John Rawls’s influential theory of justice and public reason has often been thought to exclude religion from politics, out of fear of its illiberal and destabilizing potentials. It has therefore been criticized by defenders of religion for marginalizing and alienating the wealth of religious sensibilities, voices, and demands now present in contemporary liberal societies.
In this anthology, established scholars of Rawls and the philosophy of religion reexamine and rearticulate the central tenets of Rawls’s theory to show they in fact offer sophisticated resources for accommodating and responding to religions in liberal political life. The chapters reassert the subtlety, openness, and flexibility of his sense of liberal ‘respect’ and ‘consensus, ‘ revealing their inclusive implications for religious citizens. They also explore the means he proposes for accommodating nonliberal religions in liberal politics, developing his conception of ‘public reason’ into a novel account of the possibilities for rational engagement between liberal and religious ideas. And they reevaluate Rawls’s liberalism from the ‘transcendent’ perspectives of religions themselves, critically considering its normative and political value, as well as its own ‘religious’ character. Rawls and Religion makes a unique and important contribution to contemporary debates over liberalism and its response to the proliferation of religions in contemporary political life.
Table of Content
Foreword, by Sebastiano Maffettone
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction, by Tom Bailey and Valentina Gentile
Part I. Reinterpreting Rawls on Religion
1. Respect and War: Against the Standard View of Religion in Politics, by Christopher J. Eberle
2. Religion and Liberalism: Was Rawls Right After All?, by Robert B. Talisse
3. Inclusivism, Stability, and Assurance, by Paul Weithman
4. Rethinking the Public Use of Religious Reasons, by Andrew F. March
Part II. Accommodating Religions with Rawls
5. The Liberal State and the Religious Citizen: Justificatory Perspectives in Political Liberalism, by Patrick Neal
6. Reasoning from Conjecture: A Reply to Three Objections, by Micah Schwartzman
7. The Religious Hermeneutics of Public Reasoning: From Paul to Rawls, by Johannes A. van der Ven
Part III. Transcending Rawls
8. E Pluribus Unum: Justification and Redemption in Rawls, Cohen, and Habermas, by James Gledhill
9. A Reasonable Faith? Pope Benedict’s Response to Rawls, by Peter Jonkers
10. Islamic Politics and the Neutral State: A Friendly Amendment to Rawls?, by Abdullahi A. An-Na’im
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Tom Bailey teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome. His research focuses on contemporary political philosophy, ethics, and the history of modern philosophy. He is the editor of
Deprovincializing Habermas: Global Perspectives. Valentina Gentile is vice director of the Center for Ethics and Global Politics at LUISS University in Rome. Her research focuses on liberal tolerance, reasonable pluralism, and moral stability in divided societies, and on justice and recognition. She is the author of
From Identity Conflict to Civil Society: Restoring Human Dignity and Pluralism in Deeply Divided Societies.
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