Religion and Radical Pluralism

Jeff Shawn Jose is assistant professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and director of the Centre for the Study of World Religions at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram.

The innovative character of this book lies in a confrontation between John Rawls’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s views of the place of religion in the public sphere, marked by radical pluralism. The author not only gives a critical analysis of Rawls’s ideas on this matter from a Gandhian perspective but also criticizes Gandhi’s religious ideas from Rawls’s liberal point of view. To make this confrontation academically sound and fair, the author needs an intermediate between the ideas of these two thinkers: he introduces three fundamental objections, which have been raised against Rawls’s ideas from a religious perspective, viz. the integrity objection, the fairness objection, and the divisiveness objection. These objections serve as the theoretical groundwork for a well-argued critique of Rawls from a Gandhian perspective. Moreover, since Rawls and other proponents of political liberalism have extensively responded to these objections, they can, in turn, be employed to discuss the weaknesses of Gandhi’s views from a Rawlsian point of view. The confrontation between a Western and non-Western perspective on the role of religion in the public sphere makes this book highly relevant to the ongoing debate about this fundamental question.

• IntroductionChapter 1: Western Secularisation and Religious PluralismChapter 2: Secularisation and Religious Diversity in IndiaChapter 3: Rawls and Religion in the Public SphereChapter 4: Gandhi and Religion in the Public SphereChapter 5: A Gandhian Critique of RawlsChapter 6: A Rawlsian Critique of GandhiConclusion: Towards a Prospective Framework of the Political and the Religious