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Dissertation
Authors
Mullin, Daniel MichaelAdvisors
Kuipers, Ronald A.van der Merwe, W. L.
Affiliation
Institute for Christian StudiesIssue Date
2012-12Keywords
Habermas, JürgenDemocracy
Religion and politics
Taylor, Charles
Rawls, John, 1921-2002
Secularization
Secularism
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Jürgen Habermas has argued that democracy depends on all citizens recognizing the legitimacy of the law. Therefore, political argument must appeal only to public reason which is secular. Religious citizens must translate their reasons into a secular language accessible to the public. This dissertation argues that religious arguments are justified in public discourse if they refrain from dogmatism. Moreover, there is nothing inherent in secular reasons that make them publicly accessible or likely to generate consensus among members of a pluralistic society. If we treat religious arguments as simply arguments with controversial premises, it becomes less clear why religious arguments are singled out as particularly problematic for liberal democracies, since many secular political arguments share this feature. Granted, religious reasons are unlikely to secure consensus, but this does not count against them if consensus is not the goal of democratic discourse. This dissertation makes the case that Habermas, and other liberal theorists such as Rawls, have placed too much emphasis on consensus as the goal of democracy. Moreover, what they refer to is not practical consensus achieved pragmatically through compromise, but an idealized consensus that is the achievement of secular reason. This is problematic for two main reasons: there is no normative reason to think we ought to attain such consensus and such consensus is unlikely to be achieved in practice. Thus, there seems to be no normative force to the claim that religious citizens out to translate their arguments in secular language.Publisher
Institute for Christian StudiesType
ThesisLanguage
enRights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/Rights holder
This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner.Degree Title
Conjoint Ph.D. by the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto and the VU University AmsterdamCollections
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