Some Thoughts on Ronald Dworkin's Religion Without God
13 Pages Posted: 5 Aug 2013
Date Written: 2013
Abstract
This paper analyses the arguments of Dworkin's Eistein Lecture, 'Religion without God', focusing on the third lecture. There, Dworkin suggests that one way of solving protracted disputes about religious freedom is to present it as a general not a special right. If freedom of religion is a general right – a right of ethical independence – religion does not need to be defined precisely, nor does it need to be confined to traditional theism. What should be the focus of our attention is not what religion is but, rather, what kind of reasons government appeal to when they restrict people’s attempt to live their lives by their own lights. In this paper, I point to three limits to Dworkin’s strategy of ‘dissolving’ religion
Keywords: freedom of religion, exemptions, establishment, neutrality, rights.
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