Habermas and Taylor on Religious Reasoning in a Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This article compares Habermas’s and Taylor’s approach to the role of religious language in a liberal democracy. It shows that the difference in their approach is not simply in their theories of religious language. The contrast lies deeper, in their incompatible moral theories: Habermas’s universal discourse ethics vs Taylor’s communitarian substantive ethics. I also explore William Rehg’s defence of discourse ethics by conceding that it is based on a metavalue of rational consensus. However, I argue that Habermas’s and Rehg’s discourse ethics and translation proviso are untenable. While Taylor rightly argues that there is no reason to exclude religious reason from the formal political sphere, his proposed fusion of horizons to generate a new hybrid framework is also problematic. I suggest that Taylor’s historical hermeneutics should be extended to include the narrative approach to ethical deliberation as conducive to mutual experiential understanding, and hence to achieving a fusion of horizons of the diverse worlds of citizens in a liberal democracy.

Keywords:

• Charles Taylor
• Jürgen Habermas
• Religious Language
• Public Sphere
• Narrative

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Chan Kai Yan and other anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

Notes

1. Calhoun, “Introduction,” 35–36.

2. Cooke, “Salvaging and Secularizing,” 187–207; Dillon, “Can Post-Secular Society Tolerate” 139–56; Ferrara, “The Separation of Religion and Politics,” 77–91; Sheedy, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 3–20; Yates, “Rawls and Habermas on Religion,” 880–91; and Calhoun, Mendieta, and VanAntwerpen, eds., Habermas and Religion.

3. See Bowman, “Why Cosmoipolitanism in a Post-Secular Age?” 127–47; and Spohn, “A Difference in Kind,” 120–35. Bowman’s and Spohn’s articles also compare Taylor’s and Habermas’s analysis of religion in secular polity. Bowman’s article mainly focuses on the difference between European and American approaches to secularization and their development of an exceptionalist thesis. Spohn’s article does show that their understanding of secularism is related to their different understanding of modernity. Yet neither of them discuss in detail Taylor’s and Habermas’s postsecularism in relation to their moral theories.

4. Habermas, “The Political,” 24, 23; hereafter cited in the text.

5. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 8, 9.

6. Lafont, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 235.

7. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 9.

8. Taylor, “Radical Redefinition of Secularism,” 34–35, 52. Indeed, Taylor’s criticism of the myth of Enlightenment here may be a bit too simplistic. According to Jonathan Israel, there are two kinds of Enlightenment. While Radical Enlightenment is founded on a rationalist materialism and rejects religious thought, Moderate Enlightenment sought to reconcile science with traditional religious faith. It seems that what Taylor criticizes can only apply to Radical Enlightenment rather than Moderate Enlightenment. However, we cannot go into detail here. See Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment.

9. Taylor, “Radical Redefinition of Secularism,” 53, 37, 63–64.

10. Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Jurgen Habermas,” 108–9.

11. Spohn, “A Difference in Kind?” 127–28.

12. Habermas, Justification and Application, 4–8.

13. Ibid., 3, 12–3.

14. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 367.

15. Ibid., 361. See also Flynn, “Communicative Power,” 440.

16. Cooke, “Authenticity and Autonomy,” 273.

17. Habermas, Between Fact and Norms, 97. See also Dahlberg, “The Habermasian Public Sphere,” 14.

18. Habermas, Between Fact and Norms, 9.

19. Habermas and Taylor, “Dialogue,” 62.

20. Taylor, “A Procedural Ethics,” 337–38.

21. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 53.

22. Taylor, “A Procedural Ethics,” 340.

23. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 3, 76–89.

24. Taylor, “Radical Redefinition of Secularism,” 48.

25. Although Taylor borrows the notion of overlapping consensus from Rawls, their notions differ significantly. For Taylor it is simply a method to achieve consensus without any predetermined conclusion of principles of justice as it is for Rawls. See Taylor, “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus,” 124.

26. Ibid., 137–38.

27. Rehg, Insight and Solidarity, 131, 140, 135, 136.

28. Habermas, “A Reply,” 220.

29. Rehg, Insight and Solidarity, 156.

30. Sallis, On Translation, 103.

31. Ibid., 90, 104.

32. Piecychna, “The Act of Translation,” 175.

33. Dillon, “Can Post-Secular Society?” 147; and Martin, “Integration and Fragmentation,” 84.

34. Habermas and Taylor, “Dialogue,” 64.

35. Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion, 231.

36. Cooke, “Salvaging and Secularizing,” 202.

37. Bernstein, “Forgetting Isaac,” 161.

38. Lafont, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 235.

39. This argument has come under critical examination over the last two decades. In Myth of Religious Violence, Cavanaugh shows that it is based on a misconception of the term “religion.”

40. Habermas, “Reply to My Critics,” 368.

41. Rehg, Insight and Solidarity, 139.

42. Taylor, A Secular Age.

43. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. 3, 246.

44. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 114. See also Kearney, On Stories, 129.

45. Roberts, “Narrative Ethics.” 

46. Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 53, 71.

47. Smith, “Storytelling, Sympathy and Moral Judgment,” 356–77.

48. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. 1, 3.

49. Simms, Paul Ricoeur, 86.

50. Kearney, On Stories, 132.

51. Ibid., 137, 140.

52. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 48, 103–4, 498.

53. Taylor, The Language Animal, 292.

54. Taylor, A Secular Age, 729.

55. Hume, An Enquiry.

56. Taylor, The Language Animal, 301.

57. White, Figural Realism, 9.

58. Strictly speaking, scientific studies also involve interpretation of data; scientific truths are never absolutely certain. The main difference from historical study is that scientific studies can do experiments repeatedly; thus they can achieve a certain degree of prediction varying from discipline to discipline. However, I cannot go into details here.

59. Boswell, “Why and How Narrative Matters,” 620–36; and Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere,” 323–50.

60. Boswell, “Why and How Narrative Matters,” 620–36; and Bennett and Edelman, “Toward a New Political Narrative,” 156–71.

61. Kearney, On Stories, 146.

62. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 58.

63. Roberts, “Narrative Ethics.”