deep freedom 299fi rst among them) can enjoy no defi nitive justifi cation. Its demands
always exceed, immeasurably, its grounds for making them. It says,
“Follow me.” It can never give a conclusive reason to do so. All that it
can do is to make an incomplete argument and a defeasible appeal. It
cannot escape the circularity in all our large- scale transformative
projects: for better or worse, each of them is a partly self- fulfi lling
prophecy. If it is embraced and if it works, it remakes part of experi-
ence in its image.
Th e conception of a free society and the religion of the future from
which it may draw energy and authority are no exception to this rule.
Th ey are by their very nature endeavors that ask to be judged by the
form of life and the type of humanity that they make possible.
Th e contestability of every approach to the world has the po liti cal con-
sequence stated at the beginning of this chapter. No ordering of social life
can claim to be neutral with respect to social ideals, conceptions of the
good, or visions of humanity. No such ideal, conception, or vision can
claim to be defi nitive. We cannot even be sure that it serves as a guide to
the best direction. Th is fact is one of the foundations of the sacrosanct
right of apostasy as well as of the pluralism of po liti cal forces, which the
po liti cal arrangements of a free society must be or ga nized to uphold.
Th e comprehensive conception of a free society that I have here out-
lined may give way to yet more expansive and ambitious views of free-
dom than the one that it embodies. Th ere will be other, more limited
views of freedom, emphasizing some aspects of that conception but
disregarding or even dismissing others. Th e public culture of a free so-
ciety benefi ts from such disagreement as well as from opposition to its
most basic and pervasive intentions.
By virtue of such a divergence and contest of views, the conception
of a free society becomes subject to a two- part test of its power and au-
thority. Th e fi rst part of the test is that, despite this diversity of more
comprehensive and more limited conceptions or because of it and not-
withstanding the defective character of its institutional enactment, it
become second nature to the majority of ordinary men and women. It
must prevail, in its appeal and infl uence, over those who reject it root
and branch. Th e second part of the test is that the broader and more
radical versions of the idea of freedom come to predominate, in the
public culture of the society, over the more fragmentary ones. Such a