TY - JOUR
T1 - Educating citizens to public reason
T2 - what can we learn from interfaith dialogue?
AU - Bardon, Aurélia
AU - Bonotti, Matteo
AU - Zech, Steven T.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to participants in the Association for Social and Political Philosophy Online Workshop ‘Crises of Liberalism?’, Royal Holloway, University of London, 9 July 2021, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. We would also like to thank Richard Bellamy and two anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback. This work is part of a larger collaborative project titled ‘Civic Virtue in Public Life: Understanding and Countering Incivility in Liberal Democracies’. The research is funded as part of the Self, Virtue and Public Life Project, a three-year research initiative based at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma, made possible with generous support from the Templeton Religion Trust.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024/12
Y1 - 2024/12
N2 - John Rawls’s political liberalism demands that reasonable citizens comply with the duty of civility, which limits the justification of state action to public reasons. However, many religious citizens in liberal democratic societies reject the exclusion of religious reasons from public debate. What can be done to encourage these citizens to endorse public reason? Rawls proposes the idea of reasoning from conjecture (RC), i.e. directly engaging with someone’s comprehensive doctrine and showing them that such a doctrine actually supports public reason. In this article, we argue that reasoning from conjecture faces serious objections and that interfaith dialogue (ID) provides a better and more effective tool to encourage religious citizens to endorse public reason. More specifically, ID provides support to public reason by (i) relying on the principles of equality, sincerity and self-criticism, which are also central to public reason; (ii) leading participants to de-parochialize religion; and (iii) promoting tolerance. Moreover, ID avoids the main objections faced by RC, which undermine the latter’s morality and effectiveness.
AB - John Rawls’s political liberalism demands that reasonable citizens comply with the duty of civility, which limits the justification of state action to public reasons. However, many religious citizens in liberal democratic societies reject the exclusion of religious reasons from public debate. What can be done to encourage these citizens to endorse public reason? Rawls proposes the idea of reasoning from conjecture (RC), i.e. directly engaging with someone’s comprehensive doctrine and showing them that such a doctrine actually supports public reason. In this article, we argue that reasoning from conjecture faces serious objections and that interfaith dialogue (ID) provides a better and more effective tool to encourage religious citizens to endorse public reason. More specifically, ID provides support to public reason by (i) relying on the principles of equality, sincerity and self-criticism, which are also central to public reason; (ii) leading participants to de-parochialize religion; and (iii) promoting tolerance. Moreover, ID avoids the main objections faced by RC, which undermine the latter’s morality and effectiveness.
KW - Interfaith dialogue
KW - public reason
KW - reasoning from conjecture
KW - unreasonable citizens
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85130225368
U2 - 10.1080/13698230.2022.2073104
DO - 10.1080/13698230.2022.2073104
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85130225368
SN - 1369-8230
VL - 27
SP - 1050
EP - 1074
JO - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
JF - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
IS - 7
ER -