Kevin Vallier, “Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation” (Routledge, 2014)
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What is the central problem of religious conviction in liberal democratic politics?
Welcome to the New Books and Philosophy channel of the New Books Network. My name is Robert Talese. I'm Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the channel with Carrie Figter. Carrie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. Today, my guest is Professor Kevin Vallier. His new book is titled Liberal Politics and Public Faith Beyond Separation. It's recently been published by Routledge. Vallier is assistant professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University. In a liberal democracy, citizens share political power as equals. This means that they must decide laws and policies collectively, yet they disagree about fundamental questions regarding the value, purpose, and meaning of life.
So what role should their convictions concerning these matters play in their public activity as citizens? According to familiar answers, citizens must bracket or constrain the role that their religious convictions play in their public lives. But many religious citizens find this unacceptable, and some of them hold that their religious views should determine law and policy. But that too seems unacceptable. In Liberal Politics and Public Faith, Kevin Vallier develops a novel view of the role of religious conviction and reasoning in liberal democracy. On his view, religious citizens will rarely need to constrain the role that their religious convictions play in their public activities. However, Vallier also contends that public officials and institutions cannot determine public policy solely on the basis of religious reasons.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Kevin Vallier.
Hi, Bob. How
are you doing today?
Really well. How about you?
Oh, doing fine, doing fine. Thank you for joining us today on New Books and Philosophy.
I'm delighted to be here.
Great, and thank you, listener, for tuning into the podcast. My guest, as you know, is Kevin Vallier, and his new book is titled Liberal Politics and Public Faith Beyond Separation. Now, as the title of the book suggests, this book is an examination of a range of philosophical problems concerning the role of religious conviction, maybe religious reasoning in liberal democratic politics. I suppose one way of stating that problem or that host of problems in a very general way is the way that is sort of suggested to us by John Rawls, paraphrasing how is it possible for individuals – who are divided over life's big questions, we might say, to nonetheless share political power as equal citizens. Now, a range of familiar answers to this question – I think answers that will be familiar to the listeners –
have it that religious citizens, in order to live as equals with others who don't share their religious convictions, must in some way constrain or contain or bracket the role of their religious convictions when it comes to acting as a citizen or engaging in public life. Sallier rejects this picture. He thinks that religious views and reasons and convictions should have or can have a much more robust role in the life of the liberal democratic citizen and the liberal democratic polity. There's a lot to talk about here. There are lots of issues afoot, but we'll begin as we usually do. Kevin, why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
All right. So I grew up in South Alabama. on the Gulf Coast, and I was born in 1982. As I say in the beginning of the book, I've never known a world without, or never known a country without the culture war. When I was 13, I became an atheist, and my family was very religious, and my school was very religious, and my town was very religious. And questions about the rationality of religious belief and the role of religion in politics were just sort of in the air. There were always questions that arose about should we do this or that thing? Should we, for instance, be teaching evolution in the classroom? I remember my freshman biology course, a student asked, quietly and nicely excused herself from the lesson and the teacher was perfectly happy to excuse her.
I thought it was appalling.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the central problem of religious conviction in liberal democratic politics?
0:01–26:28
2
How does Kevin Vallier’s personal background shape his view on public faith?
26:28–48:12
3
What are the historical roots of the debate over religion and public reason?
48:12–58:23
4
How does Vallier define public reason liberalism and the duty of civility?
58:23–1:10:59
Speakers
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