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John Locke's theory of toleration has been criticized as having little relevance for politics today because it rests on controversial theological foundations. Although there have been some recent attempts to develop secular, or publicly accessible, arguments out of Locke's writings, these tend to obscure and distort the religious arguments that Locke used to defend toleration. More importantly, these efforts ignore the role that religious arguments may play in supporting the development of a normative consensus on the legitimacy of liberal political principles. Bracketing the search for publicly accessible justifications makes it possible to appreciate the continued relevance of Locke's religious arguments for toleration.

A common objection to the idea of public reason is that it cannot resolve fundamental political issues because it excludes too many moral considerations from the political domain. Following an important but often overlooked distinction drawn by Gerald Gaus, there are two ways to understand this objection. First, public reason is often said to be inconclusive because it fails to generate agreement on fundamental political issues. Second, and more radically, some critics have claimed that public reason is indeterminate because it cannot provide any citizen with sufficient reason(s) for making important political decisions. Against the first of these objections, I argue that the purpose of public reason is not to end reasonable disagreement. Rather, it is to provide a suitable framework of values and principles within which citizens may resolve their moral and political differences. Against the second objection, I argue, first, that the indeterminacy of public reason is much less common than its inconclusiveness; and, second, that there are second-order decision-making strategies that may enable citizens to cope with cases of indeterminacy. The incompleteness of public reason, whether it takes the form of inconclusiveness or indeterminacy, is not a reason for citizens to abandon their commitment to public justification.

The paper concerns the daily activities of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).1It explores the way in which knowledge about different aspects of society is built at the frontier where different actors and institutions interact. Focus will be laid on how public statistics developed in the institutional context. How different interest groups with varying perspectives on the nature and character of statistical information and knowledge influenced the institute is also explored in the paper. Further, controversies about statistical knowledge, struggles for institutional legitimacy and, eventually, how some sort of consen sus is reached is discussed in the context of IBGE.

Tendo em vista o debate sobre a questao etnica ou racial no Brasil, bem como a tentativa de aperfeicoar o quesito de raca ou cor na elaboracao do censo demografico do ano 2000, o autor examina alguns resultados da Pesquisa Mensal de Emprego do IBGE de 1998, na qual se introduziram questoes que buscaram aferir se as categorias de cor correspondem ou nao a forma como a populacao se reconhece e se esta se identifica com origens culturais e etnicas especificas, como a afro-descendente. Tambem sao analisados dados sobre rendimento, nivel educacional e idade em relacao as diferencas e identificacoes de cor ou raca e de origem. (Novos Estud CEBRAP/DÜI)