Co-authored with Paul Billingham, University of Oxford

In this debate book, Billingham begins by considering three worries that one might have about whether religious citizens can productively bring their faith to bear in political debates: first, that religious citizens may be prone to engage in moral crusades in politics; second, that they may appeal to religious reasons that are inaccessible to other citizens; and third, that they may be unwilling to reconsider or revise their views. Billingham argues that each of these worries can be defused, and that (as a result) religious citizens need not be especially concerned to regulate when or how they rely on religious reasons to defend their positions.

In response, I highlight some features of religious commitment that may make religious citizens particularly susceptible to political polarization, and suggest that— insofar as religious citizens are especially vulnerable to political polarization—they may also become particularly prone to moral crusading, offering inaccessible religious reasons, and being unwilling to reconsider their (religiously-based) political positions. Specifically, I argue that religious affiliation can sometimes aggravate the forces of political polarization by drawing religious citizens into deliberative enclaves and connecting their political positions to deep,  life-orienting theological commitments. To counteract the potentially destructive influences of political polarization, I contend, religious citizens should be proactive in developing (what I call) a strong deliberative stance towards their interlocutors: they should foster and exercise the virtues of empathetic engagement, conscientious inquiry, and (what I term) 'reciprocity in reasoning.' I maintain that religious citizens who take a strong deliberative stance towards their non-religious (and differently religious) compatriots can bring their unique gifts to bear on public political culture in a way that enhances, rather than erodes, the strength of democratic institutions.

Contemporary philosophical discussions about religion and democratic politics focus primarily on deontic questions. Exclusivists argue that believers should not appeal to sectarian religious beliefs as grounds for supporting coercive laws because such appeals show disregard for non-believers’ status as free and equal citizens (Hartley and Watson 2018; Quong 2011; Rawls 2005). Inclusivists deny that claim. Some inclusivists are highly permissive. Against exclusivists, they suggest that deontic principles give rise to few, if any, civic obligations for ordinary religious citizens. In this essay, I develop a consequentialist case against permissive inclusivism. I contend that religious citizens are vulnerable to being polarized around their religiously-motivated moral convictions and that, to address this vulnerability, they should exercise two virtues: conscientious inquiry and empathetic engagement. I suggest that when religious communities develop these virtues, they not only need not contribute to polarization, but may in fact have certain advantages over secular ones in helping to fight against it. 

Public reason liberals contend that religious reasons ought not to serve as the (sole) bases of coercive laws. Their argument depends on the claim that reasonable citizens cannot reasonably be expected to accept religious reasons as justifications for laws because those reasons are inaccessible to non-religious citizens. 

As critics point out, public reason liberals’ defense of this claim—which I call the Unreasonable Expectations claim—is weak and fails to engage with relevant literature in epistemology. The first part of my project aims to remedy this problem, and develop the strongest possible defense of Unreasonable Expectations.

The second part of my project considers the objection that any standard of inaccessibility that makes religious arguments inappropriate bases for laws will also render inadmissible the arguments of oppressed peoples seeking revolutionary change in epistemically hostile environments. I explore criteria for determining how far would-be revolutionaries (religious or secular) must go in seeking out arguments that are accessible to other citizens. 

Leadership 18, 3 (2022): 446-464

(Available for free download here.)

Focusing on current efforts to persuade the public to comply with COVID-19 best practices, this essay examines what role appeals to religious reasons should (or should not) play in leaders’ attempts to secure followers’ acceptance of group policies in contexts of religious and moral pluralism. While appeals to followers’ religious commitments can be helpful in promoting desirable public health outcomes, they also raise moral concerns when made in the contexts of secular institutions with religiously diverse participants. In these contexts, leaders who appeal to religious reasons as bases of justification for imposing COVID policies may seem to fail to show respect for the autonomy of those who lack the relevant religious commitments, and—especially when a leader herself rejects the religious commitments she makes reference to to persuade others—her appeals to religious reasons may seem to constitute ethically problematic exercises of manipulation. This essay draws on the resources of contemporary political philosophy to analyze and respond to these concerns and concludes that they are not sufficiently well-founded. To the contrary, it contends that there are good moral grounds for leaders to appeal to religious reasons as (partial) bases of justification for why followers should accept COVID policies. In the course of the argument, this essay also highlights how contemporary political theory can enrich discussions about the distinctions between coercion, manipulation, and leadership. It thereby give insight not only into the ethics of leadership but also—at least by the lights of central theories of leadership like that of James MacGregor Burns (1978)—into whether and how appeals to religious reasons can figure into genuine exercises of leadership, in contrast with mere instances of the wielding of social power. 

Journal of Religion and Health 61, 5 (2022): 4155-4168

(Available here.)

While many have implemented best practices intended to help stem the spread of COVID-19, there are also a substantial number of citizens, both domestically and abroad, who have resisted these practices. We argue that public health authorities, as well as scientific researchers and funders, should help address this resistance by putting greater effort into ascertaining how existing religious practices and beliefs align with COVID-19 guidelines. In particular, we contend that Euro-American scholars—who have often tended to implicitly favor secular and Christian worldviews—should put added focus on how Islamic commitments may (or may not) support COVID-19 best practices, including practices that extend beyond the domain of support for mental health.

(In progress. Please email mcoetsee@nd.edu for a draft)

According to deliberative democrats, we should not only express our political views at the ballot box but also open up our contested commitments to critical scrutiny from disagreeing others in the course of deliberation before casting our votes. However, deliberative democrats do not explain how this duty for deliberative inquiry aligns with various epistemic and practical considerations that bear on disagreement in political contexts. For one thing, this duty stands in tension with epistemic arguments suggesting that epistemic superiors’ may stand steadfast on their controversial beliefs. It also raises important ethical questions. In a high-stakes disagreement about Whether p?, serious reflection on an epistemic inferior’s arguments may seem to give undue credibility to their position. It may also make one vulnerable to being misled. I review and reject several arguments deliberative democrats may offer to respond to these challenges before arguing that (what I call) the social costs of error may appropriately motivate us to give the benefit of the doubt even to those we regard as our epistemic inferiors.

(In progress. Please email mcoetsee@nd.edu for a draft)

According to public reason liberals, coercive laws should be publicly justified to reasonable citizens on the basis of reason that they can accept notwithstanding the diversity in their comprehensive religious and philosophical beliefs. However, critics of public reason liberalism contend that there are some policy debates—like the debate about abortion—in which the justification for any policy choice will depend on controversial religious or philosophical arguments that some reasonable citizens cannot accept. These cases of indeterminacy sometimes lead critics to reject the project of public justification and favor a purely procedural approach to democratic politics. I highlight the shortcomings of a procedural approach and argue that—rather than giving up on finding mutually acceptable laws—reasonable democratic subjects should engage in conscientious inquiry about the underlying religious and philosophical commitments that motivate their political disputes. This requirement for conscientious inquiry may sometimes oblige democratic actors to interrogate even their core religious and philosophical beliefs, and so it sits uneasy with public reason liberals’ aspiration to avoid skeptical consequences for those beliefs. Nevertheless, I contend that regard for other citizens as free and equal requires reasonable subjects not to be dogmatic, even about their core comprehensive commitments.

Journal of Ethics 26 (2022): 563-589 

(Available online here.)

In this paper, I argue for a (pro tanto) moral duty against dogmatism: I argue that the social costs of a disagreement can give those who are party to it added moral reasons to reconsider their controversial beliefs and (so) not to be dogmatic. In Sect. 1, I motivate the idea that the social costs of disagreement may give rise to reasons to reconsider our beliefs by considering intuitive examples to that effect. I suggest that some of the stock intuitions that epistemologists of disagreement have depended on to make their arguments are implicitly influenced by social costs that are salient to the disagreements in their cases. In Sect. 2, I respond to a Practical Objection to my argument that political philosophers might be keen to press. According to this objection, the social costs of disagreement do not give rise to a moral duty against dogmatism because we can adequately address those costs just by compromising on how we act on our beliefs in the context of the disagreement. In Sect. 3, I address a contrasting objection to the moral duty against dogmatism that might be pressed by epistemologists, which I term the Truth Objection. This objection points out that the social costs of disagreement do nothing to affect the strength of the evidence for or against one’s contentious beliefs, and so complains that those who reconsider their beliefs just on account of the social costs of disagreement ‘cave in’ to social pressure in a problematic way. In the course of addressing the Truth Objection, I more carefully explain how the social costs of disagreement give rise to a moral duty against dogmatism by distinguishing between ‘truth-motivated’ and ‘truth-indifferent’ reasons for inquiry. 

Philosophy and Social Criticism (forthcoming in print, available online here.)

Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes.