I'm Concerned About The Survival, Historically, Of

The Fault Of The Utilitarian Doctrine Is That It Mistakes Impersonality For Impartiality.

What's Important Is That People Give The Kinds Of Reasons That Can Be Understood And Appraised Apart From Their Particular Comprehensive Doctrines: For Example, That They Argue Against Physician-assisted Suicide Not Just By Speculating About God's Wrath Or The Afterlife, But By Talking About What They See As Assisted Suicide's Potential Injustices.

There Are Two Kinds Of Comprehensive Doctrines, Religious And Secular. Those Of Religious Faith Will Say I Give A Veiled Argument For Secularism, And The Latter Will Say I Give A Veiled Argument For Religion. I Deny Both. Each Side Presumes The Basic Ideas Of Constitutional Democracy, So My Suggestion Is That We Can Make Our Political Arguments In Terms Of Public Reason. Then We Stand On Common Ground. That's How We Can Understand Each Other And Cooperate.

The Claims Of Existing Social Arrangements And Of Self Interest Have Been Duly Allowed For. We Cannot At The End Count Them A Second Time Because We Do Not Like The Result.

The Question Is, We Have A Particular Problem. How Many Religions Are There In The United States? How Are They Going To Get On Together? One Way, Which Has Been The Usual Way Historically, Is To Fight It Out, As In France In The Sixteenth Century. That's A Possibility.