Reason, Religion, and Postsecular Liberal-Democratic Epistemology

Ryan Gillespie University of Southern California

Abstract

ABSTRACTReason, religion, and public culture have been of significant interest recently, with critics reevaluating modernity's conception of secularism and calling for a “postsecular” public discourse. Simultaneously, one sees rising religious fundamentalisms and a growing style of antirationalism in public debate. These conditions make a reconceptualization of public reason necessary. The main goals of this article are to establish agnostic public reason as the conceptual guide and normative ethic for public debate in liberal democracies by considering the secular/religious reason boundary explicitly and to argue that this ethic of public reason requires a commitment to reason giving and a particular epistemic attitude but that it does not, nor should it, take precedence over first-order judgments. An ethics of citizenship based on the process of reason giving with the appropriate epistemic stance might be one step toward rectifying the problem of an increasing separation between enclave publics, even if, by design, it cannot solve fundamental disagreement.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2014-02-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.47.1.0001
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Philosophy & Rhetoric

References (85)

  1. Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.
  2. Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957. Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  3. Asen, Robert. 2004. “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2): 189–211.
  4. Asen, Robert. 2005. “Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere.” Informal Logi…
  5. Audi, Robert. 2000. Religious Commitment and Secular Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Show all 85 →
  1. Baier, Annette. 1980. “Secular Faith.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1): 131–48.
  2. Benhabib, Selya. 1996. Democracy and Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  3. Benhabib, Selya. 2011. “The Arab Spring: Religion, Revolution, and the Public Square,” 24 Feb. Transformation…
  4. Boettcher, James W. 2009. “Habermas, Religion, and the Ethics of Citizenship.” Philosophy and Social Criticis…
  5. Bradley, F. H. 1911. “Faith.” Philosophical Review 20 (2): 165–71.
  6. Buber, Martin. 1951. Two Types of Faith. New York: Harper.
  7. Butler, Judith. 2009. “Critique, Dissent, Disciplinarity.” Critical Inquiry 35 (4): 773–95.
  8. Butler, Judith, and Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West. 2011. The Power of Religion in the Public S…
  9. Calhoun, Craig. 1993. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  10. Clegg, J. S. 1979. “Faith.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (3): 225–32.
  11. Cohen, Joshua. 2009. “Truth and Public Reason.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (1): 2–42.
  12. “Critical Forum.” 2007. Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (3): 263–77.
  13. Dancy, Jonathan. 2000. Practical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  14. Davies, Ann. 2006. “In Law More than Life? Liberalism, Reason, and Religion in Public Schools.” Rhetoric and …
  15. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 2002. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans. Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Fa…
  16. Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. 1986. “What is Maturity? Habermas and Foucault on ‘What is Enlightenmen…
  17. Eagleton, Terry. 2009. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ…
  18. Edwards, Jonathan J. 2006. “Christian Counterpublics: Evangelical Discourse and the Critique of Modernism.” I…
  19. Farrell, Thomas. 1993. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  20. Fish, Stanley. 1999. The Trouble with Principle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  21. Fish, Stanley. 2010. “Is Religion Special? New York Times. opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/is-religi…
  22. García, César. 2010. “Pope Benedict XVI on Religion in the Public Sphere.” Journal of Communication and Relig…
  23. Garver, Eugene. 2004. For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of Belief. Chi…
  24. Gaus, Gerald F. 2003. Contemporary Theories of Liberalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  25. Gibbard, Allan. 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  26. Gillespie, Ryan. 2011. “Uses of Religion.” International Journal of Communication 5: 1669–86.
  27. Gillespie, Ryan. Forthcoming. “Disturbing Categorical Reason in Moral Argumentation.” In Disturbing Argument:…
  28. Gutmann, Amy. 1996. “Democracy, Philosophy, Justification.” In Democracy and Difference, ed. Seyla Benhabib, …
  29. Goodnight, G. Thomas. 1982. “The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry i…
  30. Grimaldi, William M. A. 1957. “A Note on the Pisteis in Aristotle's Rhetoric, 1354–1356.” American Journal of…
  31. Habermas, Jürgen. 1998a. Between Facts and Norms. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  32. Habermas, Jürgen. 1998b. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambr…
  33. Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Trans. William Rehg, Max Pensky, and Hella Beister. Malde…
  34. Habermas, Jürgen. 2008. Between Naturalism and Religion. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Malden, MA: Polity.
  35. Habermas, Jürgen, and Joseph Ratzinger. 2005. The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion. Trans…
  36. Hauser, Gerard A. 1985. “Aristotle's Example Revisited.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 18 (3): 171–80.
  37. Hauser, Gerard, and Amy Grim. 2004. Rhetorical Democracy: Discursive Practices of Civic Engagement. Mahwah, N…
  38. Huntington, Samuel P. 1998. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and S…
  39. Ivie, Robert L. 1998. “Democratic Deliberation in a Rhetorical Republic.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (4):…
  40. Ivie, Robert L. 2008. “Toward a Humanizing Style of Democratic Dissent.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11 (3): …
  41. Jacoby, Susan. 2009. The Age of American Unreason. New York: Vintage.
  42. James, William. 1927. “Reason and Faith.” Journal of Philosophy 24 (8): 197–201.
  43. Kant, Immanuel. 1993. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. James W. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: H…
  44. Kant, Immanuel. 1996a. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Trans. James Schmidt. In What is E…
  45. Kant, Immanuel. 1996b. Conflict of the Faculties. Trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor. Cambridge: Cambrid…
  46. Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul A. Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambri…
  47. Keith, William. 2002. “Introduction: Cultural Resources for Deliberative Democracy.” Rhetoric and Public Affa…
  48. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus. Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. …
  49. Kurtz, Jeffery. B. 2009. “‘How Is it That Ye Do Not Discern this Time?’ Public Faith, Moral Conflict, and the…
  50. Lundberg, Christian. 2009. “Enjoying God's Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of an Evangelic…
  51. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1987. Feminism Unmodified. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  52. Mansbridge, Jane. 1996. “Using Power/Fighting Power: The Polity.” In Democracy and Difference, ed. Seyla Benh…
  53. McLennan, Gregor. 2010. “The Postsecular Turn.” Theory, Culture, Society 27 (3): 3–20.
  54. Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso.
  55. Parfit, Derek. 2006. “Normativity.” In vol. 1 of Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau. Oxford…
  56. Parfit, Derek. 2011a. On What Matters. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  57. Parfit, Derek. 2011b. On What Matters. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  58. Platts, Mark. 1979. Ways of Meaning. London: Routledge.
  59. Perelman, Chaïm. 1982. The Realm of Rhetoric. Trans. William Kluback. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dam…
  60. Price, H. H. 1965. “Belief ‘in’ and Belief ‘That.’” Religious Studies 1 (1): 5–27.
  61. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  62. Rawls, John. 2005. Political Liberalism. Exp. ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
  63. Ross, W. D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  64. Sandel, Michael. 1994. “Political Liberalism.” Harvard Law Review 107 (7): 1765–94.
  65. Sandel, Michael, and Thomas Nagel. 2006. “The Case for Liberalism: An Exchange.”New York Review of Books, 5 Oct.
  66. Santas, Gerasimos. 2001. Goodness and Justice: Plato, Aristotle, and the Moderns. Oxford: Blackwell.
  67. Scanlon, Thomas M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  68. Schneider, Herbert W. 1924. “Faith.” Journal of Philosophy 21 (2): 36–40.
  69. Schrift, Alan D., ed. 2010. The History of Continental Philosophy. 8 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  70. Smith, Michael. 1987. “The Humean Theory of Motivation.” Mind 96 (381): 36–61.
  71. Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  72. Smith, Steven D. 2010. The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  73. Stampe, Dennis W. 1987. “The Authority of Desire.” Philosophical Review 96 (3): 335–81.
  74. Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  75. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  76. Toulmin, Stephen. 1958. Uses of Argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  77. Toulmin, Stephen. 2001. Return to Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  78. Walzer, Michael. 1990. “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism.” Political Theory 18 (1): 6–23.
  79. Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.
  80. Willard, Charles A. 1987. “Valuing Dissensus.” In Argumentation: Across the Lines of Discipline (Proceedings …