Cécile Laborde

Female Autonomy, Education and the Hijab

Abstract This essay discusses one of the motives behind the recent ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves (hijab 1 ) in French schools: the belief that it assists the emancipation of Muslim girls from religious and patriarchal oppression. 2 The first section sets out a republican perfectionist case for the ban, based on Enlightenment assumptions about progressive secular rationalism, education to autonomy, and criticism of the pre‐modern, patriarchal nature of Islam. The second section mounts a critical response, which rejects republican paternalism and connects insights from the post‐modern sociology of religion with radical feminist theories of female agency. In the third section, I show that both arguments, even on the most sympathetic interpretation I present here, are flawed. I argue that although the ban on the hijab cannot be justified, republicans are right to worry about the dangers of domination in civil society. I then set out a ‘critical republican’ theory of non‐domination which avoids the pitfalls of coercive paternalism without, however, leaving individuals unaided in the face of domination.

The Concept of the State in British and French Political Thought

The importance of the concept of state in British political thought has recently been re-assessed, and Dysons contrast between a continental ‘state tradition’ and an Anglo-American ‘stateless tradition’ has been put into question. Yet this paper argues that there remain crucial differences in the way in which French and British political thinkers have understood the concept of state. Focusing on a critical moment in the crystallization of the meaning of ‘state’, the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular on the anti-statist pluralist school, it analyses how state critics were influenced by national intellectual traditions. French thought has been permeated by the idea of the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis society at large, while British thought has remained committed to an ideal of fluidity between state and society.

What is a Free State? Republican Internationalism and Globalisation

This article addresses an underexplored area of investigation within the global justice debate: To what extent does globalisation structurally undermine the freedom of states? And if it does, what type of injustice does this constitute? It is argued here that a republican theory of freedom as non-domination is better equipped than existing cosmopolitan and social liberal accounts to explain the systemic connections between domestic, international and global injustice. The forms of unchecked power that globalisation sets off create new opportunities for the domination of states – by other states as well as by non-states actors. And when citizens live in dominated states, they are themselves exposed to domination. The upshot is a normative analysis of the global arena that attributes a central role to states, yet is deeply critical of the status quo.

State Paternalism and Religious Dress

Sartorial regulations, particularly bans on Muslim religious dress, have recently been defended on paternalist grounds. This means that certain forms of dress are banned by the state on the grounds that they infringe the autonomy of the individuals wearing them. Very often these arguments have taken a feminist form. Women who have adopted certain religious beliefs — radical Islamic beliefs are typically targeted — are assumed to be oppressed and dominated. To use a terminology famously introduced by Isaiah Berlin, they may enjoy negative freedom (provided that they are not interfered with or otherwise coerced) but they may be denied the more positive freedom which is associated with a life of genuine self-determination and autonomy (Berlin, 1969).

Why Tolerate Conscience

In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter argues against the special legal status of religion, claiming that religion should not be the only ground for exemptions to the law and that this form of protection should be, in principle, available for the claims of secular conscience as well. However, in the last chapter of his book, he objects to a universal regime of exemptions for both religious and secular claims of conscience, highlighting the practical and moral flaws associated with it. We believe that Leiter identifies a genuine and important contemporary legal and philosophical problem. We find much to admire in his reasoning. However, we raise questions about two claims that are crucial for his argument. The first claim is that it is not religion as such, but conscience that deserves toleration and respect. The second claim is that respect for religion and conscience demands ‘principled toleration’ but does not entail stronger policies of legal exemptions. Against the first claim, we argue that Leiter does not successfully distinguish religious belief from secular conscience and morality; and he does not explain why secular conscience (which shares many of religious conscience’s epistemic features) deserves respect. Against the second claim, we argue that the most promising theories of legal exemptions are not classical theories of liberal toleration.

Republican Citizenship and the Crisis of Integration in France

Even the most cursory survey of the literature on French citizenship presents the reader, accustomed to the categories of Anglo-American political philosophy, with a paradox. In some respects, the dominant understanding of citizenship in France seems to encapsulate the values of Enlightenment-influenced liberalism: a strong emphasis on individual autonomy at the expense of community attachments, the justification of political authority by reference to universalist principles, and an insistence on the separation between the public and the private spheres of human life. In other respects, however, the French approach to citizenship reflects distinctively communitarian concerns, emphasizing the importance of a clearly bounded, homogeneous citizenry, the need to foster civic virtues, and a particularist commitment to distinctive national traditions. While this paradox is testimony to the fact that neat philosophical categories are often ill-equipped to capture the complexity of actual understandings of citizenship in particular contexts, it also illustrates the theoretical impasse that the debate between liberals and communitarians has reached. In France, both popular and academic accounts of the nature and significance of citizenship are (more or less consciously) articulated as republican syntheses between ‘liberal’ and ‘civic’ insights. This ‘civic-liberal’ synthesis, which took shape under the Third Republic and was revived, in a modified form, in the 1980s, as a discourse of ‘national integration’, has in the last two decades come under growing strain. As a result, this chapter will argue that the normative force of republicanism, its capacity of holding together the ‘liberal’ and the ‘civic’ components of citizenship, has been somewhat lessened. The chapter’s organization is broadly chronological: the first section clarifies the meaning of the civic-liberal heritage of citizenship, as it has been formulated in the course of French history, and the second focuses on recent reformulations of the ideal of civic-liberal citizenship.

Three cheers for liberal modesty

ABSTRACT Many liberals have been immodest in postulating that their own progressive, secular liberalism is the only one that can be justified in public reason. In Liberalism’s Religion, I articulate a more modest theory of liberalism and religion. While I personally endorse progressive secular liberalism, I argue that it is only one of the reasonable conceptions of liberal justice. This liberal modesty has profound, hitherto unnoticed implications for (i) the role of religious arguments in the public sphere, (ii) the legitimacy of religious establishment, and (iii) the justifiability of religious exemptions. In this article, I defend these three claims by providing replies to my critics.

The Evanescence of Neutrality

In this short commentary, I draw on Alan Patten’s chapter about liberal neutrality in Equal Recognition, as well as the companion paper “Three Theories of Religious Liberty,” to argue that neutrality has a well-defined, yet limited, place in liberal theory, particularly in relation to controversies about the rights of religious citizens.1 I suggest that neutrality becomes evanescent the closer we get to hard cases of religious recognition and accommodation. Alan Patten defends neutrality as a constraint on the pursuit of perfectionist policies. A liberal state has a strong (if defeasible) reason not to favour one conception of the good over another, and this reason is grounded in respect for people’s fair opportunity for self-determination (henceforth FOSD). The state should not favour one rival good over another out of respect for people’s interest in pursuing the conception of the good they hold. The conception of neutrality Patten favours is what he calls neutrality of treatment. Neutrality of treatment improves both on neutrality of impact and justification. For example, it can explain why some intuitively non-neutral policy, such as religious establishment, is wrong even though it can be justified neutrally (ER, 113). Patten argues that neutrality demands that the state give equal treatment to different conceptions of the good—Christianity and Islam, cricket and softball, to use his favourite examples. The state maintains neutrality between rival conceptions when, relative to an appropriate baseline, its policies are equally accommodating of those conceptions—without however equalizing outputs or impact (ER, 115). One advantage of the theory is that Patten deflates some implausible claims sometimes made on behalf of neutrality as a central value of liberalism.

Liberal Neutrality, Religion and the Good

Over the last few years, a number of legal and political philosophers have argued that there is nothing special – legally and constitutionally – about religion. Religion should be understood as a sub-set of a broader category, what John Rawls called ‘conceptions of the good’, and it should not generate claims of unique, exclusive treatment. These philosophers articulate what I call an ‘egalitarian theory of religious freedom’. It is egalitarian because it places religious and non-religious conceptions of the good on a same plane; and argues that all citizens, whether religious or not, are entitled to equal concern and respect. Egalitarian theorists of religious freedom aim to ‘generalize toleration’: to extend the idea of religious freedom to neutrality towards secular worldviews, lifestyles, sexual preferences, and so forth. All citizens deserve equal respect as citizens, whatever their particular conception of the good – be it a life of intellectual reflection, of pious devotion, or of consumerist hedonism. Religious citizens, for example, should not be exclusively entitled to exemptions from general laws: other citizens (such as secular conscientious objectors) deserve equal consideration.

Three theses about political theology: some comments on Seyla Benhabib’s ‘return of political theology’

In this short piece, I explore Seyla Benhabib’s suggestion that hijab controversies can be interpreted as a return of political theology. I first clarify what political theology is; I then ask what it means to talk about a ‘return’ to it in relation to hijab controversies; and I finally ponder how much of the return of political theology is a genuine challenge to secular political theory.