During our episode onReligion and the Secular StateRobert Audi claimed that some religions are non-dogmatic He might be right about that, I am not sure which ones he had in mind. On the other hand, John was pushing the line that many of our "secular" beliefs have pretty much the status and function of dogmatic religious beliefs. At least for some people, he might be right about that. I recall that at least one caller agreed with John's remark. I still insist that if we are to have a shared public life that reflects whatJohn Rawlscalls "reasonable pluralism" citizens must pursue public debate with an absence of dogmatism.

在合理的多元主义中，我们可以追随罗尔斯，包括“所有合理的对立的宗教、哲学和道德教义，这些教义可能会延续几代人，并在一个或多或少公正的宪政体制中获得相当多的追随者。”罗尔斯认为，所有这些合理的、但反对“全面的”道德学说的信徒之间可能会有一种趋同。他认为，尽管如此，持这种对立观点的信徒仍然可以在某些基本的正义原则上达成一致。他声称，这些原则被奉为民主社会的基本理念，所有理性的公民都可以分享这些原则，尽管他们在基本道德观上存在差异。这就是他所说的重叠共识。

I share Rawls's optimism that it ispossible多元的、相互冲突的综合道德观点汇聚在一起，形成重叠的共识。但我认为，这种趋同的可能性的一个条件是没有教条主义。我认为，要实现独断专行是非常困难的。对此，我其实非常悲观。事实上，我认为，鉴于顽固而彻底的教条主义，分化和分裂的可能性可能大于趋同。

我所说的没有教条主义是什么意思?为什么我认为这是实现重叠共识的可能性的一个条件呢?这又回到了我在之前的一篇文章中所说的，将各种道德观的本质综合起来。By that I mean not just that they provide comprehensive moral assessments of a wide variety of things, but also that they generate felt entitlements tohold othersto the strictures of the relevant moral outlook,不管其他人是否赞同相关的道德观。This last part is the key.

Suppose that I have a moral outlook that condemns slavery as wrong. And suppose that you have a moral outlook that permits you to own slaves. What am I to do when faced with your slave holding practices, practices that I abhor. There are at least three options. I could try to persuade you out of them. I could try to force you out of them. Or I could simply tolerate our differences. Which options am I entitled to take? One can imagine my endorsing a moral doctrine that entails an absolute prohibition on slavery -- not just for myself or adherents to that doctrine, but for everybody. And one can imagine that doctrine generating in me a felt entitlement to hold the world to that doctrine, even those who do not accept that doctrine. If I accepted such a doctrine, I might feel entitled not just to try to persuade or to tolerate your slaveholding, but to force you out of your slaveholding. Now suppose your slave-holding morality generated in you a felt entitlement to hold the world to a norm of permitting slave-holding. You might feel thereby entitled to resist my attempts to change your practices with force or coercion of your own.

One quick caveat. You might think that anybody who endorses a slave-holding doctrine is in some sense unreasoable, so not part of a Rawlsian reasoable pluralism. There is something to be said for that approach. But I think it's very tricky to make it work in the end. Whatever else slaveholders have been throughout history, I doubt much of a case can be made that they were any more or less deficient in rationality than the rest of us.

I think that the committed slave-holder and the committed abolitionist might never reach moral consensus. Nor do I think their failure to do so would require a failure of rationality on either of their parts. Rational consensus and rational emnity are, I think, equally open to rational beings as real possibilities. Because of that fact, moral struggle among even highly rational beings seems to me as likely to end in discord, fragmentation, and/or the domination of one party by the other as in an overlapping consensus of the Rawlsian variety. This is what makes the achievment of overlapping consensus deeply subject to historical and cultural contingencies, on my view.

我认为，有一条出路，但它需要我所说的教条主义的消除。我的意思是，在一定的范围内，我们不应该认为自己有资格让别人遵守她自己不会支持的道德原则(在某些理想条件下，我在这里就不赘述了)。It should be clear that the absence of dogmatism isnotrationally mandatory and not a directive of reason itself. That's why I flag it as a separate and additional principle. I also think that there are lots of exceptions to it. Moreover, the principle as I just stated it is much too crude and needs lots of refinements. But never mind about those just now.

The significance of the principle is that in accepting it, I represent to myself that I am not entitled to hold another even to my deepest moral commitments unless that other in effect herself entitles me to do so. By accepting some such constraint on my relations with others, I view even my deepest moral commitments as commitments, in the first instance, for me alone. That is not to say that they mustremaincommitments for me alone and that I can'tproposethem as commitments for us all. But if I am to achievemoral communitywith those with whom I start out in deep disagreement, I have to be open to revising my moral commitments in such a way thatwe togethercan reach a set of mutually binding agreements about the conduct of our shared lives. I have to allow others as much say in the constitution of that order as I demand for myself. And of course, the other has to do the same for me.

这一切都是对约翰的回应，还有一点是对罗伯特的回应。约翰说，许多世俗信仰具有教条式的宗教信仰的特征。但如果是这样的话，那么我同意世俗主义并不比教条宗教更好地作为多元和冲突的道德观点共享生活的基础。如果罗伯特是对的，有些宗教是非教条的，如果他的意思是说它们暂时具有约束力，服从道德辩论，对集体理性的准则负责，那么这些宗教就可以在我们构建共同生活的尝试中占有一席之地。