Shyun J. Ahn 安 丁 秀賢

(This post is in reference to “Rawls the redeemer” by Alexandre Lefebvre)

In this article, Alexandre Lefebvre from the University of Sydney unearths Rawls’ unpublished writing. In it, Rawls briefly talks about religion, which is rarely associated with his intellectual work. “HRP (as imagined): You never talk about religion in your classes, although sometimes the discussion borders on it. Why is that? Do you think religion of no importance? Or that it has no role in our life? JR [John Rawls]:…What I call the ordinary round of life – growing up, falling in love, having children and the rest – can seem not enough by itself. That ordinary round must be graced by something to be worthwhile. That’s what I mean by redeemed.”

Using this as a vantage point, Lefebvre argues that liberalism is not just a political idea but moral and ethical values that guide us to “redeem” or “elevate” our ordinary round of lives. Moreover, though Lefebvre doesn’t use this word, he suggests that redemption takes religiosity, whether with or without a god. That is to say, we assign values to our routine lives—and thus redeem—by holding faith in certain moral or ethical values and resolutely pursuing them. Sometimes, especially when one is facing an ethical dilemma, he needs to *solemnly* internalize and pursue said values. Hence, Lefebvre connects how the traditional or moral aspect of liberalism is ignored in the contemporary Western world as they’re rapidly growing non-religious. Likewise, he states, “[T]o embrace the Original Position [a critical idea in Rawls’ theory of political liberalism] is not just a thought experiment but a transformative spiritual practice.”

This surfaces a frightening yet undeniable connection between politics, morality, and religiosity. There are a couple of reasons why this connection frightens people. First, we have been taught the separation of church and state, a concept I fully support. The fear based on this concept, however, is misled because it confuses religion with religiosity, the former of which is an institution and the latter an attitude. Second, even those who recognize the difference between the two may feel uneasy about religiosity because they sound antithetical to critical thinking, which is indispensable for a healthy political community. Perhaps, they think critical thinking should preclude emotions or emotion-derived concepts like religiosity. This is clearly false and one can easily think of a counterexample, so I won’t go over it.

Nonetheless, there’s another and more plausible reason for feeling uncomfortable about religiosity, morality, and politics. Religiosity embraces epistemic (i.e., knowledge-related) shortcomings and forms staunch belief, rather than all the questions that can be asked. For example, an atheist asks a Christian about the afterlife, and the latter gives an answer from the Bible. The former is often eager to ask more questions based on natural science to challenge what the latter knows. In other words, the atheist often asks a Christian if she knows what she knows and how. In contrast, the Christian can choose to pursue her epistemic quest about the afterlife, but she can also rest her argument here by stating her faith. She does not have to refer to astrophysics or some other knowledge to believe that there is heaven and hell. Similarly, even in a non-religious context, religiosity involves accepting a proposition despite one’s shortcomings in knowledge.

This is also why so many people feel uncomfortable about coupling morality with politics. Many think that morality requires certain religiosity (“Hey, this is what our countrypeople believe to be moral! There’s no further justification needed, so don’t ask any more questions!”). Yet others think morality is mere strong emotion much like religiosity. Therefore, justifying or criticizing political ideas, actions, or systems based on morality appears to be deadly.

However, these views are also misguided because religiosity, in our context of redemption, is not about determining the truth of propositions that arise in politics. Again, I explained redemption as “assign[ing] values to our routine lives [, which composes politics,] by holding faith in certain moral or ethical values and resolutely pursuing them.” This is not to say you will determine what type of person to meet and when you should marry purely through faith while compromising your reasoning. You will probably reason hard why this person is the right person for you based on the degree of love, compatibility in your personality, shared views, social status, and so on. Yet, by holding faith in certain moral or ethical values—fidelity, care, honesty—and vigorously pursuing them, you can assign values to your relationship and make it meaningful.

Let’s talk more explicitly about politics. Religiosity does not have to interrupt your reasoning about policies, parties, or politicians. Quite contrarily, you must exhaust all questions you can ask before you make a political decision, instead of forming ungrounded faith. However, consistently holding faith in certain moral or ethical values will guide you and help you determine why your decisions are meaningful to you. As such, religiosity redeems your politics.

Now, the question remains. How about morality? Can we make moral values meaningful by holding faith in moral values? This sounds quite dangerous because moral values are now a simple product of religiosity without room for reasoning. This is exactly what people fear. And if moral values are untrustworthy, how can we use them to assign values to our lives and politics? Here’s my answer: Morality takes religiosity, not in the process of reasoning but in the process of inciting motivation and action. Moral good can be argued with reason, yet emotion—religiosity—must be involved when we overcome the weakness of will. For example, you are all exhausted from a long day at work and are taking a nap in a park. You happen to be the only person in the park. Then, a person on a crutch approaches you and asks if you can help him go up the staircases. And the only way to get through this situation is to carry this person up the stairs by yourself. You can reason, without involving religiosity, whether it is morally good to pretend you didn’t hear it. After you decide that it’s morally good to help this person out, you need faith in your moral reasoning to overcome your fatigue and carry it out.