Democracy and Tradition aims to articulate and defend two related theses. The first thesis is that modern liberal democracy is itself a tradition strong enough to engage substantive ethical questions on the merits of its own distinctive set of discursive practices. The second thesis concerns how we should understand this set of discursive practices: in other words, what do we say and how do we say it when we are deliberating democratically? In prosecuting his claims Stout relies both on sustained criticism of his interlocutor's writings—there are separate chapters on Rawls, MacIntyre, and Hauerwas—and a substantial development of his own views. The targets of the first thesis are the "new traditionalists," those authors who have reacted critically to the advance of liberalism and who advocate a return to pre-liberal, or—as Stout would say—"traditional" society. The "new traditionalists" whom Stout principally engages are Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas, but these figures are meant to represent a larger current of anti-liberal thought. In Stout's view these authors short-change the capacities of democratic thought and retreat conceptually into a nostalgic homeland of their own making. In opposition to their pessimism about liberalism, Stout presents a more positive picture of democratic liberalism that places it in a rich tradition of its own, using such figures as Emerson, Whitman, Wollstonecraft, and Dewey.

The target of the second thesis is Rawls, specifically his famous interdiction on religiously based reasoning in the public sphere. Stout believes that Rawls is forced to exclude religious arguments from public debate because of his belief that 'reasonableness' must include a commitment "to the contractarian project of trying to find, and abide by, a common basis of principles" (71). Religious principles, which are not common to all members of the polity, cannot be used as the basis for public argument. But Stout abandons the project of finding "reasonable" reasons for the project of putting yourself in your interlocutor's shoes, and arguing from her specific premises (which you need not accept). Stout describes this as replacing Rawls' "transcendental" goal with a dialogic one. Therefore, Stout does not claim that religious principles should be used in public debate in the way that Rawls does not want them to be used, as though they had the privileged status of common principles. Rather, Stout is expanding the kinds of argument that could count as reasonable in Rawls' liberal framework to include a Socratic-style dialectic that has no need of such principles beyond a commitment to argument and consistency. Hence the tradition of democratic reasoning as Stout sees it does and should continue to allow religious speech to have its say in our collective deliberation, so long as this speech is properly construed.

Both camps—the new traditionalists and the secular liberals—according to Stout, offer what in fact is a false picture of how democracy (at least in this country) operates. In this they are closer than they initially appear. By upsetting their shared assumptions, Stout hopes to present a third way of approach, one that saves what is useful from the traditionalists' criticism without becoming "separatist"; one that retains Rawls' commitment to reasons without subscribing to his doctrine of 'reasonableness.' Stout calls his position a variation of "Hegelian pragmatism."

After criticizing Rawls' notion of "reasonableness", MacIntyre's impugning of the Enlightenment, and Hauerwas's infelicitous mixture of pacifism and antiliberalism, Stout goes on to develop a theoretical defense of his own account of democratic ethical discourse, using writers such as Brandom, Putnam, Hegel, and Dewey. This positive project is an ambitious one. Stout develops a fairly detailed account of practical rationality in line with contemporary analytic Hegelianism, provides his own account of "secularism," and goes to great lengths to defend the "objectivity" of ethical claims. These theses include lengthy discussions of belief, justification, pluralism, and truth which are too complex to treat at length here.

Probably because it is so far-reaching, there is much that is unconvincing in this latter section, particularly in its account of truth. Stout is a realist, yet abhors the spooky metaphysics he feels accompanies his position, so he constantly denies being a metaphysical realist and calls himself a modest pragmatist instead. This way, he feels, he does not have to explain truth as "correspondence to the world" or something of that ilk, but merely has to invoke it. (Never mind that Stout speaks of truth being about or directed at a subject matter, which is perilously close to the position he seems at pains to avoid.) Truth on Stout's view is objective without needing any explanation of how this is so. Stout constantly assures us this is not a problem, but his solution seems rather to refuse any argument than refute it. In all fairness, however, Stout's picture of ethical truth and ethical discourse is idiosyncratic and intriguing. There are many who will remain skeptical of his larger claims, but these claims, even if not true, are nonetheless thought provoking. Further, Stout peppers his theoretic arguments with practical examples and analogues, making even the most difficult sections of his book eminently readable.

Democracy and Tradition has much to recommend it. It ranges easily from the historical to the philosophical, from the theological to the political, and is written at a level that is engaging without being chatty. It will probably achieve its important goal of getting the "new traditionalists" to talk to the Rawlsians, and vice versa; but whether this ensuing discussion develops along the lines of Stout's proposed version of pragmatism is anyone's guess.

William Junker, The University of Chicago

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