The aim of this paper is to discuss the possibility to find a shared basis of agreement among comprehensive religious doctrines, when actors neither agree about which goals are reasonable nor think that a cooperative behaviour is worthy. Taking into account recent case studies, I will compare two of the most influential theories about consensus: Habermas’s position about “reaching understanding” and Rawls’s model of “overlapping consensus”. Whereas several well known political theories about consensus seem to reside at a distance from the world, failing to place normative claims within historical contexts, Max Weber argues that opposed value’s spheres interlace because of the “superficiality” of quotidian life. The still open problem pertains to conditions for political consensus and justice when there is no reason to expect that religious individuals and organizations will converge in their views on what constitutes a just way of life and on where are the reasonable limits of reciprocity to be drawn.
