How political is the personal?

Justice in upbringing

Bibliographic Data

ID23200499
AuthorsSteven Lecce (University of Manitoba, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume6
Issue1
Pages21-45
Publication date2008-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory and Research in Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1477-8785 • E-ISSN: 1741-3192
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1477878507086729
OpenAlexW2002935356
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

According to one recently influential version of liberalism, law and public policy in a democracy should be justified independently of the controversial ethical or religious beliefs that divide citizens, because political membership is coercive, involuntary and profoundly influential to our overall well-being. For children, however, the parent—child relationship shares these three salient features of the political domain: it is also necessarily coercive, involuntary and profoundly influential. In this article, I examine the case for extending the ideal of public reason to parental conduct in connection with religious upbringing. After distinguishing several senses in which the personal is political, and several modes of applying political principles to personal conduct, I reject the proposed extension, and conclude that liberalism is ultimately compatible with `fundamentalist' upbringings.

Classical liberalism · Democracy · Ideal (ethics) · Law and economics · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Salient · Sociology · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Religious Education and Schools · Religious Freedom and Discrimination · Social Psychology

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