INTRODUCTIONated with the common good, such as the separation between the church’s and its own
jurisdictions. In Mouffe’s words: ‘‘Those separations make possible the emergence of civil
society as a distinct realm’’ (p. 321). Indeed, she goes on to claim, ‘‘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’’ (p. 321).
Yet the legal separation of church and state does not take place within a neutral space
or starting out from a supposedly impartial (call it secular) point of view, nor does it
imply that religion and politics do not jointly constitute the public realm at different
levels. To deny this is to confuse politics and the political with the question of state power
and to identify the latter with things public. On the contrary, Mouffe goes on to claim, the
separation between church and state does ‘‘not require that religion should be relegated to
the private sphere and that religious symbols should be excluded from the public sphere’’
(p. 325). Within constitutional limits, which will be differently interpreted depending on
historical context and cultural tradition, religious motifs and causes can inform demo-
cratic struggles in the public arena, and hence contribute to the definition or readjustment
of the common good.
This being said, the ‘‘social imaginary,’’ or the constituted ‘‘we’’ implied in the com-
mon good, is conceived here, not as a natural or historical given, but as a ‘‘vanishing
point,’’ a ‘‘horizon of meaning’’ whose empirical referent is impossible to represent fully
under modern conditions, precisely because it must always remain an object of contesta-
tion in view of temporary hegemonies. The nature or dimension of the political requires
that politics—especially democratic politics or agonistic pluralism—steer clear of the an-
tagonism whose intrinsic and destabilizing hostility is a standing possibility and, indeed,
risk of the social and public realm. The Greek and modern understanding ofpolisand
polemos, for essential reasons, never lie far apart. An agonistic and pluralistic democratic
ethos or practice would not prevent the possibility or risk of exclusion—of the very dis-
tinction between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’—nor, to be sure, should it have the illusion that dis-
agreements will eventually be resolvable through rational agreement brought about by
certain formal procedures. Yet it makes sure that in the cultivation, expression, and con-
frontation of impassioned utterances or divisive affects (that is to say, all the values, be-
liefs, and motivations that are irreducible to self-declared interests and reasons, let alone
moral judgments, but that bring people into the political process in the first place) ‘‘the
opponent is not seen as an enemy to be destroyed but as an adversary whose existence is
legitimate and must be tolerated. We will fight against his/her ideas, but we will not put
into question his/her right to defend them’’ (p. 323).
That alternative conceptions of pluralist democracy might require further question-
ing, both of the very concept of tolerance and of elusive notions of transcendence, is aptly
argued by Lars Tønder and Matthew Scherer. Tønder’s succinct analyses build upon a
thorough investigation of the historical and intellectual underpinnings—and limita-
tion—of the fundamentally Christian idea of tolerance, showing it to be in need of further
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