Last week, I discussed Ronald Dworkin’s reframing of the debate regarding the appropriate role of religion in public life. Dworkin argues that advocates on the Right and Left have fundamentally different notions of the relationship between church and state, which accounts for the shrillness of the public debate on the issue. The Right believes that we are a religious nation that tolerates nonbelief. The Left believes that we are a secular nation that tolerates religion. Dworkin suggests that by thinking in terms of these competing models, we can formulate our arguments in ways that actually address our underlying disagreements and thus, have a more productive debate.
I think Dworkin’s general approach to political debate is a good one. It’s far more productive to focus on core disagreements than to argue about discrete policy preferences. In this case, however, Dworkin sets up a false dichotomy. His tolerant secular society is not the neutral state he imagines it to be and it excludes, whether explicitly or implicitly, individuals of faith.
Dworkin’s first mistake is his inconsistent use of the term “secular”. He first defines “secular” as “neutral on the subject of whether there is a god or gods or which religion is best, if any is”. The tolerant secular society, in this formulation, is no more religious as it is atheistic. Thus, the two competing models take the form of religious vs. neutral – where “neutral” clearly sounds more attractive. But just as a person can’t genuinely be neutral on the question of religious, neither can a state. Dworkin, at least implicitly, recognizes this, as he later refers to “[r]eligious as well as secular Americans.” Secular doesn’t mean neutral, it means nonreligious; and a nonreligious state that tolerates religion is no better than a religious state that tolerates secularism.
Dworkin’s second mistake is a failure to appreciate how religious individuals see the world through the lens of their faith. Interestingly, he criticizes John Rawls’s “public reason” along these very lines. Rawls’s theory of public reason is nicely paraphrased by Dworkin.
[R]easonable people in political community will wish to live together on terms of mutual respect and accommodation and will therefore accept the constraints of . . . public reason. They will accept that they must justify collective political decisions to one another in terms that each can understand and whose force each can appreciate given his own comprehensive religious, moral, and ethical beliefs. That constraint would rule our appeals to even an ecumenical religious faith in a community some of whose members reject all religion. It would command a tolerant secular state.
In others words, according to Rawls, we must ground our political discourse in principles upon which we all initially accept. But Dworkin realizes why this in inadequate.
[Conservative's] religious convictions are political principles. They do not accept private observance as a substitute for public religious endorsement; they want to celebrate their god not just a private worshipers but as citizens. They want to pour their faith into their patriotism so that the two commitments are one. They see no appeal in a principle that tells them to set that transcendent ambition aside. . . .
Dworkin instead urges people of faith to recognize that a tolerant secular state is actually in line with their religious principles, namely, the idea that one must come to faith freely. Public endorsement of religion, he argues, is ipso facto coercion. But this isn’t enough to persuade religious individuals to leave their faith at the front door when they enter the political arena for the same reason that Rawls’s public reason won’t work. Dworkin just doesn’t take his critique of Rawls far enough.
It’s not just that religious principles are political principles. It’s that religious principles, if taken to heart, apply consistently to all aspects of life and ideology. Rawls’s public reason fails because religious individuals can’t, even in principle, engage in politics without their positions being influenced by their values, including their religious values. Of course, this doesn’t entail Dworkin’s tolerant religious state. In a diverse democracy, nonreligious individuals participate as well and their positions are influenced by nonreligious or anti-religious values.
It is impossible to sidestep genuine religious questions by simply agreeing, as a society, to be “neutral” about religion because it is impossible to separate religious and non-religious values from our respective worldviews. The result is a society that is neither religious or non-religious but rather, a society that reflects our collective values, some of which are religious, others of which are not.
[...] a healthy discussion to be had about the appropriate role of religious values in political life and of political values in religious life. But dismissing liberal religion as secular only obscures [...]
Dear David Fryman,
I very much enjoyed your entry here on Dworkin and Public reason. I too share similar concerns over this issue. It seems that Dworkin gets off to a plausible start in his critique of Rawls’s idea of public reason and its inability to engage respectfully, or meaningfully, with religious citizens and that Dworkin seems to, as you say, not take the critique far enough.
I was wondering if you have either (a) written more on this topic or (b) have come across someone who has spoken to this issue in more detail. I am working on a dissertation chapter that is aimed at developing a more substantive conception of ‘respect for persons’ that seeks to engage with comprehensive doctrines in a more meaningful sense. Put differently, one that avoids the restraints of Rawls’s idea of public reason and instead posits a view of deliberative democracy that allows for nonpublic reasons to be part of the discourse.
Many thanks,
M., thanks for the comment. I haven’t written more about this, although I’d like to. Would you care to expand further on what your view is?
HI David (if I may),
There seems to be much dissatisfaction with the restraints of public reason on deliberative discourse. Rawls’s commitment to ‘respect for persons’ (in the Kantian sense) is fairly abstract but thought necessary for his framework. That is, given that in a liberal democracy the coercive power of the state needs to be exercised in a way that is consistent with the equal and free standing of its members then, as Rawls suggests, citizens have a (moral) duty of civility to offer one another reasons that others might reasonable accept (as a normative not empirical claim). Thus, given Rawls’s view of reasonable disagreement, such reasons must be justified by appealing to the shared conception of justice.
Many have taken up issues with this claim even though Rawls’s had revised his idea of public reason to allow for nonpublic (or comprehensive) reasons with the proviso that such reasons be supported by public reasons at a later time.
I, on the other hand, am interested in developing a more substantive view of ‘respect for persons’ from the multicultural literature that defines respect not as shy away from disagreement caused by incompatible views of justice but rather seeks to engage with comprehensive doctrines with the presumption that such reasons are valuable for those that hold them, without having to accept the stronger claim that such reasons are valuable by virtue of being comprehensive reasons.
When i read your post, I thought that you hit the nail on the head with Dworkin, namely that he acknowledges the shortcoming of Rawls’s public reason but fails to take the criticism (or its resolution) far enough. Dworkin, for reasons internal to his own philosophy, pretty much falls back on a Rawlsian model in the book. That is, he proposes that his two principles of human dignity (inherent worth and personal responsibility) will do the work required to show religious citizens why they ought to endorse his secular/neutral state.
I had hoped that Dworkin would engage ‘disagreement’ differently, namely by wanting to get his hand dirty and engage with the deep disagreement in an attempt to find an integral/constructivist solution rather than seek to avoid the disagreement. I think Dworkin may still offer a better solution but it will require returning to his earlier writings even though I am beginning to think that Dworkin may not, at the end, offer us (by which I mean ‘me’) a better alternative to dealing with disagreement (than Rawls).
I apologize for the long response. I also hope it makes some sense.
Many thanks,
M. Al-Hakim
[...] way. I’ve written before about the tension between religion and democracy (see also here) and, more recently, about how religion is treated by our courts (see also Jason’s post on [...]
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