WhyDo Not

INTRODUCTION

A DICTATORSHIP OF RELATIVISM?

A specter is haunting Western societies: the specter of relativism. Once only thought to constitute a relatively marginal philosophical or meta-ethical position, it is now treated as a social and political problem, and it is primar-ily as an antidote against this supposed problem that the reference to a set of “absolute”—and in particular “religious”—moral values is increasingly defended. Consider, for example, what Cardinal Josef Ratzinger asserted in the last homily he gave before the assembled conclave, the day before being elected pope:

Today, having a clear faith based on the creed of the Church is oft en labeled fundamentalism. Whereas relativism; that is, letting oneself be tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine, seems the only at-titude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as defi nitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely in satisfying one’s ego and desires.

In the years that have elapsed since Benedict XVI’s election, this opposition between “relativism” and “a clear faith based on the creed of the Catholic

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Church” has been made into the backbone of the Vatican’s pontifi cal mes-sage. Neither of the popes that has been in offi ce since then nor any other offi cial spokesperson of the Catholic Church has missed an occasion to denounce the poisonous eff ects that relativism is supposedly having on modern societies and to present Christianity as the only available antidote against it. Th is has led to the constitution of a whole body of discourse that certain commentators have not hesitated to describe as amounting to an intellectual “crusade” against relativism.

Nor is this discourse restricted exclusively to the Catholic Church. Th e concern with relativism cuts across denominational distinctions. In the ser-mons preached in many contemporary evangelical churches in the United States, for instance, relativism is oft en treated—along with liberalism and secularism—as part of a sort of “unholy trinity” that is supposed to be cor-roding the moral foundations of contemporary societies. Indeed, a recent poll conducted among evangelical preachers in the United States found that, aft er “abortion,” “moral relativism” was indicated by most respondents as “the most pressing moral issue faced by America today.”

For anybody familiar with the language used in contemporary evangeli-cal churches in the United States, this is unlikely to come as a surprise. In a lecture delivered at the National Ligonier Conference in 2007, for instance, John Piper, pastor at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Min-nesota, summed up the objections made by evangelical Christians against relativism:

Relativism is an invisible gas, odorless, deadly, that is now polluting every free society on earth. It is a gas that attacks the central nervous system of moral striving. Th e most perilous threat to the free society today is, therefore, neither political nor economic. It is the poisonous, corrupting culture of relativism. . . . Here is a list of seven amongst the most evil and destructive eff ects of relativism: 1) Relativism commits treason against God. 2) Relativism cultivates duplicity. 3) Relativism conceals doctrinal defection. 4) Relativism cloaks greed with fl attery. 5) Relativism cloaks pride with the guise of humility. 6) Relativism en-slaves people. 7) Relativism leads to brutal totalitarianism.

Finally, by way of further illustration, consider also the following passage from the book titled Milestones by Sayyid Qutb—which is considered by many one of the principal intellectual reference points for the contempo-

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rary strands of political Islamism that denounce the “moral corruption” of modern and in particular liberal-democratic societies: “Mankind today is on the brink of abyss, not because of the danger of complete annihilation, which is hanging over its head (this being just a symptom and not the real disease) but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are nec-essary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress.”

Although the term “relativism” itself is not explicitly mentioned in this passage, the key idea it advances is analogous to the ones contained in the other passages mentioned, namely, that modern societies are under threat of being destroyed because they are supposedly in the process of losing their commitment to a set of “absolute” moral values. Th e implicit mes-sage—which Qutb goes on to articulate very incisively in his book—is that modern societies need to make reference to a set of ultimately religious moral values in order to avoid annihilation.

THE CRITIQUE OF RELATIVISM AS A CRITIQUE

OF DEMOCRACY

Th e political overtones implicit in the notion of a “dictatorship of relativ-ism” and in the idea that “relativism leads to brutal totalitarianism” are by no means coincidental. For the key claim that is being advanced in the pas-sages quoted above is not simply that relativism constitutes a problem for the spiritual lives of individuals, but also that it constitutes a danger for the survival of modern societies. Th ere is thus a political dimension to the contemporary religious discourse of anti-relativism, which translates into a project of reasserting the importance of a reference to the notion of “abso-lute truth,” not only in the private domain of individual morality, but also in the public domain of contemporary politics.

It is this political dimension of the religious discourse of anti-relativism that I intend to discuss over the course of this book. Specifi cally, what I am interested in discussing is the bearing of this discourse on the domain of democratic theory. My contention is that the call for a reassertion of a refer-ence to a notion of absolute truth within contemporary politics constitutes one of the last remaining grounds upon which the democratic principle of self-government can be—or at least still is—criticized. To show this re-quires a brief foray into the history of anti-democratic rhetoric.

As is well known, this form of government did not always enjoy the near-universal favor it is invested with today. On the contrary, throughout most

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of the history of Western political thought, democracy was generally as-sumed to constitute one of the “degenerate” forms of government. Th e ar-guments sustaining this consensus can mostly be traced back to a Platonic heritage, which in fact proves to have several elements in common with the contemporary discourse of anti-relativism.

In the famous book 8 of Th e Republic , for instance, Plato argues that de-mocracy leads to a degeneration of the moral and political standards of so-ciety, since individuals are led into believing that they can do whatever they want because of the absence of a common authority. Chaos and disorder are assumed to ensue, and the only way in which peace can be reasserted is said to be through a form of tyranny keeping society under control “with an iron fi st.”

For centuries, this—or some set of views akin to it—constituted the political common sense on democracy. Opinions only gradually began to shift over the course of the past two centuries, during which democracy was progressively posited as the bedrock of all forms of political legitimacy. Today, the process has reached such a point that it appears very diffi cult to fi nd anybody explicitly declaring him- or herself against the democratic principle itself: even those who might secretly harbor other sympathies usually say they are democrats, and couch their arguments in democratic terms.

Th is does not mean that the previous critiques of democracy have simply been forgotten. Rather, they have been incorporated within a democratic framework by being transformed into arguments for limiting democracy from within. Th e political struggle today is therefore largely fought in terms of diff erent conceptions of democracy and in particular of the limits that should be imposed on them. Within this struggle, critiques of the demo-cratic principle still have an important role to play because they serve as the basis for diff erent views as to whether, and in what way, democracy should be limited for its own sake.

Th e political signifi cance of the contemporary religious discourse of anti-relativism emerges from this context. For, from the point of view of contemporary political common sense, the claim that relativism leads to “dictatorship,” “tyranny,” or even “totalitarianism” can be interpreted as a way of stating that it represents a threat to the survival of existing demo-cratic regimes. Th e political consequence is that, in order to be sustainable as a form of government, democracy needs to be complemented with refer-ence to a notion of absolute truth, both limiting and guiding the democratic

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exercise of political power, and therefore keeping it within the bounds of moral legitimacy.

Th is link between the issue of relativism and that of democracy was, for example, drawn explicitly by Pope John Paul II in a document that can be in many ways considered the intellectual foundation for the rise to promi-nence of the religious discourse of anti-relativism in the aft ermath of the Cold War—the encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor :

Today when many countries have seen the fall of ideologies which bound politics to a totalitarian conception of the world, there is no less grave a danger that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied.  .  .  . Th is is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism , which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowl-edgement of truth impossible. Indeed, if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can eas-ily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

Th e central argument that John Paul II seems to be making here is that a conception of democracy founded on relativism would ultimately be self-defeating . Th e reason he alludes to is that relativism is incapable of specify-ing any determinate principles to “guide and direct political activity.” Th is is taken to make a relativist conception of democracy vulnerable to the para-dox whereby democracy may be overthrown by democratic means because it implies that there can be no limits on what a sovereign people may legiti-mately do to itself. Relativism is therefore accused of providing no guaran-tee that democracy will not transform itself into a form of “totalitarianism.”

From this, John Paul II goes on to deduce that democratic regimes need to make reference to some notion of absolute truth in order to remain po-litically sustainable, because by imposing a set of external limits on the power exercised by the people over themselves, the reference to a notion of truth off ers the only available guarantee that democracy will not overthrow itself. Moreover, since Christianity is implicitly assumed to constitute the natural foundation for such a notion of absolute truth, faith in Jesus Christ is ultimately posited as a necessary complement to the good functioning of democracy.

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Although he does not mention democracy explicitly, a very similar argu-ment is also made by John Piper in the lecture I already quoted above:

Th e formula is simple: when relativism holds sway long enough in a so-ciety, everyone begins to do what is right in his or her own eyes, without any regard for submission to truth. In this atmosphere, a society begins to break down. . . . When the chaos of relativism reaches a certain point, the people will welcome any ruler who can bring some semblance of order and security. So a dictator steps forward and crushes the chaos with absolute control. Ironically, relativism, the great lover of unfet-tered freedom, destroys freedom in the end.

Th e Platonic heritage is still clearly visible in both formulations of this argu-ment, since the key claim they make is that a political system founded on relativism leads to the dissolution of the moral fabric of society and ulti-mately to the emergence of a kind of political regime that radically negates the essential principles of freedom and democracy. Indeed, even the anti-dote recommended against this danger can be seen as a Christianization of the Platonic idea that the political order must be founded on a set of abso-lute truths standing above and beyond the human order of things.

Th e key diff erence with Plato, however, is that the contemporary critics of relativism do not present their arguments as critiques of democracy as such, but rather as analyses of the conditions for its survival. In this sense, it is possible to say that the critique of democracy has become internal : instead of opposing democracy from outside, the point advanced is that democracy needs to be complemented by a religious criterion of legitimacy for its own sake—that is, in order to guide and limit its own exercise of political power.

A POLITICAL RESPONSE

My goal over the course of this book is to examine the body of discourse making this claim in order to assess its cogency. More specifi cally, what I am interested in exploring is the challenge represented for democratic theory by the idea that democratic regimes need to be complemented by the reference to a set of absolute moral or political truths in order to avoid degenerating into a form of tyranny or totalitarianism.

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From the point of view of what has been stated, this can be interpreted as a way of intervening in the contemporary political debate over the meaning of democracy and the conditions of its legitimacy. In this respect, it should however be made clear from the start that I will not be adopting the posi-tion of a neutral or disengaged observer. On the contrary, it is precisely because I consider myself both a philosophical relativist and a committed democrat that I am interested in examining the challenge posed for demo-cratic theory by the contemporary discourse of anti-relativism.

In this sense, there is a polemical dimension to this book, which consists in the project of fi rst assessing the critique of democracy implicit in the idea that democracy needs to make reference to a set of absolute moral or politi-cal values in order to avoid degenerating into a form of tyranny or totali-tarianism, and then attempting to provide a response to it by testing both the coherence and the political sustainability of a conception of democracy founded on a form of philosophical relativism.

Th at said, since I remain convinced that a necessary preliminary for a convincing critique is an adequate understanding of one’s opponent’s po-sition, a signifi cant portion of this book will be devoted to the project of reconstructing the intellectual grounds for the contemporary discourse of anti-relativism. In other words, it is precisely because I want to take a stand against the contemporary religious discourse of anti-relativism that I will fi rst have to bring into relief the challenge it represents for democratic theory in the fairest possible way.

In so doing it will also be possible to address a number of broader theo-retical and political issues, which are at the heart of contemporary demo-cratic theory. Before moving on to outline these broader theoretical stakes of the present discussion, it is, however, worth highlighting a further im-portant aspect of my approach, which circumscribes the set of issues under consideration.

THE FOCUS ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

For the purposes of the present discussion, I have decided to restrict the domain of analysis to the formulations of the religious discourse of anti-relativism off ered by the Catholic Church, and in particular by Vatican doc-trine as it is contained in the body of papal encyclicals promulgated over the course of the past two centuries. Th e principal reason for this is one of

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focus: the discourse of anti-relativism has recently been employed by a va-riety of both religious and non-religious advocates for the purpose of sub-stantiating a wide array of political projects. It would simply be unmanage-able to try to discuss all the various strands of this discourse in one book.

At the same time, however, I also think that the decision to focus on the Vatican’s formulations of the religious discourse of anti-relativism can be justifi ed positively, on the basis of a number of concurring observations. First of all, as we will see in more detail, the contemporary discourse of anti-relativism originates from within offi cial Catholic doctrine. Th e fi rst recorded usage of the term to refer to a social and political problem, rather than simply a philosophical position, for instance, occurs in a papal encyc-lical of 1884.

Since then, offi cial Catholic doctrine has continued to elaborate and refi ne this original intuition, so that today it is within this body of texts that one fi nds the most sophisticated formulations of the religious dis-course of anti-relativism. When the Catholic formulations are compared to others one might encounter in the discourse produced by other religious organizations, the diff erences are in fact oft en striking, simply because the Catholic Church has a much more established tradition of scholarly apologetics.

Indeed, it has already been pointed out by several observers of religious trends—especially in the United States—that the Catholic Church is pro-gressively assuming a position of “intellectual leadership” within a broader “faith-based” political front. From this point of view, the well-known theo-logical and political disputes between Protestantism and Roman Catholi-cism appear largely a thing of the past, and what is increasingly replacing them is a sort of inter-denominational division of labor whereby Catholic apologists provide the intellectual foundations, while Protestant organiza-tions supply the grassroots support, for a set of essentially convergent posi-tions. Th us the Vatican’s formulations of the discourse of anti-relativism can be considered exemplary of a much broader range of arguments raised from a variety of religious standpoints.

Last but not least, a further reason for focusing on the Vatican’s formula-tions of the religious discourse of anti-relativism is its degree of political infl uence. Even in the United States, this is not something to underestimate. Catholicism is currently both the largest single denominational affi liation in this country and the fastest growing, largely due to the infl ux of immi-grants from Latin America. What the Church’s authorities think and stand

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I N T R O D U C T I O N 9

for is therefore going to be a very important determinant of the political life of this country in the future.

Outside the United States, the political infl uence of the Catholic Church is so well established as to require little demonstration. Every time a pope makes a public statement, millions of people listen all over the world, and the resonance of these messages in the political life of individual countries is enormous. No other religious organization has the same degree of cap-illary diff usion, bolstered by a highly centralized organizational structure and an availability of economic and political resources comparable to those of a sizeable state.

To examine and discuss the discourse advanced by this institution there-fore constitutes an intellectually and politically worthwhile task in its own right. Even if this will not exhaust the range of diff erent formulations of the discourse of anti-relativism advanced in the contemporary public sphere, it is certainly a necessary step in that direction. Th e analysis conducted in this book can therefore be seen as laying the foundations for a larger project to be continued and expanded in the future, while at the same time engaging with an interlocutor that is both suffi ciently interesting and important to be confronted on its own terms.

THE QUESTION OF THE ABSOLUTE

As I have already pointed out, beyond the strictly political interest of engag-ing with the Vatican’s discourse of anti-relativism in a debate on the condi-tions for the stability and viability of existing democratic regimes, such an endeavor also has a bearing on a number of more theoretical debates that are central to the contemporary discipline of political theory. Before mov-ing on to outline my main argument, I will therefore spell out some of these issues in order to illustrate what is at stake theoretically, as well as politi-cally, in this book.

Th e fi rst major theoretical debate that is at stake in a discussion of the re-lation between relativism, religion, and democracy concerns the philosoph-ical foundation for the legitimacy of democratic regimes, and in particular whether any attempt to address this issue supposes a reference to a notion of the absolute. Th is question has been both posed and contextualized in a compelling manner by Hannah Arendt in her book On Revolution .

Her starting point is the claim that, before modernity, the question con-cerning the foundations for the legitimacy of the political order did not

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really emerge, because it was in a sense already resolved in advance. A hier-archical order of authority was assumed to be implicit in the natural order of things, and this prevented the question concerning the foundations for its legitimacy from being raised in a politically meaningful manner.

At the beginning of modernity, Arendt contends, this assumption began to be called into question. Indeed, for her, the theory of the divine rights of monarchs already constituted a response to this problem, which consisted in making explicit something that had previously been assumed to be im-plicit: that the foundation for the legitimacy of the political order ultimately lay in the sanction received by the transcendent will of God. A conceptual absolute was therefore posited as the foundation for early modern theories of absolute monarchy.

To be sure, modern revolutions emerged out of the rejection of divine right theories. However, precisely for this reason, Arendt suggests that they posed the question of the foundation for the legitimacy of the political or-der even more acutely. Th e solution that was initially adopted—especially in France, but also to some extent in the United States—was to posit a new “absolute,” as a substitute for the one that had been rejected: the collective will of the people in the place of the transcendent will of God.

Arendt’s claim, however, is that this solution posed more problems than it actually solved, because the “people” proved to be an abstract entity, inca-pable of solving the concrete political question of who is to formulate pub-licly binding legislation. As a result, the idea of popular sovereignty opens up the dangerous possibility that a new and even more oppressive form of tyranny may be exercised against the people, in the name of the people itself. Arendt takes this to be at least part of the explanation for the failure of the French Revolution to achieve the stated goal of instituting the condi-tions for political freedom.

Having identifi ed the root of the problem in the attempt to substitute the old (“transcendent”) absolute with a new (“immanent”) version of it, she therefore poses the question of whether it is possible to found a political order without making reference to a notion of the absolute at all. Th e pro-posal she puts forward to address this challenge draws from a specifi c in-terpretation of the experience of the American Revolution, which she reads as having succeeded precisely where the French Revolution failed. Its core lies in a combination of the contractualist idea of a political order founded on reciprocal agreements among its members and the republican idea of a quasi-religious attachment to the founding moment itself.

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I will return to the details of this theory, as well as to its complex relation with the notion of democracy, in the course of the substantive discussion carried out in the ensuing chapters of this book. For the time being, what I am interested in extracting from Arendt is the specifi c problem she poses through her discussion of the vicissitudes of the notion of the absolute. Th is ultimately boils down to a question over whether a political regime can be founded without making reference to the idea of something that does not depend on anything else: in other words, whether political legitimacy requires an absolute foundation, or whether it is possible to do without it.

Th is has been a central question in political theory at least since the be-ginning of the democratic age, and Arendt’s is by no means the only avail-able answer. Indeed, contemporary democratic theories can be classifi ed on the basis of the way in which they attempt to address this question. On the one hand, what I will be calling “rationalist” theories of democracy at-tempt to overcome the problems generated by the voluntaristic conception of the “people” implicit in early theories of popular sovereignty by employ-ing the category of rationality to provide an autonomous set of foundations for the legitimacy of democratic regimes. What could perhaps be called “post-foundationalist” theories of democracy, on the other hand, attempt to circumvent the need for an absolute by questioning the assumption that a democratic order requires a philosophical foundation in the fi rst place.

Th e Catholic discourse of anti-relativism constitutes an alternative to both these strands of contemporary democratic theory. As we have seen, it is neither “anti-absolutist” nor “post-foundational” but resolutely affi rms that democracies can only succeed in establishing a stable political order if they make reference to a set of absolute moral or political values, assumed to be derived from a transcendent source. From the point of view of the question under consideration, this can be seen as a way of challenging the very premise of most contemporary democratic theory by reasserting the need for the reference to a notion of the absolute from within a demo-cratic framework.

Examining this discourse and attempting to respond to it therefore of-fer the opportunity for addressing one of the central questions of contem-porary democratic theory from a diff erent perspective. By comparing the way in which rationalist and post-foundational theories of democracy can succeed in responding to a challenge that is raised for both by the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism, I hope to shed new light on the question of whether democracy can do without the reference to some notion of the

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absolute. A large part of this book will therefore be devoted to a compara-tive analysis of existing democratic theories from the point of view of their capacity to address this question.

THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY

OVERTHROWING ITSELF

Th e second substantive theoretical issue I intend to address through an en-gagement with the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism concerns a paradox that emerges from within the framework of democratic theory itself: that democracy may be overthrown by democratic means. As we have seen, the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism pivots essentially around this possi-bility, because the argument made against a relativistic conception of de-mocracy is that it would not be capable of preventing such an outcome. If, for example, a majority of the people were to be convinced that they ought to relinquish their democratic rights, a relativist would seem to have no grounds for urging a defense of the democratic order against this expres-sion of the people’s will.

It is on these grounds that the Catholic Church claims it is necessary to complement the democratic principle with reference to a set of absolute moral or political values, by suggesting that this is the only way to immu-nize it against its potentially suicidal tendencies. As we have also seen, how-ever, from a longer-term perspective, this argument can be understood as a version of a well-established theme within the tradition of anti-democratic rhetoric. Even Plato suggested that democracy would ultimately convert itself into a form of tyranny through a process whereby the people them-selves relinquish their democratic rights to a demagogue.

Stated formally, the problem seems to be that there is nothing within the democratic principle itself capable of preventing the demos from turning against democracy as such. If this were to happen, democracy would seem to be incapable of sustaining itself, unless it were comple-mented by some additional principle of legitimacy, limiting it from out-side. Th is has obviously been a central problem within democratic theory, at least since the beginning of the democratic age. All the most important theorists of democracy have accordingly had to grapple with it in one form or another, because what is at stake is whether democracy is capable of sustaining itself on its own, or requires being supported by an external set of premises.

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Rousseau was able to circumvent this problem by supposing that the people could never will anything against their own interests. Th is con-viction, however, relied on such a stringent set of assumptions concerning the conditions under which the “general will” was to be formulated that it was never held to be politically pertinent. Especially in the aft ermath of the French Revolution, a large part of the theoretical eff ort of nineteenth-century liberalism consisted precisely in the attempt to limit the power that the people would exercise over themselves in a democratic context, in order to prevent it from slipping out of hand and turning against itself.

Th e problem with this solution to the paradox of popular sovereignty is that it poses a further question concerning the grounds for restricting the power of the people over themselves in the fi rst place: can the limits on the democratic exercise of political power be justifi ed democratically? From this point of view, the problem presented by the possibility of democ-racy overthrowing itself merely appears to be translated into the problem of whether democracy is capable of establishing limits on its own exercise of power, without relying on an external principle of legitimacy.

Th e Catholic Church was by no means the fi rst to claim that the demo-cratic principle ought to be limited for its own sake. However, when it did begin to make this claim, it provided a clear criterion for doing so: the abso-lute will of God was posited as the foundation for a set of natural laws that were supposed to provide guidelines to the democratic power of the people, in the interest of good government and the preservation of the democratic order itself. Nineteenth-century liberals were necessarily ambivalent about this idea, because of their acceptance of the notion of natural law, on the one hand, and their skepticism of the attempt to ground political legitimacy on religious foundations, on the other.

Contemporary political theory remains divided along these lines. On the one hand, there are those who believe that democracy must draw from outside itself the grounds for limiting its own power. Th is strand of thought includes both Catholics and liberals, whose consensus over the idea of nat-ural law has evolved into a specifi c conception of human rights as absolute checks on the democratic exercise of political power. On the other hand, radical democrats insist on the idea that democracy may contain within itself the grounds for limiting its own power. In practice, this strand of thought has revolved around the idea that, instead of being seen as external checks on the democratic exercise of political power, certain fundamental rights must be seen as constitutive of the democratic principle itself.

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Engaging with the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism may therefore also off er the opportunity for addressing this controversy within the fi eld of contemporary democratic theory. By examining diff erent possible re-sponses to it, I will be led to address the question of whether an unfettered conception of democracy is indeed self-defeating, as the Catholic critics contend. By implication, this will allow me to pose the question of whether democracy is capable of establishing adequate limits on its own exercise of power autonomously or whether it requires being complemented by the reference to an external source of legitimacy.

THE ISSUE OF POST-SECULARISM

Finally, a third theoretical issue I will also address through my engagement with the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism concerns the question of the relationship between democracy and religion. Th is is an issue that has re-cently been attracting a lot of attention within the fi eld of political theory, under the banner of the notion of “post-secularism.” At root, the debate stems from the recognition that, contrary to previous expectations, the as-sumption that modernity would coincide with a progressive erosion of re-ligious belief seems to have proved false. On the contrary, religion appears more vital than ever, not only in the private domain of individual belief, but also as a political factor to be reckoned with.

As a reaction to this, political theory has been confronted with the ques-tion of how to come to terms with this “return of the religious” in contem-porary politics. To the extent that political institutions and projects were predicated on the assumption that religion would somehow disappear, or at least be relegated to the marginal domain of the private sphere, it appears necessary to rethink the very foundations of our way of approaching politi-cal problems.

Th e way in which contemporary political theorists have approached this question is however, in my opinion, rather narrow. Essentially, the debate over the notion of post-secularism has revolved around a dispute over the appropriate scope for the expression of religious belief in the democratic public sphere. Contributors to this debate disagree on the extent to which religious arguments ought to be accepted in a democratic context, but the overall way of approaching the question remains the same.

Th e reason I fi nd this way of approaching the question limited is that it fails to address the actual content of the arguments made by religious orga-nizations in the contemporary public sphere. Th us, in a sense, it is as if the

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participants in this debate all adopted the haughty position of referees with respect to the arguments made by religious organizations in the contempo-rary public sphere, without realizing that what is at stake are the basic rules of the game itself.

For, if contemporary political theorists took notice of what religious organizations are actually saying, they would realize that for them post- secularism doesn’t simply mean that the scope for the appropriate expres-sion of religious belief in the public sphere ought to be reevaluated. What is being challenged is the assumption that the foundation for publicly binding legislation ought to be secular in the fi rst place. Th is latter point is some-thing that the political theorists who have taken part in the debate on the notion of post-secularism have largely taken for granted. However, since they do not engage with the actual content of the arguments made by re-ligious organizations, it is not something that has been justifi ed explicitly.

Simply to say that anything else would be incompatible with the demo-cratic principles of freedom and equality is not suffi cient because, as we have seen, the argument made by the Catholic Church through its cri-tique of relativism is precisely that democracy needs to make reference to a transcendent criterion of legitimacy in order to be sustainable on its own terms. From the point of view of the contemporary debate on the notion of post-secularism, the project of discussing the Catholic discourse of anti- relativism can therefore be seen as a way of engaging with the actual content of at least one of the arguments made by several religious organizations in the contemporary public sphere on its own terms, rather than adopting the haughty position of referee with respect to them.

Such a form of engagement between secular and religious points of view is something that has oft en been called for by contemporary theorists of the notion of post-secularism, but it has rarely actually been engaged in. From the point of view of the ongoing debate concerning the relationship between democracy and religion, this book can therefore be seen as a way of responding to that call by actually addressing what some contemporary religious authorities have to say concerning the role and place for religion within a democratic society.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

In light of this exposition of the set of questions this book will attempt to address, I now move on to outline its overall argument. Since the reasoning proceeds in stages, and there is always more than one issue at stake at the

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16 I N T R O D U C T I O N

same time, I will follow the order of the individual chapters, outlining the central argument of each in order to show its place and function within the whole. I hope this will provide the reader with a sort of map of the discus-sion to follow that will help him or her follow the main lines of the reason-ing even when the details begin to come into the forefront.

The History of the Catholic Discourse of Anti-Relativism

Th e fi rst chapter is devoted to a reconstruction of the history of the Catholic discourse of anti-relativism. Its function is therefore to spell out, in a greater degree of detail than could be done up this point, the essential arguments on which this discourse relies, and thereby to clarify the central object of discussion with which the rest of the book is concerned. Th e analysis is based on a study of the corpus of encyclical letters and Vatican councils promulgated by the Catholic Church over the past two centuries. Within this corpus, I have sought to isolate the specifi c occurrences of the term “relativism” and to relate them to the broader set of claims and intellec-tual projects in which they are embedded, in order to establish the specifi c meanings that are progressively attached to the term and the political and intellectual function its critique is made to serve.

Th e central argument advanced is that the term “relativism” has histori-cally served the function of mediating the relationship between Catholi-cism and the two political forms the Church has historically assumed to be distinctive of modernity—liberalism and democracy. Th e term fi rst began to be employed in the second half of the nineteenth century from within the framework of the so-called “intransigentist” doctrine that was devel-oped as a reaction to the French Revolution and the political upheavals of the fi rst half of the century. From the start, therefore, the discourse of anti- relativism was associated with a concern to reassert the political authority of the Catholic Church, as a counterpoint to the perceived destructive ten-dencies of the democratic principle of popular sovereignty and the liberal call for the separation of church and state.

In particular, the function that the term was initially made to serve was to establish a distinction within the political landscape of modernity be-tween the aspects that the Catholic Church could come to terms with and those that it couldn’t. Drawing on the Augustinian conception of the dis-tinction between the “city of God” and the “city of Man,” the Church sought to distinguish between two aspects of modernity: a good one and a bad one.

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