A Difference in Kind? Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor on Post-secularism

Abstract

In this essay I examine the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor on the post-secular state. I argue that, although their views on the relation of religion and politics converge in certain respects, a profound difference remains between their overall approaches. Their disagreement on the epistemic status of religious as opposed to secular moral reasons, and on the role religious arguments can play in the public sphere testify to a deeper schism. Thus what might at first seem like a quarrel about details proves to be a fundamental philosophical divide on the issue of modernity. I conclude that Taylor’s model of post-secularism is more promising as an approach to the challenge posed by growing religious and cultural diversity, for, if understood as a version of “reiterative universalism,” it avoids both moral relativism and Eurocentrism.

I would like to thank the editors of this Special Issue, Lasse Thomassen and Camil Ungureanu, as well as two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. Charles Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” in Dilemmas and Connections (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 320.

2. Taylor himself does not use the term “post-secularism,” but sticks to “secularism.”

3. I borrow the terms “cultural” and “acultural” from Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in The Hastings Center Report 25 (1995): 24–33.

4. Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), and An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age, (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).

5. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the ‘Public Use of Reason’ by Religious and Secular Citizens,” in Between Naturalism and Religion, 138ff.; hereafter cited in the text.

6. Cf. John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997): 769.

7. Cf. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 127ff. with reference to Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues,” in Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate, ed. R. Audi and N. Wolterstorff (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 67–120. For this “split-identity objection,” see also Melissa Yates, “Rawls and Habermas on Religion in the Public Sphere,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 33 (2007): 881ff.

8. Cf. Yates, “Rawls and Habermas,” 889.

9. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 217; cf. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 769.

10. Cf. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 769; Robert Audi, “The Place of Religious Argument in a Free and Democratic Society,” San Diego Law Review 30 (1993): 685, 700.

11. Such contested secular philosophies or world-views should be understood in terms of Rawls’s concept of “comprehensive doctrines.” As examples of secular comprehensive doctrines, Rawls points to utilitarianism and the comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and Mill. Cf. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13, 145. Habermas himself focuses on naturalistic outlooks (see below).

12. Cf. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 141 (note n. 48), with reference to Wolterstorff, “The Role of Religion.”

13. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “Prepolitical Foundations of the Constitutional State?” in Between Naturalism and Religion, 112f.

14. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen. Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2001 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2001), 22.

15. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 766.

16. Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, “Dialogue: Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor,” in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, ed. E. Mendieta and J. VanAntwerpen (New York: Columbia University Press), 61.

17. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?”; Charles Taylor, “Die Blosse Vernunft (‘Reason Alone’),” in Dilemmas and Connections, 326–46; Charles Taylor, “Western Secularity,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. C. Calhoun, M. Juergensmeyer, and J. VanAntwerpen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–53; Charles Taylor (with Jocelyn Maclure), Laizität und Gewissensfreiheit (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2011); Charles Taylor, “The Meaning of Secularism,” The Hedgehog Review 12 (2010): 23–34; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Secularism and Its Critics, ed. R. Bhargava (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 31–53.

18. Cf. Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” 33f., 35ff.

19. Cf. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 134, 144f.

20. Cf. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 134, 140f.; Thomas Gutmann, “Religiöser Pluralismus und liberaler Verfassungsstaat,” in Modelle des religiösen Pluralismus. Historische, religionssoziologische und religionspolitische Perspektiven, ed. K. Gabriel, C. Spieß and K. Winkler (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012), 297.

21. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 12.

22. Cf. Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” 37, 51f.

23. Cf. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 319.

24. Cf. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 309.

25. Cf. Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation (Québec: Commission de Consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles, 2008), 20, 148ff.

26. Cf. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 311.

27. Cf. Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” 49f.

28. Cf. Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” 50f.

29. See William M. Curtis, “Liberals and Pluralists: Charles Taylor and John Gray,” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 86–107.

30. Cf. Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” 51.

31. See John Horton, “Realism, Liberal Moralism and a Political Theory of Modus Vivendi,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010): 442f.

32. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 321.

33. Cf. Habermas in Habermas/Taylor, “Dialogue,” 61.

34. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 400 (note n. 17).

35. Craig Calhoun, “Secularism, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere,” in Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and Van Antwerpen, Rethinking Secularism, 89 (note n. 5).

36. Habermas/Taylor, “Dialogue,” 61.

37. Habermas/Taylor, “Dialogue,” 62.

38. Taylor, “Die Blosse Vernunft,” 326, 327.

39. Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West (New York: Vintage Books, 2008); Taylor, “Die Blosse Vernunft,” 327f., 328.

40. Taylor, A Secular Age, 22.

41. Cf. Taylor, “Die Blosse Vernunft,” 345.

42. Calhoun, “Secularism,” 76.

43. Cf. Taylor, “Two Theories,” 24f.

44. Cf. Ulrich Willems, “Religion und Moderne bei Jürgen Habermas,” in Religion und Moderne. Kontroversen um Modernität und Säkularisierung, ed. U. Willems, D. Pollack, H. Basu, T. Gutmann and U. Spohn (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013), 504.

45. Cf. Peter Danchin, “Islam in the Secular Nomos of the European Court of Human Rights,” Michigan Journal of International Law 32 (2010–11): 686.

46. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “A Conversation about God and the World,” in Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 150f.

47. Cf. Willems, “Religion und Moderne,” 504f.

48. Cf. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 320, 321.

49. Taylor, “What Does Secularism Mean?” 321.

50. As has been pointed out, Habermas is sensitive to the particular cultural embedding of norms up to a certain point. Eventually, however, this sensitivity is outweighed by the acultural thrust of his thinking, which springs from his understanding of modern Western secularity as the result of a process of rationalization or “learning process.” On Habermas’s oscillation between acultural rationalism and sensitivity to cultural particularity with regard to the question of the validity of secular liberal norms, see Lasse Thomassen, “The Inclusion of the Other?: Habermas and the Paradox of Tolerance,” Political Theory 34 (2006): 439–62.

51. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

52. Taylor and Bouchard observe similar trends in Québec. Cf. Bouchard/Taylor, Building the Future, 187.

53. See Ulrike Spohn, “Sisters in Disagreement: The Dispute among French Feminists about the ‘Burqa Ban’ and the Causes of Their Disunity,” Journal of Human Rights 12 (2013): 145–64.

54. Veit Bader, “Citizenship and Exclusion: Radical Democracy, Community, and Justice. Or, What is Wrong with Communitarianism?” Political Theory 23 (1995): 231.

55. Michael Walzer, “Nation and Universe,” in Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 186.

56. Walzer, “Nation and Universe,” 196.

57. Seyla Benhabib, “Democratic Iterations: The Local, the National, and the Global,” in Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 47f. Benhabib, however, seriously curtails the notion of iteration by trying to control the risks of that practice. See in this regard the criticism by Lasse Thomassen, “The Politics of Iterability: Benhabib, the Hijab, and Democratic Iterations,” Polity 43 (2011): 128–49.

58. Walzer, “Nation and Universe,” 186.

59. Charles Taylor, “Afterword. Apologia pro Libro suo,” in Varieties of Secularism in A Secular Age, eds. M. Warner, J. Van Antwerpen and C. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 320.

60. Veit Bader, “Moral Minimalism and More Demanding Moralities: Some Reflections on ‘Tolerance/Toleration’,” in Tolerance, Intolerance and Respect: Hard to Accept? ed. J. Dobbernack and T. Modood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 23.

61. See Horton, “Realism”; and John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: The New Press, 2000).

62. Cf. Volker Heins, Der Skandal der Vielfalt. Geschichte und Konzepte des Multikulturalismus (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 2013), 61–64.

63. Cf. Ulrich Willems, “Normative Pluralität und Kontingenz als Herausforderungen

politischer Theorie. Prolegomena zur Theorie eines Politischen Pluralismus,” in Politik und Kontingenz, ed. U. Willems and K. Toens (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2012), 292.