PLURALISM AND FAITHrefuse such an invitation. But if the late-modern time is one in which most territorial
regimes find themselves populated by partisans of different faiths/creeds/philosophies, if
much violence within and between states is traceable to dogmatism on this score, and if
the culturalneedfor such a public ethos is therefore high, then public intellectuals should
lead the way in setting the example, rather than decrying the refusal of others to follow
one that they do not instantiate sufficiently in their own practices. The assumption en-
abling such a pursuit is thatbetweena fundamental image of the world as either created
or uncreated and a specific ethico-political stance resides asensibilitythat infuses how the
creed is lived, how it is expressed, and how it is portrayed to others. The sensibility flows
into the creed, rotating its ethico-political compass in this way or that. An existential
faith, then, consists in a creed or philosophy plus the sensibility that infuses it.
The most urgent need today is to mix presumptively generous sensibilities into a
variety of theistic and nontheistic creeds, sensibilities attuned to the contemporary need
to transfigure relations of antagonism between faiths into relations of agonistic respect.
The idea is not to rise either to one ecumenical faith or to a practice of reason located
entirely above faith, but to forge a positive ethos of engagement between alternative faiths/
philosophies. Of course, the difficulties are great and the probabilities may even point in
other directions, but the contemporary need is great. Those who invoke the cover of
pessimism to forgo pursuit of the possibility do not contribute enough to the end they
purport to support.
Such a pluralism of creeds, again, does not devolve into relativism. Pluralists think it
is extremely important, for instance,howpeople of diverse faiths hold and express their
faiths in public space. And we seek to limit the power of those who would invest their
faith with unquestioned territorial hegemony. We think that, in a world marked by the
co-existence of multiple faiths on most politically organized territories, the horizontal
relations between faiths require as much attention as the vertical dimensions of each.
Expansive pluralism, then, supports the dissemination of general virtues across diverse faiths.
To the extent that Strauss seeks to realize a regime in which one creed rules over
others, he folds an exclusionary sensibility into his faith. The exclusionary imperative is
an effect less of the creed he embraces than of the type of sensibility infused into it. To
the extent that he seeks to realize a world in which multiple faiths interact productively
on the same terrain, that, too, is influenced by the kind of sensibility infused into faith.
The same goes for me. My faith in immanence, in the last instance, might be joined to a
presumptively generous sensibility or to an exclusionary, imperious sensibility.
But why do I, a believer in immanence and supporter of deep pluralism between
creeds, join Strauss in drawing attention to the ubiquity of faith? Why do so, in particular,
during a time when so many brim over with faith and many of the faithful in several
traditions vindicate violence to nationalize the states they inhabit? Here I follow William
James, to whom the same question was posed. James says, ‘‘I quite agree that what man-
kind at large most lacks is criticism and caution, not faith.’’^14 Among many, it is the
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