On Giving Religious Intolerance Its Due: Prospects for Transforming Conflict in a Post-secular Society

Springs explores the possibility that intolerance and conflict motivated by deep moral and religious commitments and identities might be reframed and positively utilized as resources for constructive political and social purposes. He revisits efforts by political philosophers and religious ethicists over the past two decades to accommodate in political discourse religious voices and actors allegedly inclined toward intolerance and, thus, likely to spawn divisive and destabilizing conflict. He examines Chantal Mouffe's account of agonistic pluralism as a proposal for thinking beyond tolerance as a primary, orienting value that aims to contain, assuage, or resolve intransigent conflict. He concludes that Mouffe's agonistic pluralism aids in executing a conceptual reframing of religious intolerance and conflict and, thus, moves in an important and promising direction toward a workable model of transforming and constructively utilizing conflict that is liable to be intransigent.