Comprehensive Doctrines in the Public Sphere – A Case for Politicization

Year 2019, Volume: 18 Issue: 2, 289 - 303, 30.09.2019

Tomasz Jarymowıcz

https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.612491

Abstract

The
problem with religious reasons is not whether they should be present in the
public sphere but how they should be present. Political theorists such as
Jeremy Waldron, Juergen Habermas, and Christina Lafont have favored two
approaches to making religion legitimate in the public sphere. They have either
tried to work out the conditions under which religious reasons can contribute
to public sphere in a fruitful way or they have drawn attention to the moral
content of religious principles. However, I argue that the latter approach
relies too heavily on the propositional content of religious arguments to the
detriment of investigating how they are politicized in the public sphere. It is
my conviction that without looking at how given religious morality is politicized,
a false moral consensus is manufactured, which given the motivational pull of
religion can be dangerous. Furthermore, the article makes a case for a more
realistic idea of a public sphere where other comprehensive doctrines such as
feminism or economism are taken into account as well. Moreover, the evaluation
of religious reasons should include their relationship to a given background
political culture, which will increase a critical edge of a political theory. 

Keywords

Habermas, Religious Reasons, Public Sphere, Deliberative Democracy

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