Abstract
How to manage conflict and achieve a modicum of stability has occupied political philosophers and theorists for millennia. Some, like Thomas Hobbes, regard peace as such a fragile achievement that they would have us consent to almost any sort of arrangement that promises to bring it. Others, like St. Augustine, regard stability as, strictly speaking, impossible in this world and attainable only in “the city of God.” In his “political, not metaphysical” work, the late John Rawls displays a confidence that many of his predecessors seem to lack. For him, we can have a stable decent political order if only we are “reasonable,” accepting the contemporary fact of pluralism with respect to the different comprehensive doctrines that we variously embrace, acknowledging the burdens of judgment that lead reasonable people to disagree, and being prepared to reason with one another “politically, not metaphysically”—staying close to the surface without expecting or demanding agreement on comprehensive or foundational things like the old Kantian trinity of God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul.
In its earliest formulations, Rawls’s “political, not metaphysical” turn relied upon an understanding of “public reason” that seemed hostile to religious argument, leading perhaps in the direction of a “naked public square,” as Richard John Neuhaus called it. Rawls later revised his formulation, opening a way for religious believers (not to mention others who wished to argue for their positions by relying upon their comprehensive doctrines) to say their piece, provided that, when and if called upon, they could also express their views in the language of a public reason allegedly accessible in principle to everyone.
While this reformulation has not satisfied all of Rawls’s critics, it has by and large satisfied the contributors to Rawls and Religion, who, generally speaking, regard him as friendlier to religion than he has frequently been given credit for. Versions of this argument are made with especial clarity in the essays by Paul Weithman, Patrick Neal, and James Gledhill, as well as in the editors’ introduction.
Still, it is not clear to me that Rawls’s stoutest religious critics will be placated by the positions taken in this volume. For example, Neal argues with refreshing honesty and clarity that there is in fact a kind of theology that facilitates living comfortably within the confines of an overlapping consensus, offering as an example John Locke’s liberal and rationalist reworking of Christianity in the name of toleration. While mainline Protestants might be happy with this, I am a lot less certain that conservative evangelicals will be. Then there is James Gledhill, who thinks that Rawls’s overlapping consensus requires a “leap of faith” leading to the recognition of “the very great value of the good of political community” (204). Augustinian pilgrims or Hauerwasian “resident aliens”—neither given to the theocracy with which non-adherents of Rawlsian liberalism are sometimes taxed—might in some measure be inclined to disagree.
But the point of the collection is not to provide a kind of apologia on Rawls’s behalf. Rather, it seems meant to demonstrate the various lines of argument and inquiry that Rawlsian liberalism can offer those who wish to comes to grips—as, arguably, we must (at least for the foreseeable future)—with the social, religious, cultural, and political pluralism that marks many developed societies, especially in what used to be called Christendom. Since it is, of course, impossible within the confines of a review to do justice to every contribution to an edited volume, I will restrict myself to calling attention to two essays that are, in my judgment, especially interesting.
Micah Schwartzman’s “Reasoning from Conjecture” gets, in my view, to the heart of the practical aspect of the Rawlsian project. As everyone familiar with Rawls’s work knows, his response to the pluralism characteristic of contemporary developed societies is to propose the creation of an overlapping consensus on “political, not metaphysical” principles, to which as many people as possible subscribe, each based upon his or her own comprehensive doctrines. Those who undertake such a project—Rawls included—do so, not ultimately for political reasons, but because their own comprehensive doctrines persuade them that these principles are best, under current circumstances. But rather than seek to spread their particular comprehensive gospel, they rest content with trying to persuade others to accept the political arrangements that follow from their understanding. The expectation is that more people can arrive by various routes at the conclusion than can be persuaded to take one particular path. What distinguishes a Rawlsian from his or her fellow citizens thus seems to be a greater flexibility with respect to the means by which the political principles are reached. By this I do not mean to suggest Rawls and his followers will resort to any rhetorical trick in the book to bring others into the consensus. Rather, as Schwartzman is at pains to argue, they are eager—by “conjecture”—to show their fellows the way from their particular comprehensive doctrines to the preferred principles. The challenge, which he admits is difficult, is to do so without condescension, without presuming to know better than one’s interlocutors what is good for them and where their comprehensive doctrines—necessarily or merely permissibly—lead. I am not convinced that Schwartzman offers a satisfying argument on this front. At the very least, he does not adequately explain why—save for practical or contingent reasons—we should all care more for reaching an overlapping consensus on thin political grounds than for the perhaps more difficult goal of winning more adherents to our comprehensive position, even at the expense of more friction and less stability.
The essay in the collection that comes closest to developing an Auseinandersetzung between Rawls and a theologically and philosophically serious religious position is Peter Jonkers’s “A Reasonable Faith,” which puts Rawls’s argument in conversation with Pope Benedict XVI. Here we see the contrast between two different reasonable faiths, Rawls’s chastened and Kantianized “faith in the possibility of a just constitutional regime” and Benedict’s insistence, with the Gospel of John (1:1), that the word (logos) is God. While we might not all accept the narrative found in Scripture, we are created in God’s image and, as such, share in the common heritage of God’s logos. Religious believers bear witness to this truth and, in so doing, maintain the prospect that conversations in the public square reflect, not a merely contingent overlapping consensus (which, contrary to Rawls’s expectation or “rational faith,” is not at all stable in its own terms), but something more enduring in which we all share. Jonkers very sympathetically presents Rawls’s doubts regarding this possibility, born of his searing perception of God’s absence in the Holocaust, an event that clearly shook his faith but not that of men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Emil Fackenheim, let alone Benedict XVI. Here the issue between Rawls and traditional religion is joined on the deepest level: in the end, is the frank, steadfast (not to say intransigent) public witness of faith a threat to a decent public life in which human dignity is upheld, or rather evidence of a promise that Rawls’s rather crabbed reasonable faith will be fulfilled, not as a result of his efforts or those who are persuaded by him, but because it reflects the character and will of God?
However much Rawls and his industrious, ingenious, and impressive followers—well-represented in this volume—wish to avoid this question by accommodating religious belief only so long as it plays according to their rules, it is, I think, the question, not just of our time, but of all time. That those who write about Rawls cannot help but think about religion is some small evidence for my bold claim.