In Defense of Moderate Inclusivism: Revisiting Rawls and Habermas on Religion in the Public Sphere

Jonas Jakobsen,Kjersti Fjørtoft

doi:10.5324/eip.v12i2.2267

Abstract

The paper discusses Rawls’ and Habermas’ theories of deliberative democracy, focusing on the question of religious reasons in political discourse. Whereas Rawls as well as Habermas defend a fully inclusivist position on the use of religious reasons in the ‘background culture’ (Rawls) or ‘informal public sphere’ (Habermas), we defend a moderately inclusivist position. Moderate inclusivism welcomes religiously inspired contributions to public debate, but it also makes normative demands on public argumentation beyond the ‘public forum’ (Rawls) or ‘formal public sphere’ (Habermas). In particular, moderate inclusivism implies what we call a ‘conversational translation proviso’ according to which citizens have a duty to supplement religious with proper political arguments if – but only if – they are asked to do so by their co-discussants. This position, we argue, is more in line with the deeper intuitions behind Rawls’ political liberalism and Habermas’ deliberative model than is the fully inclusivist alternative.  Keywords: conversational translation proviso, deliberative democracy, ethics of citizenship, Habermas, moderate inclusivism, public reason, Rawls

Highlights

Cultural and religious pluralism is a permanent feature of modern democracies
We argue that, on a closer look, Habermas’ deliberative model is more in line with moderate inclusivism than with the fully inclusivist alternative, and we point to developments in Habermas’ more recent writings, suggesting that he has moved in the direction of moderate inclusivism
Defenders of Rawls have argued that even if the scope of the idea of public reason’ (IPR) is wide in the sense that it includes ordinary citizens engaged in political advocacy, its content is narrow because the proviso applies only to debates about “constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice” (Rawls 1997: 767; 2001: 90)

Summary

Introduction

Cultural and religious pluralism is a permanent feature of modern democracies. in spite of this diversity of worldviews and ways of life, a stable democracy depends on the citizens’ ability and willingness to agree on basic political principles. Having outlined these basic features of moderate inclusivism, we defend our revised model against Jürgen Habermas’ ‘asymmetry argument’, according to which to the informal public sphere must be fully inclusive in order to include religious citizens on fair terms.

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Conclusion