Comments on: Taking religion seriously http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:55:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Daniel Steinmetz http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/05/taking-religion-seriously/#comment-1509 Daniel Steinmetz Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:26:37 +0000 http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/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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