Habermas’s Politics of Rational Freedom: Navigating the History of Philosophy between Faith and Knowledge

Abstract

Despite his hostility to religion in his early career, since the turn of the century Habermas has devoted his research to the relationship between faith and knowledge. His two-volume Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie is the culmination of this project. Spurred by the attacks of 9/11 and the growing conflict between religion and the forces of secularization, I argue that this philosophy of history is the centerpiece of an important turning point in Habermas’s intellectual development. Instead of interpreting religion merely as part of the history of postmetaphysical thinking, Habermas now sees it as a crucial normative resource for both philosophy and social cohesion in the future aswell. Despite its backward-looking approach,my basic thesis is that this book is best understood as a forward-looking appeal for a tolerant, self-reflective democratic politics that brings religious and secular citizens together dialogically through the cooperative use of their rational freedom.

Between Habermas and Lyotard: Rethinking the Contrast between Modernity and Postmodernity

“…Habermas has sought to further clarify his understanding of the relationship of history to modernity in his two-volume Also a History of Philosophy , published in 2019 (Verovšek, 2020). While the genealogical approach he adopts vindicates the Kantian project of modernity rooted in the ‘universal aspirations of postmetaphysical thought’, he sets this philosophical aspiration on different foundations by acknowledging that that European movement is situated within a ‘particular context of origin’ that cannot simply be transposed and applied in other settings (Habermas, 2019: I.110, our translation).…”