America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty

A Clear and Present Danger: The Doctrine of Political Nonfoundationalism

A Clear and Present Danger: The Doctrine of Political Nonfoundationalism James W. Ceaser The greatest threat to America today comes from a theoretical doctrine that has been offered in all sincerity as the friend, even the savior, of liberal democracy. For want of a universally accepted name, this doctrine will be designated here by the label of political nonfoundationalism. Political nonfoundationalism holds that liberal democracy is best maintained by renouncing public reliance on a ‹rst principle (or “foundation”) that claims to embody an objective truth—something, for example, along the lines of the “laws of nature” that are invoked in the Declaration of Independence. Political life should either be neutral toward such principles or exclude them altogether. The implementation of nonfoundationalism would take place not by imposing new constitutional or legal rules, except perhaps in the case of religion, but by encouraging a new way of thinking. This new way of thinking, called “reasonableness” by one philosopher and “irony” by another, is already said to be trickling down from the intelligentsia to the people.1 A public shaped by the doctrine of nonfoundationalism would regard the introduction of ‹rst principles into politics as retrograde (because all foundations are ‹ctions), or divisive (because not all persons share the same ‹rst principles), or undemocratic (because a truth is held to be selfsubsisting and thus beyond our own making). The new doctrine draws its support from some of the most celebrated thinkers of our era, among them Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Gianni Vattimo. Each of these philosophers has his own school of thought, known respectively as “anti-essentialism” (or“neopragmatism”),“political deconstructionism,”“the doctrine of public reason,” “deliberative democracy,” and “weak thinking” (il pensiero debole ). By no means are these positions all in perfect agreement. Some of these philosophers defend a thoroughgoing theoretical skepticism, while / 75 others insist that certain positions can be objectively established.2 Yet regardless of their differences on these theoretical issues, nonfoundationalists join together in seeking to erect a high wall of separation between foundations and politics. To put a clearer face on this doctrine, political nonfoundationalism in America would mean an end to public discourse about the “transcendent law of nature and nature’s god” that has been invoked since the Founding.3 “Metaphysical ideas” or “comprehensive doctrines” of this sort should have no place in the public discourse of an advanced liberal democracy. They are in a word, and the word is Richard Rorty’s,“useless.”4 “A liberal society,” he writes,“is badly served by an attempt to supply it with philosophical foundations . For the attempt to supply such foundations presupposes a natural order of topics which is prior to, and overrides the results of, encounters between old and new vocabularies.”5 A nation without foundations can move more easily from one language game to the next, free of the vexing constraints imposed by claims of truth. A nonfoundationalist public philosophy , Rorty continues, is a boon to liberal democracy; it “chimes . . . with the spirit of tolerance that has made constitutional democracy possible.”6 John Rawls, following his famous turn in the 1980s, argued much the same thing: “A constitutional regime does not require an agreement on a comprehensive doctrine: the basis of social unity lies elsewhere.”7 The doctrine of nonfoundationalism would likewise exclude public acknowledgment of a religious basis of America’s political system and civilization . Shortly before his death, Jacques Derrida contrasted contemporary “European” public philosophy, characterized by its exclusion of religion from sanctioned public discourse, with the backward views found in America , where “despite the separation in principle between church and state, [there is] a fundamental biblical (and primarily Christian) reference in its of‹cial public discourse and the discourse of its political leaders.”8 Derrida lamented the fact that American currency still displays the motto “In God We Trust” and that presidents regularly invoke the Almighty in their public speeches. Just as Rorty has urged the abandonment of metaphysical foundations , Derrida called on American political elites to dispense with these anachronistic references to religion and to follow the lead of advanced European nations in embracing a nonfoundationalist secularism. No observer can fail to remark upon the highly political use of the doctrine of nonfoundationalism in recent times. Almost alone among the 76 / america at risk Western liberal democracies, America exhibits strong foundationalist elements in its political discourse. For this stance, it has been roundly criticized by nonfoundationalists, especially in those instances when presidents have turned to...