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The Normative Significance of Conscience: A Contractualist Account
Abstract
Despite the increasing amount of literature on the legal and political questions raised by liberty of conscience, an explanation for the normative significance of conscience remains elusive. In our view, a compelling explanation of the normative significance of conscience is a much needed addition to the literature. In our paper, we attempt to show that the few attempts to explain the normative significance of conscience are faulty. However, we offer an alternative account grounded in contractualist moral theory that we believe effectively utilizes the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy to explain why conscience matters.
By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. First published thirty years ago but long since unavailable, Freedom and Resentment collects some of Strawson's most important work and is an ideal introduction to his thinking on such topics as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. Beginning with the title essay Freedom and Resentment, this invaluable collection is testament to the astonishing range of Strawson's thought as he discusses free will, ethics and morality, logic, the mind-body problem and aesthetics. The book is perhaps best-known for its three interrelated chapters on perception and the imagination, subjects now at the very forefront of philosophical research. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Paul Snowdon and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson. © 1974, 2008 P.F. Strawson.
Should we think of what I will refer to generically as “the law of religious liberty” as grounded in the moral attitude of respect for religion or in the moral attitude of tolerance of religion? I begin by explicating the relevant moral attitudes of “respect” and “toleration.” With regard to the former, I start with a well-known treatment of the idea of “respect” in the Anglophone literature by the moral philosopher Stephen Darwall. With respect to the latter concept, toleration, I shall draw on my own earlier discussion, though now emphasizing the features of toleration that set it apart from one kind of respect. In deciding whether “respect” or “toleration” can plausibly serve as the moral foundation for the law of religious liberty we will need to say something about the nature of religion. I shall propose a fairly precise analysis of what makes a belief and a concomitant set of practices “religious” (again drawing on earlier work). That will then bring us to the central question: should our laws reflect “respect” for religion” or only “toleration”? Martha Nussbaum has recently argued for “respect” as the moral foundation of religious liberty, though, as I will suggest, her account is ambiguous between the two senses of respect that emerge from Darwall’s work. In particular, I shall claim that in one “thin” sense of respect, it is compatible with nothing more than toleration of religion; and that in a “thicker” sense (which Nussbaum appears to want to invoke), it could not form the moral basis of a legal regime since religion is not the kind of belief system that could warrant that attitude. To make the latter case, I examine critically a recent attack on the idea of "respect" for religious belief by Simon Blackburn. This is the penultimate version of a paper that will appear in a symposium issue of the San Diego Law Review on the topic "Freedom of Conscience."
This article considers the difficult question of whether there are any reasons for theocratic religious devotees to affirm liberalism and liberal institutions. Swaine argues not only that there are reasons for theocrats to affirm liberalism, but that theocrats are committed rationally to three normative principles of liberty of conscience, as well. Swaine subsequently discusses three institutional and strategic implications of his arguments. First, he outlines an option of semisovereignty for theocratic communities in liberal democracies, and explains why an appropriate valuation of liberty of conscience may justify a standard of that kind. Second, he addresses the question of permissible government aid for religion and symbolic endorsement of religious groups. Third, Swaine considers innovations and new approaches that could be employed internationally to better display liberal government's affirmation of religiosity, to promote liberty of conscience, and to help improve relations between liberal and theocratic parties around the globe.
Dans le cadre du debat entre consequentialisme et deontologie, l'A. examine l'idee d'une ethique deontologique non teleologique, fondee sur la priorite du droit sur le bien, d'une part, et montre que celle-ci est incompatible avec un critere distributif de la justice et avec l'idee de vengeance, d'autre part.
If there is any single theme that has provided the foundation of modern liberalism and has infused our more specific constitutional commitments to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, that theme is probably "freedom of conscience." But some observers also perceive a progressive cheapening of conscience even a sort of degradation. Such criticisms suggest the need for a contemporary rethinking of conscience. When we reverently invoke "conscience," do we have any idea what we are talking about? Or are we just exploiting a venerable theme for rhetorical purposes without any clear sense of what "conscience" is or why it matters? This essay addresses two questions. The first is discussed briefly: what is "conscience"? What do we have in mind when we say that someone acted from "conscience"? A second question receives more extended discussion: granted its importance to the individuals who assert it, still, why should "conscience" deserve special respect or accommodation from society, or from the state? That question forces us to consider the metaethical presuppositions of claims of conscience. The discussion suggests that claims to conscience may be defensible only on certain somewhat rarified moral and metaethical assumptions. The discussion further suggests that shifts in such assumptions have transformed the meaning of claims to "freedom of conscience," so that such claims typically now mean almost the opposite of what they meant when asserted by early champions of conscience such as Thomas More, Roger Williams, and John Locke.
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- Joseph Butler
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Two Kinds of Respect
_____ (1977) " Two Kinds of Respect, " Ethics 88: 36-49.
Wondering After Babel: Power, Freedom and Ideology
- Marie Failinger
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- Gerald Gaus
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The Liberal Archipelago
- Chandran Kukathas
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Liberty of Conscience Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach
- Martha Nussbaum
Nussbaum, Martha (2008) Liberty of Conscience, New York: Basic Books.
_____ (2001) Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
- Benjamin Whichcote
Whichcote, Benjamin (2010/1753) Moral and Religious Aphorisms, Samuel Salter, ed., Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing.