Rawls’s inclusivism and the case of ‘religious militants for peace’: A reply to Weithman’s restrictive inclusivism

Across almost a decade, Desmond Tutu, Anglican cleric and chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, supported a model of civil resistance against the apartheid regime based solely on religious argument. Tutu is one of what Appleby (2000) calls the “religious militants for peace”: people of faith who use religious arguments to buttress resistance against unjust regimes and to support vital political change with regard to rights and justice. Yet the employment of religious arguments to justify political action seems to contradict the liberal democratic requirements of public reason, particularly the duty of liberal citizens to provide reasons that others could reasonably endorse. If “religious militants” violate their duty of civility by appealing to their comprehensive doctrines, should liberal democracy exclude this form of religiously founded dissent as being unreasonable? Or, rather, should liberal democracy embrace and support the efforts of “religious militants” to enhance and/or restore political justice

From identity-conflict to civil society: civil society role in building peace, through the protection of human dignity and pluralism.

From identity conflict to civil society. Understanding ethno-religious conflicts. From conflict to civil society: a normative perspective. Bosnia case study.From identity conflict to civil society. Understanding ethno-religious conflicts. From conflict to civil society: a normative perspective. Bosnia case study.LUISS PhD Thesi

De politiek van ‘interreligieuze dialoog’ Religieuze rechtvaardigingen en ‘rechtvaardige’ verzoening

Religions and religious actors are increasingly associated with extremism and violence. A mainstream view that sees religions as prone to violence has been affirmed within the West. Yet, to affirm that religions promote anti-democratic projects and are inclined to violence can only partially capture the impact of religious voices in contemporary societies. In fact, religions have often played an important role in promoting democratic transition and religiously inspired doctrines have importantly supported peace and reconciliation processes in divided societies. This paper argues that the mainstream view reproduces and extends a traditional liberal wariness toward the alleged incendiary role of religions in politics, the so-called doctrine of religious restraint. This view, I argue, is based on a misinterpretation of contemporary liberal theory and, especially, of Rawls’s Political Liberalism. The paper shows that Rawls’s framework instead provides an extensive accommodation of religions in political life. Starting from this premise, this paper responds to the mainstream view by focussing on the role of religious actors and sensitivities in reconciling divided societies

Democratic justice: the priority of politics and the ideal of citizenship

In his Democratic justice and the social contract, Weale presents a distinctive contingent practice-dependent model of \u2018democratic justice\u2019 that relies heavily on a condition of just social and political relations among equals. Several issues arise from this account. Under which conditions might such just social and political relations be realised? What ideal of equality is required for \u2018democratic justice\u2019? What are its implications for the political ideal of citizenship? This paper focuses on these questions as a way to critically reconsider Weale\u2019s model. After presenting Weale\u2019s procedural constructivism, I distinguish his model from an institutional practice-dependent model, one salient example of which is Rawls\u2019s political constructivism. This distinction allows for a formulation of the social and political equality required for justice in each case. The contingent model assumes that an equality of \u2018status\u2019 will generate just social practices, yet it fails to recognise that an equality of \u2018role\u2019 is also important to ensure citizens\u2019 compliance. The paper ultimately seeks to show that the contingent model is insufficient to ensure that just social practices will become stable

From a Culture of Civility to Deliberative Reconciliation in Deeply Divided Societies

In deeply divided societies (DDS) – those having experienced episodes of ethnic or religious mass violence – thousands of survivors must confront the challenge of reconstructing their public identity, split between their tragic human experience as victims and their political obligations as citizens. They are required to cooperate precisely with those who are, in their eyes, responsible for the crimes perpetrated against them. Is liberal democratic theory able to respond to such deep divisions? Is democracy, even, compatible with the reconciliation that in these societies is a priority? Building on the idea that certain cultural conditions are important for securing the stability of liberal democracy, this paper presents an account of deliberative reconciliation appropriate to the context of DDS and which provides guidance in such circumstances of unmitigated pluralism. Deliberative reconciliation works with those elements of background culture that disclose some forms of civility within society. This is the culture of civility: a deliberative consensus, which enables former enemies to become part of a community of equals and to reciprocate on the basis of some shared political values, thus displaying support for liberal democratic institutions

Towards a Minimal Conception of Transitional Justice

Transitional Justice (TJ) focuses on the processes of dealing with the legacy of large-scale past abuses (in the aftermath of traumatic experiences such as war or authoritarianism) with the aim of fostering domestic justice and creating the basis for a sustainable peace. TJ however also entails the problem of how a torn society may be able to become a self-determining member of a just international order. This paper presents a minimal conception of TJ, which departs from Rawls\u2019 conception of normative stability of the international order, which suggests disentangling the two goals of fostering democracy within torn societies and TJ itself. The scope of TJ is therefore limited to enabling these societies to create minimal internal conditions for joining a just international order on equal footing. This paper makes an original contribution to two different debates, namely normative research on TJ, and post-Rawlsian literature in general. First, it provides a new direction for normative theorizing about TJ which takes both its domestic and international dimensions seriously into consideration. Second, it extends Rawls\u2019 political liberal outlook to an area where it is not usually understood to appl

La Religione, le Religioni e il Progetto Politico di J. Rawls

The essay explores the relationship between religion and Rawls from the perspective of some issues that are central to his political project: political autonomy, public reason and the implications of the fact of pluralism for the development of the idea of decent peoples. Religion has a dual dimension in political liberalism, plural and singular. The problem of the liberal political transition is to allow these two dimensions to coexist harmoniously within the liberal political project