Democracy on Purpose

by Franklin I. Gamwell

Published 30 March 2000
Western moral and political theory since the 1800s has widely held that morality and politics are independent of a divine reality. Claiming that this consensus is flawed, and without appealing to the beliefs of any specific religion, Franklin Gamwell defends a return to the view that moral and political principles depend on a divine purpose. Engaging in a dialogue with such major representatives of the dominent consensus as Kant, Habermas and Rawls, and informed by the philosophical writings of Alfred North Whitehead, this text makes the case for a neoclassical metaphysics that restores a religious sensibility to our political life.