Brian Leiter Archives - Protection of Conscience Project Library

(Book Review) Why Tolerate Religion?

Robert Merrihew Adams

Brian Leiter. Why Tolerate Religion? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012, 192 pp. ISBN: 9780691153612

Extract
“Why tolerate religion?” The question is raised by someone who thinks there is something wrong about religion as such. To tolerate, Brian Leiter emphasizes, is to “put up” with beliefs or practices that one regards as “wrong, mistaken, or undesirable” (p. 8). His paradigm case of principled tolerance is one in which a “dominant group has the means at its disposal to effectively and reliably change or end [a] disfavored group’s beliefs or practices, and yet . . . acknowledges that there are moral or epistemic reasons . . . to permit the disfavored group to keep on believing and doing what it does” (p. 13). Forcibly changing or ending religious belief has commonly been extremely difficult or impossible to achieve by any means short of total extermination or banishment of the disfavored group, as history shows, and is therefore a really scary project. With his stated paradigm in mind, we might think that Leiter’s statement that “the contemporary problem, at least in the post-Enlightenment secular nations, . . . is why the state should tolerate religion as such at all” (pp. 14-15), would be ominous indeed if it were an accurate reading of political reality.

Adams RM. Why Tolerate Religion? [Internet]. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews; 2013 Jan 6.

Comment on Koppelman and Leiter

Christopher T. Wonnell

Abstract
Andrew Koppelman has offered a challenge to Brian Leiter’s view that the proper public attitude toward religion is one of tolerance rather than active respect. Let us explore the nature of that challenge and offer a few observations on the topic.

Wonnell CT. Comment on Koppelman and Leiter. 47 San Diego L. Rev. 987 (2010).

How Shall I Praise Thee? Brian Leiter on Respect for Religion

Andrew Koppelman

Abstract
In two recent papers, Brian Leiter argues that there is no good reason for law to single out religion for special treatment and religion is not an apt candidate for respect in the “thick” sense of being an object of favorable appraisal. Special treatment would be appropriate only if there were some “moral reason why states should carve out special protections that encourage individuals to structure their lives around categorical demands that are insulated from the standards of evidence and reasoning we everywhere else expect to constitute constraints on judgment and action.” Favorable appraisal would be called for “[o]nly if there were a positive correlation between beliefs that were culpably without epistemic warrant and valuable outcomes. Both arguments depend on a radically impoverished and conception of what religion is and what it does. In this paper, I will explain what Leiter leaves out and offer a hypothesis about why. I will also engage with some related reflections by Simon Blackburn and Timothy Macklem, both of whom influence, in different ways, Leiter’s analysis.

Koppelman A. How Shall I Praise Thee? Brian Leiter on Respect for Religion. 47 San Diego L. Rev. 961 (2010).

Foundations of Religious Liberty: Toleration or Respect?

Brian Leiter

Abstract
Most Western constitutions, including the American, single out religious beliefs and practices for special kinds of legal solicitude and protection. In this essay, I want to ask a question about the moral foundations of such a legal practice. Should we think of what I will refer to generically as “the law of religious liberty” as grounded in the moral attitude of respect for religion or on the moral attitude of tolerance of religion? My question will not be which of these moral ideals best explains the existing law of religious liberty in the United States, or elsewhere, though legal doctrine is a relevant data point for the inquiry. Instead, I want to ask which of these moral attitudes makes the most sense given what religion is. Of course, our legal practices offer some evidence about “what makes the most sense” because they are, quite obviously, not detached from our moral attitudes. But the law is but one data point among others, and if it were to turn out that aspects of existing legal doctrine in the United States should yield before the best account of the moral foundations of religious liberty that is a conclusion I am happy to endorse.

Leiter B. Foundations of Religious Liberty: Toleration or Respect? 47 San Diego L. Rev. 935 (2010).