Language,Liberalism and the Critical Religion Challenge

In this article I consider Cécile Laborde's response to the semantic and Protestant critiques of liberalism's approach to religion. In Section 1 I examine the complex relationship between language and religion that emerges from Laborde's response to the semantic critique. In Section 2 I argue that Laborde's response to the Protestant critique either fails on its own terms or is in tension with her response to the semantic critique. Finally, in Section 3 I critically reflect on the negative conception of freedom that underlies Laborde's response to the Protestant critique, and ask how this can be reconciled with the republican understanding of freedom that characterises Laborde's earlier work.     

Religious Political Parties and the Limits of Political Liberalism

Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship.     

政治自由主义和公共理性的局限性

这篇论文分析了政治自由主义的局限性.这一点是通过批判其公共理性的不足来阐明的.这个论述分三部分来进行:第一部分分析公共理性和话语,第二、三部分分别进行民主缺陷和社会缺陷的解释.这些缺陷被分析为是对公民参与政治社会条件的一个根本限制.因此这个分析集中于过去十年最有影响的政治哲学家 J.罗尔斯的公共理性理论.这篇论文认为在他的理论中有两个缺陷:一是随着个体向社会的不完全整合而带来的缺陷--民主缺陷;二是与低估正义的社会分配维度相关的缺陷--社会缺陷.     

Beyond Establishment and Separation: Political Liberalism, Religion and Democracy

Does John Rawls??s political liberalism require the institutional separation between state and religion or does it allow space for moderate forms of religious establishment? In this paper I address this question by presenting and critically evaluating Cécile Laborde??s recent claim that political liberalism is ??inconclusive about the public place of religion?? and ??indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public place of religion??. In response to Cécile Laborde, I argue that neither moderate separation nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic justice, are compatible with Rawls??s political liberalism. Furthermore, I claim that a state can ensure that both its religious and non-religious citizens enjoy a sense of self-respect and identification with their polity by leaving issues of symbolic establishment and separation open to democratic debate. I conclude that Rawls??s political liberalism transcends the standard distinction between moderate establishment and moderate separation and leaves the public place of religion open to the democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics.     

The Limits of Learning: Habermas' Social Theory and Religion

Habermas' view that contemporary philosophy and social theory can learn from religious traditions calls for closer consideration. He is correct to hold that religious traditions constitute a reservoir of potentially important meanings that can be critically appropriated without emptying them of their motivating and inspirational power. However, contrary to what he implies, his theory allows for learning from religion only to a very limited degree. This is due to two core elements of his conceptual framework, both of which are key features of his account of postmetaphysical thinking. The first is the requirement of ethical agnosticism; this requires philosophy and social theory to refrain from offering guidance on questions of the good life. The second is his language‐immanent conception of truth in the domain of practical reason; this follows from his rejection of any source of validity beyond human communication in this domain. I make the case for a more robust account of learning from religious traditions and metaphysical worldviews, arguing that for this purpose Habermas must modify his requirement of ethical agnosticism and relinquish his language‐immanent conception of truth.     

政治的优先性及其限度——对《政治自由主义》一个理论预设的反思

罗尔斯的《政治自由主义》不仅是只在政治的范围内、而且是直接在政治的范围内运作,因而除了主张政治的独立性,它事实上还同时预设了政治的优先性。但由于政治与人性的内在关联不再是现代社会的共识,疏离于政治与强调政治的优先性就成了两种对立的政治哲学思路。政治自由主义强调政治的优先性,是要优先考虑政治的背景制度和合理的政治关系,因为由此构成的政治社会是一种人们应当共享的、内在的政治之善。但政治的优先性被限制在正义问题的理论建构方法与思维方式上,它并不在实质性的正义原则中对公民课以积极参与政治的责任,这就使得《政治自由主义》在两种对立的政治哲学思路之间取得了某种平衡。     

Liberalism and Eugenics

‘Liberal eugenics’ has emerged as the most popular position amongst philosophers writing in the contemporary debate about the ethics of human enhancement. This position has been most clearly articulated by Nicholas Agar, who argues that the ‘new’ liberal eugenics can avoid the repugnant consequences associated with eugenics in the past. Agar suggests that parents should be free to make only those interventions into the genetics of their children that will benefit them no matter what way of life they grow up to endorse. I argue that Agar's attempt to distinguish the new from the old eugenics fails. Once we start to consciously determine the genetics of future persons, we will not be able to avoid controversial assumptions about the relative worth of different life plans. Liberal eugenicists therefore confront the horns of a dilemma. Whichever way they try to resolve it, the consequences of widespread use of technologies of genetic selection are likely to look more like the old eugenics than defenders of the new eugenics have acknowledged.     

Liberalism and Democracy

ABSTRACT Political liberalism and the democratic ideal together supply the foundation of almost all contemporary political thinking. This essay explores the relation between them. It argues that, despite common parlance, there is an inevitable tension between the two. Furthermore, attempts to resolve this tension by showing that democracy is a good thing in its own right, or that it is the inevitable development of liberal aspirations, or that it is conceptually connected to fundamental liberal ideas, all fail. The conclusion to be drawn is that liberalism requires a pragmatic rather than a principled approach to democratic aspirations.     

共和主义与自由主义:一个思想史的考查

本文旨在从思想史的角度,对共和主义与自由主义这两大西方政治文化传统之间的关系做一个初步的考查。本文首先概括了古典共和主义的基本理念,然后探讨了自由主义对它的继承与超越,最后试图从中获得两点启示。     

Religion,Health, and the Psychology of Religion: How the Research on Religion and Health Helps Us Understand Religion

An increasing replication of studies find a correlation between religious belief and practice and mental and physical health and longevity. This paper discusses some of the implications of this research for the ways in which religion might understood psychologically. Most interpretations of this data focus on the presence of one or more mediating variables. This paper argues that the presence of these mediating factors helps us understand more precisely some of the ways in which religion actually does impact on human life and in what the psychological uniqueness of religion actually consists.     

Putting Liberty in its Place: Rawlsian Liberalism without the Liberalism

To be a liberal is, among other things, to grant basic liberties some degree of priority over other aspects of justice. But why do basic liberties warrant this special treatment? For Rawls, the answer has to do with the allegedly special connection between these freedoms and the ‘two moral powers’ of reasonableness and rationality. Basic freedoms are said to be preconditions for the development and exercise of these powers and are held to warrant priority over other justice‐relevant values for that reason. In the first half of the article I mount an internal critique of this Rawlsian line, arguing that it is flawed in two main ways. First, it overestimates the contribution of basic freedom to moral personality. Second, it underestimates the contribution of non‐liberty resources (such as basic material necessities, but also opportunities for culture, education, leisure, and social contribution) to moral personality. In the second half of the article I repair these flaws (thus putting liberty in its proper place, if you like). The result is a new, intriguingly radical version of justice as fairness, one with surprising—yet plausible—implications for economic and gender justice.     

Liberalism and the general justifiability of punishment

I argue that contemporary liberal theory cannot give a general justification for the institution or practice of punishment, i.e., a justification that would hold across a broad range of reasonably realistic conditions. I examine the general justifications offered by three prominent contemporary liberal theorists and show how their justifications fail in light of the possibility of an alternative to punishment. I argue that, because of their common commitments regarding the nature of justification, these theorists have decisive reasons to reject punishment in favor of a non-punitive alternative. I demonstrate the possibility of this alternative by means of a careful examination of the nature of punishment, isolating one essential characteristic—the aim to impose suffering—and showing how this characteristic need not guide enforcement. There is logical space for a forceful and coercive, yet non-punitive method of enforcement. This fact poses difficulties for many classical and contemporary justifications of punishment, but it poses particularly crippling problems for general liberal justifications.

Liberalism and Democracy Revisited

In JAP 9 (1992) Gordon Graham argued that liberals cannot be counted on to support democratic institutions since there are no conceptual or strongly contingent links between democracy and liberal ideals. This paper responds to Graham's challenge by claiming that his model of liberal aristocracy is not liberal in several respects. In particular, the liberal should recognise a right to democratic participation which individuals may plausibly claim as an element in a respectable conception of how to live well. The right to democratic participation is shown to stand alongside other important liberal ideals which may be justified in this fashion, e.g. freedom of religious worship and freedom of association. Furthermore, I argue against those who claim that political participation enacts delusory aspirations that the rights which are promoted and protected within a democratic constitution are necessary for both individual and collective autonomy — and so the liberal should defend them.