Aurelia Bardon

Cécile Laborde

Until now, there has been no direct and extensive engagement with the category of religion from liberal political philosophy. Over the last thirty years or so, liberals have tended to analyze religion under proximate categories such as 'conceptions of the good' (in debates about neutrality) or 'culture' (in debates about multiculturalism). US constitutional lawyers and French political theorists both tackled the category of religion head-on (under First Amendment jurisprudence and the political tradition of laicite, respectively) but neither of these specialized national discourses found their way into mainstream liberal political philosophy. This is somewhat paradoxical because key liberal notions (state sovereignty, toleration, individual freedom, the rights of conscience, public reason) were elaborated as a response to 17th Century European Wars of Religion, and the fundamental structure of liberalism is rooted in the western experience of politico-religious conflict. So a reappraisal of this tradition - and of its validity in the light of contemporary challenges - is well overdue. This book offers the first extensive engagement with religion from liberal political philosophers. The volume analyzes, from within the liberal philosophical tradition itself, the key notions of conscience, public reason, non-establishment, and neutrality. Insofar as the contemporary religious revival is seen as posing a challenge to liberalism, it seems more crucial than ever to explore the specific resources that the liberal tradition has to answer it.

Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy

Jeffrey W. Howard

How should liberalism understand - and deal with - religion? Cécile Laborde offers powerful new answers in her book Liberalism's Religion; this collection subjects that theory to critical scrutiny from an array of scholars, thereby advancing the scholarly debate. Religion has recently become the object of a significant and growing literature in legal and political philosophy, for example: What does it mean to guarantee religious freedom? When the religious freedom of some citizens appears in conflict with the religious freedom of others, what should be done? May religious reasons be legitimately invoked to justify political decisions, or should they be excluded from public deliberation? In the recent literature, the dominant liberal response to these questions is based on an egalitarian theory of religion. In her major new work, Liberalism's Religion, Cécile Laborde argues that the prevailing liberal-egalitarian approach toward religion is misguided and in need of crucial revision. In doing so, she offers powerful and original answers, organised by her distinctive thesis that liberals must radically rethink how we conceive religion itself. This volume subjects her powerful new theory to scrutiny from an array of scholars, engaging each dimension of it. The volume includes a comprehensive reply by Laborde to the various points raised by these scholars, and therefore moves the debate forward, highlighting key issues that should be addressed in the future in the literature on religion and political philosophy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Aurelia Bardon

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