From Public Reason to the Democratic Decision-Making Process

This chapter criticizes the ideal of public reason, showing that even when it is specified in several plausible ways, it does not provide citizens with sufficient guidance in evaluating religious politics. Instead, the ideal must be placed within a larger, way-of-life conception of democracy that considers religion’s roles in citizens’ civic lives. The chapter develops a minimal conception of public reason and analyses two criticisms of it: that public reason is a culturally protestant political approach that ignores crucial aspects of religion and that public reason violates religious citizens’ integrity. It then assesses two predominant responses to the second criticism: restricting the domain of public reason norms and adopting the convergence conception of public justification. Both responses demonstrate public reason’s inability to offer citizens sufficient guidance in evaluating religion’s political influence.