Dissertations / Theses: 'Public reason and religion'

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Ng, Wing Hong. "John Rawls' idea of public reason : religious reason in public justification." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2007. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/782.

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Martin, Andrew Joseph. "Public values? Public virtues? a critique of John Rawls' idea of public reason /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2005. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p068-0575.

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O'Connor, Christopher. "Is there a place for religious conviction in public reason?" Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN) Access this title online, 2004. http://www.tren.com.

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Bespalov, Andrei. "Negotiating religious exemptions: a public reason perspective." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/667498.

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In this thesis I elaborate on three reasons why religious exemptions from generally applicable laws are not publicly justifiable in a liberal democratic society. First, mere claims of the form “God says so and my conscience requires that I obey” do not explicate the rationale behind the legal provisions that they are expected to support. Therefore, such claims cannot be regarded even as pro tanto justificatory reasons for any legal provisions, be it laws or exemptions. Second, no matter how elaborate they are, reasons based on religious faith cannot be allowed in public justification of exemptions because such reasons involve non-negotiable claims about final values, which is incompatible with respect for fellow citizens as equal co-legislators. Third, even if religious arguments are allowed in public justification, carving out religious exemptions from generally applicable laws is still impermissible because it arbitrarily bends the sovereign will of the people to the dictate of religious doctrines.
En esta tesis explico tres razones por las cuales las exenciones religiosas de las leyes de aplicación general no son públicamente justificables en una sociedad democrática liberal. Primero, las meras afirmaciones de la forma "Dios lo dice y mi conciencia requiere que obedezco" no explican las razones detrás de las disposiciones legales que se espera que respalden. Por lo tanto, tales reclamos no pueden considerarse incluso como razones justificativas pro tanto de ninguna disposición legal, ya sean leyes o exenciones. En segundo lugar, no importa cuán elaborados sean, las razones basadas en la fe religiosa no pueden admitirse en la justificación pública de las exenciones porque tales motivos implican reclamos no negociables sobre los valores finales, lo que es incompatible con el respeto de los conciudadanos como colegisladores iguales. En tercer lugar, incluso si los argumentos religiosos son permitidos en la justificación pública, dar las exenciones religiosas de las leyes de aplicación general sigue siendo inadmisible, porque cede arbitrariamente la voluntad soberana del pueblo al dictado de las doctrinas religiosas.

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Birkett, Edward John. "The tensions of modernity : Descartes, reason and God /." View thesis View thesis, 2000. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030411.100355/index.html.

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Hoyeck, Philippe-Antoine. "Religion and Democracy: Political Inclusion and Normative Renewal in the Work of Jürgen Habermas." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/38967.

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Habermas’s work since the turn of the millennium is characterized by an increased interest in the role of religion in politics. One of the most significant theses of this so-called “religious turn” is captured by Habermas’s institutional translation proviso, which calls on citizens to participate in translating religious contributions to public dialogue into a secular language purportedly accessible to all. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the translation proviso with a view both to the political inclusion of religious citizens and to the renewal of the normative resources required for democratic self-determination. By way of a critical engagement with the work of Immanuel Kant and Charles Taylor, I argue that, despite being limited as a solution to both problems, Habermas’s institutional translation proviso is nonetheless preferable to available alternatives. To that extent, I maintain that it is an indispensable feature of democratic politics in pluralist societies.

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Vallier, Kevin. "Liberal Politics and Public Faith: A Philosophical Reconciliation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/201493.

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Political philosophers widely assume that public reason liberalism is hostile to religious contributions to liberal politics. My dissertation argues that this assumption is a mistake. Properly understood, public reason liberalism does not privilege religious or secular reasoning; a compelling conception of public reason liberalism can balance the claims of secular citizens and citizens of faith. I develop a framework that can resolve the tensions between liberalism and faith not only at a theoretical level but in the practical matters of dialogue, public policy, institutional design and constitutional law.

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Naser, Samir. "Religion, reason and war : a study in the ideological sources of political intolerance and bellicosity." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6153/.

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The thesis critically examines the view that associates religion with bellicosity in politics. It is argued that the structural link between religion and the propensity to (political) violence is inaccurate because (1) religious theories of just war can be shown to be tolerant of difference in important instances and thus not belligerent; (2) secular ideology can be shown to be intolerant and bellicose in important cases; and consequently (3) the more important explanatory factor of bellicosity is not necessarily religion but it can be found elsewhere. It is argued that the true source lies in the association of a monistic ideological commitment and the willingness of its political agents to impose it on those with different ideological views. The thesis is a critical and comparative discussion of those who have dealt with ideological violence. It compares interventionist theorists with those who are not in religious tradition and contemporary theory of just war to reveal that the cause of violence is located in an avoidable failure to reconcile religious morality and politics. The thesis adds a new perspective on the debate, calling for a rethink of the relationship between religion and violence in politics. It also proposes greater scepticism about widely held assumptions about the bellicose tendency of religiously motivated political agents, arguing that theorists should rethink the real cause of bellicosity beyond the religious domain and pay closer critical attention to the sources of the belligerence of secular agents.

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Vezzani, Giovanni. "European Muslims and Liberal Citizenship: Reconciliation through Public Reason: The Case of Tariq Ramadan's Citizenship Theory." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2016. https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/228062/4/Thesis.pdf.

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This study investigates the subject of Muslims’ citizenship in contemporary Western European societies from the viewpoint of John Rawls’s political liberalism, in particular in light of the ‘idea of public reason’ [see John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) and the 1997 essay “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” originally published in University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997), 765-807 and now included in Political Liberalism, expanded edition, 440-490]. By its very nature, political liberalism does not prescribe a single model for being Muslim in contemporary Europe. Thus, one may wonder if it is too vague as a point of departure for the analysis. On the other hand, however, here I argue that political liberalism specifies a peculiar evaluative framework that allows citizens to answer questions such as “What is politically at stake when citizens of Muslim faith are publicly presented as permanent aliens in contemporary European societies?”, “On what grounds is such exclusion based?”, and “What requirements can European citizens be reasonably expected to meet?” in a distinctively political way and, ideally, to solve the political and social problems from which those questions spring. In this research, I claim that public reason provides a common discursive platform that establishes the ground for a public political identity and for shared standards for social and political criticism. Together, these two elements solve the two dimensions of the problem of ‘stability for the right reasons’ (in Rawls’s terms) in contemporary European societies, because they secure both the political inclusion of Muslims on an equal footing as citizens and civic assurance that they will remain committed to fair terms of social cooperation. A joint solution of these two apparently conflicting demands of stability for the right reasons (i.e. inclusion and mutual assurance) requires an effort in political reconciliation. After having compared public reason citizenship with two prominent normative alternatives, I will conclude that the former is an adequate ideal conception of citizenship for European societies. Finally, I will apply the justificatory evaluative methodological framework (whose requirements I will specify starting from the idea of public reason itself) to a conception of citizenship elaborated by one of the most renowned Muslim public intellectuals in Europe: Tariq Ramadan. (I justify the choice of this author in sections 2.3 and 6.1). Such an evaluation sheds light on one of the main insights of this research, that is, the idea that public reason makes a decompression of the public space possible: it frees the public space from those forces that would prevent citizens from the possibility of exercising effectively their two moral powers (once more in Rawls’s words, the ‘capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good’) as free equals. In this sense, public reason tries to reconcile ideal political consensus and the fact of reasonable pluralism on a public political ground. I believe that this is the deepest meaning of what Rawls calls ‘reconciliation through public reason’: its aspiration is to reabsorb reasonable pluralism politically without annihilating it.This research is structured in three parts: the first is methodological, the second is reconstructive, and the third is evaluative. Each part is composed of two chapters.In chapter one (“General Framework”), I begin from some empirical observations about the role of perceptions and identities in relation to the issue of Muslims’ citizenship in contemporary Europe. I claim that from this point of view Islam seems to “make problem” in a very specific sense. This does not mean that Islam is a problem, but that Islam is frequently publicly presented and perceived as a problem. This is the background problem from which my work starts. Thus, I explore some dimensions of such a problem (see 1.1). Subsequently, I provide a more specific formulation of the research problem and questions and of the aims of this study. Then, the main research question (Q) is stated in these terms: Which ideal conception of citizenship should provide the common normative perspective in contemporary Western European societies, which are characterised by both demands of inclusion of Muslims and the need for solving a ‘problem of mutual assurance’ [on which, see in particular Paul Weithman, Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)] concerning citizens’ commitment to shared terms of social cooperation, so that those societies can be stable for the right reasons? In order to answer this question, I also specify three sub-questions that I call respectively Q1, Q2, and Q3 (see 1.2).In chapter two (“Toward a Justificatory Evaluative Political Theory”), I firstly try to frame the problem of public justification within Rawls’s political liberalism (see 2.1). I then consider a specific approach to the question of Muslim citizenship in liberal democracies which can be adopted from a Rawlsian perspective: namely, reasoning from conjecture (see 2.2). Finally, I explain my own approach (which I call justificatory evaluative political theory) by means of comparison with the method of reasoning from conjecture (see 2.3). In presenting the evaluative framework specified from a political liberal standpoint, I point out three political liberal evaluative requirements: the reciprocity requirement (RR), the consistency requirement (CR), and the civility requirement (CiR).Chapter three (“What is Public Reason?”) deals with the history of the notion of public reason from Kant to Rawls and its enunciation within Rawls’s work (see 3.1 and 3.2 respectively). In doing so, I also identify three specifications for the three political liberal evaluative requirements considered in the second chapter. Furthermore, in chapter three I also unpack CR in three different dimensions (PR1, PR2, and PR3).Chapter four (“Public Reason and Religion. Reinterpreting the Duty of Civility”) completes the reconstructive stage by analysing Rawls’s ‘wide view’ of public reason and two major lines of objection to it (see 4.1). After having discussed such criticisms, I then introduce my own interpretation of the ‘proviso,’ which is structured around a two-level (or bifurcate) model of the ‘duty of civility’ (see 4.2).Chapter five (“Reconciliation through Public Reason: Justificatory Evaluative Political Theory between Modelling and Application”) bridges the second and the third part, that is, the reconstructive and the evaluative stage respectively. In the first section of the chapter, I summarise the political liberal evaluative requirements developed in the second part. In doing this, my purpose is to present my justificatory evaluative model of public reason citizenship (see 5.1). In the second section, I firstly argue that a conception of citizenship grounded in public reason is not only possible in existing European societies, but also preferable if compared with alternative conceptions (I consider liberal multiculturalism and Cécile Laborde’s critical republicanism [Cécile Laborde, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)]) with reference to the problem under scrutiny in this research. In conclusion, I show that public reason citizenship is able to solve the theoretical problem and the main research question mentioned above: Which ideal conception of citizenship should provide the common normative perspective in contemporary Western European societies, which are characterised by both demands of inclusion of Muslims and the need for solving a problem of mutual assurance concerning citizens’ commitment to shared terms of social cooperation, so that those societies can be stable for the right reasons? In the final part of chapter five, I try to demonstrate that public reason citizenship can both include Muslim citizens and solve the assurance problem because it provides both shared standards for political criticism and a common political identity on the basis of which citizens politically recognise one another as free equals. If my argument succeeds, then public reason citizenship not only could but also should be adopted as the ideal conception of citizenship in European societies (see 5.2).In the sixth chapter (“Tariq Ramadan’s European Muslims and Public Reason”) I apply the evaluative framework based on public reason to the conception of citizenship for Muslims in Europe developed by Tariq Ramadan. (According to a principle introduced in chapter two which I call the “plausibility principle” PP, I argue that Ramadan’s theory of citizenship can be plausibly presented as a “European Muslim” approach to the issue of citizenship, see 6.1). The purpose of such an evaluative work is twofold. Firstly, it aims at examining whether and how the idea of public reason accounts for a version of European citizenship for Muslims coming from Muslims themselves. Secondly, it aims at disclosing whether what such a Muslim conception of citizenship in Europe says about the two dimensions of ‘stability for the right reasons’ of the system of social cooperation (namely, inclusion and ‘mutual assurance’) is consistent with the provisions of public reason citizenship (see 6.2-6.5).
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
N.B. 1) Le lieu de défense de la thèse en cotutelle est ROME (Luiss Guido Carli)2) L'affiliation du co-promoteur de la thèse en cotutelle (Sebastiano Maffettone) est: LUISS Guido Carli
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Hannam, Patricia M. "What should religious education aim to achieve? : an investigation into the purpose of religious education in the public sphere." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/24013.

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This thesis is concerned with the question of what religious education should aim to achieve in the public sphere, and from that comes an interest in what is it that the teacher of religious education should aim to do. My enquiry is located, theoretically as well as conceptually, in the sphere of education. It is an educational study into religious education and situated in what can be termed a ‘Continental construction’ of educational research. I identify that since the inception of religious education in public schools in England, persistent assumptions have been made about both religion and education. I show how this has led, in my view, to conceptualisations of religious education which have been, and continue to be, incomplete. The central chapters of my thesis consider first religion and then education. This allows me to introduce my theoretical base, which is especially but not exclusively drawn from the work of Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt. I develop an argument suggesting that by also understanding religion existentially as faith, rather than as only belief or practice, will open new ways of considering the role of religious education in the public sphere. This is alongside an argument I develop with Arendt for education being conceptualised as bringing the child to action rather than to reason. This thesis argues for a broader understanding of religion, and therefore what it means to live a religious life, in religious education than has previously been considered. I bring this broader way of understanding what it means to live a religious life together with my argument for conceptualising education as bringing the child to action. This enables me to make a new proposal for what religious education should aim to achieve in the public sphere.

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Scott, David Charles. "THE FREE EXERCISE CLAUSE, MINORITY FAITHS, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF RELIGIOUS INDEPENDENCE AFTER RAWLSIAN LIBERALISM." UKnowledge, 2018. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/philosophy_etds/21.

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The conversation to which my dissertation belongs is that which preoccupied John Rawls in Political Liberalism, namely: (1) how it is possible that a religiously and morally pluralistic culture like ours lives cooperatively from one generation to the next, and (2) The extent to which religious or moral convictions are appropriate bases for political action. My three-essay dissertation is about aspects of this investigation that affect minority or non-mainstream religious and cultural groups, since legal institutions, and theoretical models of them (such as Rawls’s and Ronald Dworkin’s) are in many ways ill-suited to accommodate their ways of life. In the first essay, I consider Rawlsian obstacles to developing a religiously impartial conception of “substantial burdens” on religious free exercise within First Amendment jurisprudence. I apply this question to federal cases in which Native American tribes sought to prevent government uses of land that would be, they claimed, catastrophic to their cultural survival and all citizens’ safety. I propose a jurisprudential model that places a heavier burden on judges to listen and perhaps translate such views, counting non-mainstream forms of reasoning as legally cognizable and sufficient to create a prima facie constitutional case, where current models would not. In the second essay, because few conceptions of justice require that law be cognizable and justifiable to everyone, I review liberal conceptions of what makes a cultural group or person “irrational” or “unreasonable.” With a focus on public education, and cases like Wisconsin v. Yoder and Mozert v. Hawkins in mind, I argue that approaches to “unreasonableness” from the likes of Rawls, Charles Larmore, Jonathan Quong, and Stephen Macedo are well-intentioned but unduly restrictive, insofar as they tend to, by definitional fiat, exclude citizens who embody widely recognized civic virtues, or who at least pose no threat to a stable democracy. In doing so, I argue that they instantiate the sort of social circumstance that Herbert Marcuse calls one-dimensionality. In the third essay, I consider whether a meaningful and practical model for “group rights,” which would include the right of peoples to preserve their cultures, can be developed within American jurisprudence. This argument is largely inspired by a paper from political scientist Vernon van Dyke, and considers overcoming challenges to this notion wrought by contemporary forms of liberalism and vehement public disagreement over recent, pertinent Supreme Court decisions involving associational rights, like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Citizens United v. FEC.

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Ng, L. S. "Just public reason." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2013. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1401925/.

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This dissertation looks at the linked issues of justification and public reason – under what conditions do political authorities count as legitimate, and what is the appropriate mode of reasoning together in the public sphere? The main contender in the field currently is Rawls’s political liberalism. His conception of justification gives a key role to the justifiability of political power to each citizen, based on shared (because mutually acceptable) reasons. This approach to justification affects how we reason in the public sphere – in discussing certain fundamental issues, Rawlsian public reason requires limiting our reasons to public ones (viz., those which others could reasonably endorse), and bracketing those based on disputed conceptions of the good. How we think about justification thus has concrete implications for how we live together in political society. Rawls’s political liberalism is commonly pitted against comprehensive liberalism. The disagreement tends to be cast as being about comprehensive liberals rejecting the need for justifiability. I argue that this is mistaken, and that Rawls shares more than we might think with the comprehensive liberal. Taking Raz as the modern champion of comprehensive liberalism, I show that both Rawls and Raz are deeply committed to justifiability, and trace the disagreement between the two to a metaphysical dispute about how to conceive of the project of justifying the implementation of political principles. In light of their shared commitment to justifiability, the question becomes whether justifiability requires shared reasons. I propose a heuristic reading of Rawls’s requirement of mutually acceptable reasons, which explains how Rawls’s and Raz’s views on justification can be brought together without needing to bracket the truth of the principles of justice. This proposed reconciliation leads to a mode of reasoning in the public sphere that does not require setting aside non-public reasons in order to proceed.

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Reilly-Cooper, Rebecca. "Emotions and public reason." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.698184.

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Isherwood, Jack Robert. "Re-thinking public reason." Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2015. https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/download/125dc735ff6bb740e78f2412d862b1077c89fe0251dbadff751ddc97b712f305/2645036/Re_thinking_Public_Reason_FINAL.pdf.

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This thesis critically examines the concepts of civil discourse and civil disobedience expounded by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. I claim that their accounts fail to consider the impacts of epistemic injustices, which lead to the unfair dismissal of the political claims made by marginalized communities in the political realm, and the impacts of social practices of ignorance which render the contestation of social and political injustices extremely difficult. Consequently, I develop an account of civil discourse and civil disobedience inspired by feminist epistemological theory. I claim that this framework is more attuned to inequalities of epistemic status, leading to my argument that civil discourse should be re-thought as a relationship of trust which requires interlocutors to fulfil particular epistemic responsibilities towards each other. I further argue that this re-conceptualization of civil discourse allows us to transcend a dominant dichotomous interpretation of the concept in the current academic literature. This discourse either claims that civility is an essential political practice in the face of deep political and moral disagreement or that civil discourse is simply a means to stifle contentious political struggles and to solidify the political dominance of privileged social individuals, groups and communities. Furthermore, I also claim that civil disobedience should be re-conceived as a political practice which challenges patterns of vested social ignorance regarding oppressive social, economic and political arrangements while also contesting epistemic injustices. I develop this argument by critically appraising the theories of civil disobedience proffered by John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Like their theories of public reason, I maintain that they fail to consider the operation of oppressive epistemic norms, thereby severely limiting the insights of their accounts. Consequently, I develop a different set of normative criteria for analysing acts of civil disobedience which adequately considers the impact of oppressive epistemic norms while also proffering an explanation of how civil discourse is reconcilable with coercive political disobedience. Ultimately, therefore, I hope to illustrate that extending feminist epistemological insights into discussions of civil disobedience and civil discourse offers a fruitful way of exploring the broader connection between persuasion and coercion in contemporary liberal democracies.

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Pitt, Jamaal Boxill Bernard R. "Excluding inclusive public reason." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1915.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008.
Title from electronic title page (viewed Dec. 11, 2008). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Philosophy." Discipline: Philosophy; Department/School: Philosophy.

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Jayaram, Athmeya. "Public Reason and Private Bias." Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13422411.

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Public reason theorists argue that it is permissible for the state to enforce political norms, such as laws or constitutional principles, when those norms are acceptable to ?reasonable people.? Reasonable people are neither actual people, with all their flaws, nor are they perfect people; they are rather a partially idealized group ? realistic in some ways and idealized in others. Each of the major public reason theorists ? John Rawls, Gerald Gaus, Jonathan Quong, Joshua Cohen ? idealizes reasonable people to a different degree, but they all share two claims: 1) Reasonable people hold diverse views of the good life. Nevertheless, 2) Reasonable people can all accept basic liberal political norms grounded in freedom and equality. My dissertation begins by arguing that theorists are not free to choose any level of idealization, but are constrained in this choice by the justifications of their theories. In particular, idealization is constrained by one essential part of public reason?s justification, which I call the ?diversity argument.? The diversity argument explains the first element of reasonable people: why do they disagree about the good? The answers, I argue, attributes certain realistic qualities and tendencies to reasonable people, which therefore constrains how much we can idealize them. In chapters on the major public reason theorists, I argue that they all offer a diversity argument that does not match the level of idealization that they employ. As a result, they are unable to show that liberal norms are acceptable to reasonable people, appropriately idealized. In the final chapter, I argue that the mismatch in these theories goes even deeper, which we can see when we ask why we must accommodate disagreement at all. The answers that philosophers have given us ? reasonable disagreement is the inevitable result of human reasoning, human psychology, or free conditions ? also apply to irrational disagreement. Irrational influences such as implicit bias and motivated reasoning are also inevitable results of who we are and how we live, which means we must accommodate these realistic tendencies in political justification. So, if public reason theories must now accommodate disagreement among reasonable-but-sometimes-irrational people, what could be acceptable to all such people? I conclude by suggesting a new direction for public reason theories. People who disagree about the good life, but recognize their common biases, can still justify their views to each other by supporting institutions that mitigate those biases, such as non-discrimination laws and deliberative institutions. This requires a new kind of social contract theory ? one that is grounded in the shared recognition of our limitations, rather than our shared reasons.

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Tavares, Inês Ferreira Dias. "Razões religiosas na esfera pública: uma análise teórica e empírica da atuação pentecostal no Poder Legislativo brasileiro." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2012. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=7722.

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Os marcos da modernidade a secularização e a laicidade tem sido hoje postos em xeque por crescentes movimentos religiosos. As fronteiras entre Estado e religião estão sendo desafiadas e redefinidas. Dentro dessa renovação, coloca-se a questão da possibilidade ou não do uso de razões religiosas na esfera pública. O debate ganha importância no Brasil na medida em que o Pentecostalismo, ramo de Protestantismo em rápida expansão, fez afluir aos quadros do Congresso Nacional um número sem precedentes de candidatos eleitos graças à filiação religiosa. A análise teórica e empírica do uso de razões religiosas e da política pentecostal pretende jogar luz à questão, tendo sempre como paradigma, limite e orientação o fundamento último da liberdade religiosa: a dignidade da pessoa humana.
The hallmarks of modernity secularism and laicitë have now been called into question by growing religious movements. The boundaries between state and religion are being challenged and redefined. Within this renewal, the question about using or not religious reasons in the public sphere arises. The debate has great importance in Brazil insofar as Pentecostalism, a rapidly expanding branch of Protestantism, has flocking to the tables of the National Congress an unprecedented number of candidates elected because of their religious affiliation. The theoretical and empirical analyzes of the use of religious reasons and of the Pentecostal politics intends to shed light to the issue, using always as a paradigm, limits and guidance, the ultimate foundation of religious freedom: the dignity of the human person.

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Schwartzman, Micah Jacob. "Towards a defence of public reason." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270472.

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Senchaudhuri, Esha. "A critique of pure public reason." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/314/.

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Contemporary political liberalism defends the view that any legitimate law ought to be justified to those reasonable citizens subject to it. A standard way in which to accomplish this task is to construct a set of public reasons, comprised of constitutional essentials and public democratic values, which are then used to justify all political mandates. The dissertation begins with a criticism of this process of justification for outcomes of legitimate procedures of public decision-making. It argues that given how reasons contribute to judgment formation, it is highly optimistic to assume that reasonable consent on procedures of collective decision-making correspond to the justifiability of procedural outcomes. Instead, I argue for an ideal of legitimate decision-making which enables each citizen to assume a threshold level of personal responsibility for all political decisions made by the political collective. Integrating responsibility into a theory of liberal legitimacy requires a reformulation of the rules of public justification. I argue that citizens concerned with making responsible political decisions must be allowed to justify their political positions through both reasonable judgments as well as sympathetic judgments such as compassion for those who live with disability and mercy towards the criminally motivated. The notion of sympathy, as formulated by David Hume and expanded by Adam Smith, provides an account of how individuals’ ethical evaluations are affected by their ability to be in fellow-feeling with other people. A substantial portion of my doctoral thesis considers the situations in which a private judgment couched in sympathetic terms can meet political liberalism’s demands of publicity and reciprocity.

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Mang, Fan Lun Franz. "Beyond public reason liberalism : moderate perfectionism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:154eaccf-40fe-439c-b0b7-158e2e79d675.

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Should the state undertake the task of promoting the good life? Perfectionism is the idea that the state should promote the good life. Many philosophers have answered in the negative to the above question, so they reject perfectionism. This thesis aims to develop a moderate version of perfectionism, and seeks to defend it against several influential anti-perfectionist arguments, in particular the argument from public reason liberalism. I begin by examining public reason liberalism. John Rawls, Gerald Gaus, Martha Nussbaum, and many other political philosophers endorse public reason liberalism. They believe that state coercion should be publicly justified, and that perfectionism cannot meet the requirements of public reason. I argue that public reason is the object of reasonable rejection, so it cannot be realised in actual politics through state intervention in a publicly justified way. In addition, I argue that respect for persons is not a reliable basis for public reason. Thus we have good reason to reject public reason liberalism. Then I develop a moderate version of perfectionism. I contend that the state should promote the good life through supporting a wide variety of perfectionist goods, and that it should do so by using moderate measures and by appealing to perfectionist judgements of a moderate kind. Some anti-perfectionists consider that perfectionism would be unnecessary when a fair distribution of resources is realised. Yet a fair distribution of resources is not foreseeable. I propose several kinds of moderate perfectionist policies that are of great importance for any neo-liberal society where the distribution of resources is far from fair, and these policies are ultimately important for the good life, not only for remedying unfairness. Contrary to the positions of many liberal philosophers including Ronald Dworkin and Jeremy Waldron, I argue that moderate perfectionism should not be rejected on grounds of paternalism and unfairness to different conceptions of the good.

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Manning, Colin Ph D. "Issue Individuation in Public Reason Liberalism." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu161675417735823.

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Murray, Kimberly D. "Signs and Wonders: Reason and Religion in Social Turmoil." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=miami1082483917.

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23

Beynon, Graham. "Isaac Watts : reason, passion and the revival of religion." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3614.

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Isaac Watts was a dissenting minister, theologian, philosopher, hymn writer and poet in the first half of the eighteenth century. Despite exercising significant influence over dissent and beyond he remains an understudied figure. In particular there has been little attempt to find coherent patterns of thought in his works. We examine Watts' view of the role of reason and the place of passion in the Christian life. These are shown to be foundational themes in his thought. In particular they lie behind his more practical works which attempted to bring reformation and revival to the church of his day. On reason Watts in many ways followed Enlightenment thought as expressed by John Locke. However he departed in significant ways which echo his Puritan background. As a result Watts is shown to be an ‘Enlightenment Puritan' on this topic. On passion Watts accepted some of the view of the new sentimentalist thinkers but again continued significant elements of Puritan thought. Hence on both these areas Watts is shown to hold a modified Puritan position, modified that is in the light of the new thinking of his day. Watts' position on these foundational topics is then shown to lie behind his attempts to revive religion in the areas of preaching, praise and prayer. Watts' distinct views on these practical topics are shown to flow directly from his view of reason and passion. Hence in a time of increasing rationalism and sentimentality in the church Watts attempted to bring revival because of his modified Puritan views on reason and passion. As a result Watts' thought is shown to have a far greater degree of consistency than has been previously appreciated. It is not claimed that Watts has been relocated but that we have located him far more precisely.

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Carmel, Elad. ""When reason is against a man, a man will be against reason" : Hobbes, deism, and politics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d0df094a-ba7f-484c-aa30-ca1dca2eeaa7.

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This thesis explores the relationship between Thomas Hobbes and English deism. It seeks to show that Hobbes's work had a significant influence upon subsequent deists, namely, Charles Blount, John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Anthony Collins. The thesis shows that these deists were influenced by certain distinctively Hobbesian anticlerical ideas, such as his biblical criticism, his materialism and determinism, his scepticism towards present revelation, and more. The deists, who were motivated by a similar form of anticlericalism, found in Hobbes a particularly resourceful ally. Furthermore, this thesis explores how some of Hobbes's political ideas influenced the deists: particularly his concerns regarding the dangerous role that priestly interests played in society and the instability that they generated. This thesis thus argues that Hobbes can be seen as a major influence upon English deism. Secondly, it offers an examination of Hobbes's concepts of God and reason. It shows that whilst Hobbes's accounts of God and reason were multilayered and at times perhaps underdeveloped, they contained significant elements that anticipated the later positions of the deists. Finally, this thesis argues that for Hobbes, the rational potential of humankind, implanted by God, could be cultivated and fulfilled once peace and security are guaranteed. Thus, this thesis attempts to recover some of the more utopian aspects of Hobbes's thought. It concludes that both Hobbes and the deists were part of a project of enlightenment, but one which was not aimed against religion as such. They attempted to liberate natural reason from the darkness of corrupt clerics and their false doctrines: this was an anticlerical enlightenment that was partly initiated by Hobbes and developed significantly by the deists.

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McClinch, Christopher C. "Reason, Imagination, and Universalism in C. S. Lewis." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/10111.

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Though he is generally known as one of the key voices in conservative Christianity, this thesis demonstrates that C. S. Lewis was in fact far more liberal in his view of salvation than many would expect. Lewis argued for a universalist interpretation of salvation, in which the death of Christ opened up the possibility of salvation for all of humanity, not merely those people who could be identified as Christians. Lewis did believe that people could and did choose Hell over Heaven, however, and still saw evangelism as the duty of every Christian. All of Lewis's writings are in a sense evangelistic, and all attempt to effect the conversion of the reader in the same manner in which Lewis himself was first drawn to Christianity: by baptizing the imagination in the hope that the reason will follow.
Master of Arts

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El-Tobgui, Carl Sharif. "Reason, revelation & the reconstitution of rationality: Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya's (d. 728/1328) «Dar' Ta 'ārud al- 'Aql wa-l-Naql» or "The refutation of the contradiction of reason and revelation"." Thesis, McGill University, 2013. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=116885.

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This thesis explores the broad outlines of Ibn Taymiyya's attempt to resolve the "conflict" between reason and revelation in late medieval Islam in his 10-volume, 4,000-page magnum opus, Dar’ ta‘arud al-‘aql wa-l-naql, or The Refutation of the Contradiction of Reason and Revelation, by breaking down and systematically reconstituting the basic categories in terms of which the debate was framed. The perceived conflict between revelation and reason centered on the interpretation of a number of Divine Attributes, considered rationally indefensible by the philosophers and the Mu‘tazila because their affirmation would involve an unacceptable assimilation (tashbih) of God to created beings. This stance culminated in the Ash‘arite theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's "Universal Law" (qanun kulli), which stated that whenever a conflict between revelation and reason arises, the dictates of reason must be given priority and revelation interpreted metaphorically through ta’wil. Ibn Taymiyya counters these claims with a comprehensive response, attacking the logical integrity of the Universal Law but also articulating a textually self-sufficient hermeneutic and devising a radical reformulation of the philosophers' ontology, particularly their realist theory of universals which has resulted in a chronic confusion between what exists logically in the mind and what exists ontologically in external reality. This in turn allows him to elaborate a new epistemology based on three principal avenues for gaining knowledge, namely, "hiss," or sense perception; "khabar," or the transmission of reports (particularly revelation); and "‘aql," or rational knowledge (both innate and inferred). These sources of knowledge are corroborated by the mechanism of tawatur and under-girded by an expanded notion of the fitra. The disparate elements of Ibn Tay-miyya's theory of language, his ontology, and his epistemology eventually converge into a synthesis meant to accommodate a robust and rationally defensible affirmationism vis-à-vis the Divine Attributes while yet avoiding the tashbih generally presumed by the later tradition to be inevitably entailed thereby.
Cette thèse se voue à une exploration des grandes lignes du projet d'Ibn Taymiyya dans son chef-d'œuvre en dix volumes et 4 000 pages, le Dar’ ta‘arud} al-‘aql wa-l-naql, ou La réfutation de la contradiction entre la raison et la révélation. Cette œuvre a pour but de résoudre une fois pour toutes le « conflit » entre la raison et la révélation dans l'Islam médiéval tardif au moyen d'une déconstruction et d'une reconstruction systématiques des catégories structurelles du débat. Le prétendu conflit entre la révélation et la raison portait surtout sur l'interprétation de certains des attributs divins jugés irrationnels par les philosophes et les Mu’tazilites, qui y voyaient une assimilation inadmissible de Dieu aux choses créées (tashbih). Cette prise de position culmine dans l'élaboration de la « loi universelle » (qanun kulli) par le théologien ash‘arite Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. Cette « loi » oblige à privilégier les préceptes et les conclusions de la raison en tout cas de conflit entre celle-ci et la révélation coranique, dont les versets s'en retrouvent réduits, par le biais du ta’wil, à une lecture métaphorique. La riposte d'Ibn Taymiyya se révèle exhaustive et globale. Elle a pour effet non seulement de vicier l'intégrité logique de la Loi universelle, mais elle donne lieu également à l'élaboration d'une herméneutique ancrée sur le texte même de la révélation tout en permettant une refonte radicale de l'ontologie des philosophes, surtout de leur théorie réaliste des concepts universels qui avait abouti à une confusion chronique entre ce qui tient à l'existence mentale logique et ce qui relève de la réalité ontologique externe. Cette approche permet à notre auteur de mettre au point une nouvelle épistémologie empirique qui met en valeur trois voies principales d'acquisition de la connaissance, à savoir, le « hiss », ou la perception sensorielle; le « khabar », ou la transmission de récits (surtout en guise de révélation); et le « ‘aql », ou la connaissance rationnelle (autant innée qu'inférentielle). Ces sources de la connaissance sont corroborées à leur tour par le mécanisme du tawatur et sous-tendues par une conception étendue de la fitra. Les divers éléments mis en avant par Ibn Taymiyya en matière de linguistique, d'ontologie et d'épistémologie s'entremêlent pour s'élever à une synthèse permettant d'adhérer à un affirmationisme stricte et rationellement défendable à l'égard des attributs divins tout en évitant le tashbih qui, dans la perspective générale de la tradition ultérieure, devait inévitablement en découler.

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Birkett, Edward John, University of Western Sydney, of Arts Education and Social Sciences College, and School of Humanities. "The tensions of modernity : Descartes, reason and God." THESIS_CAESS_HUM_Birkett_E.xml, 2000. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/399.

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Reason, material objects, God, mind and body are all interrelated in Descartes' philosophy. The misapprehension of one will lead to misunderstandings in all of them. They are bound together by being part of the one God given secure universe. This allows Descartes to put forward the understanding of the universe as being one in which rational science was possible and indubitable certainty achievable. Because they are all organically related in the one meaningful system, the essential natures of these things which Descartes discovers flow into one another in their actual existence in the world. Accepting the picture of the universe as a rational place where certainty is possible, is part of what defines much of modernity as modernity. Since this is one way of ensuring certainty, modernity demands that a thing's essence should reflect its manner of existence. However this leads to modernity demanding of Descartes' philosophy that it reflect this same structure. Modernity then reads Descartes as trying to present such a picture, and consequently finds that Descartes' arguments do not work. Because Descartes' universe is God's universe, he is able to offer to humanity a very strong form of autonomy. But modernity prefers to have a less powerful form of autonomy which is independent of God, but which makes itself a servant to nature and the community of reason. This is a result of the price of entry into the rational universe through Descartes' method of doubt. As a consequence of modernity's reworking of Descartes' understanding of autonomy, and their demand that a thing's essence should exactly reflect its mode of existence, irreducible tensions develop in modernity. These are particularly obvious in the case of the relationship between science, reason and God, and between the mind and the body. This thesis addresses these tensions
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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28

Cothran, Martin. "Reason and imagination G.K. Chesterton's case for Christianity /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1986. http://www.tren.com.

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29

O'Connell, Luke Patrick. "Public reason vs. rhetoric John Rawls and Aristotle /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2004. http://www.tren.com.

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30

Taylor, Anthony David. "Expressing our fallibility : a conception of public reason." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7c4b5662-7fa8-4908-a659-5f783c1ff9ad.

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This thesis is about the reasonable agreement principle, a principle which holds that the exercise of political power must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens in order to be morally legitimate. Though this principle has become popular in contemporary political philosophy, it has been formulated and defended in a variety of often conflicting ways. I argue first that a successful defence of the principle will have to meet three conditions. First, it must explain who reasonable citizens are. Second, it must offer a compelling a rationale for tying the legitimacy of the exercise of political power to what these citizens accept. Third, it must show that the rules or principles that would be acceptable to reasonable citizens are not implausible. In the first part of the thesis, I examine some of the most significant ways in which the principle has been formulated and defended, and argue that none meets these three conditions. In the second part of the thesis, I develop an account of the reasonable agreement principle which can meet these three conditions. I argue that reasonable citizens should be understood as agents in circumstances where their powers of moral judgment operate free of distortions, offer an account of what these circumstances consist in, and suggest that a compelling rationale for the principle can be given when they are understood in this way. I then go on to consider what citizens in such circumstances would accept, arguing that they would accept principles of political morality that express a commitment to the fact that they are fallible choosers of their final ends.

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Adams, David Richard. "Religion and reason in the thought of Richard Overton, the Leveller." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2003. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251867.

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32

Greenlee, Patricia Annettee. "Separation of Church and State: A Diffusion of Reason and Religion." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2006. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2237.

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The evolution of America's religious liberty was birthed by a separate church and state. As America strides into the twenty first century the origin of separation of church and state continues to be a heated topic of debate. Conservatives argue that America's version of separation of church and state was birthed by principles of Christian liberty. Liberals reject this idea maintaining that the evolution of a separate church and state in America was based on enlightened thinking that demanded rational men should have religious liberty. The best way to achieve this was by erecting a wall of separation between church and state. Sources used in this study include The Letters of Roger Williams, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and the Diary of Isaac Backus, along with many other primary and secondary sources. This study concludes that America’s religious freedom, conceptualized in its separate church and state is a creation of both reason and religion.

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Maclure, Jocelyn. "Disenchantment and democracy : public reason under conditions of pluralism." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.289512.

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34

Hughes, Patrick Wallace. "Antidotes to Deism| A reception history of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason", 1794--1809." Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3573259.

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In the Anglo-American world of the late 1790s, Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (published in two parts) was not well received, and his volumes of Deistic theology were characterized as extremely dangerous. Over seventy replies to The Age of Reason appeared in Britain and the United States. It was widely criticized in the periodical literature, and it garnered Paine the reputation as a champion of irreligion.

This dissertation is a study of the rhetoric of refutation, and I focus on the replies to The Age of Reason that were published during Paine's lifetime (d. 1809). I pay particular attention to the ways that the replies characterized both Paine and The Age of Reason, and the strategies that his respondents employed to highlight and counteract its “poison.” To effectively refute The Age of Reason, Paine's respondents had to contend not only with his Deistic arguments, but also with his international reputation, his style of writing, and his intended audience. I argue that much of the driving force behind the controversy over The Age of Reason stems from the concern that it was geared towards the “uneducated masses” or the “lower orders.” Much of the rhetoric of the respondents therefore reflects their preoccupation with Paine's “vulgar” style, his use of ridicule and low-humor, his notoriety, and the perception that The Age of Reason was being read by common people in cheap editions. For Paine's critics, when the masses abandon their Christianity for Deism, bloody anarchy is the inevitable result, as proven by the horrors of the French Revolution.

This dissertation argues that while Paine's respondents were concerned about what he wrote in The Age of Reason, they were more concerned about how he wrote it, for whom he wrote it, and that Paine wrote it. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas's theories of the bourgeois public sphere, I focus on how respondents to The Age of Reason reveal not only their concerns and anxieties over the book, but also what their assumptions about authorial legitimacy and expectations about qualified reading audiences say about late eighteenth century print culture.

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35

Birkett, Edward John. "The tensions of modernity : Descartes, reason and God." Thesis, View thesis View thesis, 2000. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/399.

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Reason, material objects, God, mind and body are all interrelated in Descartes' philosophy. The misapprehension of one will lead to misunderstandings in all of them. They are bound together by being part of the one God given secure universe. This allows Descartes to put forward the understanding of the universe as being one in which rational science was possible and indubitable certainty achievable. Because they are all organically related in the one meaningful system, the essential natures of these things which Descartes discovers flow into one another in their actual existence in the world. Accepting the picture of the universe as a rational place where certainty is possible, is part of what defines much of modernity as modernity. Since this is one way of ensuring certainty, modernity demands that a thing's essence should reflect its manner of existence. However this leads to modernity demanding of Descartes' philosophy that it reflect this same structure. Modernity then reads Descartes as trying to present such a picture, and consequently finds that Descartes' arguments do not work. Because Descartes' universe is God's universe, he is able to offer to humanity a very strong form of autonomy. But modernity prefers to have a less powerful form of autonomy which is independent of God, but which makes itself a servant to nature and the community of reason. This is a result of the price of entry into the rational universe through Descartes' method of doubt. As a consequence of modernity's reworking of Descartes' understanding of autonomy, and their demand that a thing's essence should exactly reflect its mode of existence, irreducible tensions develop in modernity. These are particularly obvious in the case of the relationship between science, reason and God, and between the mind and the body. This thesis addresses these tensions

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36

Waita, Jonathan Mutinda. "The role of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas's epistemology." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2004. http://www.tren.com.

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37

Van, Rooy Paul. "The Challenge of Public Reason: Justified Property Rights and Disability." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:107978.

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Thesis advisor: David Rasmussen
When is political power legitimate? Public reasons liberals argue that political power is legitimate only when it is supported by reasons drawn from principles of justice that each citizen could endorse. The most well known model for identifying whether a principle satisfies this requirement is John Rawls’ idea of an overlapping consensus. Typical interpretations of the idea of overlapping consensus hold that it expresses a necessary conceptual condition of any reasonable conception of justice. Against this ahistorical view, my analysis shows that Rawls’ mature account of overlapping consensus rests on a particular historicist thesis that liberal institutions are necessary for social cooperation given the presumption of moral and religious pluralism. The authority of public reasoning ultimately rests on a widespread consensus about the necessity of liberal institutions, rather than on a consensus on any particular conception of justice. The limits of public reason, on my analysis, are fixed first and foremost by liberal institutions. Given the prominent historical role of classical liberalism in specifying and defending liberal institutions, one might suppose that classical liberal conceptions of justice would have a central place in any consensus that defines the boundaries of public reasoning. I argue that this appearance is misleading. The work of scholars in disability studies show that conceptions of justice must be sufficiently sensitive to the unique needs and interests of citizens with disabilities. I argue that applying these insights to the idea of public reason shows that classical liberalism can satisfy the requirements of public reason only by unjustly ignoring the perspective of disabled citizens I show that Rawls’ model of public reason rests on a nuanced and historically grounded view of the consensus circumscribing public reason. Further, it shows that a historically conditioned concept of public reason and political legitimacy need not imply a drastic retreat from central egalitarian commitments, despite initial appearances to the contrary
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Philosophy

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38

McNicholl, Stephen Peter. "Reason, religion, and Plato: Orphism and the mathematical mediation between being and becoming." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Philosophy, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/4634.

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What does religion have to do with philosophy? More specifically, what does a long-abandoned 6th c. BC Greek mystery religion have to do with Plato, to whose intellectual contribution all the rest of western philosophy is sometimes said to be footnotes? I argue that the role played by mathematics in the philosophy of Plato is integrally influenced by Orphism. Plato transformed the distinctive Orphic anthropological, eschatological, and theogonic concepts into a philosophical system. His work largely secured the cultural conditions necessary for the very practice of philosophy. In Part One I delve into just how different culture was before Plato from what it must be like in order for there to be philosophy. I consider Orphism as a novel mythological form, synthesising Apollonian and Dionysian religious motifs. I examine some of its intellectual effects. In Part Two I consider what was to come from this under Plato's own masterful influence. In these ways I resuscitate a once traditional emphasis on Orphism in the understanding of Plato. But I bring a greater than usual attention to bear upon mathematics.

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39

Sutcliffe, Adam David. "Reason, religion, toleration : Judaism and the European early Enlightenment, c. 1665 - c.1730." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.406182.

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40

Mallinson, Jeffrey Charles. "Faith, reason, and revelation in Theodore Beza, 1519-1605 /." Oxford : Oxford university press, 2003. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39936133g.

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41

Otto, Jennifer. "Reason, revelation and ridicule: assessing the criteria for authoritative allegorical interpretations in Philo and Augustine." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=67046.

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This thesis explores the interplay between reason and revelation in determining authoritative allegorical exegeses of Old Testament texts. Departing from Augustine's ridiculing of Philo's exegesis of the Ark door in Genesis 6:16 as a human anus, this thesis examines the criteria by which Augustine is able to assert that said door is correctly to be identified as the wounds of Christ. Both exegetes understand allegorical interpretation to be a rational exercise, following similar philosophically-derived exegetical principles. However, both Philo and Augustine agree that meaningful allegorical truths can only be discerned from texts whose divine provenance and authority is determined by revelation experienced either by the reader himself or a reliable witness. The conceptualization of salvation both as understood rationally and as experienced beyond reason is a crucial point of divergence. Philo's exegesis– taken by Augustine as representative of contemporary Jewish praxis– is ridiculous not in its methodology but in its failure to recognize the salvific presence of Christ within the Genesis text revealed through the Incarnation.
Cette thèse examine l'entremêlement des rôles de la raison et de la révélation déterminant l'autorité des exégèses allégoriques de l'Ancien Testament. Abordant l'analyse par la dérision d'Augustin envers l'exégèse de Philo qui interprète le portail de l'Arche du livre Genèse 6 :16 comme un anus humain, cette thèse explore les critères par lesquelles Augustin, lui, revendique que le portail soit interprète comme étant les plaies du Christ. Les deux exégètes comprennent que l'interprétation allégorique est une exercice rationnelle dont l'exégèse se voit déterminée par des principes philosophiques. Philo et Augustin s'entendent toutefois que des vérités allégoriques pertinentes peuvent seulement être discernées par une révélation vécue soit par le lecteur soit un témoin fiable. Le point de divergence se voit dans l'idée de la conceptualisation du salut par la logique ainsi que par comment celui-ci s'interprète au-delà de raison. L'exégèse de Philo, ainsi considéré par Augustin comme représentatif de la praxis de la communauté Juive de l'époque, est traitée de ridicule non pas a cause de sa méthodologie, mais pour son incapacité d'apercevoir la présence rédemptrice du Christ dans le texte de Genèse révélée de par l'Incarnation.

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Fillion, Christine Marguerite. "The role of scriptural testimony, reason and spiritual practice in Upadésasahasri : a non-commentarial work of ´Sa?nkara." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=19765.

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The thesis is an examination of the prose part of the UpadesascThasri, a non-commentarial work of Sahkaracarya (8 century CE). The introduction deals with several issues concerning the structure and content of the text itself, as well as a critique of the manner in which the text has been interpreted by recent researchers. The main body of the thesis is sectioned according to an eight-fold therapeutic model of interpretation suggested by Vetter (1979). The thesis concludes with an examination of the three-fold discipline of sravana, manana, and nididhyasana, as viewed by the Vedantic tradition. The complete text of the prose part (gadya-prabandha) of the Upadesusahasr/xn Roman script follows the thesis.

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43

Perez, Celestino. "Juergen Habermas and Pope John Paul II on faith, reason, and politics in the modern world." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3319921.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Political Science, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 11, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3302. Adviser: Jeffrey C. Isaac.

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Bone, Amra. "Knowledge : the Qur'anic discourse concerning reason and revelation and its impact." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6785/.

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This thesis is a study of the Qur'ānic discourse on knowledge and its impact on the Muslim world. It focuses in particular on the division of knowledge into the Revealed or Religious sciences and the Rational sciences. The thesis asks whether both Revealed knowledge and Rational knowledge are considered religiously praiseworthy and questions what the purpose is in acquiring knowledge. The thesis then examines the impact of the Qur’anic discourse on the Muslim community through the development of the revealed and the rational sciences and through the development of educational institutions. Finally it asks why it is that in the present day the two branches are isolated from each other when there was clearly a great deal of overlap and cross-fertilisation during the medieval period. The findings were that the purpose of acquiring knowledge in Islam is to understand God and oneself. It found that within the Qur'ānic discourse the revealed sciences and the rational sciences enjoy a symbiotic relationship. This relationship did not however always manifest in society. The educational institutions did incorporate the rational sciences during times of prosperity but when under political or economic pressure they regressed back to only teaching the revealed sciences.

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Quong, Jonathan. "Deliberation and diversity : an essay on public reason and identity politics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.402153.

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46

Badano, G. "Deliberative democracy, public reason and the allocation of clinical care resources." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1453168/.

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This thesis discusses how societies should allocate clinical care resources. The first aim of the thesis is to defend the idea that clinical care resource allocation is a matter for deliberative democratic procedures. I argue that deliberative democracy is justified because of its ability to implement equal respect and autonomy. Furthermore, I address several in-principle objections to the project of applying deliberative democracy to clinical care resource allocation. Most notably, I respond to the narrow view of the scope of deliberative democracy and the critiques of explicit rationing. The second aim of the thesis is to determine what is required by deliberative democracy in clinical care resource allocation. I identify the general requirements that resource allocation agencies should meet, namely public reason, public involvement, transparency, accuracy and revisability. I then examine what is required by deliberative democracy with regard to two particularly salient specific topics, namely the substantive values that should govern resource allocation and the involvement of scientific experts in decision-making. I demonstrate that public reason imposes severe constraints on the substantive values that should be employed. Most of these constraints are rooted in the idea that, under a regime of scarcity, public reason requires that resources be allocated so as to minimise the strongest complaint anyone may have. Out of the variety of values that are commonly proposed as relevant, only priority to the worst-off, ability to benefit, specialness of clinical care and cost are consistent with public reason. Turning to expert involvement, I argue that deliberative democracy can overcome several formidable threats, such as the opacity of expert opinions to laypersons and the tendency to hide uncertainty and disagreement from the public. I also discuss how my proposals on substantive values and expert involvement could be implemented, in order to add to the plausibility of my theory.

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Leung, Cheuk-Hang. "Educating for deliberative citizenship : public reason, political morality and civic action." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2013. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020740/.

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This project seeks to give a normative account of citizenship education in the context of deliberative democracy. Within the framework of reasonable pluralism. civic life is not as ethically minimal as many liberals think. I will argue that liberal democracy needs to incorporate the idea of deliberative democracy in order to achieve its aspiration for the teaching and learning of active and reciprocal citizens within the framework of reasonable pluralism. Ethical traits. dispositions, and characters are essential liberal vi11ues to bring about a flourishing liberal democratic life. Using the conception of deliberative democracy, I theorize an ethically robust conception of the political person for liberal citizenship education that could accommodate the ideas of public reason, political morality and civic action. In so doing, I propose a framework of citizenship as reasonableness by reformulating Rawls's political liberalism and supplementing it with Dewey’s Pragmatism - especially his ideas of human intelligence. freedom as individuality and cooperative inquiry. As such, liberal democratic citizenship could be attentive to civic duties. active civic participation, and cultivation of liberal virtues. This framework also demonstrates an authentic understanding of liberal democratic polity as an ethical project of cooperative living and fulfills the inherent requirements of liberal theory, both in terms of articulating an ethically robust conception of the political person as well as accommodating moral difference in a diverse society. In addition, the educative feature of public deliberation suggests that reasonable citizens could thoroughly internalize public reason and political morality through practising deliberative civic action. Through the lens of deliberative democracy, this project aims to advocate a thick conception of citizenship education for contemporary liberalism in order to address the theorization of the civic self and the moral demands of liberal democratic citizenship.

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Brigham, Stephen. "Limitations of reason and liberation of absurdity reason and absurdity as means of personal and social change: case study: psychotherapy /." Access electronically, 2005. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20060320.161119/index.html.

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Mohammadi, Doostdar Alireza. "Fantasies of Reason: Science, Superstition, and the Supernatural in Iran." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10215.

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This dissertation examines uncertainties about the supernatural among members of the urban middle class in Tehran, Iran. In particular, I attend to the ways in which the category of the supernatural (mavara) has become, for some people, an object of potential scientific (`elmi) inquiry that must be distinguished from approaches usually ascribed to the rural, the uneducated, and the poor, often deemed as either superstitions (khorafat) or parochically religious (dini). By examining a range of encounters with the supernatural - such as attempts to explain communications with the souls of the dead, make sense of spirit possession, and differentiate real magic from charlatanism - I highlight the varied modalities through which perspectives and forms of reasoning imagined to be rational and scientific are brought to bear on matters that are understood to lie, at least partially, within the purview of religious knowledge. I situate such supernatural encounters against a backdrop of state disciplinary and coercive measures, thereby illuminating important shifts in Iran's politico-religious landscape in the past two decades, such as the waning of the religious authority of the Shi`i ulama among certain sections of society. This declining authority does not necessarily imply a weakened interest in Islam (although this is sometimes the case). Rather, it has opened up a space for reception and deliberation of a multiplicity of sources of religious knowledge, both Islamic and non-Islamic. These include forms of Western-imported spirituality and occultism that have been entering Iran for over a century, with their most recent wave consisting of translated texts of New Age spirituality, self-help success literature, and popular psychology that have gained popularity since the end of the war with Iraq. The metaphysical models on offer through these spiritual systems are usually promoted and understood as scientific rather than religious. That is, rather than being seen as contradicting Islamic notions, these formulations are often viewed as parallel to them. By attending to such notions and their everyday manifestations, my project brings into focus various hybrid forms of religious-scientific knowledge, experience, and discourse that have largely been ignored in the study of modern Muslim societies.

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Gerber, Chad Tyler. "Virtue epistemology in redemptive historical perspective a short conversation between philosophy and theology regarding the nature of knowledge /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2001. http://www.tren.com.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Public reason and religion'

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