RELIGION, DEMOCRACY, AND CITIZENSHIPexist in a society before a given set of procedures can work. For Wittgenstein, to agree
about the definition of a term is not enough, for we need agreement in the way we use it.
He puts it in the following way: ‘‘if language is to be a means of communication there
must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in
judgments.’’
Procedures only exist as a complex ensemble of practices. Those practices constitute
specific forms of individuality and identity that make possible allegiance to the proce-
dures. It is because they are inscribed in shared forms of life and agreement in judgments
that procedures can be accepted and followed. They cannot be seen as rules created on
the basis of principles and then applied to specific cases. Rules, for Wittgenstein, are
always abridgments of practices; they are inseparable from specific forms of life. The
distinction between procedural and substantial cannot, therefore, be as clear as some
would have it. In the case of justice, for instance, I do not think that one can oppose, as
so many liberals do, procedural and substantial justice without recognizing that proce-
dural justice already presupposes acceptance of certain values. Democracy, therefore, is
not only a matter of establishing the right procedures independently of the practices that
make possible democratic forms of individuality. Procedures always involve substantial
ethical commitments. For that reason, they cannot work properly if they are not sup-
ported by a specific type of ethos. This means that, contrary to what Rawls believes,
comprehensive doctrines cannot be excluded from the political realm. In my view, impor-
tant consequences follow from that, and a new way of thinking about religion and the
role that it could play in the creation of such ethos is made possible.
The previous reflections indicate that there is a serious misunderstanding involved in the
liberal tenet of theneutralityof the state. To be sure, in order to respect individual liberty
and pluralism, a liberal democratic state must be agnostic in matters of religion and
morality. But it cannot be agnostic concerning political values, since by definition it pos-
tulates certain ethico-political values that constitute its principles of legitimacy. Far from
being based on a relativistic conception of the world, liberal democracy is the expression
of specific values that inform the way in which it establishes a particular mode of ordering
social relations. This new symbolic ordering constitutes its specificity as a distinct regime.
As a new political form of society, liberal pluralist democracy is characterized by a certain
number of crucial separations: between the public and the private, between church and
state, between civil law and religious law. Those separations make possible the emergence
of civil society as a distinct realm. Moreover, the liberal notion of a secular state implies
not only the distinction between church and state, but also the conception of the church
as a voluntary association. This underlines the important difference that exists between
our belonging to the state and our belonging to a religious group. For some people, this
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