Table Of ContentLiberal Politics and Public Faith
A Philosophical Reconciliation
Dissertation Submitted to the University of Arizona
In Partial Fulfillment for the Award of Doctor of Philosophy
In Philosophy
Kevin Vallier
Under the Guidance of Gerald Gaus
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
March 2011
Contents
Pages
Introduction 1
Part I: Conflict 11
Chapter 1: The Liberal Idea 12
Chapter 2: Objections of Faith 34
Chapter 3: A Model of Liberal Practical Reason 70
Chapter 4: A New Model of Liberal Practical Reason 97
Part II: Reconciliation 138
Introduction: Two Metrics and Two Variables 139
Chapter 5: Conceptions of Public Reasons 143
Chapter 6: Against the Standard Conception of Public Reasons 162
Chapter 7: Convergence 189
Chapter 8: Conceptions of Idealization 211
Chapter 9: Against the Standard Conception of Idealization 235
Chapter 10: Moderate Idealization 253
Conclusion 285
References 291
Introduction
The wedding of liberalism and secularism has alienated millions of Americans from the liberal
tradition. To many, liberalism is identified with an aggressive secularization of social institutions,
especially public media and public schools. Many citizens of faith believe liberalism threatens their
most sacred forms of life. This was not always the case: in American history, the relation between
liberalism and religion has often been one of mutual respect and support. Mutual respect has given
way to mutual suspicion. Liberalism‘s proponents and detractors believe that liberal political theory
requires eliminating religious influences in public life. This dissertation defends a bold thesis:
liberalism has no such implications. One we see why this is so, the philosophical underpinnings of the
liberalism-religion conflict are undermined. Unlike most work on this topic, the dissertation neither
defends liberal secularism nor assaults it. Instead, it integrates the moral emphases of both the
religious and liberal perspectives.
And yet so much has been written on the clash between faith and liberal democratic politics.
What could possibly justify another article, much less an entire dissertation? My justification for
adding yet another work to the pile is that I approach the liberalism and faith conflict from a new
angle—I attempt to carefully articulate the philosophical structure of the conflict and resolve it
without taking sides. What has been written heretofore either defends liberal secularism or assaults it
(if to varying degrees). I propose to make an end-run around the debate, to attack its shared
premises and carve out a position that integrates the moral emphases of both camps while
chastening them for being one-sided.
But before I begin, I must articulate this conflict with great care. There is no one religion and
politics problem. There are many religions and many forms of political life. Neither politics nor
religion is a univocal phenomenon. Accordingly, there will be no one way in which they clash. Our
focus will be on the role of religious expression and religiously-motivated political action in liberal
democratic politics and the liberal political tradition. This is the problem as we know it in the United
States and Western Europe. In fact, to be perfectly frank, the problem of religion in public life in the
United States and Western Europe is a problem with certain forms of Christianity, Judaism and
Islam. In our ideological neck of the woods, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism,
Shintoism, and Janism simply do not raise these issues. Accordingly, I focus on forms of the major
monotheisms that demand great devotion to the dictates of God and that require their adherents to
2
shape their social and political world in accord with religious values. Within Western democracies,
these religious have millions of adherents and accordingly they raise serious practical conflicts.1
We can focus further still. This work is situated within a debate between (mainly) secular
public reason liberals and their (principally) Christian critics. It is for this reason that I will focus
primarily on the problems raised by Christianity in public life. As of this writing, I do not have a
worked out view about Islam, though I suspect much of what I say here will have important
implications for the conflicts between Islam and liberal democratic political cultures. In particular, I
imagine that worries about religious integrity will be more pressing for many Islamic communities.
Hundreds of millions of Christians have lived under liberal democratic institutions over the course
of hundred years, sharply contrasting with the relatively recent encounter between certain forms of
Islam and Western liberal democracies. Working out their mutual compatibility is a young project
for Muslims relative to the Christians.
And yet, in another way, this work is not about religion alone. Instead, its deepest concern is
with the problems posed by the practical demands of these faiths, demands which may well arise for
any number of non-religious doctrines, ideologies, projects and social practices. I am concerned
about forms of life that require social integration or that make social and political demands of their
adherents. I am worried about citizens who believe that their individual ideals, ideals not shared by
their compatriots, should shape and structure their lives regardless of the views of others. Our
problem then is in many ways the problem of the social contract tradition as a whole: how are
divergent forms of life supposed to coexist in accord with a public social morality that allows all
citizens to live well together? John Rawls has asked this question powerfully:
How can it be reasonable or rational, when basic matters are at stake, for citizens to appeal
only to a public conception of justice and not to the whole truth as they see it? Surely, the
most fundamental questions should be settled by appealing to the most important truths, yet
these may far transcend public reason!2
1 I set aside discussions of the roles of Eastern religions in democracies like India for the sake of focus. However, I must
note that Judaism raises important problems of its own, though they are of distinctive and unusual varieties, such as
Judaism‘s role in Israeli politics and in the relationship between Israel and other liberal democracies. It is unclear to me
whether as a result Judaism is at all incompatible with liberal democratic public life. My sense is that in American
political life, followers of reformed Judaism like their liberal Protestant counterparts are largely unconcerned about
public secularization imposed by the liberal political tradition. Similarly, conservative and orthodox sects of Judaism will
likely have similar concerns about the restrictions on religious integrity imposed by the mainstream interpretation of
liberalism as do their conservative Catholic and Protestant counterparts.
2 Rawls 2005, p. 216.
3
Rawls‘s question is our question too. How can it be rational for citizens of deep conviction (not
merely people of faith) to abide by social rules that require them not to act on their commitments?
Clearly we need a set of social rules that promote social cooperation and we know that these rules
will frequently require citizens of conviction to restrain their social and political action. A well-
ordered society, one whose institutions treat all with dignity and respect, requires that citizens
compromise with one another. Truly liberal citizens accord one another the freedom to live their
lives as they see fit, yet towards this end they ask one another to refrain from institutionalizing their
competing value systems. In short, liberalism respects freedom by restricting it. Consequently,
liberals and citizens of faith (groups that may well overlap) see the other as attempting to restrict
freedom. The person of faith sees liberalism as oppressive because it asks her to ―split‖ her public
and private selves, or to privatize her beliefs, and the liberal sees the person of faith as oppressive
precisely because she refuses to do so. Liberalism and religion appear to place competing demands
on citizens. But liberalism wants a society where all are free. I shall argue that the only way to
achieve such a society is for liberals to allow all citizens of conviction to engage in political action
based on their deepest convictions, while remaining true to the liberal idea.
We must be more specific still, for just as there are many religions, there are many liberalisms.
I cannot hope to resolve the conflict between religious convictions present in liberal democratic
societies and all liberalisms. Instead, I will focus on the academically dominant form of liberalism
and the form of liberalism I regard as the most developed and attractive, what is known as public
reason liberalism. Public reason liberalism combines the traditional liberal commitments to basic liberal
democratic liberties (freedom of religion, speech and press) and political equality (universal suffrage
and democratic governance) with the demand that coercion and political authority be publicly justified.
Thus public reason liberalism holds that for the coercive power and authority of the state to be
legitimate and just, it must be justified in terms that each person can reasonably be expected to
accept. Public reason liberalism requires that coercion and authority be justified to all by their own
lights. Public reason liberals frequently argue that respect for persons as free and equal requires that
coercion be publicly justified, for unless John‘s coercing Reba can be justified to Reba on her own
terms, John simply imposes his will on Reba, his moral and political equal. Reba is a naturally free
person and, as such, for John to have the right to force Reba to change her behavior, the right in
question must be one to which Reba is rationally committed.
4
Within the world of political philosophers, political theorists, political scientists, legal
scholars, historians, sociologists and public intellectuals, public reason liberalism takes center stage.
While other forms of liberalism are frequently developed and defended in other literatures, the
religion and political literature has tended to focus on this single target for both assault and defense.
In this I will follow the literature. I do so not merely because ―everyone else is doing it‖ but because
the literature is focused in this way for a reason. Public reason liberalism unlike alternative
liberalisms like liberal perfectionism is concerned about the justification of coercion to others in
their own terms and so it claims for itself a kind of impartiality that is both attractive and potentially
suspect. In other words, it raises a unique and compelling philosophical problem. In the end, I side
with the public reason liberals with respect to their fundamental commitment to the public
justification of coercion, but I do so only after arguing at length that public reason liberalism must
fundamentally change in light of the criticisms lodged against it.
Who issues these criticisms? They typically divide into two classes. We might call the first
class ―The New Traditionalists,‖ philosophers and theologians like Alasdair MacIntyre, John
Milbank, and Stanley Hauerwas who reject liberalism because it is incompatible with religious, or
more generally virtuous, transcendent and communal forms of life.3 The second class of
philosophers and theologians, such as Kent Greenawalt, Michael Perry and Nicholas Wolterstorff,
endorse the basic institutions of liberal democracy along with its associated rights and duties despite
holding that public reason liberalism places undue strain on persons of faith.4 Discussion focusing
on this latter group promises to be more productive because of their shared commitments with
public reason liberals. I call this second group of critics integralist liberals for while they endorse
liberal democracy they typically maintain that public reason liberalism prevents citizens of faith from
living religiously integrated lives.5 This work therefore takes its place within a philosophical dialectic
between those committed to the broad outlines of liberal democratic political theory. It does not
raise the question of whether liberal democratic institutions are justified as such. Instead, its audience
is those already committed to these institutions but who profoundly and fundamentally disagree
about the place of religious conviction within them.6
3 See Hauerwas 1999, pp. 13-22, MacIntyre 1990, pp. 170-195, Milbank 2006, pp. 9-50 for some of the New
Traditionalists‘ concerns in their classic works.
4 These theorists include Christopher Eberle 2002, Kent Greenawalt 1995, Michael Perry 1991, Philip Quinn 1997 and
Nicholas Wolterstorff 1997.
5 I have borrowed this useful term from Benjamin Hertzberg.
6 We might follow John Tomasi as describing these two groups as defenders of ―A-people‖ and ―C-people‖ though
describing one side of the debate as ―As‖ and the other as ―Cs‖ is arguably prejudicial. See Tomasi 2001, pp. 17-26.
5
This work approaches the criticisms of integralists from within public reason. Integralists have
distinct religious, political and philosophical commitments and as such their criticisms are frequently
motivated by concerns that will not move public reason liberals. If we approach integralist criticisms
as embedded in their own conceptual frameworks, the task of assessment will be overwhelming.
Instead, my aim will be to show that public reason liberals must address the integralist criticisms
from within their own theoretical commitments. This is not to say that this work does not speak to
integralist liberals. Instead, in developing a version of public reason liberalism that answers the
integralist, I seek to bring the integralist closer to the public reason liberal tradition. While I do not
provide arguments that integralists should be public reason liberals, in disarming their objections I
hope to make public reason liberalism more attractive to them.
I hope that my integralist interlocutors will see my work as a good faith attempt to take their
concerns seriously. Public reason liberals often deride integralists. One notorious example is Stephen
Macedo, who claims that ―If some people … feel ‗silenced‘ or ‗marginalized‘ by the fact that some
of us believe that it is wrong to seek to shape basic liberties on the basis of religious or metaphysical
claims, I can only say ‗grow up!‘7 I aim to treat integralists in precisely the opposite way. I believe
their concerns are so serious that they can only be adequately addressed by conceptual work within
normative ethics. This work is an exercise in mutual respect, not only in its aim of developing a
version of public reason liberalism that integrates the concerns of both sides, but that honors both
sides in its argumentative structure and prose. I hope in this way to invite integralist and the public
reason liberal to view each other with mutual respect.
I believe that the conflict between public reason liberals and integralist liberals is
fundamentally a conflict between integrity and treating others with respect by reasoning from their
standpoint. Both sides have a liberal concern: preserving the freedom of all citizens to live by their
own lights. The integralist emphasizes the authority of the individual to live an integrated life, a life
where her public and private endeavors are shaped and informed by her convictions. The public
reason liberal emphasizes the need for citizens to reason from each other‘s standpoints in order to
jointly construct a social morality that allows us all to cooperate while simultaneously living in accord
with their distinctive values. From the perspective of liberalism, how could either side be wrong? Surely
the interesting question for the liberal is not ―Who is right?‖ but rather ―Both sides have a point.
What now?‖ The latter question is my question. I believe that an answer can only be found at the
conceptual level. Here is my statement of The Problem:
7 Macedo 2000, p. 35.
6
There are two fundamental sources of normativity, a first-personal source and a second-
personal source, that conflict in a complex manner. Each side in the debate draws from one
of these two sources. The public reason liberal draws on a second-personal source of
normativity by emphasizing the need to reason from the standpoint of others, while the
integralist draws on a first-personal source of normativity, the authority of the individual to
live an integrated life. And yet a viable liberal political theory must integrate these two
sources of normativity. How is this to be done?
I solve The Problem by accomplishing five aims:
Aim 1: State precisely what the dispute is and why it is philosophically interesting.
Aim 2: Validate the concerns of integralists while protecting public reason.
Aim 3: Show that public reason liberalism must change in light of integralist criticism.
Aim 4: Provide a strategy for discerning how the change must proceed.
Aim 5: Execute the strategy by defending an alternative version of public reason liberalism.
Achieving each aim is a great endeavor in itself. Aim 1 is particularly challenging. Many people argue
about the problem of the proper place of religion in the public square without clearly stating it. I
spend four chapters trying to accomplish this aim, while simultaneously achieving Aims 2, 3 and 4.
I must say something here about my approach. Participants in this literature, be they
academic or public pundit, engage it from a myriad of perspectives and methods. My method is that
of a contemporary analytic political philosopher. My skill set lies primarily in conceptual analysis and
the assessment of arguments at a high degree of abstraction. For this reason I will not take on the
sociological concerns of many public reason liberals, such as claims that a desecularized public
square will produce bad consequences, like religious violence.8 What I am after are arguments about
the clash between first and second-personal sources of normativity. That is, I am interested in claims
like the following: does the conceptual structure of public reason liberalism require restraints on
religious expression in the public sphere? Does respect for persons require the public sphere to be
secularized? Can the account of justificatory reasons offered by mainstream public reason liberalism
withstand sustained philosophical scrutiny? Some will find these questions uninteresting and
esoteric, but I claim that if The Problem can be resolved at the conceptual level that great social
8 Christopher Eberle addresses some of these concerns, see Eberle 2002, pp. 152-186.
7
and political fruit can be borne. Not only will we have resolved an important philosophical dilemma,
but the new conceptual space uncovered by my inquiry will have important implications for the
structure of constitutional law, public policy and civility within political discourse. I cannot convince
you of this now, so I write a promissory note: by the end of the dissertation, I will show that the
conceptual work accomplished herein will matter outside of philosophy.9
We may now turn to the structure of this work. It contains ten chapters divided into two
parts. In Part I, I outline the structure of public reason liberalism and analyze the standard integralist
objections leveled against it. I argue, in short, that the conflict between public reason liberals and
their integralist critics is an acute version of a conflict that lies at the heart of social morality. In
short, it is a clash between individual integrity and the need for interpersonally justified moral rules.
Chapters 1 and 2 explain the normative concerns of both sides and the structure of public reason
liberalism. They depict the tension between public reason liberals and integralists.
To elucidate this tension, I draw on the resources of contractualist moral theory. After
criticizing mainstream contractualist views like those of Darwall and Scanlon in Chapter 3, I develop
an alternative conception of contractualism that employs two types of normative reasons—first and
second-personal reasons—in Chapter 4. First-personal reasons are reasons to act in accord with our
most important projects, plans, principles and ideals—that is, to live lives of integrity. Second-
personal reasons are reasons to conform one‘s behavior to rules that can be justified from the
standpoint of others. I argue that while social morality includes both types of reasons, public reason
liberals tend to emphasize the second-personal while their critics emphasize the first-personal. Public
reason liberals believe that a second-personally justified political morality requires not advancing
unshared considerations in public political life; they thus advocate restraint on religiously-motivated
political behavior. In contrast, critics emphasize religious believers‘ duties to shape their institutions
according to their principles and values. Restraint should be rejected, these critics argue, because it
demands that religious citizens ―privatize‖ their beliefs. A complete political theory must grapple
with the inevitable tension between the two. I complete Part I by arguing that a conception of public
reason commends itself to the extent that it can accommodate and resolve the tension.
9 And yet, the reader will notice that my method is not limited to those of the analytic political philosopher. Instead, I
reach out more broadly for tools from normative ethics, metaethics, and epistemology, while in future versions of this
work I will also reach out to economics, legal theory, political science and public policy for help applying the theory
developed here to real public controversies.
8
In Part II, I employ the framework developed in Part I to reconcile the ideal of public
justification and the integrity-based claims of citizens of faith. Reconciliation requires developing an
alternative conception of public reason liberalism that imposes few integrity costs. The alternative
conception contains two elements, a convergence conception of public reasons (developed in Chapters 5, 6
and 7) and a moderate conception of idealization (developed in Chapters 8, 9 and 10). The convergence
conception of public reasons holds that reasons offered to justify coercion need not be shared; a
convergence conception of reasons will therefore be unable to motivate restraint. Another key
aspect of the debate is the extent to which we idealize the subjects of justification, i.e., how far we
assume that they have adequate or complete information, are excellent at reasoning, and so on. The
orthodox conception of public reason embraces radical idealization, or imputing full information
and perfect rationality to subjects of justification. Such idealization, however, abstracts citizens from
their conceptions of the good and threatens to violate their integrity. In contrast, I defend a more
moderate conception of idealization which attributes reasons to citizens on the basis of their deeply
held principles and values while correcting for gross errors in reasoning and obvious informational
deficits. While the religious objections provide reason to reject orthodox public reason liberalism, I
conclude that a version of public reason liberalism that embraces convergence and moderate
idealization can meet the criticisms of integralists.
Acknowledgements are, of course, in order. I must begin by thanking three individuals who
prompted my thinking on this topic years ago. In the fall of 2004, Gregg Keithley challenged me to
wonder how religious toleration could be justified and, in particular, why some religious sects should
not persecute others in the name of religious truth. I must also thank Emily and Mark Laufgraben
for helping me see the gravity of the questions Gregg pressed me to ask. Without them, I may never
have embarked on this dissertation project.
When I began my graduate work at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2005, I let my
questions about the role of religion in the public square die down so that I might pursue other
subjects. But the questions simply would not go away. In 2006, Jerry Gaus encouraged me to
address these questions once more. It was Jerry who helped me to see that an Aristotelian-Thomistic
approach to these matters was inadequate and that only an approach to social and political theory
informed by the social contract theorists—Rousseau, Kant and Rawls in particular—could succeed
in quieting my concerns. Jerry eventually became my adviser and has put more work into my
academic development, and this dissertation, than anyone could reasonably hope for. For that I am
deeply grateful.
