This article provides a new interpretation of Richard Rorty’s notion of the private-public distinction. The first section of the article provides a short theoretical overview of the origins of the public-private distinction in Rorty’s political thought and clarifies the Rortian terminology. The main portion of the article is dedicated to the critique of Rorty’s private-public distinction, divided into two thematic sections: (i) the private-public distinction as undesirable and (ii) the private-public distinction as unattainable. I argue that Rorty’s formulation provides plausible (...) answers to the first kind of criticism, but not to the second. Finally, a reformulation of the private-public distinction will be suggested, which both mitigates the second line of criticism and better coheres with Rorty’s general theory. (shrink)

El llamado “retorno de la religión” puede interpretarse como un hecho inédito, un pretexto fáctico o una enmienda. Se muestra que no se trata de lo primero, pues fue un problema político para la filosofía del siglo XX, ni de lo segundo. Consiste en un arrepentimiento implícito de la teoría política por haber asumido el secularismo y el positivismo como marco epistemológico y normativo. Este concepto conduce, además, a reformular la utopía secularista y a la emergencia de la postsecularidad.

El llamado "retorno de la religión" puede interpretarse como un hecho inédito, un pretexto fáctico o una enmienda. Se muestra que no se trata de lo primero, pues fue un problema político para la filosofía del siglo XX, ni de lo segundo. Consiste en un arrepentimiento implícito de la teoría política por haber asumido el secularismo y el positivismo como marco epistemológico y normativo. Este concepto conduce, además, a reformular la utopía secularista y a la emergencia de la postsecularidad. The (...) so-called "return of religion" can be interpreted as a new fact, as a factual pretext or as an amendment. This article shows that it is not a new fact -for it was a political problem for philosophy throughout the 20th century- nor a factual pretext. It consists on an implicit repentance from the political theory for assuming secularism and positivism as both epistemological and normative frameworks. Furthermore, this concept takes us to reformulate the secularist utopia and the postsecularism emergence. (shrink)

Richard Rorty never cared much for religion, to say the least. Faithful to his own philosophical and political outlook, he did, however, abandon atheism in favor of anticlericalism—the view that religion should play no role in the public life of democratic societies.1 This shift sets him apart from advocates of New Atheism (and their opponents), who consider the arguments for atheism a crucial component in the overall case against religion,2 but also from the growing group of religious and nonreligious intellectuals (...) who argue that democratic societies need more, not less, religious contributions to public life.3Rorty also came to articulate—particularly in the last volume of his Collected Papers—his .. (shrink)

In recent decades, American pragmatism has become an increasingly important voice in Anglo-American philosophy of religion.1 The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this ongoing development by approaching religious diversities through pragmatism's emphasis on the primacy of practice. I will not put forward a full-blown pragmatic philosophy of religious diversity, but rather offer one essential building block to use in a more comprehensive edifice.2For pragmatists, pluralism is generally a default stance, and similarities are often just as puzzling and (...) alarming as diversities. William James articulates this stance well in The Varieties of Religious Experience:Is the existence of so many religious types and... (shrink)

Political philosophers have long disagreed on the issue of whether churches should exercise restraint in the appeal to religious reasons in public discussion and political mobilization. Exclusivists defend the restraint, whereas inclusivists reject it. Both sides, however, assume the existence of a democratic government. In this essay, I discuss whether churches should exercise restraint in a non-democratic, authoritarian society. I defend inclusivism and believe that churches should not restrain themselves, especially when doing so can promote democracy and prevent severe injustices. (...) First, I argue that two exclusivist arguments which justify the restraint cannot be applied in an authoritarian society. Second, I defend inclusivism because religious reasons are effective in cultivating active citizens that strengthen the democratic movement. Finally, I use the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong as an example to show how inclusivism can enhance democratic movements under authoritarianism. (shrink)

It is still a popular philosophical position to call for a strict “separationism” concerning the private and the public sphere when it comes to religious convictions. Richard Rorty is one prominent supporter of this claim. The traditional critique against this division is mostly built on a particular characterization of religion that is at odds with Rortian assumptions. In this article, however, Rorty is criticized on his own terms turning pragmatically the objection to a fully internal one. What Rorty values most, (...) namely a tolerant and ironic liberalism as the capacity to describe oneself in new and interesting ways is precisely the role, I argue, that religious faith could play under “neo-liberal” conditions. (shrink)

Richard Rorty interpreted religion as a historically constituted part of culture. As a philosopher, he sought primarily to understand religion’s socio-cultural nature and role. His approach was socio-critical, intellectually sympathetic and humanistic. The paper provides an account of Rorty’s key phases in his philosophy of religion. During phase one, he was primarily interested in whether, in a democratic society, religion should simply be a private matter or also one of public concern. During phase two, his thinking on cultural politics developed (...) more broadly, and he wrote about ‘romantic polytheism’ and the future of religion, etc. In his writing from phase one, he portrays himself as a ‘secular humanist’ as well as an atheist and, in his writing from phase two, as a ‘non-theist’ and ‘anti-clericalist’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article investigates which epistemological considerations justify how religious life fits into the school life, and examines the debate on the participation of religiosity in the education system. I do this, first, by addressing the pedagogical implications of the distinction between public and private as maintained by Richard Rorty and, second, by reconsidering the pluralist metaphysics held by William James as an alternative path to understanding and re-addressing the question of religious life in school life. The article analyzes how the (...) strict separation of projects of individual self-creation and the public sphere, as defended by Rorty, poses problems in implementing pluralism in democratic societies and their educational institutions. (shrink)

Past discussions of the public role of religious ethics scholarship have tended to focus on the propriety of religious argumentation in the public square. Rather than critiquing or vindicating such public engagement by explicitly religious thinkers, this essay recommends broader public engagement by scholars of comparatively oriented religious ethics, exploring why this goal is worthwhile, some possible objections, and various models of how it might be accomplished.

The article considers how Richard Rorty's writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rorty's philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rorty's proposal. It is argued first that Rorty's "redescription" of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to see what (...) remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rorty's claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rorty's key notion of "unjustifiable hope". Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the "romantic" and "utilitarian" aspects of Rorty's pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view. (shrink)

Commonplace among deliberative theorists is the view that, when defending preferred laws and policies, citizens should appeal only to reasons they expect others reasonably to accept. This view has been challenged on the grounds that it places an undue burden on religious citizens who feel duty-bound to appeal to religious reasons to justify preferred positions. In response, I develop a conception of democratic deliberation that provides unlimited latitude regarding the sorts of reasons that can be introduced, so long as one (...) is prepared to defend them against criticism. Moreover, I contend that religious citizens have a powerful incentive, based on their religious convictions, to be fully responsive to criticism. I defend this proposition by drawing on Robert Erlewine’s account of Hermann Cohen’s ‘religion of reason’. (shrink)

Notwithstanding his own spiritual inadequacies, Wittgenstein has a profound respect for those capable of living a genuinely religious life; namely, those whose “passionate,” “loving” faith demands unconditional existential commitment. In contrast, he disapproves of those who see religious belief as hypothetical, reasonable, or dependent on empirical evidence. Drawing primarily on Culture and Value, “Lectures on Religious Belief,” and On Certainty, in this essay I defend two claims: (1) that there is an unresolved tension between Wittgenstein's later descriptive-therapeutic approach and the (...) implicit normativity of his conception of genuine/passionate religious belief; and (2) that the demarcation between the latter and its pseudo-religious counterpart is itself problematic. To illustrate these claims I argue that apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism presents a significant challenge to Wittgenstein's taxonomy. Despite these shortcomings, however, I conclude by suggesting that his characterization of religious belief as a “passion” or “love” remains valuable. (shrink)

This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify anAnti‐Reductive Paradigmthat is guided by anEgalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the (...) field'smethodsto values that can describe the field'spurposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric ofCritical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post‐critical reasoning, social criticism, cross‐cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article brings Cormac McCarthy's novels into discussion with Dewey's thinking, particularly with an eye to the distinction, made famous from A Common Faith, between religion and “the religious.” In this work Dewey argues for emancipating what is genuinely religious from all that is adventitious to it—above all, anything wedded to ideas of the supernatural—so that “the religious aspect of experience will be free to develop freely on its own account.” He concludes by highlighting the need to make explicit (...) and militant “the common faith of mankind”—which lies in the recognition that “the things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves” but “exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link.” While McCarthy's novels share Dewey's broadly anti-supernatural and anti-ecclesiastical commitments, there are some areas of divergence between the two that allow us to reflect critically on the distinction between religion and “the religious.” Most significantly, whereas Dewey aims to discern the intrinsic quality of the religious apart from what is adventitious to it, McCarthy focuses on the historical givenness of religious practices so as then to imagine their repurposing and radical transformation. (shrink)

What is the cash value of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and politics of religion? This paper analyzes the political promise of Rorty’s shift from atheism to anticlericalism in the last decade of his life. It seeks to deliver primarily a concise summary of this shift, and of its transformative motivation. Then a critique of this shift is followed by the suggestion of a friendly amendment: its extension towards a pragmatic pluralism. The outlined Rortyan conception of a serene, and, at the same (...) time robust, politics of religion is proposed as a promising answer to the question of how secular liberal citizens should react to the “return of the gods.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLeo Strauss argues that the “theologico-political” problem arose from the competing claims of rationalist philosophy and theology. Although he urges others to take sides in this debate, most theorists see it as insoluble, since it is rooted in competing traditions and different, non-demonstrable, epistemic principles. Strauss, however, argues that there is a common ground capable of sustaining a contest between the two: their appeal to the pre-philosophic understanding of justice as moral virtue. The contest between the Bible and Socratic-Platonic philosophy (...) centers on which of the two better understands what justice is, what completes it, and in what respect it is good. Strauss enables us to see why Plato’s Socratic dialogues became indispensable models for classical and medieval philosophers who sought to meet the challenge of theology on the vital common ground of philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This contribution seeks a nuanced democratic view on the position of religious and ideologically inspired views and argumentations on the political forum. We reject the liberal standard vision that rules out every reference to comprehensive doctrines. Political decisions should be neutral in their formulation of a proposition, but this does not exclude that there is some room for pluralism in the debate that precedes those decisions. From a democratic point of view there is no objection to religious and ideological views (...) and argumentations in the political debate on condition that citizens adopt a democratic attitude with regard to their own comprehensive views. (shrink)

This contribution seeks a nuanced democratic view on the position of religious and ideologically inspired views and argumentations on the political forum. We reject the liberal standard vision that rules out every reference to comprehensive doctrines. Political decisions should be neutral in their formulation of a proposition, but this does not exclude that there is some room for pluralism in the debate that precedes those decisions. From a democratic point of view there is no objection to religious and ideological views (...) and argumentations in the political debate on condition that citizens adopt a democratic attitude with regard to their own comprehensive views. (shrink)

The idea of nihilism continues to figure prominently in philosophical debates about the problems of modernity. The aim of this article is to consider how Richard Rorty’s work might advance these debates. The article begins with a discussion of the problem of nihilism as it appears in the recent exchange between Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly. It then brings Rorty into the conversation by considering his reflections on egotism and his proposed antidote to it: self-enlargement. I propose that (...) self-creation and solidarity, two key ideas of Rorty’s earlier work, should be understood as redemptive paths to self-enlargement. With this interpretation in place, Rorty can be seen as offering an alternative perspective on the problem of nihilism, one that compares favourably with those put forward by Taylor, Dreyfus and Kelly. (shrink)

Rorty uses the private–public distinction as a conceptual tool to uphold the ideal of self–creation (Romanticism) simultaneously to the ideal of solidarity (Enlightenment liberalism). The difficulty of accommodating these two apparently opposing ideals has led Rorty to make inconsistent and contradictory claims about the private–public distinction. This article suggests a way of easing the tension that exists around Rorty’s formulations of the distinction. It does so by turning to the thematic of “self–enlargement” to be found in Rorty’s later writings. By (...) presenting self–enlargement as a common feature of self–creation and solidarity, this reading opens up a way of reconciling these two ideals and mitigating some of the difficulties in Rorty’s private–public distinction. (shrink)

In Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism, Tracy Llanera places Richard Rorty in conversation with philosophers confronting nihilism as a “malaise of modernity.” She shows how Rortyan thought offers a horizontal and relational approach to “redemption,” as opposed to religious or philosophical paths to be saved by higher beings or ideas. This essay focuses on Llanera's redescription of Rorty and whether amplifying Rorty's use of “redemption” and “transcendence” is wise. Leaving behind this laden vocabulary might better serve Llanera's purpose of illuminating (...) a path to outgrow, rather than overcome, the anxiety of nihilism. After exploring Llanera's redescription of Rorty, the essay suggests that a different vocabulary—composed of words such as ease, hope, and comfort, and potentially as capable of supporting Llanera's overarching aim—is available in Rorty's writings. Turning to this other vocabulary might strengthen Llanera's significant contribution to the nihilism debate and to Rortyan and pragmatist philosophy more generally. (shrink)

This article addresses the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor on the implications of state secularism for the public use of reason. Recent commentators have traced this debate either to Habermas’s and Taylor’s divergent views about the status of Western modernity or to their disagreement about the relation between the good and the right. I argue that these readings rest on misinterpretations of Habermas’s theory of social evolution and understanding of impartial justification. I show that the debate rests on (...) diverging interpretations of what it means for citizens to embed the principles of liberal democracy in their respective conceptions of the good. This difference in turn leads Habermas and Taylor to espouse different criteria of democratic legitimacy. I conclude by suggesting that we have prima facie reasons to prefer Habermas’s conception of legitimacy to Taylor’s, and to that extent, to favor his model of the public use of reason. (shrink)

Politics is on the one hand an attempt to implement certain good, a desire for achieving agreed objectives, on the other hand – as Max Weber says – a simultaneous a#empt to avoid a particular evil. If in defining the notion of politics there are references to good and evil, purpose and desire, it has to include the non-political spheres – culture, axiology, religion. Mark Lilla argues that for decades we have been aware of the great and final separation that (...) has taken place in Western Europe between political and religious life. This awareness implies a conviction, which is obligatory today in most countries and societies, that to separate politics from religion is a great achievement. For many thinkers and politicians this is an undisputed success from which the West learns to benefit while preparing other regions of the world for such separation. Therefore it seems that modern politics should be free from religious inspiration and temptation. On the other hand, many sociologists and political scientists show the vitality of religious attitudes, proving that in its deepest essence religion is an expression of human behaviour. Each person and each community always has an element of irreducibility which is an internal defence against reducing man to “here and now”, restricting his world to what is useful and usable. We experience that in man there is a natural opening to what is transcendent. Thus, if man is ever to achieve individual and social reconciliation with himself, he will always look for rational and moral meanings. This situation creates a platform for the emergence of a completely new a#itude in society and politics – to seek and pursue spirituality in a world without religion. Increasingly, the understanding of religion reveals itself in a wide etymological sense, sociological and ethnological: religare – “to connect”, “to bind”, “to build community ties”. Religion so understood would be a great solution to the dilemma of separation – the adoption of religion (bonds) without the doctrine, while ensuring social cohesion, strengthening the feeling of being together, maintaining a spiritual connection. Many thinkers are convinced that we cannot base social life only on fear, discipline and economy; we need a deeper and stronger foundations for Community Cohesion. But is such a project possible at all? Is politics becoming a place for the formation of relationships, education and conservation of values, a narrative space which tells citizens what is good and right and what is wrong and alien? Can it replace religion in its deepest essence – in its intimate sense of an exploration and discovery of transcendence? Will it not become a caricature of religion, and a caricature of politics, and ultimately a trap for freedom? (shrink)

This article offers a review of Richard Rorty’s attempts to come to terms with the role of religion in our public and intellectual life by tracing the key developments in his position, partially in response to the ubiquitous criticisms of his distinction between private and public projects. Since Rorty rejects the possibility of dismissing religion on purely epistemic grounds, he is determined to treat it, instead, as a matter of politics. My suggestion is that, in this respect, Rorty’s position is (...) best construed as that of a humanist rather than a post-modernist. Ultimately, it appears that, in his view, the positive element of religion—i.e. the idea of religion as a social gospel—has been absorbed and transformed into a utopian striving which humanists associate with the ideal of democracy. Hence, in this regard, religion can be considered obsolete. Yet, without explicitly invoking the usual epistemic grounds, Rorty’s arguments for excluding religion from the public sphere remain rather thin, and an interest in reforming rather than excluding religion would have been more consistent with his general outlook. (shrink)

This paper addresses recent examples of militant atheism. It considers the theistic reply that describes atheism as deriving from a “God-shaped hole” in the human soul. The paper will argue that American pragmatism offers a middle path that avoids militant atheism without suffering from this problem. The paper describes this middle path and considers the problem that is seen in Rorty’s recent work: how the pragmatist can remain critical of religious fundamentalism without succumbing to a militant version of atheism. The (...) solution proposed is tolerant acceptance of religion along with melioristic criticism developed within shared norms of inquiry. (shrink)

This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical attention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls's undergraduate thesis, "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community" (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant theology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liberalism for reasons that (...) anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls's late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellectual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism. (shrink)

Respectively, Martin Buber and Richard Rorty imaginatively account for the philosophy and publicity of dialogue. Rorty’s account imagines dialogue as if the secularization of public political culture is inevitable. Buber’s account imagines a philosophy of dialogue in which religious considerations are unproblematic. Rorty’s repudiation of religion’s political influence results in an unnecessary estimation of the American government’s role in redressing social evils, especially those evils that are the result of the collective action of affiliated agents whose individual intentional choices are (...) not presumed blameworthy.2 Social evils obtain when choices accrue in associations and institutions that cause cruelty on a... (shrink)

This article offers broad lessons for ways to rethink the tangled relation among religion, modernity, and the secular. After characterizing what I mean by theories of secularization and how these theories have dominated our accounts of British romanticism, I consider two poems – one by Coleridge, the other by Wordsworth – that disrupt the view that British Romanticism replaces God with nature and discipline with unencumbered freedom. I conclude by suggesting that when we disclose the language and ways of religion (...) and practice in British Romanticism, we make more apparent its political and environmental dimensions. (shrink)

In After God: Morality & Bioethics in a Secular Age, Professor H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. argues that the now dominant intellectual culture of the West actively shuns any transcendent point of orientation, such as an appeal to God or to a God’s eye perspective on reality. Instead, it seeks to frame its understanding of reality and morality, and thus its bioethics, without reference to any foundation outside of particular human concerns. This article explores the implications of living in a secular (...) culture that eschews any appeal to a fully objective perspective on reality. Drawing on Engelhardt’s analysis, it argues that absent access to a binding moral standpoint that is not already conditioned by a particular society, culture, or place in history, all moral and bioethical commitments are merely contingent, subject to particular human interests, aesthetic inclinations, personal intuitions, idiosyncratic choices, and political objectives. (shrink)

This article explores the question of the role of religion in the public square through the lens of Richard Rorty’s more general public–private distinction. When we note his various positions over the years on the role of religion in the public square we observe a shift that yields a more favorable public role for religion so long as it limits itself to social action and refrains from making knowledge-claims that serve as tools of the powerful. But if, according to Rorty, (...) religion per se is no longer the problem, then what becomes of his efforts to endorse a more general public–private distinction? The argument set forth assesses the inadequacies and limitations of Rorty’s assumptions about the public–private split and suggests another way of framing the issue that will prove productive in debates concerning the role of religion in the public square. (shrink)

This essay discusses the continued importance that religion holds in African life, not only in terms of numbers of believers, but also regarding the varieties of religious experience and its links with politics and the “public sphere(s)”. Coinciding with the wave of democratization and economic liberalization efforts since about 1990, a notable growth of the public presence of religion and its political referents in Africa has been witnessed; alongside “development”, religion will remain a hot issue in the future political trajectory (...) of the continent. Its renewed presence in public spheres has also led to new understandings of what religion means and how it figures into both “world-making” and identity politics. This will prolong the challenges associated with the role and status of religion in the “secular state model” found in most African countries. Can these states, while “besieged” by believers, maintain neutrality among diverse worldviews, and if so, how? The paper discusses these issues in a general manner with reference to African examples, some taken from fieldwork by the author, and makes a philosophical argument for the development of a new kind of “secular state” that can respect the religious commitments of African populations. (shrink)

Muitos filósofos contemporâneos têm se debruçado sobre o lugar e os possíveis limites do discurso religioso na esfera pública. Nesse debate, Richard Rorty defende que o discurso religioso está em desacordo com os ideais liberais de esfera pública. Como resultado de sua análise, Rorty defende que a religião deve ser mantida no âmbito privado com o intuito de que o Estado liberal possa se manter neutro nas questões pessoais dos indivíduos que o compõem, preservando a liberdade e autonomia dos cidadãos. (...) Para demonstrar as escolhas que constituem a posição de Rorty, o trabalho analisará, em particular, três posicionamentos que Rorty defende em seus escritos e que fundamentam sua visão sobre o problema: o primeiro argumento, a de que a religião deve ser privatizada; o segundo, a defesa da marginalização das organizações eclesiásticas; o terceiro, de que defender o pragmatismo resulta em defender uma utopia liberal secular. Assim sendo, o objetivo desse trabalho é, além de expor a posição de Rorty sobre o problema, explicar como os argumentos de base surgem do compromisso de Rorty com seu neopragmatismo e como eles se encaixam dentro da lógica liberal antifundacionista proposta pelo autor. (shrink)

En este artículo, defiendo que las creencias religiosas pueden ser pragmáticamente racionales. Una creencia religiosa es pragmáticamente racional si es consistente con una ética de las virtudes, como la de Martha Nussbaum, al margen de si tal creencia tiene evidencia o justificación como soporte epistémico. Para lograr tal objetivo, primero, analizaré algunas tesis pragmatistas y anti-evidencialistas de William James y Richard Rorty. En segundo lugar, analizaré el evidencialismo de William Clifford y Susan Haack. Luego, argumentaré que, aunque los argumentos evidencialistas (...) son más fuertes que los anti-evidencialistas, es posible satisfacer las demandas de ambas posiciones. En particular, sostendré que la diferencia pragmática relevante descansa en garantizar que la creencia religiosa no implique daño moral. Finalmente, argumentaré que, para satisfacer las demandas evidencialistas y anti-evidencialistas, es necesario establecer un marco moral para cualquier cuerpo de creencias religioso. -/- In this article, I defend that religious beliefs can be pragmatically rational. A religious belief is pragmatically rational if it is consistent with an ethics of virtues, like Martha Nussbaum’s, regardless if such belief has evidence or justification as epistemic support. In order to argue that, firstly, I will analyze some pragmatist and anti-evidentialist thesis from William James and Richard Rorty. Secondly, I will analyze the evidentialism of William Clifford and Susan Haack. Then, I will argue that, although evidentialist arguments are stronger than anti-evidentialist arguments, it is possible to satisfy the demands of both positions. In particular, I will hold that the pragmatist and relevant difference relies on ensuring that religious belief cannot implies moral damage. Finally, I will argue that, in order to satisfy both evidentialist and anti-evidentialist demands, it is necessary to establish a moral frame for any religious creed. (shrink)

The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life through mass rule and charismatic authorities. In response, I evaluate recent innovations in deliberative (...) democratic systems theory (DDST). By adding a pragmatist inflection to DDST, I aim to apprehend the complex religious interactions between partisan interest groups as well as the trust-building capacities of minipublics. (shrink)

Discursive liberal democracy might not be the best of all possible forms of government, yet in Europe it is largely accepted as such. The attractors of liberal democracy (majority rule, political equality, reasonable self-determination and an ideological framework built in a tentative manner) as well as an adequate dose of secularization (according to the doctrine of religious restraint) provide both secularist and educated religious people with the most convenient ideological framework. Unfortunately, many promoters of ideological secularization take too strong a (...) stance against the manifestation of religiosity in the public sphere. They claim that people may discuss, debate or adopt (coercive) laws and regularities only by means of secular public reasons and secular motivation. We argue that these secular restraints on the ideological framework are unfairly biased against religion, counterproductive and unreasonable. The exaggerated secular restrictions create a strict secular public sphere that appears to be a Pickwickian world suitable just for inoffensive, dull and lethargic people. Deliberately separated from the idea of truth, secular public reasons cannot sustain a complex adaptive system like discursive liberal democracy. Liberal democracy needs citizens with a strong sense of truth and with a sufficient will-power to follow both a personal ideal and a collective ideal. Religious beliefs provide people with just such a sense of truth and with the desire to have a certain kind of character. In the secularized public sphere of liberal democracy, people can manifest just educated religious beliefs that correspond to the real world and respect the principle of peaceable conduct. In the final part of the article we support the assertion that believers could and should educate their religious belief before expressing them in the public sphere. Educated religious beliefs have a wide enough propositional content, obey the moral imperative of William Clifford, are purged from all propositional components against which there is strong evidence and are consciously cultivated by the mechanism of suggestion. (shrink)