ABSTRACT
The project began as a reaction to the strong state monism of the Nazi regime, under which state power trumped conscience and the government invoked emergency powers to overcome claims to political and civil rights. Perhaps the unease many feel towards human rights is based upon an erosion of the strong commitment to dualism that underlays just the human rights worldview, but most of Western history. If the official ideology of dualism is some variation of natural reason and natural rights, then official ideology of monism is public reason, including a tendency to discount conscience, significantly or altogether. So, every one of these dimensions of religious freedom freedom of religion, freedom for religion, freedom from religion, and freedom within religion actually rests upon presumptions of dualism that are so familiar they are hardly recognized by those who hold them, presumptions that are under assault in sustained ways.
