In her book, Politics of Piety, Mahmood is not discounting that Secularity 3—in some form—already exists in Egypt; the fact that people feel able to join the piety movement point out that some form of religion as one option among is present, even if not as strongly in the West. It is not whether secularism exists in Egypt that troubles her, but rather what it does. Like Talal Asad, Mahmood worries that a modern secular worldview leaves no room for critiques that are non-liberal, making a distinct teleology—like that of the mosque movement—all but impossible. I think she has done an excellent job of furthering this discussion in her blog posts, but I’d like to take the discussion back to A Secular Age itself.

Mahmood’s definition of secularism fits more or less as two different forms of Taylor’s secularity 1 and 3: “Secularism has often been understood in two primary ways: as the separation of religion from issues of the state, and the increasing differentiation of society into discrete spheres” (47). She argues that if the mosque movement seeks to change anything, it is her second form of secularism, in which religion is relegated to its own private sphere. They “seek to imbue each of the various spheres of contemporary life with a regulative sensibility that takes its cue from the Islamic theological corpus rather than from modern secular ethics” (47).

Mahmood’s point here ties in with her book’s much larger purpose: a meta-critique of critique itself. She points out that a secular worldview (bearing some similarity to Taylor’s Secularity 3) is imposed upon Egypt as a totalizing, even redemptive vision, while a similar totalizing view (that of the piety movement) is disregarded immediately, without any sort of intellectual generosity or openness. There is no escaping secularism in the Middle East, which is “impacting everything from pedagogical techniques to conceptions of moral and bodily health to patterns of familial and extra-familial relations” (191). Responding to secularism then cannot simply be a political or economic discussion, but should emphasize “arguments about what constitutes a proper way of living ethically in a world where such questions were thought to have become obsolete. In Egypt today, the primary topoi for this ethical labor are the body, ritual observance, and protocols of public conduct” (192).

It is an important challenge, and a difficult one to respond to: after all, the world Mahmood describes is quite different from the one Taylor does and the compromise of “you do your thing and I’ll do mine” is, in fact, an implicit rejection of the piety movement and an acceptance of Taylor’s ethics of authenticity. For example, the “forms of attire toward which secular-liberal morality claim indifference” are the kinds that allow secularism in the first place (75-76). Mahmood’s critique bears important similarities to Talal Asad’s concern about the dominating power of Taylor’s secularism. Indeed, both challenge whether Secularity 3 can in fact function as the “overlapping consensus” Taylor calls for in his 1998 essay in Secularism and its Critics. I think it can, but I think the means of compromise ought not to be rooted in the axial age, but rather in fusing Taylor’s conception of Secularity 3 with the Foucauldian emphasis on bodily practice that Mahmood employs.

William Connolly talks frequently about the “politics of becoming” and the importance of cultivating a means of engagement. I’m not sure that is entirely what Mahmood is getting at, but I think they are onto something similar, something which can help Taylor take into account bodily practice. Mahmood writes that the mosque attendees want to ameliorate this situation through the cultivation of those bodily aptitudes, virtues, habits, and desires that serve to ground Islamic principles in the requisite strategies and skills to enable such a manner of conduct, and the lives of the most devoted participants are organized around gradually learning and perfecting these skills (45).

She later describes various participants in the movement talking about how bodily practice enables them to be more virtuous. However, it is important not to frame these as a sort of individual means of authenticating the self. Mahmood makes clear that she does not believe that an actor “uses various corporeal techniques to acquire a cultural specificity” (121). Rather, for her, bodily practice forms “the terrain upon which the topography of the subject comes to be mapped” and so the self moves not from internal to external but, in fact, the other way around. What practice does is more important than what it means:

What is striking about this approach to the explication of the self is that the work bodily practices perform in crafting a subject—rather than the meanings they signify—carries the analytical weight. In other words, the “how” of practices is explored rather than their symbolic or hermeneutic value (122).

This approach is particularly useful for Mahmood in her analysis of gender norms, when she argues that a hermeneutic approach might not capture the fact that “acts of resistance” compel the body to act in certain ways, requiring “the retraining of sensibilities, affect, desire, and sentiments—those registers of corporeality that often escape the logic of representation and symbolic articulation” (188).

Both Taylor and Mahmood agree that bodily practice does not much matter in the new form of secularity: this might be somewhat lamentable for Taylor, but it is downright tragic for the women in the mosque movement. But here is where Mahmood’s stern warning against hermeneutics becomes useful: we are not talking about how we interpret the body, which, quite likely, does in fact happen a lot less. We are talking about the existence of the body itself, which, following Foucault and others, does not ever really disappear. Whether or not we are aware of it, our bodies form our ethical sensibilities—a point first made by Aristotle, made contemporary by Elias, and used implicitly by Taylor. Mahmood would certainly agree that this is true for the women of the piety movement, and I am sure she would grant that the same is true for the rest of the secular world.

So the compromise I would suggest between the two is simple enough: we need to recognize that everyone—not just the women of the piety movement—are ethically formed by their bodies. Mahmood discusses the self-reflection that always happens in self-formation, even when it is mainly physical (I notice I pray in the right form or I don’t, so I adjust accordingly, etc.) (55-57). I think she is onto something important here, and I am borrowing from the Connolly’s politics of becoming to talk about it.

What if we all became more aware of our bodily practice? Of course, our various end-goals would still be quite different; we would still be, whether the women of the mosque movement like it or not, amidst the ethics of authenticity. The modern moral order will almost certainly rule, whether we like it or not. But if we are aware of what is visceral, what is bodily, what is habitual, and we are aware of these things as preconditioning our responses (rather that being the subjects of them), then we are—all of us—more able to engage in the sort of generous critique and interlocution which Mahmood describes.

How does one square concerns with individual rights with concerns with the common good especially if one holds that the collectivity has rights? My right to benefit from my own efforts in proportion to my own effort is my good. How can someone share this good in common?

Are we confusing a public good what all can have access to in some degree and from which none can legitimately be excluded with the common good?

I for one would appreciate some clarity on this.

Concerned citizens face substantial burdens in finding policies that work and anything that alleviates substantial cognitive burdens of developing accessible and acceptable reasons for policies that work would be all to the good.

One other point needs to be made here. Virtually all the discussion on the role of religious and secular reasons addresses upstream concerns at the stage of policy formation and legislative language development. At the same time there is serious neglect of the challenges associated with the effective implementation of policy and procedures embedded in legislation and ultimately in regulations. Effective implementation of policies requires the support of many and diverse persons and institutions whose cooperation will be influenced by their understanding of the core values advanced by the policy and the supporting programs. Those policies and programs supported by an overlapping consensus reflected in a broad coalition is more likely to be implemented effectively than those policy and programs with limited rationale provided by one world view. Or to put it another way the more numerous and diverse the stakeholders the more likely it will be that programs will be carried out in a way that is consistent with the goals and values of the coalition that developed the programs in the first place.

What I have in mind is the fact that two people who disagree about the “ultimate” grounds for some moral and political claim might easily agree about the more proximate (if that is the word) grounds for it. Secular John and religious Charles could not only have “overlapping consensus” about the claim that such-and-such bill should be passed, but they might also agree about the justification for this claim: passing such-and-such bill will ease the suffering of the poor, say. Now if we ask them why easing the poor’s suffering is desirable, they may offer different justifications. John says it because actions are right as they tend to promote happiness; Charles says you should love your neighbor.

But they don’t just agree about the moral/political claim, they also agree (at least in part) about the justification for it. So their consensus is, I want to say, “deep,” or at least it’s deeper than it would be if they just agreed about what bill was to be passed, and both has completely different reasons for supporting it.

Here we would have not just overlapping consensus, but overlapping rationalities (as it were). And it seems like there could be universal (or universal enough) rules of rationality that we could require. “We should vote for this bill, because it will ease people’s suffering” might be a really good argument, regardless of what religious or non-religious principles the person making it is basing her aversion to suffering on. (As if one really needs principles for that!) “We should vote for this bill, because the Bible says we should” is a bad argument, and so is “We should vote for it, because Marx says so,” and for the same reason, in both cases: those aren’t good arguments, they’re appeals to authority. Different (reasonable, rational) systems, both secular and religious, will be different in the “ultimate” justification they will give for their particular moral/political claims. But to the extent that our systems overlap, we can agree not only about the moral/political, but about our reasons as well. All that, consistent with anti-foundationalism. And I think Prof. Taylor should be sympathetic with a consequence of all this: it’s not “reason vs. religion”, but more like varieties of reason, lots of them, overlapping in (I would argue) most of the important points.

The idea of an ethic of citizenship put forward by Christopher Eberle, Jeffrey Stout, etc. is to deny the political in favor of a politicized ethic. This is clearly a curious understanding of democracy that has more relevance to a secular university classroom than the public at large.

Consider also that in terms of the wider public people appeal to their religious beliefs to back up their politics all the time in the United States. Rawls’s political liberalism has not trickled down to the masses and is primarily an academic debate. If I was a Senator I could go before Congress and speak all day about God. No one might listen to me but I could do this without breaking any laws. So my question is how relevant is this debate to the actual situation in society? I really think it is something scholars in the academy are projecting onto society, when it is really more of an issue in the secular academy.

Recently, his position on religious discourse has considerably evolved; to the point of recognizing that its “potential makes religious discourse a serious candidate for possible truth content with respect to relevant political issues.” But the basic epistemic distinction still holds for him. Thus when it comes to the official language of the state, religious references have to be expunged. “In parliament, for example, the rules of procedure must empower the presiding officer to remove religious statements and justifications from the official record.”

While theory has been important for me in this shift, the key factor has been weekly conversations with several open minded religious persons, including my wife. At the start of these conversations I was adamant about employing the “no religious grounds for public policy advocacy” rule. They have convinced me that it is impossible to secure reasonable well thought out positions from religious persons on key issues in the public sphere unless and until they process issues through their religious frames before they attempt to process them through a secular frame. When they do so they offer much grist for the deliberative mill from which I have benefited greatly. They in turn have learned much from me. What was mutually incomprehensible has become less so and in some cases, even fully comprehensible. If ordinary citizens with good intentions to learn from each other can do so there is hope that we can arrive at overlapping views on major issues.

One of the keys in all this has been our mutual willingness to address each other with the intention of sharing knowledge and using as much of the other’s language as possible. As scholars in the field enter the public square to help concerned citizens manage the secular-religious discussions better, they could contribute much if they could begin to speak to us in ordinary language.

In a marvelous and too-little-known essay, Modes of Secularism, in Secularism and Its Critics (Rajeev Bhargava, ed., 1998), Taylor observes that there are three different strategies by which modern political philosophy has tried to cope with religious diversity. One, the “common ground strategy,” seeks to establish political ethics on the basis of premises shared across different confessional allegiances: what all Christians, or even all theists, believe. The difficulty with this approach is that as pluralism grows, the common ground shrinks. The universal sentiments of Christendom aren’t as universal as they once seemed. A second understanding, the “independent political ethic” strategy, seeks to abstract away from all our disagreements to something that is independent of them. The aim is to infer, from certain fundamental preconditions of modern political life, conclusions about how political life should be organized. Pluralism has also created a problem for this approach: we may want to ignore God only for political purposes, but if there are real live atheists in the society, then the state, by endorsing an ethic that is independent of religion, may appear to be taking their side on fundamental issues. The difficulties of both of these approaches, Taylor thinks, create the case for “overlapping consensus,” which does not seek any agreement about foundations, but only acceptance of certain political principles.

Taylor borrows the term “overlapping consensus” from John Rawls, but by it he means something considerably shallower, and therefore less necessarily committed to neutrality toward contested ideas of the good. Taylor thinks that “Rawls still tries to hold on to too much of the older independent ethic.” Rawls expects citizens not only to endorse a set of political principles, but also to accept a doctrine of political constructivism and just terms of cooperation. This, Taylor thinks, is too much to ask. As a schedule of rights, political liberalism for Taylor may suggest an independent political ethic. But any schedule of principles will need interpretation, and interpreters inevitably will do this in light of their comprehensive moral views. To that extent, they will inevitably partake of the common ground strategy.

Taylor’s analysis implies that absolute neutrality is unattainable. Any state position will rely on some common ground, and no common ground is universal.

The answer to this puzzle, I think, is to note that there exist a large variety of possible modes of neutrality. The absolute neutrality toward all conceptions of the good proposed by Ronald Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman are only one available flavor of neutrality.

The range of possible justifications for any version of neutrality is broad. The following is a crude taxonomy of typical strategies of argument. It probably does not exhaust the possibilities, and arguments for neutrality typically rely on more than one of these moves.

One strategy is the argument from moral pluralism, which holds that there are many good ways of life and that the state should not prefer any of these to any other. Another is the argument from futility, which holds that some perfectionist projects are doomed to failure. The argument from incompetence holds that the state should be neutral about things that it is likely to get wrong. The argument from civil peace proposes that some issues be removed from the political agenda in order to avoid destructive controversy. Finally, the argument from dignity argues that some political projects fail to properly respect citizens’ capacity for free choice.

Different formulations of these arguments have persuaded different people. Everyone probably accepts most of these five arguments for neutrality, at least in some form, as applied to some question. Conceptual analysis cannot, of course, say whether or in what form you ought to accept them. There is probably an infinite number of ways in which any of them could be formulated, and an infinite number of ways in which those formulations could be combined. Shifting from any formulation of each rationale to a slightly different one will probably yield a slightly different prescription for neutrality. Neutrality is not a fixed point, but a multidimensional space of possible positions. I develop this argument in an essay, The Fluidity of Neutrality.

This is broadly consistent with the picture Taylor paints. Since obviously many of these argumentative moves toward neutrality are consistent with his claims – his book, A Secular Age, can be read as an extended argument from moral pluralism, here mediating between religiosity and secularism – there is a kind of neutrality appropriate for us. But its outlines are not definite, and will always be an object of negotiation. Taylor’s neutrality is not that of Dworkin and Ackerman. But for just that reason, it is more persuasive than theirs.

It was striking to me that the Pope refused to address the president’s authorization of inhumane treatment and torture of prisoners. This was not an accidental omission. In return, the president refused to engage the Pope on his own complicity in the systematic cover-up of child rape and teen abuse by his own priests.

Sullivan noted that the leaders’ failure to criticize one another publicly obscured not only these facts, but also their deep philosophical disagreement over the nature of political freedom. In spite of such disagreements, however, their political instincts appear to have prevailed. As Sullivan pointed out, “The president is keen to advance certain factions in a religious faith he does not share - for his own political purposes. That instrumental use of religion is at the core of today’s ‘conservatism’.”

There is more I could say about all this if we continue this dialogue. I have engaged this terrain also in the context of integral spirituality in bringing into dialogue Jurgen Habermas and Ken Wilber. Integral Review is hosting an online dialog for my essay “Towards an Integral Critical Theory of the Present Age.” Using a new forum platform, the dialog started on April 21st and will last for approximately 6 weeks. The article is available in the Current Issue and you are welcome to join the discussion on this blog with that dialogue.