PUBLIC REASON, RELIGION AND EXCLUSIVISM: RAWLS IN THE LIGHT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ISLAMIC VIEW

One of the central questions of the modern societies - which are heterogeneous regarding their values and world views - is the relation between democratic public on one hand and religions - but also other comprehensive doctrines - on the other. It is obvious that some reasonable account about this issue represents the key guideline for resolving and mitigating the conflicts of the modern world. For this reason the author sets himself to a comparative analysis of the models of arranging of this relation proposed by four eminent theoreticians who are representatives of different religions, cultures and world views: John Rawls, Pope Benedict XVI, Islamic scholar Abdullahi A. An-Na'im, and German philosopher Martin Breul. The author discovers certain drawbacks of the first three accounts from the aspect of feasibility, fairness, completeness and clarity. He finds Breul's variant of moderate exclusivism as the most clear and adequate proposal and hence as the most appropriate guideline to the main topical question of the article. Breul claims that, on one hand, it is necessary that we insist on neutral justification of political norms. But the neutral justification doesn't imply any demands that religion must stay just in the private sphere, since there are many other roles which can be, and should be, performed by religious beliefs in the public discourse of democratic societies. In such a way we can avoid, on one hand, the unjustified discrimination of religious argumentation in advance and, on the other hand, the possibility of the non-democratic domination of some world view majority based on the religious or some other comprehensive reasons which are not subjected to any neutral judgement.