Religion and Public Reason: A Comparison of the Positions of John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricoeur

This book compares three approaches to public reason and to the public space accorded to religions: the liberal platform of an overlapping consensus proposed by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethical reformulation of Kant’s universalism and its realization in the public sphere, and the co-founding role which Paul Ricoeur attributes to the particular traditions that have shaped their cultures and the convictions of citizens. The premises of their positions are analysed under four aspects: (1) the normative framework which determines the specific function of public reason; (2) their anthropologies and theories of action; (3) the dimensions of social life and its concretization in a democratic political framework; (4) the different views of religion that follow from these factors, including their understanding of the status of metaphysical and religious truth claims, and the role of religion as a practice and conviction in a pluralist society. Recent receptions and critiques in English and German are brought into conversation: philosophers and theologians discuss the scope of public reason, and the task of translation from faith traditions, as well as the role they might have in the diversity of world cultures for shaping a shared cosmopolitan horizon. Preface Introduction 1 Public reason as a neutral mediator in pluralist democracies in John Rawls’s political philosophy 1.1 The normative framework and its two methods of justification 1.1.1 Justice as founded by contract and as found in reflected cultural standards 1.1.2 Assessments of the contract foundation: The circularity of the device of the “original position” 1.1.2.1 Onora O’Neill: A metaphorical contract between idealized parties 1.1.2.2 Otfried Höffe: A ruse of rational egotists 1.1.2.3 Paul Ricoeur: Oscillating between disinterest and mutuality 1.1.2.4 Between philosophical and empirical concepts 1.1.3 Beyond a constructed procedure: Convictions formed in religious and cultural history in “reflective equilibrium” with principles 1.1.4 The completion of a contextual foundation in Political Liberalism 1.2 “Idea of the good” and “sense of justice” as elements of moral personhood in Theory of Justice 1.2.1 Rationality as a good and its realization in a life plan 1.2.2 Comparison and critique of Rawls’s concept of the good of selfrespect 1.2.3 “The sense of justice” 1.2.4 The “sense of justice” compared with principled autonomy in Kant 1.2.5 Natural contingency and self-respect 1.3 Society as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage 1.3.1 From a system of benefits and burdens to a “social union of social unions” 1.3.2 Withdrawing from metaphysical assumptions: Classical republicanism versus civic humanism 1.3.3 Lack of “natural assets” as grounds for intervention? 1.3.4 Sources and significance of plurality in Theory of Justice and in Political Liberalism 1.3.4.1 Plurality in contract, associations, and primary goods 1.3.4.2 Setting the stage for the task of public reason: Philosophies as “comprehensive doctrines” in Political Liberalism 1.4 Democratic life and public reason 1.4.1 The search for a neutral ground between irreconcilable worldviews 1.4.1.1 Public reason converting comprehensive into political conceptions of justice 1.4.1.2 The paradox: Civility as abstention 1.4.1.3 The dual motivation of the overlapping consensus: comprehensive and civic 1.4.2 The spheres of democratic life 1.4.2.1 The composition of the background culture 1.4.2.2 Religious contributions to nonpublic reason? 1.5 “Public reason” and practical reason: Critiques from a Kantian perspective 1.5.1 Distinct starting points: “Public reason” between theory of law and morality 1.5.2 An alternative guiding principle for the constitutional order: Human dignity 1.5.3 The Law of Peoples: Transnational scope for human rights and justice? 1.5.3.1 Human rights, urgent and universal, versus constitutional and contextual 1.5.3.2 Justice – bounded or transnational? 1.5.4 The public and the private use of practical reason 1.6 Religion in the limits of Rawls’s concept of public reason 1.6.1 A philosophical approach to God: Kant’s “highest good” and the antinomy of practical reason 1.6.2 A proviso and translations in due course – how attractive for religions? 1.6.2.1 Addressing the hermeneutical deficit of procedural theories of justice: Christian sources of identity formation (Elke Mack) 1.6.2.2 Self-restriction by religions on what basis? (Stefan Grotefeld) 1.6.3 The sources of public reason – free-standing, or indebted to a history of formation? Introduction to Parts Two and Three 2 Practical reason in the public sphere: Jürgen Habermas’s rehabilitation of religion as a resource within the project of modernity 2.1 The normative framework: The foundations of discourse ethics 2.1.1 The basis of communicative rationality: Reason as embodied in language 2.1.2 The competence of philosophy 2.1.2.1 Constructivist and reconstructive elements in discourse ethics 2.1.2.2 Philosophy as “stand-in” and “interpreter” 2.1.3 Postmetaphysical thinking reconfirmed 2.2 An anthropology of the lifeworld 2.2.1 The interactive constitution of self-consciousness 2.2.2 Pragmatic reconstruction of normative implications, or moral recognition of the other? 2.2.3 Between a reservoir of shared meanings and postconventional morality: the role of the lifeworld 2.2.4 Religion after the abysses of reason 2.3 The public use of reason in the democratic public sphere 2.3.1 The moral core of public reason 2.3.2 Public reason as generated in the practical discourse of citizens 2.3.3 The basis of justification: Moral, ethical, or civic? 2.3.4 From religion to public reason: Habermas’s comments on continuities in Rawls’s thinking from its theological origins 2.3.4.1 Human individuality in response to God and as normative in the construction of just social structures 2.3.4.2 Anchoring the right in a personal view of truth 2.4 Religion as a resource for the project of modernity 2.4.1 The persistence of religion and the task of reconstructing the genealogy of human reflection in religions and philosophies 2.4.1.1 From the secularization thesis to the consciousness of a postsecular constellation 2.4.1.2 The shared origins of religions and philosophical reason in the axial period 2.4.1.3 The distinction between the two axial formations of reflection: Comparing Jaspers and his interpretation by Habermas 2.4.2 The heuristic and semantic potential of religions in the pathologies of rationalization 2.4.2.1 The ongoing intellectual potential of religious traditions for selfunderstandings formed in the lifeworld 2.4.2.2 The origin of “the political” in the encounter between religious and secular self-understandings 2.4.2.3 Postsecular society or postsecular state? 2.4.3 Theological critiques: Religion in the limits of postmetaphysical reason 2.4.3.1 The means of translation 2.4.3.2 The specific difference of religion 2.4.3.3 The limits of translatability 3 Religions as co-foundational of the public space in Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy 3.1 The normative framework: A phenomenology of desiring, capable and fallible human beings 3.1.1 Theory of action based on “desire and effort to exist” 3.1.2 Self-understanding as a result of appropriation 3.1.3 Symbols and conflicts of interpretation 3.1.4 Cultural uniqueness, utopia and ideology 3.1.4.1 Particularity versus homogenization and historicist relativism 3.1.4.2 Between foundational hopes and strategies of legitimation: Utopia and ideology 3.1.4.3 Tradition and emancipation: Ricoeur’s comments on Habermas’s critique of Gadamer 3.1.5 A hermeneutics of the self as idem and ipse, and as self and other 3.1.6 Insights from Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology as a framework for ethics 3.2 The self and its agency: Three types of ethical reflection 3.2.1 A phenomenological reconstruction of the three dimensions of ethics 3.2.1.1 The wish to “live well, with and for others, in just institutions” 3.2.1.2 The deontological level as the “sieve of the norm” 3.2.1.3 “Practical wisdom” as a “heartfelt conviction” 3.2.1.4 The wish for a reconciled memory and the status of forgiveness in a theory of agency 3.2.2 Differences to Rawls and Habermas in the outline of ethics 3.2.2.1 Questions to Rawls 3.2.2.2 Questions to Habermas 3.2.3 Conclusions from perspectives on ethics 3.3 Co-founding the public space: Types of authority, legitimation, and citizens’ convictions 3.3.1 Democracy between foundational myths and selfauthorization 3.3.1.1 The narrative model: Myths of foundation, potestas and auctoritas 3.3.1.2 The model of self-authorization 3.3.1.3 The model of recognizing heterogeneous traditions as cofoundational 3.3.2 Domination and obedience, or initiatives in plural spheres of negotiation? 3.3.2.1 Pluralizing the category of Herrschaft in Max Weber’s theory of social action 3.3.2.2 Explicit and implicit theory decisions in Weber’s approach 3.3.2.3 Enunciative and institutional authority 3.4 Religion and agency: Fallibility, hope, and translation 3.4.1 Fallibility and freedom in religious experience and in philosophical reflection 3.4.2 A dialectic that gives a place to hope: Kant’s concept of the “highest good” 3.4.2.1 Reason as structurally oriented towards completion 3.4.2.2 The endpoint of reason in Kant and Hegel: Demand of unconditional meaning versus absolute knowledge 3.4.2.3 The epistemological status of hope 3.4.2.4 Kant’s treatment of evil in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 3.4.2.5 Comparison of the three Kantian argumentations on the scope of reason 3.4.3 Translations, particularity and plurality of religious traditions 3.4.3.1 The possibility of intercultural understanding 3.4.3.2 The goal of translation between a search for equivalents and engagement with particularity 3.4.3.3 Epoch-making translations of biblical texts 3.4.3.4 Plurality of interpretations in foundational scriptures and histories of effect 4 Conclusion of the comparison of the three positions 4.1 Reason in its three dimensions 4.1.1 Theoretical reason 4.1.2 Practical reason 4.1.3 Judgement 4.2 Religion and public reason 4.2.1 Three views of religion in relation to reason 4.2.2 Co-founders of the public sphere Bibliography Person Index Subject Index This Book Compares Three Approaches To Public Reason And To The Public Space Accorded To Religions: The Liberal Platform Of An Overlapping Consensus Proposed By John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas's Discourse Ethical Reformulation Of Kant's Universalism And Its Realization In The Public Sphere, And The Co-founding Role Which Paul Ricoeur Attributes To The Particular Traditions That Have Shaped Their Cultures And The Convictions Of Citizens.--publishers Website Public Reason As A Neutral Mediator In Pluralist Democracies In John Rawl's Political Philosophy -- Practical Reason In The Public Sphere: Jèurgen Habermas's Rehabilitation Of Religion As A Resource Within The Project Of Modernity -- Religions As Co-foundational Of The Public Space In Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutical Philosophy -- Conclusion Of The Comparison Of The Three Positions. Maureen Junker-kenny. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 302-311) And Indexes. The role of religious self-understandings as resources for the normative foundations of democracy is much debated in social and political ethics, theology and law. The comparison of the positions of Rawls, Habermas and Ricoeur highlights alternative conceptions of the premises of "public reason" and of religion. Recent philosophical and theological receptions and critiques in English and German are brought into conversation