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Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship

James W. Boettcher Philosophy Social Criticism 2009 35: 215 DOI: 10.1177/0191453708098761 The online version of this article can be found at: http://psc.sagepub.com/content/35/1-2/215
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James W. Boettcher
Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship
Abstract A recent essay by Jrgen Habermas revisits political liberalism and takes up the question of the extent to which democratic citizens and ofcials should rely on their religious convictions in publicly deliberating about and deciding political issues. With his institutional translation proviso, a proposed alternative to Rawls idea of public reason, Habermas hopes to dodge familiar (and often overstated) criticisms that liberal requirements of citizenship are unfair or disproportionately burdensome to religious believers. I argue that, due in part to its sharp contrast between the obligations attributed to political ofcials and those attributed to ordinary citizens, Habermas position is beset by additional, quite considerable difculties. I conclude that Habermas account of religion in the public sphere does not present a genuine alternative to the leading liberal theory of citizenship and public reasoning. Key words citizenship deliberation liberalism Jrgen Habermas public reason John Rawls religion and politics
In keeping with a traditional aim of critical theory to address the struggles of the age, Jrgen Habermas has turned his attention to one of the more pressing concerns of contemporary democratic societies, namely, the problem of religiously and culturally based disagreement and conict. From the standpoint of his discourse theory of democracy, Habermas writings over the past several years have increasingly addressed issues of toleration, cultural rights and the relationship between the religious and the secular in a postsecular age.1 A recent essay, Religion in the Public Sphere, also revisits Rawlsian political liberalism, this time with particular emphasis on the proper role of religion in political discourse and decision-making. The central question of this recent essay concerns the extent to which democratic citizens and ofcials may rely on their
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religious convictions in publicly deliberating about and deciding matters of law and policy. This latest analysis of political liberalism may seem to t a familiar pattern. Reecting on the long-awaited 1995 exchange of essays between Rawls and Habermas, Charles Larmore has observed that while Habermas stressed the differences between their respective political philosophies, Rawls instead sought to locate common ground.2 One suspects that Rawls would have adopted a similar approach, had he responded to a subsequent essay in which Habermas claried and sharpened one of his main lines of criticism against political liberalism.3 Habermas more recent essay raises new criticisms, challenging the Rawlsian understanding of the public-political role of religion. Engaging the literature on public reason and religion, he hopes to stake out a middle position between Rawls and his many critics. But, as I shall argue, the requirements of citizenship entailed by the most plausible version of this position are in the end not so different from those of Rawlsian public reason. Perhaps this is not especially surprising, considering some of Habermas other references to Rawls. While he had once contrasted political liberalism with own discourse-theoretic Kantian Republicanism on the basis of their different starting intuitions, he now refers to Kantian republicanism as a form of political liberalism.4 Moreover, in the earlier essays Habermas was mainly critical of the idea of overlapping consensus, which is said to present an insufciently intersubjectivist model of public justication. But this criticism does not appear in recent essays that incorporate the Rawlsian insight that citizens should be able to locate different moral justications for political conceptions of justice which are embedded as modules in their respective comprehensive doctrines.5 My focus will not be on the earlier critique of political liberalism, which Habermas had characterized in the rst place as a mere family quarrel.6 My main goal is instead to examine Habermas more recent account of religion in the public sphere, and to determine the extent to which it provides an alternative to the liberal idea of public reason. Two features of the Habermasian account are especially important in this regard. First, Habermas distinguishes the stronger requirements associated with the formal political decision-making of legislators and other government ofcials from the weaker requirements that would apply to ordinary citizens in the public sphere. Only political ofcials and candidates for ofce are required to justify their political decisions and conduct their political discussions with reasons that are generally accessible and independent of religions doctrines. Second, Habermas proposes an institutional translation proviso according to which all citizens would contribute to the ongoing project of seeking appropriate secular translations for politically relevant religious claims. I shall argue that the best interpretation of this position is one which shows it to involve many of
217 Boettcher: Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship

the same expectations (and supposed burdens) as Rawlsian public reasoning. Specically, there are additional problems with Habermas institutional translation proviso, and these problems could be avoided by interpreting his account of religion in the public sphere as involving requirements of citizenship similar to those of the leading liberal idea of public reason. I begin in the rst section by reviewing several relevant issues from the earlier RawlsHabermas debate in light of Habermas more recent writings. In the main part of the paper (sections 2 through 4), I analyze the Habermasian approach to religion and politics, comparing it to political liberalisms ideal of public reasoning. In section 5, I turn to an additional feature of Habermas approach, namely, his understanding of the appropriate political attitudes expected of non-religious citizens in a postsecular society. It is primarily with this treatment of the limits of secularist worldviews that Habermas advances the contemporary discussion of religion and politics, reminding us that an ethics of citizenship applies equally to adherents of philosophical naturalism and other non-religious comprehensive doctrines.
1 The 1990s RawlsHabermas debate

Despite its obvious importance for the project of political liberalism, religion does not emerge as a principal theme in the 1990s Rawls Habermas exchange of essays. Instead, according to a main line of criticism developed in Habermas essays of that period, political liberalism is faulted for not including an adequate theory of practical reason that would supply the standpoint i.e. the moral point of view from which moral questions and questions of justice could be resolved. At least two specic problems are identied in this regard. First, Habermas criticizes the Rawlsian account of justication and normative validity. In his Reply to Habermas, Rawls had explained that there are three logical moments to the justication of a political conception of justice.7 A political conception is (a) pro tanto justied on the basis of political values alone and then (b) fully justied by individual citizens who must determine how to weigh and order political and non-political values within their comprehensive doctrines. Finally, a political conception is (c) publicly justied when all reasonable citizens undertake a full justication and mutually acknowledge the fact of their having thereby arrived at an overlapping consensus. The problem with this model, according to Habermas, is that citizens are denied an additional standpoint from which the reasons for their convergence on a political conception would be jointly accessible. A political conception is supposed to provide public reasons content, but public justication

of the political conception itself depends upon the non-public, grounding reasons of citizens various comprehensive doctrines. Thus prior to the emergence of an overlapping consensus, Habermas argues, citizens do not have access to a public, intersubjectively shared perspective from which they could make impartial judgments.8 A second, related problem concerns the priority of political values over non-political values in cases of conict. This priority is an essential albeit, as Rawls admits, also seemingly paradoxical element in the idea of public reason, insofar as citizens are sometimes required to exercise restraint in their appeal to the non-political values of their comprehensive doctrines. Habermas argues that Rawls never actually demonstrates this priority. He simply presupposes it, or sometimes expresses the hope that reasonable citizens will themselves come to recognize it. Yet, pace Rawls, the priority of political values is best understood as a requirement of practical reason which must be imposed on competing worldviews and which can only be justied by appeal to an epistemic authority that is itself independent of worldviews.9 The rst problem identied by Habermas admits of a rather straightforward solution, especially in light of Rawls later writings.10 For the emergence of an overlapping consensus on a publicly justied political conception of justice is not a precondition for public reasoning and deliberation. Rawls explains that the content of public reason is supplied by the family of reasonable political conceptions of justice. Each citizen appeals to the political conception that he or she takes to be most reasonable and to political values that others could be expected to endorse as at least reasonable.11 Thus the idea of reasonableness and the multiple reasonable political conceptions circumscribed by this idea are sufcient for specifying a framework for public reasoning and deliberation; a preexisting overlapping consensus is not necessary. Moreover the family of reasonable political conceptions is said to be limited by the criterion of reciprocity, which also provides a standpoint from which citizens political claims and arguments are jointly accessible and criticizable. According to this criterion, [o]ur exercise of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we would offer for our political actions were we to state them as government ofcials are sufcient, and we also reasonably think that other citizens might also reasonably accept those reasons.12 The second problem, concerning the priority of political values, is the more difcult one to resolve, given political liberalisms philosophical method of avoidance. As is well known, insofar as political liberalism makes use of ideas of practical reason e.g. specifying normative conceptions of the person and society these ideas are not drawn from a comprehensive moral theory that would also demonstrate how citizens should balance prima facie obligations of public reason alongside their

other moral or religious obligations, ideals and values. How, then, do we explain an obligation to recognize the priority of political values in public reason as a requirement that must be (morally) imposed on comprehensive doctrines? This is a question that I have addressed elsewhere and shall not take up here.13 But it is worth noting that a concern with the moral grounding of public reasons requirements is not explicitly addressed in recent writings in which Habermas appropriates the model of overlapping consensus in order to explain the demands of religious tolerance.14 Drawing directly on Rawls in several recent essays, he avers that a political morality of human rights and equal respect for all is a module that ts into [different] orthodox chains of justication.15 Hence, even for Habermas, religious citizens are expected to justify a particular political morality not as a modus vivendi but from within their religious doctrines, sometimes by revising and adapting traditional attitudes and teachings. In the case of an individual citizen, Habermas concludes that the political values of the liberal state must be seen as fully justied in the Rawlsian sense, that is, as derived from (or at least consistent with) premises supplied by that citizens comprehensive doctrine.
2 Habermas on religion in the public sphere

The starting point for Habermas account of religion in the public sphere is an analysis of the Rawlsian idea of public reason. The main features of the latter idea are well known. As an ideal of citizenship, the idea of public reason is supposed to govern deliberation and decision-making about fundamental political questions i.e. constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice in the public political forum of courts, legislatures, governmental discourses and campaigns for ofce. It applies rst to political ofcials and ideally to citizens as well, when they decide fundamental questions or when they otherwise enter the public political forum as advocates or discussants. The content of public reason consists mainly of common sense, scientic and historical knowledge, and the political values specied and ordered by a reasonable political conception of justice. On my interpretation, the three main requirements of public reason are to deliberate with others in good faith, to seek suitable political justications based on the criterion of reciprocity and a reasonable political conception, and sometimes to exercise restraint in the justicatory appeal to comprehensive philosophical and religious doctrines.16 Citizens and ofcials in the public political forum are not to rely solely on their comprehensive doctrines in deliberating about and deciding fundamental political questions. They should attempt to identify sound political justications that their reasonable compatriots might accept as

at least reasonable, that is, as consistent with their status as free and equal citizens engaged in fair terms of cooperation. Drawing primarily on arguments advanced separately by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Paul Weithman, Habermas identies three problems with this liberal standard approach to the role of religion in politics.17 A rst criticism is that, all things considered, the practice of public reasoning would have adverse political consequences, depleting the fund of social capital and civic competencies on which democratic societies ultimately depend. Religious doctrines articulate the urgency of struggles against injustice and motivate citizens to look beyond their own narrow interests. Furthermore, as Weithman argues, many persons become better citizens through the activities of churches and religious organizations. Citizens should not be expected to identify with a conception of citizenship that would deprive them of these valuable political goods and opportunities. A second criticism is that some citizens are simply incapable of consistently making the distinctions in judgment that the idea of public reason would seem to demand. Identifying proper public reasons and distinguishing them from religious reasons may be especially difcult for those citizens who take themselves to be religiously obligated to base their political deliberation and decision-making on religious doctrine. As Wolterstorff observes, many religious believers see themselves as obligated to pursue an ideal of integrity, with religious doctrine directly informing all of their major choices and decisions.18 A third criticism, or set of criticisms, centers on this ideal of religious integrity. Wolterstorff argues that it is wrong to attribute requirements of public reasoning that would violate religious convictions essential to integrity or impose disproportionate burdens on religious citizens vis--vis non-religious citizens. My own view, developed elsewhere, is that the strongest versions of these criticisms fail and that Rawlsian public reason remains a worthy ideal.19 Habermas nevertheless attempts to develop an alternative ethics of citizenship that would avoid these criticisms, whatever their merits as applied to political liberalism.20 His alternative is based on his discourse theory of law and democracy, with its fundamental discourse principle: Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses.21 Habermas political theory adapts this general normative principle in order to explain how a group of free and equal consociates might legitimately regulate their association by means of the rule of law. The discourse principle takes shape as a system of basic rights and a corresponding principle of democracy, according to which just those statutes are politically legitimate to which citizens would agree in legally constituted discourses.22 This principle is then institutionalized in a set of legal and deliberativedemocratic procedures that are said to provide the basis for legitimate

law-making for the following reasons. First, in virtue of their equal political participation, citizens are able to see themselves as both authors and addressees of the laws that govern them. Second, in virtue of the epistemic dimension of democratic deliberation, citizens are able to presume that their deliberative outcomes are rationally acceptable.23 The epistemic dimension of deliberation leads Habermas to accept an essential component of the liberal standard approach, namely, that ofcial political decisions should not be based solely and directly on religious grounds. He maintains that political decisions backed by coercive power must be formulated and justiable in a language which is equally accessible to citizens at large. And, he further assumes that only secular reasoning is generally accessible. Thus, [m]ajority rule turns into repression if the majority deploys religious arguments in the process of political opinion and will formation and refuses to offer those publicly accessible justications which the losing minority, be it secular or of a different faith, is able to follow and evaluate in light of shared standards.24 Several additional features of Habermas discourse theory are presupposed in this analysis. First, while it is not clear precisely which conditions must be satised for a justication to count as accessible, one such condition would seem to involve the form of practical reasoning and argumentation adopted by citizens. Throughout his writings on discourse ethics, Habermas distinguishes moral discourses concerning what is equally good for all from ethical discourses concerning the selfunderstanding and reexively endorsed values of a context-bound community.25 Democratic political deliberation must include both types of discourse (along with pragmatic discourses and forms of bargaining), since citizens within political communities inevitably address ethicalpolitical questions concerning who they are and who they would like to be in light of their particular circumstances, traditions and values. But especially under conditions of pluralism and multiculturalism, political issues often cannot be neutrally framed by appealing to the worldviews or value constellations of particular religious or cultural groups.26 Faced with irresolvable value conicts at the ethical level, participants in discourse should shift to a more abstract perspective in order to determine what is in the equal interest of all, bound by the rights that secure the equal coexistence of different groups.27 These distinctions between types of discourse are not discussed in Religion in the Public Sphere, even though they seem quite germane to understanding the notion of accessibility. For the purpose of interpreting Habermas, I shall simply assume the following denition, motivated by Habermas appeal to shared standards of evaluation: accessible political justications are based on reasons which may be meaningfully evaluated in light of standards shared by human beings generally, such as reliable perception and observation, rules of inference, common sense, basic

scientic and moral reasoning, historical evidence and shared democratic political values. Religious traditions have different authoritative texts, social teachings and methods of interpretation, and citizens cannot be expected generally to share distinctively religious standards of evaluation for political claims. Suppose that, for example, some practice or activity is said to be wrong because, according to a particular interpretation of Scripture, God has forbidden it. This is certainly a good reason for avoiding and perhaps criticizing the activity or practice in question, and so a potential justication for politically disfavoring or even prohibiting it. But it would be difcult for non-religious citizens and religious believers from rival traditions to evaluate this reason in terms of shared standards. The appeal to religious authority does not provide a standard of evaluation that we would expect to be shared by human beings generally, insofar as they have adopted different religious and philosophical doctrines. Likewise, perception of Gods will might count as evidence for the individual perceiver, though others can hardly be expected to have the same access to it. Thus one can have a good reason to avoid and criticize an activity or practice even if that reason does not constitute an adequate political justication for politically disfavoring or prohibiting it. A second feature of discourse theory, which seems to be presupposed in the call for accessible political justications, is that democratic procedures such as majority rule are understood to have an epistemic dimension, that is, to be conceptually related to the search for truth or rightness.28 In cases of conict, reaching an understanding on the basis of insight is an alternative to the use of force or violence. But this alternative is possible politically only insofar as citizens can agree to their constitutionally regulated democratic procedures and assume that these procedures aim at the right answers to disputed political questions. Habermas characterizes majoritarian decisions as provisional results that may be accepted by the losing minority provided that these results are (a) procedurally correct, (b) supported by background deliberations and (c) connected to a democratic process that affords members of the minority the opportunity to take up political questions anew. A third feature of discourse theory is the distinction between formally structured political will-formation that generates legislation and more informal processes of political opinion-formation, in which citizens are relieved of the constraints and pressures associated with having to issue binding decisions. In addition, a political systems institutional core must be distinguished from the peripheral network of communication that constitutes the so-called public sphere. Ideally the discursive contributions of actors in the informal public sphere, including those of churches and other organizations of civil society, travel through procedural sluices in order to inuence the exercise of legislative and administrative power.

Law is the medium through which everyday communicative power is politically channeled and organized, and democratic law-making is based on the interplay between informal opinion-formation and ofcial decision-making in the legislature.29 This last distinction is essential to Habermas recent attempt to split the difference between Rawls and his critics. On Habermas view, ordinary citizens who are incapable, or even in principle unwilling, to identify suitable political justications need not refrain from appealing solely and directly to their religious doctrines in discussing or voting on fundamental political questions. That is, they need not exercise public reasons requirement of restraint. At the same time, they must know and accept that only secular reasons count beyond the institutional threshold that divides the informal public sphere from parliaments, courts, ministries and administrations.30 I interpret Habermas claim, repeated in a subsequent passage, that only secular reasons count, to mean that only such reasons may count as justications or as contributing in an essential way to justications of laws and policies. Within the institutional core where decisions are reached, only secular reasons have what we may call justicatory weight. Where does this leave ordinary citizens who rely solely and directly on religious reasons in deliberating about and deciding matters of law and policy? How do citizens whose reasons are denied justicatory weight still understand themselves as politically autonomous authors of the law? Habermas answer is that religious reasons may contribute indirectly to decision-making, insofar as they are rst translated into an appropriate secular idiom. Citizens should thus acknowledge an institutional translation proviso as a condition for expressing and justifying their political judgments with religious reasons.31 The institutional translation proviso implies the following: 1 2 3 that only secular reasons have justicatory weight within the institutional core, that secular translations of religious reasons are admissible within the institutional core, and that ordinary citizens are permitted to rely exclusively on religious reasoning in their political discourse and decision-making even when they are not personally able to locate appropriate secular translations.
The pursuit of secular translations should be an ongoing, cooperative effort on the part of both religious and non-religious citizens in the informal public sphere. Although the details of this proposal are not worked out, Habermas seems to assume that a citizen can justiably take a claim to be translatable insofar as he or she believes that others with more expertise or knowledge have succeeded or will succeed once they devote themselves to the task of translating it.

A nal point is that religious citizens are said to be able to abide by this ethics of citizenship and comply with the institutional translation proviso only if they rst have or are willing to adopt a set of necessary epistemic attitudes. First, they must be able to endure the cognitive dissonance associated with maintaining their convictions while still accommodating the existence of rival religious doctrines and non-religious worldviews. Second, they must accept the independence of secular knowledge and modern science. Third, in order to recognize the priority of secular reasoning, they must connect the egalitarian individualism and universalism of modern law and morality with the premises of their comprehensive doctrines.32
3 Ordinary citizens, government ofcials and political accountability

Does the Habermasian account of religion in the public sphere present a genuine alternative to the liberal standard approach and, more specically, to Rawlsian public reasoning? I am not convinced that it does. There are differences between the two approaches, ones which are emphasized and perhaps somewhat stylized by Habermas. However, with respect to the demands placed on a politically active religious citizen, especially a citizen committed to an ideal of religious integrity, these differences should not, in practice, make much of a difference. I hope to establish this conclusion by reecting further on two of the main features of Habermas position, namely, the distinction between ordinary citizens and political ofcials and the call for accessible secular reasons as part of the institutional translation proviso. Consider rst the proposal that a restraint requirement should apply only to political ofcials, and not to ordinary citizens.33 How does this proposal compare to Rawls idea of public reason? While Rawls extends the main requirements of public reason to all, he also acknowledges that these requirements should apply in different ways to political ofcials and ordinary citizens.34 According to Rawls, the idea of public reason applies rst to judges, government ofcials and candidates for public ofce. As an ideal, public reason also applies to ordinary citizens, especially when they are voting on fundamental political questions or evaluating candidates for ofce. The restraint requirement does not apply to discussions in the background culture of civil society. But all of the requirements of public reason apply to citizens insofar as they are involved directly in lawmaking on fundamental questions, through public referenda and other mechanisms of direct democracy. Moreover citizens would typically discharge their obligation to reason publicly as voters in their evaluation of political ofcials and candidates. Ideally citizens are supposed to think

of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think it most reasonable to enact.35 Thus, in their role as voters considering fundamental political questions, citizens would typically undertake the following two, related tasks: rst, in forming their political judgments, they would sometimes analyze matters of law and policy as if they were legislators in order to identify the range of available public reasons; and, second, they would attempt to hold ofcials accountable by, inter alia, repudiating agrant violations of the main requirements of public reason. Indeed, this is what we would expect, insofar as an ideal of public reason is to be realized in a society with representative institutions for law-making, institutions which are constituted through periodic elections and responsive to citizens at large. Here I assume that some form of political representation is both necessary and desirable for a deliberative democracy.36 I also assume that accountability understood as responsiveness to the needs and claims of constituents should be included among the essential elements in an acceptable form of political representation, counting as one of several essential elements.37 The accountability dimension of representation does not imply that representatives are mere delegates, instructed only to advocate and vote in accordance with the preferences of local constituents. Representatives must deliberate and exercise good judgment, and on most issues they must consider the needs and claims of citizens at large and other moral constituents, in addition to those of local constituents.38 Representatives should also be able to give an account of their justifying reasons for their advocacy and votes. Accountability may be secured not only through elections, but ideally through additional deliberative procedures that would encourage reasoned exchanges between citizens and their representatives.39 The accountability dimension of political representation is important to Habermas discourse theory as well. Popular sovereignty is said by him to be institutionalized through democratic, politically accountable legislative bodies in which representatives seek discursively formed judgments in part to avoid the criticism and sanction of voters.40 Indeed, based on the earlier description of discourse theory, it seems that representatives who are properly responsive to the needs and claims of citizens should be receptive to opinion-formation and input from the informal public sphere and capable of distinguishing between the relevant forms of argumentation and bargaining that contribute to democratic discourse. Habermas recent essay suggests that representatives are also responsible for adhering to a requirement that within the institutional core only secular reasons have justicatory weight in deliberation and decision-making. Thus representatives should be held accountable both for the uptake of appropriately translated religious

claims and for restraint in the justicatory appeal to inaccessible religious reasons. If representatives are to be held accountable, then they are accountable mainly to citizens who must evaluate their efforts. And, if representatives are expected to have adequate political justications, and if adequate political justications depend in part upon distinguishing between types of argumentation and between religious and non-religious reasons, then citizens must be able to evaluate their representatives modes of reasoning. But how are citizens to evaluate representatives in this way, unless they engage in the kind of reection suggested by Rawls? That is, citizens who hope to hold representatives (and other ofcials) accountable should sometimes think of themselves as if they were charged with the responsibility of more directly formulating and justifying legislation. Put in terms of Habermas discourse theory, this means that citizens would ask themselves which reasons have justicatory weight as accessible, secular reasons and which laws and policies are in the equal interest of all.41 To be sure, a political ofcials satisfaction of such a reasoning requirement is neither the only nor perhaps the most important aspect of elected ofce which citizens must periodically evaluate. Nor will it always be easy or even possible for ordinary citizens to evaluate the justifying reasons of ofce-holders. Most citizens are not ofcials and should not be expected to consider political questions always as if they were; requirements of public reason should apply in a more demanding fashion to political ofcials, as Rawls also seems to recognize. My point is simply that an ideal of citizenship should include, to the extent that it is plausible, the expectation that citizens will sometimes assess the justifying reasons of representatives and other political ofcials. Habermas argues elsewhere that because of its intersubjectivist and proceduralist understanding of popular sovereignty, discourse theory avoids presupposing an ethically homogeneous, collectively acting citizenry that stands in for the people as a whole.42 Nor does it overtax individual citizens with exceedingly difcult epistemic requirements, or especially high expectations of civic virtue. In comparison to political liberalism, then, discourse theory may seem to rely on fewer idealizations about background socio-historical conditions or the capacities and dispositions of citizens. Yet, as we have seen, Habermas assumes that citizens are capable of adopting several key epistemic attitudes and of recognizing the role differentiation between citizen and co-religionist. He also acknowledges that a system of democratic procedures must be supported by autonomous public spheres which are in turn embedded in a liberal political culture.43 I submit that a disposition sometimes to evaluate, or at least to make a good-faith effort to evaluate, the justifying reasons for laws and policies must be understood as a part of this

liberal political culture and as among the expected virtues attached to the role of citizenship. If the justications and forms of argumentation pursued by legislators were to diverge sharply from those of ordinary citizens, then a fairly obvious accountability problem arises. Kent Greenawalt provides a clear explanation of this problem in an earlier book on public reasoning:
If it were completely proper for citizens to form their views in any way they pleased and to vote accordingly, but legislators were not supposed to rely on citizen views based on nonaccessible and comprehensive grounds, citizens would appropriately vote out of ofce (and for that reason) legislators who rightly declined to pay attention to citizens views developed from nonaccessible and comprehensive grounds. This would be an anomalous and regrettable combination of ideals for political behavior.44
In short, Habermas view of religion in the public sphere encounters the following difculty: unless the accountability dimension of representation is secured through ongoing evaluation by citizens, the requirement that legislators rely only on accessible, secular reasons in political decision-making will be less effective at encouraging politically justied laws and policies. Legislators might even ignore this requirement altogether, insofar as their constituents fail to acknowledge or value it. The danger is that even fundamental political questions would be settled on the basis of reasons that are inaccessible to many citizens. One solution to this problem is for citizens to make a good-faith effort to evaluate the reasoning of their representatives by satisfying requirements similar to those suggested by Rawls ideal of public reason. At least with respect to fundamental political questions, they would seek reasons that they believe other reasonable citizens could accept as at least reasonable (i.e. consistent with fair terms of cooperation between free and equal citizens) and, to this end, they would sometimes deliberate as if they were legislators and from a point of view that is in principle independent of their religious doctrines.
4 Public reason, sincerity and translation

Suppose that citizens attempt to hold ofcials accountable in this way. The Habermasian approach to religion and politics may still seem to be more accommodating to religious citizens insofar as it permits them to rely solely and directly on religious reasons in their own political discourse and decision-making, provided that they continue to recognize the institutional translation proviso. Recall that translations are supposed to be carried out jointly by citizens in the informal public sphere and that appropriately translated religious claims may be treated

by political ofcials as having justicatory weight. And, as we have seen, citizens have good reason to seek translations, both because they want their own political judgments to be included in political decision-making and because they want political decisions to be legitimate, and so based on reasons that are generally accessible. But what precisely does Habermas mean by translation? No criterion of adequacy for translation is proposed in Religion in the Public Sphere. The idea seems to be that some religiously based claims and arguments can be translated and still retain their basic meaning even when translated into generally accessible secular reasons and arguments. A strong interpretation of the translation proviso suggests that some religious claims and arguments are equivalent or at least sufciently semantically similar to corresponding secular claims and arguments. A weaker interpretation suggests that politically relevant religious judgments are sufciently supported by secular reasons which bear some meaningful resemblance to underlying religious premises, perhaps by addressing the same themes or values. Habermas seems to rely on the weaker interpretation in one of his few examples of translation. In Faith and Knowledge, he presents the example of an appeal to the Genesis creation story in political discussions about whether parents should be allowed to intervene into the genome of an embryo, presumably in order to select preferred genetic characteristics.45 The relevant insight in this case is that creation in the likeness of God does not undermine a persons freedom to act or his or her equality vis--vis other human beings. But our sense of ourselves as free and equal may indeed be threatened insofar as we are genetically programmed by others.46 Notions of the inherent dignity and self-determining freedom of human beings might serve as (partial) secular translations of a religious conception of persons as sacred and created by God. More important, Habermas maintains that even non-religious citizens should reect on the difference between dependence on God the Creator and the causal dependence on other human beings which may arise or simply be perceived if others have intervened without consent into a persons genetic constitution.47 To have been genetically determined by another might very well undermine a persons sense of herself or himself as an equal. The important question is this: how is the call for translation in this example different from Rawls claim that citizens and ofcials honor the idea of public reason when they rely on the values of a reasonable political conception of justice in their political discourse and decisionmaking? After all, for Rawls, a citizens political conception will typically be supported evidentially by his or her comprehensive doctrine, even though that conception must still be presentable as politically freestanding. In addition, according to the proviso associated with Rawls wide view of public political culture, citizens and ofcials are permitted

to introduce religious and other comprehensive reasons at any time provided that sufcient public reasons are presented in due course.48 In drawing on reasonable political values morally grounded by their religious doctrines and in attempting to satisfy the proviso, citizens would appear to be pursuing a kind of translation of their religious views. A citizen motivated by the concerns expressed in Habermas genetic engineering example could easily satisfy the requirements of public reason. One obvious difference is that the category of Rawlsian public reasons is not logically equivalent to the category of Habermasian accessible, secular reasons. But we should avoid overemphasizing this difference. For much depends on precisely what these latter terms mean for Habermas. According to the denition of accessibility that I have already proposed, Rawlsian public reasons are accessible since they may be meaningfully evaluated in light of standards shared by human beings generally.49 What about the idea of secularity? Habermas does not provide a denition of secular reasoning; nor does he follow Rawls in stipulating that secular reasoning is the non-public reasoning associated with a secular comprehensive doctrine, such as comprehensive liberalism. Habermas seems to assume that a secular reason is simply a non-religious reason. Robert Audis more precise formulation is helpful in this regard: [A] secular reason . . . [is] one whose normative force, that is, its status as a prima facie justicatory element, does not depend on the existence of God (or on denying it) or on theological considerations, or on the pronouncements of a person or institution qua religious authority.50 If this denition is in the spirit of Habermas essay, then accessible, secular reasons are, in short, non-religious reasons that may be meaningfully evaluated in light of shared standards. While this set of reasons is not logically equivalent to the set of Rawlsian public reasons, there would be considerable overlap between the two sets of reasons. All public reasons are accessible and non-religious (and so are secular in the sense that I am attributing to Habermas), even if some accessible, secular reasons are non-public (in the Rawlsian sense), insofar as they are based directly on a non-religious, comprehensive philosophical doctrine. Deliberating citizens and ofcials who are guided by the ideals set forth by Rawls or Habermas would for the most part pursue the same types of reasons.51 A second, more interesting difference derives from Rawls characterization of the family of reasonable political conceptions of justice that provides the content of public reason. Two characteristics of political conceptions are especially important. First, Rawls argues that among the conditions that a conception of justice must satisfy in order to count as political is that it can be developed from ideas seen as implicit in a constitutional democracys public political culture, such as political liberalisms fundamental ideas of society and the person.52 Another

important characteristic of political conceptions is that they should be complete. That is, a citizens political conception should organize values in such a way that a reasonable answer is provided to all or nearly all fundamental political questions. As Rawls puts it, [p]olitical values are not to be ordered by viewing them separately and detached from one another or from any denite context. They are not puppets to be manipulated from behind the scenes by comprehensive doctrines.53 Together these conditions impose considerable discipline on how doctrinal convictions would be translated into political values. Translations should not be made in an arbitrary and purely strategic fashion; rather they should be pursued within the framework of a more or less complete and freestanding reasonable political conception of justice that can be worked out from a democratic cultures fundamental political ideas. The concerns motivating both Rawls and Habermas on this issue are understandable. Rawls hopes to guard against deliberative practices in which political values and public reasons are invoked insincerely and ad hoc as a mere pretext for decisions that are actually based solely on doctrinal grounds. Just to be clear, on my interpretation of Rawls view, the political justications that citizens advance need not be based on reasons that are actually shared by all reasonable citizens. Nor is it the case that the political activity of religious citizens must be sufciently motivated by what they identify as corresponding political justications based on public reasons. Where the idea of public reason applies, citizens should identify what they take to be sufcient public reasons for their religiously motivated political advocacy and voting. But they are entitled and encouraged to present additional public reasons that they do not accept as decisive or sufcient, provided that these reasons, which are assumed to be signicant or sufcient for others, are considered minimally credible and relevant, given the epistemic circumstances of their reasonable interlocutors.54 Call a citizens political justication insincere insofar as the values and reasons to which he or she appeals are not considered credible or especially relevant for the case at hand. Suppose further that a citizens political justication is ad hoc when he or she is not concerned about how these values and reasons might be applied consistently to relevantly similar cases or to other fundamental political questions. In appealing to political values insincerely and ad hoc a citizen cannot assume that these values provide an adequate context of justication for political decision-making. This same conclusion can be reached with respect to Habermas approach. Recall that for him it must be possible to justify political decisions in a language that is equally accessible to all citizens; there must be shared standards for evaluating political justications. Thus, even for Habermas, a law or policy otherwise based solely and directly on inaccessible religious grounds should be no less objectionable just because

its principal advocates in the informal public sphere or the legislature invoke political values insincerely and ad hoc. A conscientious citizen committed to the institutional translation proviso would want only adequate and credible translations to carry justicatory weight and would express this commitment in voting on fundamental political questions or in evaluating candidates for ofce. If no adequate and credible nonreligious justication for a favored fundamental law or policy is identied, then presumably a conscientious citizen would eventually reconsider his or her support for that law or policy and exercise the corresponding measure of restraint in voting or evaluating candidates for ofce. On the other hand, by not specifying in the same detail the framework within which translations should be pursued, Habermas approach is to that extent more accommodating to politically relevant religious claims and arguments. Consider a citizen who sincerely attempts to locate within her or his religious doctrine a set of reasonable political values that apply to most fundamental questions and which other citizens might reasonably accept, but who fails to organize these values in the form of a complete and freestanding political conception of justice. Although gaps and occasional inconsistencies remain in a more loosely organized set of political values, assume that our citizen is prepared to rely on these values sincerely and consistently in an attempt to satisfy requirements of public reason. Why shouldnt an ethics of citizenship include as suitable public reasons the contributions of a reasonable religious citizen who ts this description? As I see it, Rawlsian requirements of public reason should be relaxed or modied in such a case, as well as in some cases in which political deliberation involves the analysis of difcult and complex nonpolitical facts and judgments with ineliminable non-public content.55 Without pursuing this particular point further, I submit that the main differences between the Rawlsian and Habermasian approaches to religion and politics would not be especially signicant in practice. Neither approach restricts discussion in the background culture of civil society. Both hold that it is illegitimate for ofcial political decision-making to proceed solely and directly on the basis of religious doctrine. Both maintain that general requirements of public reason apply more stringently to ofcials than ordinary citizens. And, even though Habermas does not endorse a restraint requirement for ordinary citizens, we should not overestimate the signicance of this difference. First, according to political liberalism the restraint requirement applies only in particular circumstances.56 Second, Habermas approach seems to demand that conscientious citizens make relevantly similar distinctions in judgment and perhaps sometimes exercise restraint if they are to avoid insincere and ad hoc appeals to political values and if they are successfully to hold their political ofcials accountable for adhering to the terms of the institutional translation proviso. A law or policy otherwise favored solely

and directly on religious grounds should eventually be reconsidered by citizens who are truly committed to accessibility but cannot foresee identifying an adequate and credible secular translation.
5 Secularism and the postsecular society

According to Habermas, religious believers are not alone in having to adopt demanding epistemic attitudes as part of an ethics of citizenship. They are not the only ones who might nd discharging their civic obligations burdensome. We have already seen that citizens are supposed to pursue translations jointly and cooperatively. This means that nonreligious citizens must do more than merely tolerate religious belief and practice, where a merely tolerant agent is one who endures or puts up with some objectionable, but not intolerable, belief or practice. Attempts at translation are likely to fail if citizens at large view religion as necessarily irrational or as fundamentally incompatible with social modernization. Hence, according to Habermas, non-religious citizens must also remain open to the possibility that religious doctrines are a source of important moral intuitions and judgments, some of which have not yet received an adequate secular translation.57 At least in their role as citizens, the non-religious must also be able to distinguish science from scientism and related forms of philosophical naturalism. In what remains I want to reect briey on this last point by turning again to political liberalism and considering philosophical naturalism as a comprehensive philosophical doctrine in the Rawlsian sense. Philosophical naturalism is the theory that everything that exists is natural.58 Whether or not they are physicalists, philosophical naturalists typically deny the existence of spiritual and supernatural realities.59 Recent attempts to explain and criticize religious belief from the standpoint of evolutionary biology are consistent with philosophical naturalism, and perhaps in part motivated by it.60 These positions must not be confused with what Audi has called the scientic habit of mind, or the more modest commitment to using the scientic method in order to address empirical questions.61 Neither philosophical naturalism nor scientism is entailed by a commitment to the scientic method. One might consistently adopt the scientic habit of mind along with, for example, religious convictions that assert or presuppose the existence of supernatural beings. The more important point here is that some varieties of naturalism deny the possibility that religious doctrines can ever serve as sources of moralpolitical insight. Not all who are sympathetic to a naturalistic order of explanation will necessarily endorse philosophical naturalism as a worldview that would also determine matters of law and policy and explain what our

interests, rights and obligations are. But we could certainly imagine a doctrine of this sort, and one that could be pursued more or less reasonably. A naturalistic conception of the human person might directly inform political judgments about the permissibility of so-called liberal eugenics, or the freedom of individuals to choose forms of genetic engineering that aim at human enhancement. Or, to take another example, a naturalistic explanation of religious belief, especially if combined with sentiments of fear or animus toward religion, might direct a citizen to advocate placing greater limits on religious freedom or religious education. The relevant questions from the standpoint of an ethics of citizenship are not whether particular naturalistic explanations of this sort are correct or whether a general theory of philosophical naturalism is true. Rather, like the religious doctrines that they would ostensibly replace within the background culture, varieties of philosophical naturalism are not likely sources of reasons that all persons qua reasonable citizens could share. It would be unreasonable to rely solely and directly on these views to resolve fundamental political questions. In examining philosophical naturalism as a type of secularism, Habermas rightly calls our attention to neglected questions in the public reason debates: just what is a secular comprehensive doctrine and which doctrines should we consider as we think through the implications of realizing an ethics of citizenship? Returning to the terminology of political liberalism, it does seem that some contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism are appropriately categorized as either comprehensive doctrines or essential parts of comprehensive doctrines, even if they are not connected to traditions of thought or moral theory in the way that other philosophical doctrines are.62 Furthermore, if citizens are to comply with Rawls idea of public reason, they will need to adopt the epistemic attitudes similar to those identied by Habermas, distinguishing the methods and results of science from philosophical naturalism and attempting to understand their disagreements with the religious as reasonable. Rawls did not examine philosophical naturalism in Political Liberalism, opting instead to discuss Kantian and Millian comprehensive liberalisms as examples of secular comprehensive doctrines. This may obscure our understanding of how the idea of public reason should apply to an increasingly important form of secularism, one that is supported by prominent public intellectuals and often seen as fundamentally at odds with religious commitment. Consideration of naturalism as a worldview is also relevant to the much discussed question of the burdens of public reason. Although the difculties associated with making a publicnonpublic distinction in political judgment and with setting aside the whole truth (as one sees it) are typically discussed as burdens only for religious citizens, they might be encountered by philosophical naturalists and

other non-religious citizens as well. Consider, just as a thought experiment, a society in which philosophical naturalism predominates, and religious doctrines are endorsed by relatively few citizens. How would this affect our judgments about the feasibility, fairness or overall appropriateness of an ethics of citizenship? I take it that, according to political liberalism, the same norms of public reason would apply, safeguarding the rights of religious believers and encouraging the pursuit of political justications that would secure justice for all citizens.
6 Conclusion
The main purpose of this article has been to determine whether the ethics of citizenship recently developed by Habermas represents a genuine alternative to the liberal standard approach and to Rawls idea of public reason in particular. I conclude that, unless it is to be interpreted so as to give rise to considerable difculties, it does not. Habermas proposes to weaken requirements of citizenship without giving up the essential liberal desideratum that legitimate political decisions be based on generally accessible reasons. Absent further explanation, this proposal seems to ignore the important role citizens play in holding representatives accountable for their political reasoning and decisions. It also fails to address the concern that citizens and ofcials pursuing secular translations of religious utterances should avoid relying on insincere and ad hoc political justications. I have suggested that Habermas approach would avoid these problems by attributing to ordinary citizens civic requirements similar to those of Rawlsian public reason, namely, to deliberate with others, to pursue suitable political justications, to hold their public ofcials accountable and sometimes to exercise restraint. If this is right, then perhaps in the end this latest round of the RawlsHabermas debate is best seen as yet another family quarrel, and a minor one at that. Saint Josephs University, USA
PSC
Notes
I am grateful to Susan Liebell for comments and suggestions. 1 Jrgen Habermas, A Conversation about God and the World, in Eduardo Mendieta (ed.) Religion and Rationality (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 14767; Faith and Knowledge in The Future of Human Nature, trans. H. Beister and W. Rehg (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2003), pp. 10115;

Intolerance and Discrimination, International Journal of Constitutional Law 1 (2003): 212; Fundamentalism and Terror, in Ciaran Cronin (ed.) The Divided West (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006), pp. 325; Between Naturalism and Religion (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008). Several chapters from Between Naturalism and Religion appeared earlier in English-language journals, including Religious Tolerance The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights, Philosophy 79 (2004): 518; Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism, The Journal of Political Philosophy 13(1) (2005): 128; On the Relation between the Secular Liberal State and Religion, in Eduardo Mendieta (ed.) The Frankfurt School on Religion (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 33948; and Religion in the Public Sphere, European Journal of Philosophy 14(1) (2006): 125. I rely on these translations here. Charles Larmore, The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism, The Journal of Philosophy 96(12) (1999): 599625 (599). Jrgen Habermas, Reasonable versus True, or the Morality of Worldviews, in Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff (eds) The Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 75101. Habermas, On the Relation between the Secular Liberal State and Religion, p. 340. ibid., p. 347 and Habermas, Religious Tolerance, p. 12. Jrgen Habermas, Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason, in The Inclusion of the Other, p. 50. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 3867. Habermas, Reasonable versus True, p. 84. ibid., p. 93. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 44090. ibid., pp. 241 and 450. See also my What is Reasonableness?, Philosophy and Social Criticism 30(5/6) (July/September 2004): 597621. Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 4467. See my Respect, Recognition, and Public Reason, Social Theory and Practice 33(2) (April 2007): 22349, arguing that the requirements of public reason are based on a norm of respect for persons. A related concern is introduced in the nal section of Religion in the Public Sphere, pp. 1820. Habermas emphasis is no longer on the failure to theorize the moral point of view but on specic epistemic attitudes that are said to be preconditions for public deliberation. Habermas concludes that a freestanding political theory like Rawls cannot adequately account for how these attitudes might be understood as resulting from a historical learning process. I leave aside further analysis of this issue, which does not in any case appear to be central to Habermas criticisms of Rawlsian public reason. Habermas, Religious Tolerance, p. 12. See also Habermas, Intolerance and Discrimination, pp. 67. I outline these requirements in my Respect, Recognition, and Public Reason. Standard approach is Weithmans term for the conceptions of citizenship
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17

and political justication defended by Rawls and Robert Audi, among others. See Paul Weithman, Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 6. Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, p. 8, referring to Nicholas Wolterstorff, The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues, in Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds) Religion in the Public Square (New York: Rowman & Littleeld, 1997), pp. 67120 (105). Elsewhere I have attempted to defend the idea of public reason by responding to all three of the aforementioned varieties of criticism. See James Boettcher, Public Reason and Religion, in The Legacy of John Rawls, ed. Thom Brooks and Fabian Freyenhagen (London: Continuum, 2007[2005]), pp. 12451; Weithman and Rawls on Liberal Democratic Decision-Making, Review Journal of Political Philosophy 4 (2006): 3653; and Respect, Recognition, and Public Reason, especially pp. 2438. Habermas attempt to avoid the second and third criticisms is examined by Melissa Yates, Rawls and Habermas on Religion in the Public Sphere, Philosophy & Social Criticism 33(7) (2007): 88091. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 107. ibid., p. 110. Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, p. 5. ibid., p. 12. See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, ch. 4 and Jrgen Habermas, Justication and Application, trans. C. Cronin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Habermas, Reply to Symposium Participants, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Cardozo Law Review 17(45) (1996): 1477557 (1489). ibid., p. 1490. See also the critical discussion by Thomas McCarthy, Legitimacy and Diversity: Dialectical Reections on Analytical Distinctions, Cardozo Law Review 17(45) (March 1996): 1083125. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 274. Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, p. 9. ibid., p. 10. ibid., p. 14. A similar approach is taken by Kent Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 21320 and 4415. ibid., pp. 4445 (original emphasis). I follow Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 131. This denition of accountability is based on the inuential work of Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 57. Gutmann and Thompson use the term moral constituents to refer to citizens in other states and other nations, groups of disadvantaged citizens, and citizens yet to be born. See Democracy and Disagreement, pp. 1445. For examples of these procedures, see ibid., pp. 1424, and Iris Marion
18
19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 132. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 186 (emphasis removed) and 487. I note that the requirement is formulated here in terms of Habermas discourse theory. Rawls distinguishes public reasons from secular reasons, associating the latter with secular comprehensive doctrines. ibid., p. 298. ibid., pp. 358 and 487. Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, p. 151. It is worth noting that Greenawalts own position is that public reason requirements apply more stringently to ofcials than ordinary citizens and, among ofcials, more stringently to judges than legislators and other ofcials. Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, p. 114. See also Habermas, The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species, in The Future of Human Nature, pp. 17100. As Simone Chambers puts it, the story of God creating us communicates the vast distance that must exist between creator and creature, a distance that does not exist between humans. Simone Chambers, How Religion Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion, Constellations 14(2) (2007): 21023 (218). Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 462. Of course, it may be the case that some religious reasons and other nonpublic reasons are also accessible in this sense, though I leave aside this point in order to examine the notion of secular reasoning. Robert Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 89. The difference between the two positions is this: Rawls explicitly classies reasons drawn directly from secular comprehensive doctrines as non-public reasons. Thus it is inappropriate to rely solely and directly on these reasons in arranging the fundamental terms of political cooperation. It is unclear, however, whether Habermas also thinks that it is inappropriate (for political ofcials) to rely solely and directly on these reasons in arranging the fundamental terms of political cooperation. Insofar as these reasons are accessible, then they would appear to serve as sufcient political justications for Habermas, since they are already by denition secular reasons. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 453. ibid., p. 454. See also the instructive analysis of sincerity in David Reidy, Rawlss Wide View of Public Reason: Not Wide Enough, Res Publica 6 (2000): 4972. This last point deserves more attention than I am able to give to it here. See my Public Reason and Religion, pp. 1434. See also Reidy, Rawlss Wide View, especially pp. 6372. As voters, citizens must consider the restraint requirement insofar as they are directly involved in decision-making or evaluating an ofcials (or a candidates) record or position on fundamental political questions. The restraint requirement is also limited by the Rawlsian proviso, since citizens who satisfy the proviso are always free to introduce their religious views into the public political forum.
40 41 42 43 44
45 46 47
48 49 50 51
52 53 54 55 56

Cristina Lafont seems to assume a much wider scope for the Rawlsian restraint requirement, interpreting it as restricting discussion among citizens in the informal public sphere, or what Rawls calls the background culture. But this restriction does not necessarily follow from the fact that citizens in the background culture must sometimes deliberate as if they were legislators in voting or evaluating political ofcials. On this point, and for a critical discussion of both the Rawlsian and Habermasian approaches to religion and politics, see Cristina Lafont, Religion in the Public Sphere: Remarks on Habermass Conception of Public Deliberation in Postsecular Societies, Constellations 149(2) (2007): 23959. Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, p. 15. In dening philosophical naturalism I follow Robert Audi, Religion, Science, and Philosophical Naturalism, in Knowledge and Belief: Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Wittgenstein Symposium (Vienna: Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky, 2004), pp. 37785 (3789). Kai Nielsen, Naturalism and Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001), p. 29. See Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifin, 2006). Audi, Religion, Science, and Philosophical Naturalism, p. 377. As Burton Dreben observes, commenting on political liberalism, it is part of public reason to use anything that is normally accepted in science. That is common sense. Scientism, however, is a comprehensive doctrine. It might be a secular comprehensive doctrine, but it is still a comprehensive doctrine. See Burton Dreben, On Rawls and Political Liberalism, in Samuel Freeman (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 31646 (345).
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Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship

>> Version of Record - Jan 30, 2009 What is This?

Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship

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217 Boettcher: Habermas, religion and the ethics of citizenship

1 The 1990s RawlsHabermas debate

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2 Habermas on religion in the public sphere

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3 Ordinary citizens, government ofcials and political accountability

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4 Public reason, sincerity and translation

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5 Secularism and the postsecular society

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