In Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie (Also a History of Philosophy), Jürgen Habermas weaves together various themes such as faith and knowledge, history and theology, naturalism and epistemic justification, learning processes and moral development as well as multiculturalism and deliberative democracy in a transnational public sphere. This article argues that to articulate these multiple elements, Habermas adopts a robust framework built upon four conceptual pillars that can be clearly identified: postmetaphysical, postconventional, postnational, and postsecular. This “conceptual plurality” underlies his genealogy (...) of the centuries-long tension and mutual learning between religious faith and scientific knowledge in the Western philosophical tradition. By considering the interplay of these concepts, it is possible to understand the several ways in which religion emerges in contemporary society and the equally multiple strategies Habermas uses to interpret religion throughout his career, which are masterfully reconsidered and articulated in his opus magnum on religion. (shrink)

Habermas’s postmetaphysical reading of Kierkegaard is paradigmatic for his understanding of religion. It shows, why Habermas reduces religion to fideism. Therefore the paper reconstructs Habermas’s reception of Kierkegaard and compares it with the accounts of Dieter Henrich and Michael Theunissen. Furthermore it demonstrates how Habermas makes use of Kierkegaard’s dialectics of existence to formulate his postmetaphysical thesis of a cooperative venture.