Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy

Edited by Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon

Provides contributions from leading scholars in the field
Offers a variety of perspectives on religion from the perspective of liberal political philosophy
Provides a significant new contribution to the understanding of the normative status of religion in liberal political philosophy

Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy

Edited by Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon

Description

Until now, there has been no direct and extensive engagement with the category of religion from liberal political philosophy. Over the last thirty years or so, liberals have tended to analyze religion under proximate categories such as 'conceptions of the good' (in debates about neutrality) or 'culture' (in debates about multiculturalism). US constitutional lawyers and French political theorists both tackled the category of religion head-on (under First Amendment jurisprudence and the political tradition of laïcité, respectively) but neither of these specialized national discourses found their way into mainstream liberal political philosophy.

This is somewhat paradoxical because key liberal notions (state sovereignty, toleration, individual freedom, the rights of conscience, public reason) were elaborated as a response to 17th Century European Wars of Religion, and the fundamental structure of liberalism is rooted in the western experience of politico-religious conflict. So a reappraisal of this tradition - and of its validity in the light of contemporary challenges - is well overdue.

This book offers the first extensive engagement with religion from liberal political philosophers. The volume analyzes, from within the liberal philosophical tradition itself, the key notions of conscience, public reason, non-establishment, and neutrality. Insofar as the contemporary religious revival is seen as posing a challenge to liberalism, it seems more crucial than ever to explore the specific resources that the liberal tradition has to answer it.

Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy

Edited by Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon

Introduction, Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon
Part I - The Special Status of Religion in the Law
1: Religion, Equality, and Anarchy, Micah Schwartzman
2: A Rawlsian Defense of Special Treatment for Religion, Andrew Koppelman
3: The Irrelevance of Religion to Law, George Letsas
4: Understanding Religion, Governing Religion: A Realist Perspective, Enzo Rossi
5: The Consequences of Disaggregation and the Impossibility of a Third Way, Ronan McCrea
Part II - Sovereignty, Non-Establishment, Neutrality
6: Sovereignty, the Corporate Religious, and Jurisdictional/Political Pluralism, Jean L. Cohen
7: Religious Establishment and Public Justification, Kevin Vallier
8: What's the Problem with Symbolic Religious Establishment? The Alienation and Symbolic Equality Accounts, Sune Laegaard
9: Is Ethical Independence Enough?, Matthew Clayton
10: On the Scope and Object of Neutrality: Policies, Principles, and 'Burdens of Conscience', Saladin Meckled-Garcia
Part III - Accommodation and Religious Freedom
11: Religious Exemption and Distributive Justice, Peter Jones
12: Religious Accommodation: Responsibility, Integrity, and Self-Respect, Jonathan Seglow
13: Exemptions for Conscience, Simon Cabulea May
14: Religious Exemptions and Fairness, Alan Patten
15: How the Interests of Children Limit the Religious Freedom of Parents, Daniel M. Weinstock
16: Equality and Conscience: Ethics and the Provision of Public Services, Annabelle Lever
Part IV - Toleration, Conscience, Identity
17: Religion, Reason, and Toleration: Bayle, Kant - and Us, Rainer Forst
18: Toleration Without Limits: A Reconstruction and Defence of Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary, Chandran Kukathas
19: Liberalism and Identity, Akeel Bilgrami
20: Conscience in Public Life, Maeve Cooke
21: Is Religious Conviction Special?, Kimberley Brownlee
22: How Should We Respect Conscience?, Emanuela Ceva

Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy

Edited by Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon

Author Information

Edited by Cécile Laborde, Nuffield Chair in Political Theory, University of Oxford, and Aurélia Bardon, Lecturer in Politics, University of Liverpool

Cécile Laborde holds the Nuffield Chair in Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Previously, she was the Director of the Religion and Political Theory Centre at University College London.

Aurélia Bardon is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on public justification, especially on the implications of public justification for religion and religious reasons, as well as on secularism and bioethics.

Contributors:

Aurélia Bardon, University of Liverpool.
Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University.
Kimberley Brownlee, University of Warwick.
Emanuela Ceva, University of Pavia.
Matthew Clayton, University of Warwick.
Jean Cohen, Columbia University.
Maeve Cooke, University College Dublin.
Rainer Forst, Goethe University Frankfurt.
Peter Jones, Newcastle University.
Andrew Koppelman, Northwestern University.
Chandran Kukathas, London School of Economics.
Sune Lægaard, Roskilde University.
Cécile Laborde, University of Oxford.
George Letsas, University College London.
Annabelle Lever, University of Geneva.
Simon Cabulea May, Florida State University.
Ronan McCrea, University College London.
Saladin Meckled-Garcia, University College London.
Alan Patten, Princeton University.
Enzo Rossi, University of Amsterdam.
Micah Schwartzman, University of Virginia School of Law.
Jonathan Seglow, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Kevin Vallier, Bowling Green State University.
Daniel Weinstock, McGill University.