Lexington Books
Pages: 218
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-0-7391-6663-5 • Hardback • May 2012 • $120.00 • (£92.00)
978-0-7391-6664-2 • Paperback • May 2012 • $57.99 • (£45.00)
978-0-7391-6665-9 • eBook • May 2012 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
Kenneth L. Grasso is professor of political science at Texas State University-San Marcos.
Cecilia Rodriguez Castillo is assistant professor of political science at Texas State University-San Marcos.
Introduction
“Theology and the American Civil Conversation”
Kenneth L. Grasso
Part I: Religion, Morality, and Modernity’s Discontents
“The Perils of Moralism”
Charles Taylor
Responses
“Ockham’s Children: Nomolatry, Nominalism and Contemporary Moral Culture”
Kenneth L. Grasso
“Nomolatry and Fidelity”
Fred Dallmayr
“Moralism and Its Traps”
William Schweiker
Part II: Theology and the Foundations of Political Authority
“‘For the Authorities are God’s Servants’: Is a Theistic Account of Political Authority Still Viable Or Have Humanist Accounts Won the Day?”
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Responses:
“Two Theories, Not One”
J. Budziszewski
“On the Origin and Nature of Political Authority”
Jeanne Heffernan Schindler
“Is Consent a Theological Category?”
Joshua Mitchell
Part III: Religion, Culture and Public Dialogue
“Consensus and Commitment: Real People, Religious Reasons and Public Discourse”
Robin Lovin
Responses:
“Reframing the Conversation”
Charles Mathewes
“Why We Can Talk to Each Other”
Jonathan Chaplin
“Liberal Democracy: An Alternative to the Idolatry of the Nation State?”
Michael L. Budde
Part IV: The Problem of Pluralism
“Moral Traditions”
Jean Porter
Responses:
“Adjudicating Moral Inquiry: Scientific Reason and/or Dialogical Encounters”
Eloise A. Buker
“Alasdair MacIntyre: Closet Liberal”
Christopher Beem
“Taking the American Moral Tradition Seriously”
Peter Berkowitz
Epilogue:
“Concluding Reflection”
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Grasso and Castillo have here assembled a “dream team” of eminent thinkers who seek to deepen and enrich our ideas about the role of religion in public life. The result is a consistently lively and engaging volume, with a strong underlying message for the future: The recovery of a viable public philosophy will almost certainly need to find ways to draw on the substantive resources of religious thought and practice if it is to succeed.
— Wilfred M. McClay, University of Oklahoma
It’s a rare thing, these days, to find minds capable of untying the knots into which the modern world has tied itself. This book is something rarer still: serious, knot-untying minds in conversation — the kind of conversation that has always been the hallmark of politics and philosophy at their best and most humane.
— George Weigel
Theology and Public Philosophy is an immeasurably valuable contribution to the ongoing contemporary debate on the role that theology can play in the development of an authentic public philosophy, especially given the theoretical and practical weaknesses of the liberal intellectual tradition and the models of social and political life that flow from within it.
— Journal of Markets & Morality