Two important objections have been raised against exclusivist public reason. First, it has been argued that EPR entails an unjust burden for citizens who want to appeal to non-public reasons, especially religious reasons. Second, it has been argued that EPR is based on a problematic conception of religious reasons and that it ignores the fact that religious reasons can be public as well. I defend EPR against both objections. I show that the first objection conflates two ideas of public justification (...) and that the second objection conflates two ways to understand and identify religious reasons. Ultimately, it turns out that those who defend such objections actually share the concerns that justified EPR in the first place. In other words, if we are clear about the idea of public justification and the kind of religious reasons that EPR is really about, it appears that justificatory liberals are in fact all exclusivists. (shrink)

When generally applicable rules clash with one’s cultural, religious or moral commitments, should exemptions be granted? The debate on exemptions raises the question both of what it means to treat people equally and of what it means to protect diversity adequately. The objective of this paper is to defend the no-exemption argument and to make it a more attractive position for liberals. I first argue that exemptions violate the principle of equal treatment because they rely on distinctions that cannot be (...) neutrally justified. I then argue that diversity can be adequately accommodated if we use a more demanding interpretation of the justification of generally applicable rules. There should be no exemption to fully justified rules, but rules are only fully justified when the particular demands that they impose on individuals are justified, i.e. when they are either neutral or pass both a Necessity Test and a Sufficiency Test. When rules are not fully justified, they should be repealed or modified. Based on this focus on the demands of rules, equality can be reconciled with an adequate accommodation of diversity. (shrink)

Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition offers a new and powerful argument to support the ‘strong cultural rights thesis’. Unlike other culturalist arguments, his argument is not based on a problematic and essentialist conception of culture but on a particular understanding of liberal neutrality as fair treatment and equal recognition. What justifies the existence of such rights is not culture itself but what culture means for people and the negative consequences it can have for them when they form a cultural minority. Patten’s (...) argument, however, faces another challenge: I argue that culture and neutrality cannot be fully reconciled, and that, ultimately, the concept of culture might not be playing any significant role in his argument for minority rights. (shrink)

In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of the debate on religion in political philosophy. We present the main arguments defended by Cécile Laborde in Liberalism’s Religion and explain how these arguments contribute to the debate.