I've had a chance to read a bit more of that Connolly book. I'm not sure if it is really worth reading unless you have a strong interest in political philosophy. Anyway, I need to return the book to the library tomorrow and I thought I would do my best to sum up his argument against secularism. I still haven't read the whole thing, but I think I at least have a grasp on his basic argument, and it may generate some interesting discussion.
Connolly traces the history of secularism back to Tocqueville, Kant, Mill, and Rawls and then uses Habermas as a more contemporary example of a seculuar position. His argument, as I understand it, is that early secularists in the West insisted on a separation of religious and political forms of argument, but they did so with the assumption that political and social life would always be guided by a shared sense of Christian values. From this perspective secularism is only possible when everyone shares a common set of values. Early secularists argued that without shared values to replace a connection with organized religion, then politics would devolve into endless conflicts that could never be solved. Habermas does not assume that public life will always be guided by Christian values. I'm a little hazy on this, but it seems that Habermas pushes for discussion and debate that is based in reason and particular types of communicative practice.
Connolly's critique of the early sense of secularism is that it assumes that politics are guided by a relatively narrow set of values. Clearly we live in a diverse world that cannot be understood based on only one set of values. From the early secularist perspective it seems that those who do not possess Christian values are unable to participate in politics. However, the more contemporary Habermasian approach does not really solve this problem. There is still the problem of how to deal with those who believe politics should be influenced by religion. Are they simply not allowed to participate in political life because their beliefs are based in faith rather than reason? For Connolly, a non-secular politics is not necessarily dominated by religion, and certainly not any particular religion. Rather it is a politics that is open to various faith based forms of reasoning and argument.
It seems that there is tendency on the part of the left to push for the elimination of religious arguments from political thought. On the radio this morning I heard Bush giving a speech in the Czech Republic in which he says something about "freedom" being granted to us by our "maker" and that it is a "true expression of the soul" or something like that. My initial reaction was to question what "maker" he is talking about and to wonder if non-Christian souls are also expressed through freedom. However I'm not sure if my instinct to critique the presence of religious thought in a political speech is very useful. The current secular state seems to produce policies that are based in the religious rhetoric at the same time that it denies any relationship with religion. One solution to this problem is to eliminate religious based arguments. Perhaps they would be replaced with empirically based reasoning. Another solution would be to accept that multiple forms of belief and reasoning will always exist and to try to create space for all of them in the construction of policy.
I am still in the process of thinking through all of this and I would welcome some input from you folks. Should non-secular forms of thought provide a basis for political decision making? If so (at this point I'm answering yes to the first question), how would this work?
26 comments:
I think that it's interesting to compare American and European politics on this question: Europeans have figured out how to run successful modern democracies that, while certainly not perfect, manage to outdo the US on most measures of social justice/welfare, yet their politicians don't feel the need to go blathering on and on about their "faith." Maybe after 1600 years the shared Christian values are just so deeply ingrained that they don't need to draw so much attention to them...or maybe they've just figured out that doing your best to promote social justice/welfare just leads to a better functioning society, God or no God.
If you get the chance, you should try to check out the essay "Religion as Conversation Stopper" in Richard Rorty's book Philosophy and Social Hope, which addresses a lot of these issues directly in the course of reviewing the book The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion by Stephen Carter. Two long quotes:
"It is one thing to say that religious beliefs, or the lack of them, will influence political convictions. Of course they will. It is another thing to say, as Carter does, that the public square should be open to 'religious argument' or that liberalism should 'develop a politic that accepts whatever form of dialogue a member of the public offers.' What is a specifically religious 'form of dialogue' except perhaps a dialogue in which some members cite religious sources for their beliefs? What could a specifically religious form of argument be, except an argument whose premises are accepted by some people because they believe that these premises express the will of God? I may accept those same premises for purely secular reasons-for example reasons of maximizing human happiness. Does that make my argument a nonreligious one?...the fact that one of us gets his premises in the church and the other in the library is, and should be, of no interest to our audience in the public square...political arguments are best thought of as neither religious nor nonreligious."
"I take the point of Rawls and Habermas, as of Dewey and Pierce, to be that the epistomology suitable for...democracy is one in which the only test of a political proposal is to gain assent from people who retain radically diverse ideas about the point and meaning of human life, about the path to private perfection. The more such a concensus becomes the test of a belief, the less important is the belief's source. So when Carter complains that religious citizens are forced 'to restructure their arguments in purely secular terms before they can be presented', I should reply that 'restructuring the arguments in purely secular terms' just means 'dropping references to the source of the premises of the arguments', and that this omission seems a reasonable price to pay for religious liberty."
Oy...this is exactly why I don't think religious arguments belong in our politics. What can you say to something like that? You can't...which is exactly the problem.
Religion in politics either ends in stalemate ("I believe X is the will of God" "I don't" "I do" "I don't" etc.) or religious sentiment gets reduced to bland, inoffensive statements of generic "faith" that mean basically nothing. American politics has plenty of both. I find the latter annoying but essentially harmless, while the former is one of the more dysfunctional aspects of our politics. I think we'd be much better off if religion was relegated to the private sphere. Oppose abortion? Don't have one. Don't like gays? You don't have to, but they're going to have the same rights as you and you've got to show basic human respect towards them.
Tigrenoche's claim that religion should be relegated to the private sphere seems very different than Rorty's argument that the premise for one's argument has no place in political debate. Rorty seems to be claiming that the value of an argument should be based not on the source of its claim to truth, but its function in building a consensus that would further the accomplishment of a particular goal. This seems reasonable to me, but I don't see how it implies that religion should be removed from the public sphere. Religion plays an important role in shaping values and therefore it should not be separated from politics. It is true that the types of religious arguments described by Tigrenoche (The "My God says to do X, so therefore we must do X" sort of thing) are not very productive. However I think there is also a sort of secular argument that is equally problematic, primarily because it would make the same sort of truth claims but for different reasonts. For example, "Science says X, and therefore we must do X." Neither position creates much room for dialogue. I like Rorty's statement that, "political arguments are best thought of as neither religious nor nonreligious." It seems that a public sphere that is characterized as neither secular or religious would provide much more space for an exploration of the values that are interrelated with policy formation.
I think this would actually facilitate the sort of policy that Tigrenoche suggests in his last comment. Arguing that minority groups deserve equal rights is not a non-religious position. While the argument may not be based in the ideology of an organized religion it is certainly related to a coherent system of values. Bringing those values into the debate rather than excluding them would seem to provide a better chance for reaching some sort of a consensus. If we are going to have a government then it seems that producing legislation regarding civil liberties will necessarily be one of its functions. This includes the rights to private property, social welfare, or to live in the manner that one chooses.
Rorty goes into why religion should be relegated to the private sphere in much more detail elsewhere in the same essay, just not in the paragraphs I quoted. When the whole private/public debate first popped up here a while back it was Rorty's treatment of it specifically that I was thinking of. Have I mentioned yet that almost all of my arguments are just poorly written rehashes of Rorty?
When you say "Religion plays an important role in shaping values and therefore it should not be separated from politics." I think what Rorty would say, to which I'd agree, is that sure, religion plays an important part in shaping people's values, which will effect how they approach political issues (just as their gender, race, what have you will), but religious beliefs can't be the basis of the political arguments we put forth because they rely on appeals to faith which, pretty much by definition, you can't argue with.* This is different from appeals to science, wherein what evidence there is for or against a particular position can be put forth for all to see, and which can always be disproven by further research. Towards the end of your comment you seem to imply that I'm somehow arguing that "values" should be excluded from political debate ("While the argument may not be based in the ideology of an organized religion it is certainly related to a coherent system of values. Bringing those values into the debate rather than excluding them would seem to provide a better chance for reaching some sort of a consensus.") which I'm not--politics without values doesn't even make sense...I'm just saying that in a diverse democracy appeals to religious faith can't be the basis of political debates, not without causing all sorts of unresolvable conflicts. And if all you can say to back up your position is that the Bible says so, then it's a weak position.
*Arguments based solely on identity and the particular subjective or group viewpoint that it provides are also prone to the same sort of conversation stopping--"It's a black/gay/etc. thing, you just wouldn't understand"
I'm in agreement that "the bible says so" therefore it's true sort of argument isn't very productive. However, it's still not clear to me how religion can be removed from the public sphere without compromising one's ability to talk about values in relation to politics. Not all values come from religion but many of them do. To debate income tax reform, health care, or abortion without discussing religion would seem to artificially isolate a number of relevant ideas and arguments. The questions of when life begins and when it is ok to end that life cannot be answered though science. In fact this sort of question can never be definitively answered at all. Rather it is necessary to generate some sort of a consensus. In order to achieve that consensus you can't simply exclude a group of people because their values are based in religion rather than empirical reasoning.
Based on the quotes from Rorty in TN's original post I would say that his key insight is to avoid religious or scientific truth claims. Perhaps if it is agreed that there is no "right" answer, then discussion of conflicting values and policies could occur in a productive manner that does not necessarily reference the underlying basis for these claims.
I'll have more to say to your last comment later (I'm goofing off at work now so have to be quick) but I'm curious what you think of the European political scene, where they manage to talk about values and do politics just fine with hardly any reference to religion?
TC08-do the Japanese bring religion into their political debates all the time the way we do?
I think that America's deep religiosity is a cultural quirk of ours; if you're going to talk about politics from an exclusively American perspective, then what to do with religious arguments is going to be a big issue, but I think that it's quite easy to see that "religion can be removed from the public sphere without compromising one's ability to talk about values in relation to politics."
It's super crunch time for me, but I have a few quick comments.
This whole debate is too vague for my tastes. Even from a hard-core secularist's perspective there are certain ways that religion can legitimately interact with politics. Most secularists, after all, don't want to outlaw religion. So in what new way (after all, religion does influence politics) does Connelly think that religion should influence politics? I would like some examples of cases where "religious arguments" or "religious values" have been somehow marginalized or excluded, and this has been a bad thing.
DM:
By claiming that there is no definitive answer to when life begins you have perhaps implicitly done what you claim we shouldn't do... exclude the religious viewpoint. Many Christians believe they know exactly when life begins. So how do you think their viewpoint--based on scripture, revelation, or who knows what--should be incorporated into our politics?
Your brief mention of what "science says" rubs me the wrong way in two ways. (probably rehashing some of TN's points here). First, I don't think you can derive normative or value claims from science (without using some normative or value-based premises). That's one difference between science and religion. Religion definitely tells you what you should or should not do, what you should or should not value. I wouldn't be surprised if you agreed with me about this.
Second, the difference between the "science says X" and "God says X" cases is that you can test and debate the claims of science in a way that you can't (aren't permitted to!) with the claims of religion. Science is not an authority; there is plenty of room for dialog in science, while there is usually no room for dialog when it comes to divine revelation. One of the things I think science does fairly well is create consensus about certain things. In working out a scientific theory one of the goals is to make it as broadly plausible as possible. Nobody has axiomatized all of science, but still I think at bottom good scientific theories are based on pretty basic principles that are almost preconditions for having thought at all. That's not at all so with religion.
But as I said, I don't think science can say anything about our "final ends," so you are right to express doubt that it could solve fundamental questions about values. It can provide good solutions to problems given certain ends, and that's it's main role in politics.
TC:
Be careful with Rorty! He claims that what I've decided to dedicate my life to is a waste of time!
The last paragraph of DM's last comment probably comes pretty close to the Rortyan pragmatic conception of truth and justification, which is essentially that human societies shouldn't look to anything outside those societies (God, capital-T Truth) to justify their actions; rather, the actions they take are justified by winning the uncoerced assent of everyone with a stake in the decision (or at least a good majority in a fair vote). Obviously that's an idealized situation--lots of folks have traditionally been denied participation in the decision making and coercion of various sorts abounds--but I think it's still a good goal to aim for.
I wouldn't classify scientific claims to truth in the same category as religious claims to truth the way that you're doing though; I think the differences are too important. I don't see scientific truth claims as actually commanding behavior at all (science says X, so we must do X), whereas commanding you to do or not do certain things is pretty much the essence of religion, certainly the Judeo-Christian tradition. Science attempts to explain how things are, at least to the best of our ability, until someone comes up with better research. What we do with that information is up to us. Science tells us that global warming is occuring and will lead to dramatic changes in our environment. What, if anything, we're going to do about that is a question of values and politics.
Scientific research can be used to evaluate whether a chosen policy has been successful or not, and however much it might offend some religious people, I want to keep evaluating public policy effectiveness scientifically and basing decisions on that science. Otherwise you get what we've had for the last six years--money thrown away on abstinence only programs that don't work, big business writing pollution and food safety legislation, etc.
And it looks like A beat me to the punch on most of my points about science.
Yay science!
Boo religion!
:)
I don't know whether anyone here is familiar with Rawls or not (I assume TC is at least through reading Rorty), but much of what's been covered on this post relates to a lot of the debates surrounding his work. It sounds like Connelly is rehashing many of the arguments that are often leveled at Rawls. If you are interested in liberalism, secularism, social justice, etc. I'd recommend at least getting familiar with his basic ideas. It's pretty thought-provoking stuff. This is probably a fair place to start if you are interested.
I think the blogger format is flawed in a way that prevents better discussion. Is it possible to respond directly to a comment, creating a more branching rather than linear formation? It seems like this would help us keep all of the various strands of discussion a bit more organized.
Anyway, I probably won't respond to everything, but there are a lot of interesting ideas out there.
TN: In terms of cross-cultural/ cross-national religious fervor, I don't know much about Japan or Europe, but the US does not really stand out compared to much the world. In much of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and India religion is at least as important as the US. I think the real question is why Europe is so unreligious?
Both A and TN ask difficult questions about the distinction between science and religion.
A states:"Science is not an authority; there is plenty of room for dialog in science..."
What about the role of power in science? In practice who really has the ability to debate scientific conclusions? My guess is very few people. Why is it that claims about global warming have taken so long to emerge? I don't think this is simply a case of religion drowing out science, but of competing scientific arguments. Maybe the eventual acknowledgment of global warming is due to mounting scientific evidence, but I'm sure that power is related to this process as well.
TN claims: "...commanding you to do or not do certain things is pretty much the essence of religion..."
It's true that organized religions provide suggestions for appropriate behavior, but so does science. Science commands that we wash our hands before we eat. Science has also commanded that we tear apart families in order to quarantine tuberculosis victims.
Religion often provides room for debate. The multitude of protestant sects in the US reveal just how many interpretations of a single text are possible. I caught a ride to Oregon with an Episcopalian minister in training a couple years ago who argued that the bible makes just as much of a call to avoiding eating pork as it does to condemn gay sex. While questions of proof are difficult religious arguments can certainly be questioned.
I think there are significant differences between science and religion but not so significant that one should be included in political discussions while the other should not.
A writes: " I don't think you can derive normative or value claims from science (without using some normative or value-based premises). That's one difference between science and religion. Religion definitely tells you what you should or should not do, what you should or should not value. I wouldn't be surprised if you agreed with me about this."
I think I do agree with you, but I'm not sure how important the distinction is. In practice, a value-based premise is always present so science does provide the basis for normative claims
There are still other questions that I want to respond to, but that will have to wait.
Connolly does discuss Rawls extensively. I've checked out his book from a different library, so perhaps I can clarify his ideas, although to be honest I'm not sure how much substance to it there actually is. Or perhaps I just need to be more familiar with the various thinkers that he discusses.
DN states "Science commands that we wash our hands before we eat. " but that's not quite right: Science states that bacteria on your hands can make you sick if transferred to you digestive system, and washing your hands prevents this. You can decide to ignore that advice and take your chances; cultural norms in most places tell you to wash your hands because people have decided that having people not getting and spreading diarrhea all the time is good for that society, and at least in the US, public health officials have passed laws mandating that certain people wash their hands because they have a mandate from the government to protect public health as they see fit. If enough solid evidence that washing your hands didn't do anything to prevent diseases emerged, eventually the laws might change and social norms would stop pressuring people to do so.
Global warming was first proposed as a theory in 1957. Evidence for it built up slowly, with a lot of it only coming as better technology (better satellites to measure glacial melting, better computers to model weather changes, etc.) became available. By the mid 90s the scientific community was about 99% in agreement about the basic idea, if not all the details. I'm sure power entered into this story as well--power effects what research gets funded, who gets tenure, and so on. Most of the "controversy" over global warming, though, has almost nothing to do with the science anymore, it's all to do with what to do with the information that science is providing.
Anyways, so what if power is involved in science? I think that nowadays, post Kuhn and Foucault, few would deny that science is a human endeavor and as such is prone to all the errors that any human endeavor is prone to. Still, I think that the ideal of science and the scientific method as ways of examining the world around us and figuring out what works or doesn't work is an ideal worth aiming for--just like I think that the ideal of a liberal democracy is a great ideal worth striving for, even if America and our government fall far short of that ideal a lot of the time.
I'm also curious what exactly you're asking for when you ask who is able to debate scientific conclusions? Do you want anyone and everyone to be able to do so? The "ideal science" answer is that anyone who can offer conflicting evidence or point out flaws in the research can debate the conclusions. In practice, it's true, you need to have a certain amount of expertise (most often demonstrated by having a PhD) to be taken seriously, but what's wrong with that? Expertise is a good thing. I don't feel like I'm being oppressed because the pilot won't let me fly the plane, I don't want to get surgery from some guy who made himself a diploma on his computer and put an ad up on Craigslist. Do you really want your kid learning "Creation Science" in biology class ten years from now?
No comments about science and religion right now, but I agree with DM that the blogger format sucks for the kind of thing we're doing here. Some kind of branching would be nice. It's also too bad that each time a new post is put on the front page the discussions attached to previous posts tend to get abandoned. It's a pain to check every single post to see if a new comment has been added. I tried to see if there was at least a way to list new comments on the front page (typepad.com allows this), but apparently there is not.
I definitely agree with TN that science is much more useful than religion for certain things. In general once a particular set of goals is defined then the scientific method is very useful for attaining those goals. Actually defining those goals and the practical ethics of attaining them seems to be a major part of politics and one that science cannot address without some help from other modes of thought. For example, TN points out that science is useful in establishing handwashing as means of preventing the spread of disease. The decision that long life and good health are desirable goals cannot be based entirely on scientific inquiry.
Based on scientific evidence the government may create laws controlling the behavior of food service workers in order to promote public health. The question of how much power the government should have in controlling individual behavior for the sake of public health cannot be exclusively reliant on science. Organized religion provides one means of approaching these political problems of value.
I'd also like to restate my earlier question of how one can talk about values (which we all seem to agree are inextricable from politics) without considering religion. Tigrenoche has argued that religion should be distinct from politics but I don't see how this is possible unless we artificially isolate issues of value.
DM, in the question you ask--"...how one can talk about values...without considering religion."--do you mean in the abstract sense, or are you thinking in concrete terms about a particular political environment? As I've said before, the completely secularized politics of much of Europe proves that politics can exist just fine without religion. In the US, though, it's hard to imagine someone being successful politically without talking about how important their "faith" is on a regular basis. There are various polls out there showing that Americans will vote for a woman, a black or a gay man before they'd vote for an atheist, and there is only one declared agnostic (he's some congressman from California, can't remember the district) in elected office at the national level.
I'll have more to say on this later.
When I ask how one can talk about values in relation to politics without discussing religion I mean this in a relatively concrete manner. The need within US politics to invoke religion in a symbolic manner in order to be elected is interesting, but my question is more concerned with how questions of value can be addressed.
I'm very ignorant about European political discourse. How are politics and value brought together in that context?
I really don't see what's so tough about talking values and politics without reference to religion. It just means we stop justifying our beliefs and actions based on how well they match up with intrepretations of scripture or ideas about the will of God, and justify them instead on how they would work out for our society. It just means that we ask "What kind of society do we want? What practical measures do we need to take to create that kind of society?" Not "What kind of society does God tell us is right? What actions does God tell us to take?"
Imagine the following scenario: Somehow, God is proven to definitely not exist; the evidence is overwhelming, no one can deny it. What happens then? I grant you'd probably see a bump in suicides and murders, as folks who felt it was only their belief holding back their worst impulses or giving their life meaning acted on this new information. But I'll bet that most people would quickly adjust and go on living their lives exactly as before, and politics and government would continue on much like before. Even without referencing God, people could still talk about wanting a more egalitarian society, with equal rights and opportunity for all--especially without God: If this life is the one shot you get, how can we deny someone the right and opportunity to live it to the fullest just because they're gay or don't have a lot of money? Folks on the right could still argue that the government needs to lower taxes and keep immigrants out. The only difference that I see is that we'd have to make our statements of value and political arguments without reference to anything beyond how those values or policies would effect the members of that society.
This I think is largely what goes on in western Europe: there are heated debates about cultural identity, about economic and foreign policy and so on, but they all revolve around how those things play out concretely in the nation itself. Plenty of the people involved in those debates may be religious, and their religious beliefs may (probably!) inform their political views, but when they discuss what policies to implement or what values they want their government to uphold, they leave religion out of it.
TN writes: "Even without referencing God, people could still talk about wanting a more egalitarian society, with equal rights and opportunity for all."
I agree that it's possible, and perhaps desirable, to discuss such questions without making reference to organized religion. However, I also think it's best not to exclude religion from the discussion. Equality is a complicated issue and it seems that it should be approached from multiple perspectives.
My sense is that value based questions like, "Do we want a an egalitarian society?" and "Who should equal rights be extended to?" are the foundations of most policy. These are not questions that can be answered with a scientific evaluation of the efficacy of different policies. Although these questions are extremely important, it's not clear to me how they should be debated. Struggling over interpretations of religious scriptures is one option. While, I don't think the religious model should be dismissed completely it obviously problematic for reasons that TN has explained. However, I'm not sure what the possibilities are.
I can simply say that I believe that equality is right and therefore I will struggle for policies that advance equality. That works fine for me, but it doesn't do much for the creation of a coalition working towards a common goal. I can find others that share my subjective values and we can work together, but inevitably we will encounter a block of people who disagree with us. How can I talk to these people and convince them that my values are the correct ones?
My intent is not to imply that we must search out objective or universal values. Rather, I'm trying to understand how multiple sets of socially constructed values can interact and provide the basis for implementing a coherent set of policies.
DM:
I still just don't understand _how_ you think religion should be incorporated into politics. Could you explain this? Maybe give an example, either real or hypothetical?
In response to A's question, I'm actually not sure exactly how religion should be incorporated into politics. I was sort of hoping to start a discussion about that with my initial post but there seems to be a difference of opinion about if religion has a place in politics at all.
The point that I keep returning to is that politics cannot be separated from values and religion is one of the key things that informs people's values, so of course religion and politics go together. If you take a basic political question like the redistribution of wealth varying positions will be based on different values. For example, the belief that Christ's life provides a model for human behavior may lead me to value sacrifice and helping others. Therefore I might favor taxing the rich and giving that money to the poor. Perhaps my values are based in some philosophical notion of the individual and the primacy of free will. In this case I might argue that each person has a right to their private property, regardless of how it was obtained, and collecting taxes to be distributed amongst the poor is immoral.
The point is that policy is based on values which are often based on some religious or philosophical system of thought. In order to reach a consensus regarding policy an open discussion regarding values is necessary. The purpose of this discussion is not to find the "right" religion or philosophy, and on this point I agree with Rorty's anti-foundationalist position (I'm referring to the essay that TN has attached to a different post, once again demonstrating the limited communicative possibilities of blogger). However, it seems to me that Rorty is advocating simply eliminating all discussion of the basis of one's values (am I reading him correctly here?). I'm not certain if this is really the "pragmatic" move to make. This is certainly debatable, but my sense is that creating space within political discourse for discussions of religion and other modes of thought generates more potential for consensus and achieving the political goals that I desire.
This is especially true in an American context where many people believe political decisions should be based on faith. The sort of artificial secular system that we currently operate under seems to prevent non-religious people from ever discussing the basis of their values, while Christian fundamentalists continue to use religion in order to advance their political agenda.
DM: Another claim that Rorty makes in that essay, which is maybe a bit more relevant to your last comment than the anti-foundationalism bit, is that the actual political arguments that people make are based much less in either religion or philosophy than philosophy degree holders and the devoutly religious would like to believe.
I think he might overstate his case somewhat, but there is definitely something to it: In many years of reading political magazines and blogs, mostly on the left, but very often with links to and in debate with folks on the right, arguments from practical utility, historical experience, national/cultural identity and emotional appeals are used waaaayyyy more often than either philosophical or religious statements of value. I talk politics with my mom, a very religious liberal, all the time and I honestly don't know if she sees her political beliefs as being grounded in her religious beliefs or not--she's never appealed to those beliefs when we've talked.
What a liberal postmodernist type like myself or Rorty think is that that level on which our political arguments already take place--the level of utility, historical experience, etc.--rather than religious or philosophical foundation is all we need.
Rorty's attempt to construct political differences between the left and the right in pragmatic terms is one of the things that bothers me about that essay. It's true that in political discourse historical or utilitarian arguments are far more common than appeals to philosophy or religion. However, Rorty also seems to think that the left and the right differ in terms of their understandings of "justice." Isn't justice a philosophical or religious concept? How can it be understood in pragmatic terms?
It seems to me that dialogue between the left and the right will always be constrained by fundamental differences over values like justice or equality. Religion or some other way of discussing values is necessary in order bridge that divide. It might be possible to argue that differences in value can best be overcome when their foundations are ignored, but I haven't heard Rorty or anyone else make that argument in a convincing manner.
I have some other thoughts on the Rorty essay, but they don't pertain directly to religion, so I will try to post them elsewhere.
DM: It seems to me that you keep approaching this discussion from an overly abstract/philosophical perspective, which is leading you astray...
First, you seem to believe that people hold the political beliefs they hold based on well thought out and clearly defined concepts ("justice" for example), whether they get these conceptions from religion or philosophy. I don't believe this is the case. I think most of us hold the values we do out of some combination of emotional affinity (liberalism is empathy based, conservatism fear based), tribal identity (wanting to fit in with one's peer group, social class, etc.) and vague conceptions borrowed from various sources (parents, teachers, preachers, pop culture and so on) that all get melded together into a mostly coherent world-view. In fact, I'll bet as many people are drawn to particular religious beliefs by the values they feel an emotional or social affinity with as adopt certain values based on their religious beliefs. As such, I don't see religious or philosophical debate as very important to doing democratic politics--it's not how people think. I mean, maybe it'd be nice if we could all agree to discuss justice from a strictly philosophical or strictly religious perspective, but that's never going to happen--and even if it did, we'd still probably have most of the same disagreements that we have now.
Next, if you look at how religion is actually discussed in American politics, I think you'd see that where it is being talked about in a specific way as the source of political values, it's in a dogmatic, anti-democratic way by the religious right. These folks, about 25% of the population, aren't interested in dialogue; they've got the Truth. On the other side, you have "faith" used as a vague signifier of being a decent, trustworthy person, and a majority of the population that identifies themselves as "religious" but don't base their identities around whatever religious convictions they hold. The people who you could have a decent discussion about the use of religion in forming political values with are mostly the sort of mainstream to liberal religious folks who are content keeping their religion and politics separate already, thus nullifying the need for the discussion that you want to have.
Finally (for now...) I sometimes get the sense that you think we could come up with some way of talking about politics, some vocabulary, or some way of adjudicating wildly different perspectives that would make all the political disagreements and divisions between left and right in this country disappear. You stated a couple comments up "I'm trying to understand how multiple sets of socially constructed values can interact and provide the basis for implementing a coherent set of policies" Well, the different sides argue their position, try to convince as many people as they can, get people representing their side elected, and in the end probably have to find a compromise acceptable to both sides while hoping that with time, and ongoing efforts to win people over to their view, in the future if they still have to compromise it'll be on more favorable terms. That's just basic democratic politics, and as dysfunctional as it usually is, I don't know of anyone coming up with a better method. The changes I would like to see--limits to the ability of money to influence political debate, the development of a more responsible media, the further secularization of our culture--are relatively minor, but I think would allow for better political dialogue.
TN writes: "I think most of us hold the values we do out of some combination of emotional affinity (liberalism is empathy based, conservatism fear based), tribal identity (wanting to fit in with one's peer group, social class, etc.) and vague conceptions borrowed from various sources (parents, teachers, preachers, pop culture and so on) that all get melded together into a mostly coherent world-view." I more or less agree with this statement, but I don't understand why it's alright for emotional affinity, identity, and pop culture to influence politics but not religion. In fact the argument you present here seems to fit well with my earlier posts regarding the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Especially if the broader definition of aesthetics as being concerned with what is pleasing, as opposed to only beauty, is adopted then the strong link between aesthetics and politics should be quite clear. Generating support for a political position is a matter of making it pleasing or appealing in terms of emotion and the fit with one's identity. If this is the case then one of the primary tasks of political activity is to repackage policy in a manner that appeals to emotions (or transforming values through emotional appeals), and it would seem that religion is highly effective in achieving this goal. Policies that actually achieve desired goals (for example, health care programs that reduce suffering) are helpful but there is more to politics than this.
At one point in Rorty's essay he makes a tangential comment about 18th century romanticism and the notion that the poet rather than the philosopher is primarily responsible for social progress. I would consider lumping poetry, philosophy, and religion together in that they all have the potential to reshape our values in a manner that has political implications. Certainly they do this differently, and poetry (and art, film, music, etc.) may work best for me, but I believe that they are all useful tools in making appeals to emotion and identity.
One other thing, perhaps TN's dislike for mixing religion and politics is because in American politics organized religion tends to support the conservative right. What about the case of liberation theology in Latin America? There religion has played an important role in empowering people (primarily the working class and peasants) to fight against inequality. Religion has actually promoted democracy in the egalitarian sense described by Rorty. It doesn't always serve this role, but it certainly has the potential to do so.
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