, 216, 219, 240, 252, 281, 284, 294n19, 297n43; civil religion in the 133–135, 141n55; culture wars in the 34, 51, 52, 70, 94, 97; Declaration of Independence 76; exceptionalism 134; presidency 51, 70n1, 133, 134, 138n16, 141n56; secularization in the 94, 141n57; Supreme Court 31, 40, 73n18, 121, 125, 126, 138n19, 156, 227, 228, 238, 239, 247n51 United States v. Seeger (1965) 139n39 utilitarianism 22, 282; Bentham’s 152; as comprehensive conception of the good 22, 34, 125; instrumentalist rationality 143; Mill’s 124; Rawls’ critique of/anti- 21, 23, 25, 295n26; view of religion 274n22 Uwer, T. 244n23 Vallier, K. 51, 52; convergence model 64–69; 72n15, 72n17, 72n18 VanAntwerpen, J. 74 Van der Waal, J. 37 Van Gelderen, M 105 van Leeuwen, B. 297 Van Schoelandt, C. 33 Vattimo, G. 10, 169, 248, 249, 255, 272n2, 273n5, 274n21, 274n31, 274n32, 274n34, 275n36, 275n37, 275n38, 275n40, 275n41, 275n42, 275n44, 275n45; post-foundational democracy and hermeneutic communism 264–272; secularizing Christianity 261–264; weak thought 260, 261 Vergés, 33 Vertovec, S. 174, 197 Veyne, P. 128, 140n47 violence 3, 7, 9, 24n48, 161, 168n19, 180, 186, 203n22, 204n35, 244n25, 244n26, 248, 249, 251, 258, 261, 262, 263, 265, 267, 268, 270–272, 278, 279, 282, 291, 292, 294n10; anarchic 152; cult of 153, 169n19; domestic 246n49; Islamist 3; protest/controversy/confrontation 179, 236, 280; racial 174; religious 7, 16, 21, 119, 275n36, 278, 282, 286, 287; sexual/ gender 241, 278, 287; see also nonviolence Viroli, M. 10, 18, 106, 119, 129, 136, 140n48, 140n49, 140n50, 140n51; republicanism of civil religion 130–133 Volpp, L. 214 Wahhabism 283



Waldron, J. 30, 245n31 Walzer, M. 13, 14, 19n9, 19n10, 94, 96, 185, 235, 294n11 Warner, J. 232 Washington, G. 168n14 Watts, F. 1 Weithman, P.J. 47n10, 47n15, 51, 67, 124, 297n46 Wessendorf, S. 174 Weyl, E.G. 186 White, S.K. 272n1 Whitfield, G. 111, 112 Wiggershaus, R. 75 Williams, B. 8 Williams, R. 175, 181, 182, 288 Wilsey, J.D. 134 Wilson, B. 19n7 Wilson, E.K. 288 Wilson, R. 103n36

Index

Wimmer, A. 180, 286 Wing, A.K. 115 Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) 126, 239 Wittgenstein, L. 20n18, 151, 248, 250 Wolff, J. 8, 10, 20n19, 21 Wolterstorff, N. 33, 48n27, 51, 52, 55, 56, 61, 62, 71n6, 72n10, 253 Wood, A. 89 Wood, Ph. 198, 199 xiào 12, 13, 37, 118 Yang, S. 232 Young, I.M. 93, 100n9, 110 Zabala, S. 249, 263, 264, 266–268, 274n32 Zen 277 Žižek, S. 9, 272, 292 Zolberg, A.R. 201n10

349