Academic

Waldron on Secularism and the Limits of Community

By Lawrence Solum

Jeremy Waldron (New York University (NYU) - School of Law) has posted Secularism and the Limits of Community on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper addresses two issues: (1) the use of religious considerations in social and political argument; and (2) the validation of the claims of community against markets and other aspects of globalization. It argues that we should be very wary of the association of (1) with (2), and the use of (1) to reinforce (2). The claims of community in the modern world are often exclusionary (the word commonly associated with community is "gated") and hostile to the rights of the poor, the homeless, the outcast, and so on. The logic of community in the modern world is a logic that reinforces market exclusion and the disparagement of the claims of the poor. If religious considerations are to be used to uphold those claims and to mitigate exclusion, they need to be oriented directly to that task, and to be pursued in ways that by-pass the antithetical claims of community. Religious considerations are at their most powerful in politics- and are most usefully disconcerting - when they challenge the logic of community.

Highly recommended.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 13, 2010 (boomark / email).