Religion is a vital component in society as it bears the collective expression of its morality, identity, and goals. However, it has faced challenges in an ever-growing secularized world wherein its authority and relevance are placed on the pedestal as it is continuously challenged to make sense i.e., religion must be rationalizable.[1] Christianity is one religion that needs to make its place in the modern world as Paul Ricoeur noted that it is experiencing hiding behind the liturgies and with its preoccupation with tradition.[2] Moreover, critiques are launched towards religion especially at the height of modernity when the likes of Nietzsche, Marx, and Feuerbach issued their aggressive denunciative critiques.[3] (Especially on the Christian tradition of which can be done the same with other religions as well.) Regardless of all the bombardments coming from secularization, Habermas does not rule out religion; rather, he sees it as reservoir of ideas that shaped society (Western in this context) and can contribute to the modern discourse with its concepts or fundamental element in lived experience.[4]
What
then are the major contributors to secularization movement wherein we can
situate religion at? More so, what then is the current thought landscape that
we can further understand the points where religion is facing its challenges?
To what extent did Habermas salvage religion’s contributory capability in the
modern discourse?
SECULARIZATION:
A CONTINUOUS ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT
Currently, the so called “New Atheists” such as
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, propound on the secular
fulfillment that humans can experience a categorically “better” path than that
what religion has to offer. (Since they are dubbed the New Atheist, they have
the tendency to be highly confident in their pronouncements.) The three offered
a this-worldly approach into tackling what awed people within religion.
Spirituality can be best understood through the lens of diving into the human
consciousness. The awestruck intricacies of this Godless world (according to
Dawkins) can be best looked through the lens of science; more so, the world
will be subject to further scientific inquiries and investigation in order to
know and appreciate it more rather than being limited to the limited
explanations from religion.[5]
These thoughts from the New Atheist are a continuation of the secularization
movement that started even earlier.
Given
Habermas’ take on the development of Western philosophy, he did attribute the
rise of Enlightenment as a dialectical result of religion. The enlightenment
was a project that aimed to place reason on the pedestal and not how it was
used during the Medieval period. Thus, the attempts of modernity lead to placing
reason side by side with scientific undertakings rather than being a handmaiden
to theological thinking. Habermas attributed this dialectical development when
replying to Eduardo Mendieta’s query on religion as a “condition of
possibility” to the rise of modernization and globalization. He said that the
“modern forms of consciousness encompassing abstract right, modern science, and
autonomous art could never have developed apart from the organizational forms
of Hellenized Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church.”[6]
The
enlightenment is a breakaway from the Medieval thinking; more so, rise of the
sciences is a response to the centuries long hold of the church. Humanity’s
position within the world has been evaluated and not to be merely brushed aside
by theology. The enlightenment project seeks to secularize concepts such as
ethics, government, psychology, human nature, etc. wherein, through empirical
sciences and the rigor of thinking brought in as well a critique to God.[7]
Immanuel
Kant through the Critique of Pure Reason has capitalized on the
enlightenment project by fundamentally resolving the apparent rift between
rationalism and empiricism in which he says: “thoughts without contents are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”[8]
This in turn is a response to the lack on the part of the rationalists (Spinoza
and Leibniz) in terms of relating with sense experience, and the lack on the
part of the empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) to have conceptual underpinning
to experiences. With Kant embracing the efforts brought about his predecessors,
he was simply culminating the modern project i.e., to establish scientific
thinking. This lands a huge blow to the purely rationalist approach and
long-standing adherence to metaphysical thinking present in Medieval thinking
as pure reason at play can only produce mere appearances of knowledge and
deceptive beliefs of which forms are bereft of content.[9]
Jiving
along the trend of scientific thinking and method as a core epistemic approach,
many philosophers did come forward with their take on religion which in turn
ended up in attempts to secularize religion. Secularization is not only about making
sense of religion for it to remain relevant, but also, the point of placing
religion at the crucible of scientific thinking aims at reevaluating the place
of religion to the point of ultimately discarding its relevance. Such is the
case with Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity where he indicated
that God is the result of human thought instead of the long-held idea that
humans are created by God. This reversal indicated that God is a reflection of
humans, and that God is a byproduct of the superlatives of human ascriptions.[10]
Karl
Marx is to be fairly included here in jiving along the critiques to religion
that have been circulating during his time. The critiques to religion were also
their critiques to Hegel’s views as well. Marx mentioned that religion offered
a psychological relief to the people as they were still groping their way
around in responding to the oppression they felt. As Marx said:
“Religious suffering is, at one
and at the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against
real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of
the heartless world, and the soul of the soulless conditions. It is the opium
of the people.”[11]
The tendency of every major
critique to religion is anchored on the line that religion has provided
illusions to the people and drove people’s preoccupations to the other world.
Much in the case with Friedrich Nietzsche as well in his approach towards
Christianity. Other than his famous pronouncement that “God is dead”, he leaned
towards a reevaluation of the other worldly concepts especially on the soul and
God. Nietzsche said that:
“Body am I entirely, and nothing
more; and soul is only the name of something in the body. . . Behind thy
thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage – it
is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.”[12]
Nietzsche wanted to turn the
religious experience and along side other metaphysical concepts that religion
works itself with, to something tangible as there can be no sense to deal with
a kind of language that makes one think and long for the other world. Thus, the
quote talks about the corporealization of the soul i.e., the soul, the self, is
the body
The
enlightenment project by the modern thinkers continues unto this day and gave a
framework for others to lay down their views on religion either to transform or
denounce it. However, the point is to make sense whatever religion has to offer
so that humans can have a better understanding on what course of action to take
and what humans try to say when speaking through a religious language. Habermas
is aware of the critiques to religion and how the enlightenment project was
partly a concerted effort to sift through Medieval thinking and gather usable
residues. Habermas treats the compendium of critiques as a way to make religion
relatable in the public sphere and not to stand as a dominant yet apparently
exclusivist language as it was especially for Christianity. Moreover, the same
relatability is asked for religion nowadays and a demand for a secular take to
avoid extremism and fundamentalism.
One
of the continuing legacies of the Enlightenment is the growth of the new elites.
The Storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution was not only a
challenge to the monarchy and its hold over the French society, but it was also
the moment where the bourgeoisie significantly enter the scene. The new elites
coming from the wealth they have acquired due to mercantilism and colonialism
can match the power of the traditional authorities. Thus, their growing number
creates a new contesting authority towards the church’s authority at their time
which was the dominating political and ideological institution.[13]
This new contesting authority (the elites and with them their access to the
sciences) comprises the very members of a new social group wherein they meet in
pubs and exchange their ideas even further and this for Habermas is the genesis
of a “public sphere”.[14]
Not
only does the philosophical milieu mattered in the Enlightenment, but the
growing ties created by economic and political movements defined the era
wherein this resulted to a more plural society. The interconnectedness of the
different regions around the world spelled the rise of globalization of which
Habermas later on is wary off noting its potential to sweep the discourse
between parties especially when it adheres only to the voice of the market
(dominated by the elites). Religion is further shrugged towards irrelevance
when the brewing matter at hand relied in the maximization of profit amidst
global competition.
SALVAGING
RELIGION
One obvious undeniability of renouncing religion’s
worth in today’s secular world is that many people still hold on to it.
Removing such will be catastrophic as many anchored and associate their morals
and identity with religion. Even though secularization has reached many facets
of human existence, religion remains relevant.
Habermas
attributes the current state of Western thinking to that of its predecessors. A
mixture of different religions with their values (fit for the secular world)
helped define modernization. An example would be the principle concerning
“universalistic egalitarianism which sprang from the ideals of freedom and a
collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation,
the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the
direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.”[15]
These principles and concepts that belong to the previous milieu are
transformed to make sense in the current landscape. Thus, the march towards the
future does not denounce religion, but rather transform it.
The
transformation effort is a salvaging effort as well to bring a renewed relevance
of religion to today’s society. Not only does Habermas assures the relevance
from owing the current milieu to that of the previous, but there is much to
learn from religion even to the point that one has not to tamper with its
expressive capability so that it can purely say something worth of note in the
modern world. “As long as religion can say something that philosophy cannot,
then philosophy, even in its postmetaphysical form, will not be able to replace
or to repress religion.”[16]
Habermas then is hinting that there are several approaches to salvage religion,
the two being a) the salvaging effort comes from outside religion and b) the
effort lies within the concerned religion itself.
An
attitude of self-criticism within all religions as well can help them stabilize
their inclusivity they share with a discourse delimited by secular knowledge
with other religions.[17]
The call for inclusivity is imminent granting that there is a plurality of
religion, thus a plurality of point of views with a specific religious expression.
This self-criticism is the ability to interpret language and traditions to make
sense within the discussion table. To John Rawls, each religion must express
their “reasonable comprehensive doctrines” of which the expression of such
creates an atmosphere of religious tolerance and the avoidance of violence in
the promotion of a specific belief. Supposedly, gone are those days that a
certain religion claims the absolute truth seeing that there are other
religions as well.[18]
The same attitude of self-criticism must
be upheld as well from those outside a particular religion wherein the demand to
rationalize expressions must be present when having a discourse. Not only does
religion has to step up due to the presence of other faiths, but as well as to
the ever-growing secularized world (in this sense, a secularization that does
not lose its grip in keeping rational and negotiable).
Amidst
the attempts to denounce religion, those attempts are in-themselves born from
discontent what religion was. Other than a possible instrument of violence and
the perpetuation thereof, religion (especially for monotheistic religions) has
seen itself in the pedestal of every society it “dominates”. This is the
dialect between religion and secularization and in turn should give rise to an
enlightened religious and secularist expression within the negotiating table. Religion
is not irrelevant as modernization is born from it and modernization can learn
from its pronouncements vice versa.
[1] Habermas, Jurgen, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) p. 1
[2] Ricoeur, Paul, Political and Social Essays, ed. by David Steward & Joseph Bie, (USA: Oberlin Printing Company Inc., 1974) p. 106
[3] Welker, Michael, “Habermas and Ratzinger on the Future of Religion”, Scottish Journal of Theology, 63:4 (2010), p. 458
[4] Habermas, Jurgen, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) p. 12
[5] Braddock, Matthew, “The New Atheists”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed December 18, 2022, https://iep.utm.edu/new-atheism/#H7
[6] Habermas, Jurgen, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) p. 149
[7] Stumpf, Samuel & Fieser, James, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy 8th Edition, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008) p. 254
[8] Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. & ed. by Marcus Weiglet, (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2007) p. 86
[9] Ibid., xxxii
[10] Stumpf, Samuel & Fieser, James, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy 8th Edition, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008) p. 348
[11] Marx, Karl, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. by Joseph O’Malley, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) 1
[12]
Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans by. Thomas Common,
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 2012) pp. 28 - 29
[13] Ricoeur, Paul, History and Truth, trans. by Charles A. Kelbley (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1965) p. 103
[14] Buckingham, Will et. al, The Philosophy Book, (New York: DK Publishing, 2011) p. 306
[15] Habermas, Jurgen, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) p. 149
[16]
Ibid., 26
[17] Ibid., 150
[18] Ibid., 149 – 150
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