Habermas and Religion

by Calhoun, Craig; Mendieta, Eduardo; Vanantwerpen, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780745653266
• ISBN10: 074565326X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-12-23
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

To the surprise of many readers, Jürgen Habermas has recently made religion a major theme of his work. Emphasizing both religion's prominence in the contemporary public sphere and its potential contributions to critical thought, Habermas's engagement with religion has been controversial and exciting, putting much of his own work in fresh perspective and engaging key themes in philosophy, politics and social theory. Habermas argues that the once widely accepted hypothesis of progressive secularization fails to account for the multiple trajectories of modernization in the contemporary world. He calls attention to the contemporary significance of "postmetaphysical" thought and "postsecular" consciousness - even in Western societies that have embraced a rationalistic understanding of public reason. Habermas and Religion presents a series of original and sustained engagements with Habermas's writing on religion in the public sphere, featuring new work and critical reflections from leading philosophers, social and political theorists, and anthropologists. Contributors to the volume respond both to Habermas's ambitious and well-developed philosophical project and to his most recent work on religion. The book closes with an extended response from Habermas - itself a major statement from one of today's most important thinkers.

Author Biography

Craig Calhoun is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Eduardo Mendieta is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

Jonathan VanAntwerpen is Director of the Program on Religion and the Public Sphere at the Social Science Research Council, New York.

Table of Contents

• List of Abbreviations
• Editors’ Introduction
• I. Rationalization, Secularisms, and Modernities
• 1. Exploring the Post-Secular: Three Meanings of “the Secular” and Their Possible Transcendence
• José Casanova
• 2. The Anxiety of Contingency: Reason in a Secular Age
• Maria Herrera Lima
• 3. Is the Post-Secular a Return to Political Theology?
• Maria Pia Lara
• 4. An Engagement with Jürgen Habermas on Postmetaphysical Philosophy, Religion, and Political Dialogue
• Nicholas Wolterstorff
• II. The Critique of Reason and the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment
• 5. The Burdens of Modernized Faith and Postmetaphysical Reason in Habermas’s “Unfinished Project of Enlightenment”
• Thomas McCarthy
• 6. Having One’s Cake and Eating It, Too: Habermas’s Genealogy of Post-Secular Reason
• Amy Allen
• 7. Forgetting Isaac: Faith and the Philosophical Impossibility of a Postsecular Society
• J.M. Bernstein
• III. World Society, Global Public Sphere, and Democratic Deliberation
• 8. A Postsecular Global Order? The Pluralism of Forms of Life and Communicative Freedom
• James Bohman
• 9. Global Religion and the Post-Secular Challenge
• Hent de Vries
• 10. Religion in the Public Sphere: What Are the Deliberative Obligations of Democratic Citizenship?
• Cristina Lafont
• 11. Violating Neutrality? Religious Validity Claims and Democratic Legitimacy
• Maeve Cooke
• IV. Translating Religion, Communicative Freedom, and Solidarity
• 12. Sources of Morality in Habermas’s Recent Work on Religion and Freedom
• Matthias Fritsch
• 13. Solidarity with the Past and the Work of Translation: Reflections on Memory Politics and the Post-Secular
• Max Pensky
• 14. What Lacks is Feeling: Hume versus Kant and Habermas
• John Milbank
• Reply to My Critics
• Jürgen Habermas
• Appendix: Religion in Habermas’s Work
• Eduardo Mendieta
• Notes
• Bibliography of Works by Jurgen Habermas