Religion and Public Reason
An Epistemological Interpretation
Keywords:
Public Reason, Religion, Epistemology, Robert Audi, John RawlsAbstract
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.
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