Abstract

Taking into account the fact that, in trying to define secularism, the question of the border separating state and religon is intractable, Cecile Laborde proposes to bypass this difficulty by defining only what the liberal state must abstain from when it justifies the constraints it imposes : ideas which are inaccessible, and representations which are exclusive, discriminatory or referring to conceptions of the good life. So, if ideas and representations are free from those caracteristics, they may – whther they are religious or not – be used in public discourse. If they are not, they are prohibited, whether they be religious or not. The paper puts fort some doubts on the viability of this analysis. Is it really possible that there be ideas which are accessible without being exclusive while being also non shared in the relevant sense of that term? Is it really possible to dispense with any definition of the nature of religion in order to set the limits of the liberal state?