Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere

How can we, as people and communities with different religions and cultures, live together with integrity? Does tolerance require us to deny our deep differences or give up all claims to truth, to trade our received traditions for skepticism or relativism? Cultural philosopher Lenn E. Goodman argues that we can respect one another and learn from one another's ways without either sharing them or relinquishing our own. He argues that our commitments to our own ideals and norms need not mean dogmatism or intolerance. In this study, Goodman offers a trenchant critique of John Rawls's pervasive claim that religious and metaphysical voices must be silenced in the core political deliberations of a democracy. Inquiry, dialogue, and open debate remain the safeguards of public and personal sanity, and any of us, Goodman illustrates, can learn from one another's traditions and explorations without abandoning our own.

Introduction; 1. Religious pluralism; 2. Naked in the public square; 3. Minima and maxima; 4. The road to Kazanistan; Some concluding thoughts.

Lenn E. Goodman is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. A summa cum laude graduate from Harvard University, he received his D.Phil. as a Marshall Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His many books include Creation and Evolution, Love thy Neighbor as Thyself (2010), In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach (2001) and God of Abraham (1996), winner of the 1997 Gratz Centennial Prize. Goodman serves on the editorial boards of History of Philosophy Quarterly and Medieval Philosophy and Theology, and is an associate editor of Asian Philosophy. He has served as Vice President and Program Chair of the Institute for Islamic/Judaic Studies, as well as Program Chair for the APA panels of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy.