John Rawls writes provocatively, ‘[F]or the purposes of public life, Saul of Tarsus and Paul the Apostle are the same person. Conversion is irrelevant to our public, or institutional, identity’.
This is a revealing comment: Rawls’ liberalism in effect asks citizens to exhibit a fissure in their identity. This is repeated mantra-like by media boffins everywhere - here in the UK and at home in OZ. (Mike Carlton I am thinking of you). Though Rawls recognises the anthropological/psychological problem here, he offers no satisfactory resolution from that perspective.
The public sphere is not the zone of neutrality he assumes. Quite clearly, Rawls allows a preferred position for certain kinds of truth and not for others in determining what goods society is to pursue. And yet the religious person might rightly protest that without consideration of God at this very point, the kinds of goods that belief in God might entail are deliberately excluded from consideration – and that these beliefs are not easily privatised.
What do you think?
5 comments:
G'day Michael.
I think there is far tooooooo much compartmentalism within society today, and even in Christendom.
I once worked at a servo that sold porn, and I hung a sign up saying, "This stock not for sale, due to night managers Christian beliefs, do not ask as refusal may offend"
Indeed it did cause offense and my boss who would not sack me over it, made it plain he wanted me to leave, which I did, said to me, "I am a Christian, but we have church, then work, then home and play, and this is business and business is business"
Unfortuantly this attitude is far to prevelant in our world.
I think who we are, is who we are, and if we are in a relationship with our heavenly father, then all we do should be out of that relationship.
John Rawls is clearly wrong,
BLessings craig b
Who's public life? Which public?
He's implying a society that holds a uniform belief in liberal ideals, isn't he?
It's scary - coercive and pushy - under a guise of freedom and universality.
G'day.
A bit off topic, but i couldn't find the thread it relates to as it is a fair way back.
Today at college, and for the next 2 days we have as guest lecturer Veli-Matti Karkkainen who is a lecturer at Fuller College.
His talk about systematic theology was brillant, the main subject being the Holy Spirit and Church. Before today I was a bit reticent about systematic theology, not really likeing it that much. However when he explained how it helps us to form a foundation for pastoral theology and practice, in tying things together I had one of those ahaa moments, and I went click.
I thought I would mention it here about my change of mind as I had spoken against it before on your blog,
Blessings craig b
Thanks for the reminder of a little context... I perhaps overdid it a little. Still coming to grips with the finer details of liberal philosophy.
But it seems to me that the private/public structure agrees with the church/state structure. But I'm not sure what that means, or if it was obvious to everyone else.
And isn't our identity 'fissured' anyway?
I wrote a philosophy essay back in 1999 on just this issue: the failure of Rawls to find a neutral common ground by excluding considerations of the 'good' from an account of 'right'. He has been rightly mawled by many thinkers on just this issue.
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