Hegel, Rawls and the Separation of Church and State

The public realm needs to be ordered so as to allow private and particular interests a voice, without allowing any of these to gain undue dominance in this realm. By examining Hegel's and Rawls' views of the separation of the public and private realms, and of church and state, I argue that the twin problems of privatized states (states dominated by narrow interests or worldviews, or by a particular faith or denomination) and marginalized public groups (wherein groups drawn along ethnic, racial, gendered or class lines are unfairly excluded from public life and discourse) should both be avoided. To avoid these problems and achieve a kind of inclusive balance here, my strategy will be: in section I, to recount Hegel's view of the proper synthesis of these public and private realms, within the context of his categorial system; in section II, to briefly recount Rawls' view of the separation of church and state, to provide an illuminating foil to Hegel's view; and in section III, to draw resolutions based on the convergences and divergences of their paradigmatic views.

Keywords: separation of church and state, public policy, public reason, absolutism, 1st Amendment, cultural pluralism, universality and particularity, civil society, institutional stability, overlapping consensus, justice as fairness, comprehensive worldviews.