Comments on: Taking religion seriously http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:29:19 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Johan Siebers http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/comment-page-1/#comment-6454 Johan Siebers Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:19:50 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/#comment-6454 The idea that there is a core to religion that remains important also for secularised reason---and that is as yet not completely salvaged by secular reason ('materialist' reason) goes back to the work of Ernst Bloch (<em>Atheism in Christianity</em>) and Walter Benjamin (<em>Begriff der Geschichte</em>, first thesis), and via them in a way, to Marx. It is a side-effect, if you will, of Marx's move to put Hegelian dialectics on its feet. Religion suddenly was no longer an imaginary or symbolic mode of expression for what ultimately has to be grasped in Reason, but a topsy-turvy storehouse of images, feelings, realisations, affects and effects concerning exactly the three things Habermas talks about---power, existence, eschatology (what can't yet be articulated)---but not reducible to a formal-rational or factual redescription. It is also present in Adorno's 'loyalty to metaphysics in the moment of its collapse' (despite Habermas' stylisation of Adorno as the fly-bottle he (H.) found a way out of). It is a point for reflection that the long and serious engagment with religious content in this tradition of marxism is so invisible today, and it may well point to a difficulty in Habermas's reading of the situation: For what are we to do when we, as secular citizens, take our religious fellow citizens seriously? The religious content hinges on the unum necessarium---no 'post-metapysical' thinking can take that seriously unless it changes itself. Post-metaphysical thinking is far from ideologically neutral---it also has its totality. In the end there is the promise of taking the content seriously, but on purely procedural terms. The difference with Rawls may not be so significant after all. Only if reason can keep the question about its own nature open, can it avoid its totalising tendency (which as Habermas says appears as defaitism today). But that is always a matter of 'keep trying,' and never guaranteed---and only possible in the light of reason's ultimate. The relation to an ultimate can never be procedural or formal. The idea that there is a core to religion that remains important also for secularised reason—and that is as yet not completely salvaged by secular reason (’materialist’ reason) goes back to the work of Ernst Bloch (Atheism in Christianity) and Walter Benjamin (Begriff der Geschichte, first thesis), and via them in a way, to Marx. It is a side-effect, if you will, of Marx’s move to put Hegelian dialectics on its feet. Religion suddenly was no longer an imaginary or symbolic mode of expression for what ultimately has to be grasped in Reason, but a topsy-turvy storehouse of images, feelings, realisations, affects and effects concerning exactly the three things Habermas talks about—power, existence, eschatology (what can’t yet be articulated)—but not reducible to a formal-rational or factual redescription. It is also present in Adorno’s ‘loyalty to metaphysics in the moment of its collapse’ (despite Habermas’ stylisation of Adorno as the fly-bottle he (H.) found a way out of). It is a point for reflection that the long and serious engagment with religious content in this tradition of marxism is so invisible today, and it may well point to a difficulty in Habermas’s reading of the situation: For what are we to do when we, as secular citizens, take our religious fellow citizens seriously? The religious content hinges on the unum necessarium—no ‘post-metapysical’ thinking can take that seriously unless it changes itself. Post-metaphysical thinking is far from ideologically neutral—it also has its totality. In the end there is the promise of taking the content seriously, but on purely procedural terms. The difference with Rawls may not be so significant after all. Only if reason can keep the question about its own nature open, can it avoid its totalising tendency (which as Habermas says appears as defaitism today). But that is always a matter of ‘keep trying,’ and never guaranteed—and only possible in the light of reason’s ultimate. The relation to an ultimate can never be procedural or formal.

]]> By: Daniel Steinmetz http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/comment-page-1/#comment-1509 Daniel Steinmetz Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:26:37 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/#comment-1509 My impression of Habermas, though, is that it is possible that one day we might be able to do without the moral and ethical insight of religion. Such religious insight is needed for the movement due to its "conceptual richness" that for Habermas cannot presently be matched by secular discourse. Of course, this reduces religion to functionalism in that Habermas is attempting to extract from public religious discourse content that is conducive for the heathly functioning of a democratic public square he perceives as now in jeopardy. Habermas recognizes the problem of functionalism but, as Austin Harrington notes, he continues "to make an individual´s or collectivity´s relation to transcendence subordinate to alterior ends in various respects, as when he writes of religion´s semantic potential and its function for the regeneration of a dwindling normative consciousness". Habermas has stated elsewhere that religious discourses would lose their identity if they were to open themselves up to a type of interpretation which no longer allows religious experiences to be valid as religious experiences. How to reconcile this with his apparent instrumental conception of religion in the public sphere is problematic. My impression of Habermas, though, is that it is possible that one day we might be able to do without the moral and ethical insight of religion. Such religious insight is needed for the movement due to its “conceptual richness” that for Habermas cannot presently be matched by secular discourse. Of course, this reduces religion to functionalism in that Habermas is attempting to extract from public religious discourse content that is conducive for the heathly functioning of a democratic public square he perceives as now in jeopardy. Habermas recognizes the problem of functionalism but, as Austin Harrington notes, he continues “to make an individual´s or collectivity´s relation to transcendence subordinate to alterior ends in various respects, as when he writes of religion´s semantic potential and its function for the regeneration of a dwindling normative consciousness”.

Habermas has stated elsewhere that religious discourses would lose their identity if they were to open themselves up to a type of interpretation which no longer allows religious experiences to be valid as religious experiences. How to reconcile this with his apparent instrumental conception of religion in the public sphere is problematic.

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