Reports from symposium on "Rethinking Secularism"

On October 22, 2009, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler and Cornel West participated in a symposium at New York University on "Rethinking Secularism: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere".

Habermas's talk was entitled: "The Political" - The Rational Sense of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology.

Two reports from the symposium:

1) Blog post "Open Thread: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere" written by Ruth Braunstein and David Kyuman Kim at "The Immanent Frame" (see also the comments to their post).

Excerpt:
"Habermas launched the discussion by challenging the meaning of “the political” as it has been inherited from the tradition of political theology and argued that a “democratic process is also a learning process.” This plea for democratic life undergirds his call to engage the voices and values of religious citizens in public deliberation. “This proposal includes complementary burdens on both sides,” Habermas explained. “Religious citizens who regard themselves as loyal members of a constitutional democracy must accept the translation proviso as the price to be paid for the neutrality of the state authority toward competing worldviews. For secular citizens, this same ethics of citizenship entails the duty of reciprocal accountability toward all citizens. Reciprocity in this sense also entails not dismissing religious utterances as mere nonsense in the public sphere.” Ultimately, he argued, “This proposal achieves the liberal goal of ensuring that all legally enforceable decisions can be formulated and justified in a universally accessible language without having to restrict the polyphonic diversity of public voices at its very source.”"

2) Article in the German newspaper "Frankfurter Rundschau" (October 24) by Sebastian Moll.

Excerpt:
"Zumindest deutsche Zuhörer überraschte Jürgen Habermas wenig, indem er sich an der politischen Theologie von Carl Schmitt abarbeitete. Aber möglicherweise war es ja für sein amerikanisches Publikum interessant, wie sehr Schmitts faschistoider Begriff des "Politischen" für Habermas selbst eine der Triebkräfte war, in seinem politischen Denken über jegliche ontologische Machtlegitimierung hinweg zu gelangen. Seine Abscheu für die Wiedereinführung quasi-theologischer Legitimierungen in die Politik Bushs folgt daraus selbstverständlich.

Über eine mögliche positive Rolle der Religion im öffentlichen Raum hatte Habermas freilich nicht viel zu sagen. Er billigte nicht-fundamentalistischen Glaubensbekenntnissen zwar eine gewisse positive soziale Funktion zu, erneuerte aber sein Argument, dass der politische Diskurs unter allen Umständen von solchen Sinnsystem zu abstrahieren habe. Ohne neutralen Raum des vernünftigen Austausches seien moderne Gesellschaften zum Scheitern verurteilt."