Rawlsian Explorations In Religion And Applied Philosophy

To probe the underlying premises of a liberal political order, John Rawls felt obliged to use a philosophical method that abstracted from many of the details of ordinary life. But this very abstraction became a point of criticism, as it left unclear the implications of his theory for public policies and life in the real political world. Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy attempts to ferret out those implications, filling the gap between Rawls’s own empyrean heights and the really practical public policy proposals made by government planners, lobbyists, and legislators. Among the topics examined are natural rights, the morality of war, the treatment of mentally deficient humans and nonhuman sentient creatures, the controversies over legacy and affirmative action in college admissions, and the place of religious belief in a democratic society. The final chapter explores how Rawls’s own religious beliefs, as revealed in two works posthumously published in 2009, played into his formulation of his theory of justice.

To probe the underlying premises of a liberal political order, John Rawls felt obliged to use a philosophical method that abstracted from many of the details of ordinary life. But this very abstraction became a point of criticism, as it left unclear the implications of his theory for public policies and life in the real political world. Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy attempts to ferret out those implications, filling the gap between Rawls’s own empyrean heights and the really practical public policy proposals made by government planners, lobbyists, and legislators. Among the topics examined are natural rights, the morality of war, the treatment of mentally deficient humans and nonhuman sentient creatures, the controversies over legacy and affirmative action in college admissions, and the place of religious belief in a democratic society. The final chapter explores how Rawls’s own religious beliefs, as revealed in two works posthumously published in 2009, played into his formulation of his theory of justice.

John Rawls was the most influential political thinker of the twentieth century. This book applies his theory of justice to four perennial matters of concern that remain contested in the twenty-first century. Drawing surprising implications, this book deepens our understanding of these issues and points the way toward rational, just policy reform.

Daniel A. Dombrowski brings together the thought of the 20th-century philosophy's greatest political liberal, John Rawls, with the thought of the great process philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. He shows that political liberalism is intimately linked with process philosophy, renaming it 'process liberalism'. He justifies this process liberalism in contrast to four potentially troublesome sources or influences: metaphysics, religion, right-wing politics and left-wing politics. Dombrowski engages a series of interlocutors and alternative positions including Franklin I. Gamwell, Timothy D. Snyder, Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx. In conclusion, he offers a compelling, intricate and resourceful argument for nonhuman animal rights based on Rawlsian principles, which in turn forms the basis of a future environmental ethics.

The World Parliament of Religions adopted the view that there will not be peace in this world without including peace among religions. Yet, even with the unified force of the world’s religions and wisdom traditions, this cannot be accomplished without justice among people. In one way or another, “unity” among religions, as based on justice and the will to accept the other’s religions and even irreligiosity as means of justice, will not prevail without an internal and external, spiritual, theological, philosophical and practical investigation into the very reasons for religious strife and fanaticism as well as the resources that people, cultures, religions and wisdom traditions might provide to disentangle them from the injustices of their host regimes, and to seek the “balance” that leads to a measure of universal fairness among the multiplicity of religious and non-religious expressions of humanity. “Conviviality” expresses the depth and breadth of “living together,” which itself can be understood as a translation of a central term of Whitehead's philosophy and the process tradition—“concrescence” (growing together, becoming concrete)—as it is recently and increasingly used in different discourses to name the concrete community of difference of individuals, cultures, and religions in appreciation of the mutual inclusiveness of their lives. This book seeks to bring together experts from different religious (and non-religious) traditions and spiritual persuasions to suggest ways in which the living wisdom traditions might contribute to, and transform themselves into, a universal conviviality among the people, cultures and religions of this world for a common future. It wishes to test the resources that we can contribute to this concurrent and urgent matter, aware of Whitehead's call for a radical transformation of power and violence in thought and action as, perhaps, the ultimate theory of conflict resolution.

The Judeo-Christian tradition testifies to a God that cries out, demanding that justice "roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). Christians agree that being advocates for justice is critical to the Christian witness. And yet one need not look widely to see that Christians disagree about what social justice entails. What does justice have to do with healthcare reform, illegal immigration, and same-sex marriage? Should Christians support tax policies that effectively require wealthy individuals to fund programs that benefit the poor? Does justice require that we acknowledge and address the inequalities borne out of histories of gender and ethnic exclusivity? Is the Christian vision distinct from non-Christian visions of social justice? Christians disagree over the proper answer to these questions. In short, Christians agree that justice is important but disagree about what a commitment to justice means. Christian Faith and Social Justice makes sense of the disagreements among Christians over the meaning of justice by bringing together five highly regarded Christian philosophers to introduce and defend rival perspectives on social justice in the Christian tradition. While it aspires to offer a lucid introduction to these theories, the purpose of this book is more than informative. It is purposefully dialogical and is structured so that contributors are able to model for the reader reasoned exchange among philosophers who disagree about the meaning of social justice. The hope is that the reader is left with a better understanding of range of perspectives in the Christian tradition about social justice.

John Rawls's influential theory of justice and public reason has often been thought to exclude religion from politics, out of fear of its illiberal and destabilizing potentials. It has therefore been criticized by defenders of religion for marginalizing and alienating the wealth of religious sensibilities, voices, and demands now present in contemporary liberal societies. In this anthology, established scholars of Rawls and the philosophy of religion reexamine and rearticulate the central tenets of Rawls's theory to show they in fact offer sophisticated resources for accommodating and responding to religions in liberal political life. The chapters reassert the subtlety, openness, and flexibility of his sense of liberal "respect" and "consensus," revealing their inclusive implications for religious citizens. They also explore the means he proposes for accommodating nonliberal religions in liberal politics, developing his conception of "public reason" into a novel account of the possibilities for rational engagement between liberal and religious ideas. And they reevaluate Rawls's liberalism from the "transcendent" perspectives of religions themselves, critically considering its normative and political value, as well as its own "religious" character. Rawls and Religion makes a unique and important contribution to contemporary debates over liberalism and its response to the proliferation of religions in contemporary political life.

Presents the process theistic thought of Whitehead as a third alternative between classical theism and religious skepticism. This original interpretation of the religious thought of Alfred North Whitehead highlights Whitehead’s moves from mechanism to organism, and from force to persuasion to offer a third alternative between classical theism and religious skepticism. Daniel A. Dombrowski argues that the move from force to persuasion, in particular, is not only fundamental to Whitehead’s own thought and to process thought in general, but is a necessary condition for the continuing existence of civilized life. Following this line of analysis, Dombrowski demonstrates Whitehead’s relevance to contemporary work in philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and environmental ethics by placing him in dialogue with six major thinkers: David Ray Griffin, Isabelle Stengers, John Rawls, Charles Hartshorne, Judith Butler, and William Wordsworth. Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of many books, including Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism; A Platonic Philosophy of Religion: A Process Perspective; and A History of the Concept of God: A Process Approach, all published by SUNY Press.