Religious freedom in Ronald Dworkin: liberalism between political neutrality and the metaphysics of value

Abstract

The article provides a critical analysis of Ronald Dworkin's conception of religious freedom, dividing it into three main stages. First, it examines his defense of conscientious objection and the right to abortion as expressions of religious freedom, even in non-theistic contexts, based on the notion of ethical independence and the reinterpreted idea of the sanctity of human life. Second, it focuses on the posthumous work Religion Without God, in which Dworkin proposes an expanded concept of religiosity, arguing that all morality, including secular morality, rests on a kind of faith in objective values. Third, the article identifies an internal tension within Dworkin’s own thesis: if liberal rights are grounded in values whose ultimate justification lies in a broad sense of moral faith, then egalitarian liberalism must acknowledge its own secular religiosity, a faith in human dignity as a non-negotiable value. The article concludes that this insight does not undermine the distinction between liberal and illiberal regimes but rather requires liberalism to explicitly affirm its normative and philosophical foundations.