Robert Audi on secular reasons

• Published in: Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship pp. 148 - 179
• Main Author: Weithman, Paul J.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Cambridge University Press 15.08.2002
• Subjects: PHILOSOPHY; POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
• ISBN: 052180857X; 0521027608; 9780521808576; 9780521027601
• DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511487453.008

In this chapter I look at Robert Audi's arguments that citizens must qualify their use of religious claims in politics. Audi's view is one version of what I called “the standard approach” to questions about religion's place in democratic decision-making. In the fourth chapter I said that this family of approaches derives much of its plausibility from specifications of citizenship according to which citizens have especially urgent interests in some form of liberty. Their urgency is said to be such that infringements on liberty or its essential use require special justification. As we shall see, Audi's arguments for his principles depends upon the claim that citizens have an urgent interest in one particular form of freedom, autonomy of action. According to his version of the standard approach, it is because citizens have this interest that laws and policies which restrict liberty must be justified by “accessible” – or what Audi calls “intelligible” -reasons.Unlike some proponents of the standard approach who assume that accessibility is self-explanatory, Audi lays down a condition of accessibility or intelligibility. Unlike other proponents of this approach, he lays down only a necessary condition: secularity. The standard approach requires citizens to offer or be ready to offer one another accessible reasons for the laws and policies they support. Since Audi thinks secularity is a condition of intelligibility, one of his principles – the Principle of Secular Rationale – demands, roughly, that citizens have and be ready to offer secular reasons for their political positions.