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Political liberalism and justificatory secularism

Mladenović Ivan (Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade), ivan.mladenovic@f.bg.ac.rs

In this paper I analyze Cécile Laborde’s conception of justificatory secularism. Laborde points out that in her formulation and defense of the conception of justificatory secularism, she follows Rawls’ conception of political liberalism to a certain extent. For that reason, I first provide a sketch of Rawls’ conception of political liberalism. Then I focus on justificatory secularism, trying to show to what extent it displays similarities with the conception of political liberalism, but also how it differs. I am interested in whether justificatory secularism represents a better alternative to the conception of political liberalism or whether these two conceptions should be considered complementary.

Keywords: political liberalism, justificatory secularism, religion, legitimacy, public reason

Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 43007