Habermas and Religion

Craig Calhoun is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Eduardo Mendieta is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook. Jonathan VanAntwerpen is Director of the Program on Religion and the Public Sphere at the Social Science Research Council, New York.

"Essential reading for philosophers and sociologists of religion and generally for anyone concerned with religion and politics."LSE Review of Books "This groundbreaking book contains a number of penetrating and insightful essays on Habermas's recent work, and on the meaning of the secular and of postsecularism. It will undoubtedly take the debate on all these issues to a much more rigorous and fruitful level. A stellar collection, with papers of a very high quality."Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus, McGill University "In 2001, shortly after 9/11, Jürgen Habermas's address 'Faith and Religion' attracted a great deal of attention. Until that time the topic of religion had not been a major concern in Habermas’s extensive oeuvre but he now began to speak of a postsecular age in which religion becomes a major topic in rethinking modernity and in meeting the challenge of religion in public life. This collection includes many of his most sophisticated interpreters and critics and Habermas, in his characteristic dialogical spirit, replies to each of his critics. Anyone seriously interested in the current state of the discussion about religion and public life will find this collection essential reading."Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research "Jürgen Habermas has sometimes been called the pope of European secularism, but in recent years he has written frequently and appreciatively about religion without giving up his own position. This volume collects a number of very lively responses to these writings, many of them challenging Habermas in fairly sharp ways, and coming from those close to him, like Thomas McCarthy, and far from him, like John Milbank. The book ends with Habermas’s generous but firm response to his critics: altogether a most readable and thought-provoking book."Robert Bellah, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

• List of Abbreviations viiEditors’ Introduction 1Part I Rationalization, Secularisms, and Modernities1 Exploring the Postsecular: Three Meanings of “the Secular” and Their Possible Transcendence 27José Casanova2 The Anxiety of Contingency: Religion in a Secular Age 49María Herrera Líma3 Is the Postsecular a Return to Political Theology? 72María Pía Lara4 An Engagement with Jurgen Habermas on Postmetaphysical Philosophy, Religion, and Political Dialogue 92Nicholas WolterstorffPart II The Critique of Reason and the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment5 The Burdens of Modernized Faith and Postmetaphysical Reason in Habermas’s “Unfinished Project ofEnlightenment” 115Thomas McCarthy6 Having One’s Cake and Eating It Too: Habermas’s Genealogy of Postsecular Reason 132Amy Allen7 Forgetting Isaac: Faith and the Philosophical Impossibility of a Postsecular Society 154J. M. BernsteinPart III World Society, Global Public Sphere, and Democratic Deliberation8 A Postsecular Global Order? The Pluralism of Forms of Life and Communicative Freedom 179James Bohman9 Global Religion and the Postsecular Challenge 203Hent de Vries10 Religion and the Public Sphere: What are the Deliberative Obligations of Democratic Citizenship? 230Cristina Lafont11 Violating Neutrality? Religious Validity Claims and Democratic Legitimacy 249Maeve CookePart IV Translating Religion, Communicative Freedom, and Solidarity12 Sources of Morality in Habermas’s Recent Work on Religion and Freedom 277Matthias Fritsch13 Solidarity with the Past and the Work of Translation: Reflections on Memory Politics and the Postsecular 301Max Pensky14 What Lacks is Feeling: Hume versus Kant and Habermas 322John MilbankReply to My Critics 347Jürgen Habermas (Translated by Ciaran Cronin)Appendix: Religion in Habermas’s Work 391Eduardo MendietaNotes and References 408Bibliography of Works by Jürgen Habermas 465Index 471