"Habermas and religion." Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (eds.). Polity Press. October 2013. --- Habermas and Religion aims to present a series of original and sustained engagements with Habermas’s writing on religion in the public sphere. 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. The volume is essential reading for philosophers and sociologists of religion and generally for anyone concerned with religion and politics, writes Gerard Delanty

Delanty, Gerard

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blo gs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/09/17/book-review-habermas-and-religion/Blog AdminBook Review: Habermas and ReligionHabermas and Religion aims to present a series of original and sustained engagements withHabermas’s writing on religion in the public sphere. Contributors to the volume respond both toHabermas’s ambitious and well-developed philosophical project and to his most recent workon religion. The book closes with an extended response from Habermas – itself a majorstatement from one of today’s most important thinkers. The volume is essential reading forphilosophers and sociologists of religion and generally for anyone concerned with religion andpolitics, writes Gerard Delanty.Habermas and Religion. Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta andJonathan VanAntwerpen (eds.). Polity Press. October 2013.Find this book: In various writ ings since 2001 Jürgen Habermas has made a majorcontribution to the notion of  the post-secular, a concept that has gainedincreased attention in recent years across a wide spectrum of  social andpolit ical thought. This key volume is addressed to Habermas’s attempt tore-think the relation between religion and modernity under the conditionsof  the alleged changed circumstances of  the present day thatsupposedly question a particular understanding of  modernity associatedwith the European Enlightenment legacy that separated reason and f aith.A problem f or all f ourteen contributors and the three editors in theireditorial introduction is that the concept of  the post-secular isparticularly elusive due to its dif f erent meanings in relation to philosophy,in relation to the emergence of  modernity and in relation to polit icalpractices. The volume, which includes a long Reply by Habermas, makessignif icant progress in clarif ying some of  the issues around the interplay of  the post-secularand the post-metaphysical. It is hardly surprising that the notion of  the post-secular is hotlycontested, given that the notion of  secularization that it obviously presupposes is also unclear. Theopening chapter by Jose Casanova is an incisive analysis of  the multiple meanings of  the concept ofsecularization.The post-secular f or Habermas ref ers, f irstly, to a sociological account of  the current situation in thoseparts of  the world that have experienced secularization, understood broadly as both a separation ofchurch and state, the privatization of  f aith, and the general decreased importance of  religion in public lif e. Af eature of  the post-secular condition entails a shif t in consciousness that allows a certain publicrecognition of  religion, f or instance where it might be in the interests of  justice f or minorit ies. This is acondition that is relatively clear in respect of  national societies within Europe, which have to come to termswith religious minorit ies, and in a context in which religion no longer represents a threat to democracy. Acomplicating matter, and the subject of  the chapter by James Bohman is that the post-secular is also aglobal condition in that worldwide there is an apparent rise in religion and in societies that did notexperience the European route to modernity via secularization.If  the post-secular required only a re- interpretation of  the relation between modernity and religion, thedebate would be relatively uncontroversial, since there is now general agreement that Europe – with dueregard to the diverse routes and f orms that secularization took – was exceptional in its model ofsecularization. The controversial issue in the debate – the second and complicating step – is rather thatHabermas has made the claim that the cognitive claims of  f aith must now be considered to have a valuealongside the claims of  reason and that there is a mutual learning process to be conducted f rom theirengagement. This is where he dif f ers f rom Rawls’s less demanding account of  the conditions of  pluralism,a topic explored in the chapter by Cristina Laf ont. Secular cit izens cannot write of f  religion, ignore it orridicule it, he claims and, against Rawls, they must do more than simply accommodate it; they must engagewith the potential semantic and cognitive content of  f aith.It is on the potential learning within religious worldviews that that the contributors – generally sympatheticto Habermas – are divided, with some taking up a strong posit ion against the proposal and others tovarying degrees supportive. However, this is less a case of  f or or against a proposal, since f or some  -most prominently J.M. Bernstein f or whom the proposal ult imately results in a repudiation of  reason –Habermas has gone too f ar, while f or others, more crit ical of  liberal theory, Mathias Fritsch, John Milbankand Nicholas Wolterstorf f , he has not gone f ar enough. Most other contributors have sought to f ind a mid-way posit ion on an issue that centrally resolved around what might be termed the translation thesis.Roughly it is this. Habermas’s argument – an apparent reversal of  his earlier strong context transcendenceposition – is that religious f aith contains truth claims that can be redeemed and in principle permitted inpublic discourse. Secular cit izens should be prepared to engage with religious arguments so long as thosearguments can be translated into terms f amiliar to secular cit izens. Both secular and religious cit izens haveto make an ef f ort to be understood, though apparently the latter have to make bigger ef f orts. For somethis is going too f ar, but f or others it is making too strong demands on religion which is f orced to betranslatable, thus surrendering to reason in that the language of  the latter is ult imately what is dominant.Christ the  Re d e e me r statue , Rio . Cre d it: p risc il lajp  CC BY 2.0While this all makes a considerable concession to the contextualist posit ion that Habermas had hithertostrenuously rejected in f avour of  context- transcendence, in the view of  Thomas MacCarthy it makes toostrong demands of  f aith. Overall, the contextualist posit ion appears to command the most support. In theend the translation thesis is probably indef ensible, thus reducing the post-secular argument to the lesscontroversial socio-historical thesis on modernity and the related problem of  the degree to which religioncan be permitted in the public sphere. For this reason it is hard to agree with the strong argument ofMilbank that religion should be put on a more equal level with reason. What this argument f orgets is thatsecular reason commands greater support than religion, which is divided conf essionally. Curiously there islitt le engagement with non-Christian religions. Habermas’s problem is that, in the terms of  Amy Allen, hewant ‘to have his cake and eat it ’, that is, he wants to salvage the potentially posit ive aspects of  religionwithout sacrif icing too much of  reason. Salvaging the posit ive aspects is undoubtedly easier than disposingof  the negative ones.Yet, it is clear that Habermas, despite this claim f or the recognition of  the cognitive claims of  religion,ult imately adheres to his strong def ence of  the priority of  reason, which now is only required to listen tothe demands of  religion and in terms ult imately set by reason. His Reply to the contributors is a convincingdef ence of  his project, albeit with a considerable easing of  the demands that can be made of  religion andconsequently a much reduced scope f or the post-secular moment. It would appear f rom the very f inelydeveloped contributions that Habermas has touched on a problem the solution to which is not necessarilyto be f ound in the claim that reason and f aith have to be reconciled cognitively. The relation between f aithand reason is more entwined that has of ten been thought, f or instance it can be argued that with modernityreligion adapted itself  to reason and, perhaps more controversially, there was a co-emergence of  both.Since this is a volume on Habermas and religion, it was inevitable that much of  the f ocus would be onthorny philosophical questions on the claims of  truth in religion and the extent to which postmetaphysicalthought needs to address f aith. There are clearly problems in the ways the post-secular maps onto thepost-metaphysical. The implications of  sociological dimension of  the post-secular proposal are in need off urther attention, in particular in the global context. Af ter all, as Amy Allen points out, it is not individuals butstates that are either secular or religious. In the European context the problem of  religion is a relativelyminor one to be solved pragmatically either by multicultural policies or through piecemeal ref orm based oncompromise and accommodation than on mutual learning. What is there to be learnt f rom religious zealots,who in f act generally do use secular arguments to def end their posit ions (and thus f ulf il one ofHabermas’s conditions)?A greater problem on which discussion is missing is that f rom a global perspective the problem of  religion isnot really one between f aith and reason, religion and secular polit ics, but between dif f erent religiouspositions. The post-secular proposal as put f orward by Habermas has very much derived f rom the westerncontext where the problem can be characterised as a conf lict between f aith and reason, whether theexamples are creationism, the permissibility of  religious symbols, be they the crucif ix or headscarf , in thepublic realms, abortion or gay marriage. Aside f rom these examples, most religious cit izens f ully acceptsecular arguments as f ar as polit ical community is concerned, so the objective problem is not entirelyapparent why more or less successf ul multicultural societies need to become post-secular. Is there not adanger of  making too strong a concession to extreme posit ions?From a global perspective, the world-wide growth of  Pentecostalism and Islam f or instance presentdif f erent challenges. Religious conf licts between dif f erent conf essional groups are not so easilyaccommodated within the conceptionalization of  the post-secular as put f orward by Habermas. I wouldhave liked to read more on the global context of  conf licts between dif f erent religions and their internalvariants in societies where the tension between reason and f aith took a dif f erent f orm than in Europe. Thecollection is very well edited and of f ers rich insights and analytical acumen by outstanding scholars onissues of  considerable importance. The volume is essential reading f or philosophers and sociologists ofreligion and generally f or anyone concerned with religion and polit ics.—————————————————–Gerard Delanty is Prof essor of  Sociology and Social & Polit ical Thought, University of  Sussex, UK. Hismost recent publications are Formations of European Modernity: A Historical and Political Sociology ofEurope, Palgrave 2013 and The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2009; he has edited the Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, Routledge 2012 and co-edited (with Stephen Turner) The Routledge International Handbook of Social and Political Theory. Routledge,2011. Read more reviews by Gerard.

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