Jürgen Habermas 
Between Naturalism and Religion [PDF ebook] 
Philosophical Essays

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age
– the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious
orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics
are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific
self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy,
this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific
naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected
revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of
religious communities across the world. From a philosophical
perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge
of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the
modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself.

The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme
of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he
argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural
evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human
mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation
of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural
rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of
religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the
West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and
the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical
reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political
significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to
current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for
international society.

Table des matières

Introduction 1

Part I The Intersubjective Constitution of Norm-governed Thought 9

1 Public Space and Political Public Sphere – The Biographical Roots of Two Motifs in my Thought 11

2 Communicative Action and the Detranscendentalized ‘Use of Reason’ 24

3 On the Architectonics of Discursive Differentiation: A Brief Response to a Major Controversy 77

Part II Religious Pluralism and Civic Solidarity 99

4 Prepolitical Foundations of the Constitutional State? 101

5 Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the ‘Public Use of Reason’ by Religious and Secular Citizens 114

Part III Naturalism and Religion 149

6 Freedom and Determinism 151

7 ‘I Myself am Part of Nature’ – Adorno on the Intrication of Reason in Nature: Reflections on the Relation between Freedom and Unavailability 181

8 The Boundary between Faith and Knowledge: On the Reception and Contemporary Importance of Kant’s Philosophy of Religion 209

Part IV Tolerance 249

9 Religious Tolerance as Pacemaker for Cultural Rights 251

10 Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism 271

11 A Political Constitution for the Pluralist World Society? 312

Index 353

A propos de l’auteur

Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt.