RT Article
T1 THE NEW GENEALOGY OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
JF Journal of law and religion
VO 33
IS 1
SP 3
OP 41
A1 Decosimo, Joseph David 1979-
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1666377856
AB This article pursues an immanent critique of a scholarly movement and mood that I call "the new genealogy of religious freedom" and sketches an alternative proposal. The new genealogy of religious freedom claims that religious freedom is incoherent, systemically biased, oppressive, ideological-and necessarily so. Its critique deploys a methodology inherited from Nietzsche and targets a vision of religious freedom associated with "foundationalists" like Kant and Rawls. This article calls both the methodology and the vision into question. The version of genealogy that this movement promotes proves self-destructive and incoherent, veering toward nihilism and unable to account for its own status as critique. Its attack on foundationalist religious freedom is effective, but it presupposes-and targets-conceptions of freedom, neutrality, and power that we need not endorse. For foundationalists and genealogists alike, these assumptions define religious freedom. This article rejects those assumptions and that vision of religious freedom. It sketches a pragmatist, dialectical vision of religious freedom rooted in alternate conceptions of power, freedom, and neutrality and a corresponding strategy for legally defining "religion," inheriting the strengths of genealogy and foundationalism while avoiding their weaknesses.
K1 Defining Religion
K1 Essentialism
K1 Genealogy
K1 Power
K1 pragmatist
K1 Religious Freedom
DO 10.1017/jlr.2018.11