What's God Got to Do with It? Waldron on Equality
| Author | Thomas Poole |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2004.00296.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
Review Article
What's God Got to Do with It?
Waldron on Equality
Thomas Poole*
GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY: CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS IN
LOCKE'S POLITICAL THOUGHT by JEREMY WALDRON
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 276 pp., £16.99)
Not that long ago, historians and political scientists could speak of the
secularization of the western mind as though it were a done deal.
1
The
Enlightenment stigmatization of religion as superstition and unreason ± and
hence an instrument of bondage ± had led to its successful privatization and
removal from the public sphere.
2
Confined to the realm of individual
conscience and corralled within designated `safe havens' ± the church (or
equivalent) and the home ± religion gradually ceded its place at the epicentre
of civic life. Religion, for centuries one of the core dimensions of political
argument, ceased to have direct influence on the course of politics.
3
The
contours of the liberal catechism took shape, in large measure, in opposition
to the religious: state and church were to be kept separate, theologians and
387
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*School of Law, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham
NG7 2RD, England
I would like to thank Mark Aronson, Sean Brennan, Arthur Glass, Martin Loughlin,
TheÂreÁse Murphy, and George Williams for their comments on an earlier draft. This article
was written during my time as Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of New
South Wales and I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Faculty for their
support and generosity.
1 See O. Chadwick, The Secularisation of the European Mind (1978); J. Habermas,
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989).
2 See P. Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (1966); J. Israel, Radical
Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (2001). But compare, for
example, T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1997); A.
MacIntyre, After Virtue (1985, 2nd edn.).
3 See J. Habermas, `Intolerance and Discrimination' (2003) 1 J. of International
Constitutional Law 2; R. Popkin, The History of Scepticism (2003, 2nd edn.) ch. 14;
D. Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture (2000).
priests denied privileged access to the political forum, and `scripture-
proofs'
4
rejected as a primary mode of political argument.
5
But we seem now to be witnessing something of a religious revival. Some
writers have begun to question the validity of an approach that removes
issues of vital importance ± at least in the mind of the believer ± from the
agenda of the political community. Jacques Barzun has observed that `the
believers' attacks on what they call ``secular Humanism'' are so vehement
that after a long slump religion has regained an important place in public
debate.'
6
Not confined to what might be called the realm of conscience, the
revival has also sought to embrace law and politics.
7
What is most striking
about this revival is that it involves not just all the usual suspects, but also
some scholars with impeccable liberal credentials. Michael Perry, for
insta nce, ha s argue d that hu man rig hts hav e inelu ctably r elig ious
underpinnings.
8
And, writing in the sphere of domestic constitutional
theory, T.R.S. Allan has defended the idea that religious arguments ought not
to be excluded from a liberal conception of public reason.
9
Jeremy Waldron has developed an august reputation as a liberal theorist
of law and politics. The breadth of his work is quite exceptional: rights,
10
property,
11
constitutions,
12
and judicial review
13
have been addressed with
equal elegance, insight, and eÂlan. Much of his recent work has dealt with
constitutional theory. Criticizing the imperialist presumptions of Dworkinian
constitutionalism,
14
now perhaps in the ascendancy on both sides of the
Atlanti c,
15
Waldron h as becom e the darli ng of thos e who remai n
388
4 Locke used this term to describe arguments that make use of scriptural authority: J.
Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1988, ed. P. Laslett) 138.
5 See P. Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (2003).
6 J. Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (2000)
23±4.
7 See, for example, J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980); M. Detmold,
The Unity of Law and Morality (1984).
8 M. Perry, The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (1998).
9 T.R.S. Allan, Constitutional Justice: A Liberal Theory of the Rule of Law (2001) at
286: `recourse to controversial moral and metaphysical convictions [for example,
derived from religious beliefs] is more often necessary, and more generally
legitimate, than Rawls seems willing to concede'. Allan here refers to J. Rawls,
Political Liberalism (1996).
10 J. Waldron, `A Rights-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights' (1993) 13 Ox. J. of
Legal Studies 13; `Rights in Conflict' (1989) 99 Ethics 503;`Nonsense Upon Stilts':
Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man (1987).
11 J. Waldron, The Right to Private Property (1988).
12 J. Waldron, The Dignity of Legislation (1999); `Precommitment and Disagreement'
in Constitutionalism: Philosophical Foundations, ed. L. Alexander (1998).
13 J. Waldron, Law and Disagreement (1999).
14 See R. Dworkin, Law's Empire (1986) and Freedom's Law (1996). See also, for
example, S. Freeman, `Constitutional Democracy and the Legitimacy of Judicial
Review' (1990) 9 Law and Philosophy 353.
15 See, for example, T.R.S. Allan, `Dworkin and Dicey: The Rule of Law as Integrity'
(1988) 8 Ox. J. of Legal Studies 266; P. Craig, Public Law and Democracy in the
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