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)

La ficción narrativa tiene el poder de alterar nuestras más arraigadas intuiciones y expectativas acerca de lo que significa seguir una vida éticamente buena, así como del tipo de sociedad que facilitaría tal situación. A veces su poder disruptivo es develador, lo cual lleva a un cambio éticamente significativo en la percepción. Sostengo que los poderes disruptivos y develadores de una ficción narrativa constituyen un potencial para el conocimiento ético. Interpreto este conocimiento como un proceso de aprendizaje, orientado por una (...) preocupación acerca de la verdad, que involucra la acción racional y el compromiso afectivo de un sujeto humano encarnado. Con el fin de mostrar esto, me enfrento de manera crítica a la lectura de Kafka realizada por Adorno, usando la historia de Kafka titulada “En la colonia penitenciaria” para desafiar tal análisis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn recent work, Maeve Cooke has criticised Jürgen Habermas’s post-metaphysical model in order to motivate an alternative “post-secular” conception of the state, which involves the replacement of the “institutional translation proviso” with the “nonauthoritarian reasoning requirement”. I provide a qualified defence of the Habermasian model by arguing that it does not lead to the kind of negative consequences regarding legitimacy and solidarity Cooke attributes to it. This, in turn, means that Cooke’s proposal for the secular foundation of political authority on (...) a post-secular basis is insufficiently motivated. In the process, I argue that the point of departure for the debate about religion in the public sphere shared by both Habermas and Cooke – the picture of the “total” religious citizen – should be rejected because it presupposes an overly simplistic view of religions and religious identities. (shrink)

A realist approach to learning is what I propose here. This is based on a non-epistemic dimension whose presence is a necessary assumption for a concept of learning of a life-world as complementary to learning within a life-world. I develop my approach in opposition to Jürgen Habermas' pragmatic approach, which seems to lack of something from a realist point of view.

In this article, I argue that a universalistic thrust of secularism should not be located in a Habermasian deontological liberal principle of the priority of universal morality over particularistic ethical doctrines. I show that Habermas cannot plausibly demonstrate that this principle can be invariably applied across different cases. However, in order not to succumb to parochialism, the failure of the deontological model should not prompt us to give up on the search for a universalistic drive behind secularism. To this end, (...) I advocate a Derridean critique of religion and secularism as an alternative solution. By deconstructing the Kantian dichotomy of faith vs. knowledge, Jacques Derrida shows that secularism is, paradoxically, both a concrete socio-political regime and a possibility for a radical change. (shrink)

This article investigates the politics of translation at work in contemporary theories of secularism. It turns to the thought of Jacques Derrida in order to challenge liberal and more critical perspectives. Without a complex analysis of translation and its ethico-political effects, the revisitation of secularism remains deficient, leaving the liberal politics of translation exclusionary and that of their critics ineffective. Pointing to the resources Derrida offers for a deeper understanding of the nature, political stakes, and implications of translation, this article (...) illuminates an understudied and yet crucial dimension of the relationship between religion and politics, and more generally of public life. (shrink)