Though responses to Stout's book, "Democracy and Tradition," have touched on his discussion of rights, none has comprehensively examined his position on the subject. Having endorsed several objections Stout raises against some influential views on democracy and rights, this article proceeds to criticize Stout's description and theoretical account of the natural and human rights traditions. The central argument is that Stout cannot successfully both affirm the traditions and adhere to his account.

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and moral--coexist within the (...) framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

Within democratic societies, a deep division exists over the nature of community and the grounds for political life. Should the political order be neutral between competing conceptions of the good life or should it be based on some such conception? This book addresses one crucial set of problems raised by this division: What bases should officials and citizens employ in reaching political decisions and justifying their positions? Should they feel free to rely on whatever grounds seem otherwise persuasive to them, (...) like religious convictions, or should they restrict themselves to "public reasons," reasons that are shared within the society or arise from the premises of liberal democracy? Kent Greenawalt argues that fundamental premises of liberal democracy alone do not provides answers to these questions, that much depends on historical and cultural contexts. After examining past and current practices and attitudes in the United States, he offers concrete suggestions for appropriate principles relevant to American society today. This incisive and timely analysis by one of our leading legal philosophers should attract a wide and diverse readership of scholars, practitioners, and concerned citizens. (shrink)

How far may Americans properly rely on their religious beliefs when they make and defend political decisions? For example, are ordinary citizens or legislators doing something wrong when they consciously allow their decisions respecting abortion laws to be determined by their religious views? Despite its intense contemporary relevance, the full dimensions of this issue have until now not been thoroughly examined. Religious Convictions and Political Choice represents the first attempt to fill this gap. Beginning with an account of the basic (...) premises of our liberal democracy, Greenawalt moves to a comparison between rational secular grounds of decision and grounds based on religious convictions. He discusses particular issues such as animal rights and abortion, showing how religious convictions can bear on an individual's decisions about them, and inquires whether reliance on such convictions is compatible with liberal democratic premises. In conclusion, he argues that citizens cannot be expected to rely exclusively on rational, secular grounds. (shrink)

Our concern in this essay are the roles of religious conviction in what we call a “publicly justified polity” — one in which the laws conform to the Principle of Public Justification, according to which (in a sense that will become clearer) each citizen must have conclusive reason to accept each law as binding. According to “justificatory liberalism,”1 this public justification requirement follows from the core liberal commitment of respect for the freedom and equality of all citizens.2 To respect each (...) as free and equal requires that no one simply be forced to submit to the judgments of others as to what she must do. Laws must be justified to those subject to them — each must accept grounds that justify the law. As Kant indicated, if such a condition is achieved, each is both subject and legislator: each is subject to the law, yet each legislates the law, and so all our free and equal under the law.3 Now it would appear that if we are to justify laws to each and every person, the reasons for these laws must be “accessible to all.”4 Religious reasons, however, are not shared by everyone, and may be inaccessible to some: they would thereby seem inappropriate in public justification. On the face of it, justificatory liberals seem committed to expunging religious-based reasoning from political justification. Not surprisingly, this apparent commitment of justificatory liberalism is adamantly rejected by many citizens of faith who consider themselves liberals. These citizens embrace the traditional liberal freedoms and rights and, moreover, reject any suggestion that a legitimate polity might seek to establish a religion, much less a theocracy. Yet they.. (shrink)

How far may Americans properly rely on their religious beliefs when they make and defend political decisions? For example, are ordinary citizens or legislators doing something wrong when they consciously allow their decisions respecting abortion laws to be determined by their religious views? Despite its intense contemporary relevance, the full dimensions of this issue have until now not been thoroughly examined. Religious Convictions and Political Choice represents the first attempt to fill this gap. Beginning with an account of the basic (...) premises of our liberal democracy, Greenawalt moves to a comparison between rational secular grounds of decision and grounds based on religious convictions. He discusses particular issues such as animal rights and abortion, showing how religious convictions can bear on an individual's decisions about them, and inquires whether reliance on such convictions is compatible with liberal democratic premises. In conclusion, he argues that citizens cannot be expected to rely exclusively on rational, secular grounds. (shrink)

S. 39: "My project in this paper is to develop the initial distinction which I have drawn between recognition and appraisal respect into a more detailed and specific account of each. These accounts will not merely be of intrinsic interest. Ultimately I will use them to illuminate the puzzles with which this paper began and to understand the idea of self-respect." 42 " Thus, insofar as respect within such a pursuit will depend on an appraisal of the participant from the (...) perspective of whatever standards are held to be appropriate to the pursuit, such respect will depend on a judgement to which excellences of character are thought relevant. Note that exactly what aspect of the person's character is thought to be relevant in this instance is his recognition respect (or lack of it) for the standards of the pursuit." 44 "This attitude fails of being appraisal respect in that my having it toward the person is conditional on those traits being such as to make him server a particular purpose that I happen to have" 44 - 45 "To sum up: Appraisal respect is an attitude of positibe appraisal of a person either judged as a person or as engaged in some more specific pursuit. In the first case, the appropriate grounds are features of the person's character: dispositions to act for particular reasons or a higher-level disposition to act for the best reasons. In the second case, though features of character do not exhaust the appropriate grounds for appraisal respect, some such character traits will be relevant (recognition respect for the standards of a particular pursuit). Also, the other features which constitute the appoprate excellences of the pursuit must be related to traits of character in the way specified. In both cases, the positive appraisal of the person, and of his traits, must be categorical. It cannot depend on the fact that the person, because of his traits, serves an interest or purpose of one's own." 45 "To have recognition respect for someone as a person is to give appropriate weight to the fact that he or she is a person by being willing to constrain one's behaviour in ways required by that fact." 45 "This is rather different from having an attitude of appraisal respect for someone as a person. The latter is a positive appraisal oif an individual made with regard ti those features which are excellences of persons. As such, it is not owed to everone, for it may or may not be merited. When it is, what is merited is just the positive appraisal itself." 47 "Second, the only beings who are approriate objects of appraisal respect are those who are capable of acting for reasons and hence capable of conceiving of various facts as meriting more or less consideration in deliberation.". (shrink)

This book is meant to help resolve a couple of uncertainties.

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

What role should a citizen's religious convictions play in her political activities? Is she, for example, permitted to decide on the basis of her religious convictions to support laws that criminalize abortion or discourage homosexual relations? Christopher Eberle is deeply at odds with the dominant orthodoxy among political theorists about the relation of religion and politics. His argument is that a citizen may responsibly ground her political commitments on religious beliefs, even if her only reasons for her political commitments are (...) religious in nature. His ideal of citizenship allows citizens to engage in politics without privatizing their religious commitments, and yet does not license mindless and intransigent sectarianism. An inherently controversial book that offers a substantial challenge to political liberalism, it will be read by students and professionals in philosophy, political science, law and religious studies, and general readers seeking insight into the relationship between religious commitments and liberal politics. (shrink)

In Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship Paul J. Weithman asks whether citizens in a liberal democracy may base their votes and their public political arguments on their religious beliefs. Drawing on empirical studies of how religion actually functions in politics, he challenges the standard view that citizens who rely on religious reasons must be prepared to make good their arguments by appealing to reasons that are 'accessible' to others. He contends that churches contribute to democracy by enriching political debate (...) and by facilitating political participation, especially among the poor and minorities, and as a consequence, citizens acquire religiously based political views and diverse views of their own citizenship. He concludes that the philosophical view which most defensibly accommodates this diversity is one that allows ordinary citizens to draw on the views their churches have formed when voting and offering public arguments for their political positions. (shrink)

The authors offer ways to encourage and educate Americans to participate in the public deliberations that make democracy work and lay out the principles of..

Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. In this book Fred D'Agostino shows that the concept is composed of various values, interests, and notions of the good, and that no ranking of these is possible. (...) The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino undermines many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then offers an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention. (shrink)

The defects of any form of government may be either negative or positive. It is negatively defective if it does not concentrate in the hands of the authorities power sufficient to fulfil the necessary offices of a government; or if it does not sufficiently develop by exercise the active capacities and social feelings of the individual citizens. On neither of these points is it necessary that much should be said at this stage of our inquiry.

In The Autonomy of Morality Charles Larmore challenges two ideas that have shaped the modern mind. The world, he argues, is not a realm of value-neutral fact, nor does human freedom consist in imposing principles of our own devising on an alien reality. Rather, reason consists in being responsive to reasons for thought and action that arise from the world itself. Larmore shows that the moral good has an authority that speaks for itself. Only in this light does the true (...) basis of a liberal political order come into view, as well as the role of unexpected goods in the makeup of a life lived well. (shrink)

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues (...) for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)

Though responses to Stout's book, "Democracy and Tradition," have touched on his discussion of rights, none has comprehensively examined his position on the subject. Having endorsed several objections Stout raises against some influential views on democracy and rights, this article proceeds to criticize Stout's description and theoretical account of the natural and human rights traditions. The central argument is that Stout cannot successfully both affirm the traditions and adhere to his account.