The Reciprocal Translation Proviso: An Alternative Approach to Public Reason

The role of religion in politics is problematic for liberal legitimacy. Religion is often restrained by a public reason requirement, but this creates cognitive burdens that asymmetrically impact religious citizens creating unequal barriers to accessing the political system, which is itself problemat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tyler, George (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2018]
In: Politics and religion
Year: 2018, Volume: 11, Issue: 4, Pages: 717-744
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Summary:The role of religion in politics is problematic for liberal legitimacy. Religion is often restrained by a public reason requirement, but this creates cognitive burdens that asymmetrically impact religious citizens creating unequal barriers to accessing the political system, which is itself problematic for liberal legitimacy. Habermas' institutional translation proviso balances the competing concerns of liberal legitimacy, which aims to offset the asymmetry disadvantaging religious citizens. This paper analyzes the problem and Habermas' solution. It concludes that Habermas does not alleviate the asymmetry created by the public reason requirement to the greatest extent possible and so does not equalize the barriers to accessing the political system as much as he might. The reciprocal translation proviso provides an alternative that balances the competing components of liberal legitimacy more fully and alleviates the asymmetry and inequality of barriers to political access to the greatest extent possible while preserving the publicreason requirement.
ISSN:1755-0491
Contains:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048318000081