Franklin I. Gamwell / Democracy with Religious Freedom: Habermas’s Revision of Rawls and Their Common Problem

Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls both affirm modern constitutional liberalism as democracy with religious freedom. Without addressing the difference between his postmetaphysical account and Rawls’s political liberalism, Habermas formulates a friendly amendment to Rawls’s proposal: the supposed demand of public reason expressed in Rawls’s proviso on political advocacy should be replaced with an “institutional translation proviso,” such that only secular reasons count in “formal proceedings within political bodies.” This essay argues: (1) Habermas’s amendment does not result in a coherent theory of democracy with religious freedom; (2) notwithstanding the difference between Habermas’s postmetaphysical account and Rawls’s political liberalism, the two thinkers share a common problem, namely, the assumption or implication that religious convictions cannot be the object of public reason; and (3) a better solution consists in the recognition that religious convictions or comprehensive doctrines answer a rational question, so that democracy is properly constituted as politics by the way of full and free discourse or by the way of reason.