Presumably, dear colleges, one of the central statements of Professor
Audard's keynote lecture is that, according to Rawls, "the modes of public
justification of the secular state …! must be changed in order to reach a fully
democratic consensus, even with hostile religious minorities". "Paradoxically, as she
says, the secular state must be defended on grounds other than those of secularism
and laïcité".
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I hope that we can make the idea of public justification free from the
supposed paradox by certain modifications of the statement, though, of course, it
would be an impossible task to fully establish my claim in this short comment.
Firstly, I will assume, that according to Rawls, at least it seems to me, we
cannot reach a fully democratic consensus. A fortiori, we cannot reach, let me
suppose very firml
