Religion and Public Reason

An Epistemological Interpretation

Authors

  • Raphaël de Vietri University of Western Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.v22i1.64

Keywords:

Public Reason, Religion, Epistemology, Robert Audi, John Rawls

Abstract

Using Audi’s argument for secular public debate as a starting point, which argues for the exclusion of religion from individuals’ public political discourse, this paper argues that it is a fundamental obligation of all citizens in a pluralistic liberal democracy to adhere to a notion of ‘public reason’. It does not, however accept Audi and Rawls’ interpretations of the notion of public reason uncritically. Through a comparative study of both philosophers’ principles, a new interpretation of the notion is put forward which focuses on epistemic sources as the crucial criteria for deciding what counts as public reason.

Author Biography

  • Raphaël de Vietri, University of Western Australia

    Raphael de Vietri is currently an honours student in the philosophy program at UWA. His research interests are in political and legal philosophy and ethics. He has previously held visiting research positions at the UWA Centre for Muslim States and Societies, at the International Humanitarian Law division of the Australian Red Cross and at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Bamako, and has been a graduate intern with the US State Department.

References

Alston, William P. 1991 Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Cornell University Press, London.

Audi, Robert 1989 The Separation of Church and State and the Obligation of Citizenship. Philosophy and Public Affairs 18(3): 259-96.

Campos, Paul F. 1994 Secular Fundamentalism. Columbia Law Review 94(6): 1814-27.

Clarke, William N. 1929 An Outline of Christian Theology. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.

Conkle, Daniel O. 1995 Secular Fundamentalism, Religious Fundamentalism, and the Search for Truth in Contemporary America. Journal of Law and Religion 12(2): 337-70. doi:10.2307/1051585.

Ellis, Anthony 2006 What is Special about Religion? Law and Philosophy 25(2): 219-41. doi:10.1007/s10982-005-8706-z.

Frohock, Fred M. 1997 The Boundaries of Public Reason. The American Political Science Review 91(4): 833-44. doi:10.2307/2952167.

George, Robert P. 1997 Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion and Homosexuality. The Yale Law Journal 106(8): 2475-504.

Gutmann, Amy, and Dennis Thompson 1996 Democracy and Disagreement. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Honderich, Ted 2005 The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Murphy, Andrew R. 1998 Rawls and a Shrinking Liberty of Conscience. The Review of Politics 60(2): 247-76.

Priest, Stephen 2005 Natural Theology. In Honderich 2005: 643.

Quinn, Patrick L. 1995 Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusion of the Religious. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 69(2): 35-56. doi:10.2307/3130495.

Rawls, John 1996 Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York.

The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. The University of Chicago Review 64(3): 765-807.

Waldron, Jeremy 1993 Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation. San Diego Law Review 30(4): 817-48.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas 1983 Introduction. In Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, edited by Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, 1-15. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.

Published

2009-08-17

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

de Vietri, R. (2009). Religion and Public Reason: An Epistemological Interpretation. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 22(1), 64-82. https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.v22i1.64