Suchergebnisse

The question of the proper place of religion in the liberal state has gained increasing prominence in Rawlsian political philosophy. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls posited that religious liberty was the most basic of the basic liberties and, in Political Liberalism, he set out to show that sincere religious belief was not incompatible with principled commitment to the liberal state. Should, however, the liberal state be a state of separation (of state and religion) or of recognition and establishment (of religion by the state)? On this matter, political liberals disagree. This article seeks to explain the nature of this disagreement. I first show that political liberalism, as a theory of justice, is inconclusive about the public place of religion. Both separation and establishment (or, more plausibly, a combination of the two) can theoretically meet the demands of liberal justice. I then turn to the core issue of the separation-establishment debate, which asks whether the liberal state can legitimately attach itself to religious symbols. I suggest that (what I call) 'orthodox' political liberalism is indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public place of religion. By contrast, a citizenship-centred, 'republican' conception of political liberalism decisively rules out symbolic establishment. Political liberal defences of the separation of church and state, such as Martha Nussbaum's recent eulogy of US Establishment Clause jurisprudence, implicitly rely on such a republican, citizenship-centred conception of political liberalism. The article sets out such a conception, and highlights the role it plays in arguments about the public place of religion. Adapted from the source document.

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice (as opposed to freedom or citizenship) is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the (oxymoronic) cosmopolis. The article sketches a republican account of global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination.

A re-examination of two heavily covered 2008 legal battles -- the "virginity" & "burqa" affairs -- illustrates the capacity of the secular spirit to resist the religious spirit in France. These two affairs served as occasions for confirming & consolidating the republican consensus that had in 2004 been forged over the law prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols in public schools. This consensus places strict limits on the recognition of cultural & religious (especially Muslim) religious particularisms in the Republic. Some of its ambiguities, however, are worth unpacking -- in particular, the confusion between arguments drawn from republican law & those drawn from French culture. In contrast to this conservative republicanism, critical republicanism takes care not to posit that the institutions & norms specific to a particular community -- up to & including that of the French Republic -- are necessarily in keeping with republican principles. While it is absent from the Stasi Commission Report (France 2003), a similar line of reasoning can be found in the Bouchard-Taylor Report, which offers a republican justification for certain practices based on "reasonable compromises" (Quebec 2008). Adapted from the source document.