What Hope Remains?

I think reason is religion's point of departure, not the other way round.

I can understand the argument emergimg from this essay that religiion is reason's point of departure, and I can understand the intellectual history interest in the processes of secularization. But, having read this fine essay, carefully and more than once, I'm still at a loss to understand how the content of religion informs our moral thinking such that without that informing secular society cannot nourish and sustain its own normativity.

We have developed Western moral thinking, as both an intellectual historical and a philosophical matter, from Judeo-Christian sources. But once Western societies became secularized and liberal democracies were born and grew in part on the significant ground of a division between church and state, what does it mean to say, as noted, that religion has a role in nourishing and sustaining our social ethics and morality? The closest we come to a concrete example, that I can find, is this:

... It is therefore important, he claimed, for historical sociologists and philosophers to recognize the religious genealogy of ostensibly secular precepts such as equal respect. In fact, the very emergence of the modern West has been shaped by the way that “philosophy continuously appropriates semantic contents from the Judeo-Christian tradition.”...

So, okay, we can trace the genealogy the precept of equal respect back to its Judeo-Christian origins and we can trace the secularization of that precept as it, I presume, finds practical meaning in the legal idea of equal treatment under law, a hallmark concept in the general idea of rule of law. And we can trace that secularization in the non legal but social norm of equal respect.

But beyond that tracing, what further does the propositional content of religion have to tell us about the precept of equal respect; and how is that we need the informing insights of the content of religion to sustain that precept in our legal and in our non legal but social lives? This I do not understand.

I think I understand as well the fundamental distinction Gordon draws between the “Anglo-Saxon” social contract ideal that imagines “that imagines we can lift ourselves free of our cultural horizon “ and the continental idea of “just how much of ourselves—our culture and our history—we drag along with us as we move forward. Every culture begins by holding certain truths as sacred and virtually unquestionable.”

But how does understanding that distinction, which in its second branch goes to the tradition and development of our moral ideas, help answer the question of what the content of religion today has to teach us in our secular, public lives and why we need that content to nourish and sustain us in those lvies?

I think I understand as well the importance of allowing religion its voice in the public square, in public space, and not excluding it, within the framework of the separation of church and state freedom of religion and freedom from the establishment of religion.

But that importance goes, it seems to me, to the fundamental right and liberty of individuals to be free in their religious practices—subject of course to law—and in the expression of their beliefs, privately and institutionally. I don’t understand the connection between the existence of those religious freedoms and the moral welfare of society. I don’t understand the connection between those freedoms and, as Habermas puts it:

… By the duty of reciprocal accountability toward all citizens, including religious ones, they (i.e. secular citizens—my note) are obliged not to publicly dismiss religious contributions to political opinion and will formation as mere noise, or even nonsense, from the start. Secular and religious citizens must meet in their public use of reason at eye level….

Apart from Gordon’s critique that Habermas overestimates the burden here on the non religious, what is the argument for this (social not legal) obligation on secular citizens to take the claims of religious citizens seriously and not be dismissive of them? Why exactly, as a matter of social obligation, must the religious and the secular in the public sphere meet in their public use of reason at eye level?

I’d like to understand the arguments for the answers to my questions better.

“Many theorists of democracy prefer to regard the secular Enlightenment as a precondition for the rise of democratic institutions, but for a significant group of conservative political theorists associated with Angela Merkel and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)—alongside the Christian Social Union, its smaller ally in predominantly Catholic Bavaria—Nazism was in essence a movement of modern paganism. Drawing upon arguments first developed in the interwar era by the controversial legal theorist Carl Schmitt, postwar conservative philosophers and Christian political theorists placed the blame for Nazism’s success on the overzealous process of secularization itself—a process that in their view ended by evacuating European civilization of the moral and religious resources it needed to survive.”
Personally, I don’t see Schmitt’s antisemitic views guiding Merkel’s government. I wish that Peter Gordon had told us which modern thinkers influenced by Schmitt’s extra-legal notions of power he had in mind.

Ironically, Schmitt’s work has had a profound influence on thinkers on the left like Chantal Mouffe and the Maoist Joachim Schickel as well as Agambe. Telos magazine in the US has published many essay on Schmitt by contemporary leftist which seem to naturalize his concept to the political in their thinking:

http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_...

In recent years in Germany some of the most egregious antisemite have been people on the left which could gain some real political power, for example Hermann Dierkes, leader of the Left Party

http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646

In light of the above worrying about Habermas’ putative religious turn or worrying about German conservatives seems a bit trivial right now.

...Almost all the powerful ideas that shaped human societies up until the past 300 years were religious in nature, with the important exception of Confucianism in China. The first major secular ideology to have a lasting worldwide effect was liberalism, a doctrine associated with the rise of first a commercial and then an industrial middle class in certain parts of Europe in the seventeenth century. (By “middle class,” I mean people who are neither at the top nor at the bottom of their societies in terms of income, who have received at least a secondary education, and who own either real property, durable goods, or their own businesses.)...

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-futur...

See http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-futur...

It strikes me that Jurgen Habermas is an incoherent buffoon who likes to make seemingly deep pronouncements while actually saying nothing at all of any interest. Naturally, because of this, I imagine he has a circle of disciples who devote their scholarly lives to his worship. What has he said? That the secular notion of equality before the law derived from religion? I don't think so, and where's his evidence? That religion may have something good to contribute to modern society? Again, I don't think so, and where's his evidence? What exactly has this famous pseudo-philosopher added to our store of knowledge? I suspect nothing at all.

If someone wants to reply to this comment by telling me that I am an incoherent buffoon, please feel free. If you wish to flatter me, tell me I am a coherent buffoon.

I have not read Jurgen Habermas. I am inclined for no better reason than old prejudices (rejecting religious belief at the age of ten if not earlier) to agree with nr###### that JH is an incoherent buffoon.

Most people in the world seem to believe in the (probably imaginary) being we label as God because 1) we all die someday and dislike the idea and 2) we discover that life (in this mundane world) is not fair and hope that there is a deus ex machina in some imaginary world that balances out the scales. In fact, it strikes me (and I am not the only person with this thought) that if God existed, It would be the most dreadful monster imaginable.

So here we are? What do we do? Can we invent a kinder, gentler “god” to guide us and console us in an indifferent, pointless universe? unitarians (small “u”) seem to be striving to create such. Fundamentalists (another “f” word) seem to embrace the “evil elder Gods” as H. P. Lovecraft described them and embrace mass murder (9/11 etc.) and mass reproduction in an overpopulated world.

We need to calibrate a little better. Adjust your watches and decide if your are using the English system or the metric system; tasers or machine guns, condoms or pills. Be kind; only connect.

Well skahn.... okay, you're a coherent baboon. ... buffoon.... I like the honesty implied by your admission of old prejudices. That you would feel as comfortable as you do in dismissing Habermas without having read him is interesting. Now please allow that I've not read him either. I am neither endorsing or indicting his take on 'things'. That said it would appear as if he is simply saying that there is more than meets the eye per religious-secular dialectic. Particularly as pertaining to the collective phenomenon of ratification universalis. He also seems to have some doubts as to whether the content of a diffuse secular statement can contain the moral power of communicative assimilation...... at least for now.

Side note.... you have characterized the tards and their various reasons for investing in religion in a fairly accusatory tenor. Are you sure that doesn't invite a reasonably similar appraisal of yourself as a response? The assumption of projective indicators are a capacity tell.

Jacko, thank you for your response. About half way through reading it, I got a little lost. As clearly as I can express myself, to be a self aware being is to suffer. Everyone suffers somewhat, through knowledge of mortality, through disappointment, through disillusionment, etc. Most of us (probably at least 95% or greater) possess a quality called "empathy" (the ability to imagine the feelings of other beings). This is, as far as I can tell, the main reason humans restrain and control our natural selfishness, viciousness, fearfulness as top of the food chain beings.

My life has gone pretty well. I am fairly happy in my circumstances. However, by reading and browsing the Internet it is easy for me to see that billions of people are suffering terrible oppression, pain, and misfortune for many reasons. As a person who experiences what is probably an average amount of empathy, my enjoyment of a fairly good life is diminished by my awareness of others' suffering. If some being called "God" created such a universe, why should we regard IT as wonderful? I am not a God; I did not create the universe; I do not claim to know how a better universe should be shaped. However, I find it more consoling to regard the universe as random and inexplicable than to praise and "obey" (whatever that means) such a being. OK, I have babooned and buffooned and tried to answer your comment semi-coherently. Now, if you are still reading this thread, I would be interested in reading your comments about how you deal with the existential dilemma? Are you a religious believer? If so, how would you describe your God? How do you come to terms with the suffering of our world? Thank you.

Gordon (the reviewer) obviously knows nothing about Islam. He completely dismisses its threat to Europe's separation of religious and political spheres. There is no separation of state and religion under Islam. Or respect for other points of view, for that matter. He dismisses all criticism of Islam and Muslims as bigotry. He is a useful fool of a terrible totalitarian system. The irony is that Islam is totally antithetical to his (and Habermas's) liberal values.

Amidut, what is "Islam?" Is it a monolithic entity? I am not an expert on Islam, and as you probably know from my other comments (such as a couple recently in this thread), I am not a religious believer at all. My experience and reading indicate that each major religion has many different beliefs and a wide variety of attitudes and beliefs among its adherents. I have Jewish ancestry and practicing Jews I have met vary widely. In my last job I met and worked with a variety of Muslims, and they seemed to vary widely in what they believed and how they behaved. While brevity in comments is admirable, we should be very restrained in using generalizations and labels in regard to religions as most of us are careful in how we speak of different races, ethnic groups, linguistic groups, sexual identity groups, and as far as that goes, breeds of cats, dogs, horses, and in our cases, chickens. (My wife is very attached to our current breed of chickens, but next year she is going to introduce diversity into our chicken run with a new breed of chicks, and if she starts making careless generalizations about them, I will call her on it.)

amidut - this hardly needs saying, since I'm sure almost everyone who reads your comment will be rolling his or her eyes, but what you're calling "islam" is actually "fundamentalism," a reactionary rejection of modern functionally-articulated mass societies that shows up in every religion, and the "irony" that you identify as if Habermas and his reviewer hadn't noticed it - the compatibility of exclusive religious conviction with factional democracy - is the central question Habermas has been wrestling with for the last ten years or so. Because he's taken the time to learn something (a great deal, in fact) about the history and operation of the system he's defending (Enlightened representative self-government), Habermas has earned the careful and critical attention of a large number of thoughtful people. The reason no one listens to you, on the other hand, is because your derivative opinions are entirely familiar, simplistic, uninformed and, yes, bigoted, and so of no interest to anyone else.

Come, come. Let's try to set good examples for everyone who is inferior to us (or so we consider them) by telling them how awful they are. (If you want to tell me how awful I am, you can have a pass because I don't care much what you think of me, but on the whole it has been my observation that telling people they are stupid does not make them smarter, telling them they are bigoted does not make them more tolerant, and telling someone "your ... opinions ...of no interest to anyone else," only betrays your fascination and interest in his or her opinions.

I tend to agree that "fundamentalism" is perhaps a more useful term than "Islam." As a non believer, I know people whose religious beliefs are not "fundamentalist" and thus more tolerable to me (as a non believer). So, rmutt, are you a religious believer of a non fundamentalist sort, are are you (like me) a non-evangelical atheist (or "ethical nihilist" as I label myself)?

I appreciate your defense of a civil tone, skahn, and your attempts to steer the comments back in a substantive direction. As for what I think about God, nothing any more interesting than any other vulnerable, temporary person. What I think of religious authority is: I oppose it and consider it to be based on an anachronistic deception. That's why I think Habermas's defense of a procedurally-based consensus as the essence of a just society is ultimately unworkable. The oxymoron “unforced force” that Gordon uses above points to the great weakness in Habermas's account, in my opinion. His entire theoretical edifice is designed to eliminate violence from human interaction, to describe a society in which material coercion is replaced by the compulsion exercised by better argument. That seems to me close to a category mistake, though. The domain of potential violence - not the domain of potential agreement - is the domain of the political; a society from which all coercion had been eliminated wouldn't be an organized state any more. That may be a fine ideal (I'm anarchistically inclined myself), but then the political question is: how much violence can we use to get there? And that's the question that Habermas, who eschews violence as antithetical to reasonable communicative action, doesn't seem to be able to answer. Since religion is only politically relevant when it licenses coercive violence, either pedagogic or police, Habermas's attempts to integrate some version of "religion within the bounds of reason alone" into his social theory is just another attempt to remove violence from a domain defined in terms of it. His political philosophy becomes relevant, in other words, at the point when, political coercion having disappeared, it is no longer of any relevance. That's not much different from what Gordon said, and it's my take too.

I appreciate your defense of a civil tone, skahn, and your attempts to steer the comments back in a substantive direction. As for what I think about God, nothing any more interesting than any other vulnerable, temporary person. What I think of religious authority is: I oppose it and consider it to be based on an anachronistic deception. That's why I think Habermas's defense of a procedurally-based consensus as the essence of a just society is ultimately unworkable. The oxymoron “unforced force” that Gordon uses above points to the great weakness in Habermas's account, in my opinion. His entire theoretical edifice is designed to eliminate violence from human interaction, to describe a society in which material coercion is replaced by the compulsion exercised by better argument. That seems to me close to a category mistake, though. The domain of potential violence - not the domain of potential agreement - is the domain of the political; a society from which all coercion had been eliminated wouldn't be an organized state any more. That may be a fine ideal (I'm anarchistically inclined myself), but then the political question is: how much violence can we use to get there? And that's the question that Habermas, who eschews violence as antithetical to reasonable communicative action, doesn't seem to be able to answer. Since religion is only politically relevant when it licenses coercive violence, either pedagogic or police, Habermas's attempts to integrate some version of "religion within the bounds of reason alone" into his social theory is just another attempt to remove violence from a domain defined in terms of it. His political philosophy becomes relevant, in other words, at the point when, political coercion having disappeared, it is no longer of any relevance. That's not much different from what Gordon said, and it's my take too.

Sorry for the double posting. My bad.

Hey skahn. Thanks for the invitation to a non-objectivist objective. There really should be more of that and I honor your intention in that regard. Labels are a matter of convenience and satisfy lazy distinctions. Truly not satisfactory and a source of self fulfilling ignorance. Speaking of labels many might consider me to be a lapsed Atheist. Full disclosure has me claim that I wasn't a very good atheist in its fundamental aspirations. Self serving rationalizations are not becoming to any sort of integrity.... atheist or other. Dogmatics strive to produce automatic dogs. I am now unapologetically Judeo/Christian in sympathy and entertain many a blasphemous disposition and mode of inquiry. The concept of Faith is currently undergoing a hard challenge. The idea of God and perfect will is a fulcrum by which to measure justice which is ultimately subservient to Love and its administration. Now if God has a problem with that then He can take it up with me. The idea of blindly 'obey' is something that doesn't occupy much room in my attic. Furthermore Love is anything but simplistic. It can even require violence of me in the defense of innocents.

Allow me to apologize for my 'capacity tell' comment.

Thank you to jacko and rmutt for your comments. I suspect (as much as the admission irritates me) that both of you are more intelligent than I am and more informed than I am, and I am not sure I have anything of more import to add to this discussion (though such limitations seldom stop me from offering comments). I am mulling over whether or not I should make the effort to read Mr. Habermas' work. As I have half a dozen unfinished books sitting on my book shelf at the moment, I suspect his works will have to languish unread. I will finish by saying that I prefer to think the universe (and my temporary existence in it) is a pointless accident than the creation of some malignant creature referred to as God. Our discarded Christmas tree lies by the side of our house and our chickens are wandering around scratching and pecking. I will trim the branches off the tree and toss it into the woods and preach an existentialist sermon to the chickens on my motto for getting through the rest of my life, which consists of "Maintain an attitude of cheerful despair while practicing ethical nihilism." I wish everyone here a happy century, and if we live so long, a spectacular and incomprehensible Singularity as humans evolve into a higher order of being in a few decades if we don't destroy ourselves first.

More informed - on this narrow subject, probably. I've been reading Habermas for close to thirty years. More intelligent - very unlikely, for exactly the same reason.

"narrow subject", indeed. "rmutt" (nor reviewer Gordon nor Habermas, for that matter) is unable to level with us how Islam fits into the picture. I take it from his scratchings above that Mutt endorses Islam's violence against all because Muslims always have some canned pretext.

Take it however you would like, amidut. Why would I defend myself in writing against an illiterate?

Here we go again. What is "Islam?" Is there a "Pope" of Islam who defines the religion and how it should behave? There isn't even a "Pope" of Christianity any more. For that matter, Catholics vary quite a bit. I was cornered once in an Office Depot by a nutty Catholic (whose beliefs were something similar to Mel Gibson's nutty ultra-conservative Catholic father) who ranted to me for half an hour before I walked away from him.

Humans (in my opinion) invent Gods. As we are a mixture of humane and empathic and vicious, selfish, and frightened, so are our Gods. We are justified in defending ourselves against the vicious, but it is difficult to do so without becoming as vicious ourselves. Calling people names such as "illiterate" seldom gets them to behave better or be more literate.

If I write something here that is uninformed, illogical, or just plain dumb, politely and coherently pointing it out to me has a slight chance of improving my knowledge and comprehension. Telling me I am stupid, puerile, etc., etc. mostly serves to amuse me and to encourage me to continue and redouble whatever I was doing that irritated and dismayed you. This may apply to other people than I; why not give it a try? In the earliest days of the Internet communication was carried on in "newsgroups" which were mostly unmoderated and were the verbal equivalent of world wide wrestling and such like brutal combat.

TNR is generally not that bad, but the instinct is still here; I hardly see the point. War has never brought about peace; ceaseless insults has never brought about better communication, understanding, and behavior. I don't know that insult news groups still rant away, but that may be a better place for those who find postng the epitome of verbal "fight club" communication. Peace and love, but keep your gun loaded.

It's late, skahn, so I won't be able to give you the reply you deserve, but let me just repeat that I appreciate your commitment to civility and that you're trying to preserve a discursive standard here at TNR. In the case of amidut, "illiterate" isn't a flame, it's just a true description. It hardly seems to me out of line, but I do admit in saying it I'm not trying to improve his or her knowledge and comprehension; I'm not trying to improve amidut in any way. Wouldn't it be a little patronizing if I were? I doubt amidut is busy insulting a billion Muslims because no one explained human decency clearly enough to him or her. That's just who that person is.

But enough about that. What I find interesting is that your unflagging investment in a generally respectful discourse even with someone who's replies are intellectual beer belches suggests to me that you would find Habermas's work quite sympathetic - his book on the structural transformation of the public sphere and the essays in Between Naturalism and Religion, for instance, or The Postnational Constellation, or the books under review here, all of which don't presuppose a specialist's background in social theory but just a willingness to read carefully. It's precisely the humane ethos that insists on treating a bigoted wretch like amidut as an interlocutor that Habermas is defending and placing at the core of his democratic theory. As I said (and, I guess, showed), I'm kind of skeptical. But it's a very well-thought-through attempt to carry that out.