Religion in Habermas’s Two-Track Political Theory

Abstract

This article argues that Habermas’s position on the relationship between religion and politics reaffirms his two-track political theory of the secular state and civic duty. His “hard-core” theory of secularism coupled with an ethics of citizenship seeks new ways of including religious citizens in modern pluralistic societies. The analysis of secularism both as a concept and as a guiding principle in Habermas’s work shows that most critics have misinterpreted his specific use of the term. The result of this is that most secularist and accommodationist critics of Habermas’s ethics of citizenship disregard his two-track political theory and its co-originality principle that assumes the equal status of public and private autonomies of citizens. My aim is thus to shift critical attention to the central aspects of Habermas’s work on religion, specifically to the task of translating religious reasons into an all-accessible language. This task of translation faces several difficulties due to some points that are left unclear by Habermas, such as determining the line separating the informal and the formal spheres, and how to avert the risk of majoritarian hijacks of democracy that could altogether undermine the Habermasian framework.

Keywords:

• Habermas
• secularism
• translation
• ethics of citizenship
• co-originality

Notes

1. Cooke, “A Secular State”; Lafont, “Religion and the Public Sphere”; and Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Jurgen Habermas.”

2. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 47.

3. Taylor, “The Polysemy of the Secular,” 1143–76.

4. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1–17.

5. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist, 19–46.

6. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 120; and Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 107.

7. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 26–27.

8. The term “metasocial” is not limited to religious sources of legitimacy but applies also to doctrines that attribute an “ethical substance” to the state. See Habermas, “Between the Secular Liberal State,” 252–53.

9. Böckenförde, State, Society, and Liberty, 45.

10. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 84–104.

11. Lakatos, Methodology of Scientific Research, vol. 1, 47–52.

12. Waltz, Progress in International Relations Theory.

13. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 298.

14. Habermas, “The European Nation State.”

15. Portier, “Religion and Democracy,” 432.

16. Habermas, “Notes on Post-Secular Society.”

17. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 4.

18. Habermas, “Remarks on Legitimation,” 98–99.

19. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 6.

20. Ibid., 4.

21. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason,” 769.

22. Habermas, “Notes on Post-Secular Society.”

23. Ratzinger and Habermas, Dialectics of Secularization.

24. Habermas, Awareness of What Is Missing, 20–21.

25. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason.”

26. Schmidt, “A Dialogue.”

27. Habermas, Awareness of What Is Missing, 22.

28. Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 9–10.

29. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms.

30. Cooke, “Salvaging and Secularizing,” 195; Cooke, “A Secular State”; and Cooke, “Violating Neutrality?”

31. Habermas, “Reply to My Critics,” 375.

32. Taylor, “Why We Need,” 53–56.

33. Taylor and Habermas, “Dialogue,” 61–62.

34. Bilgrami, Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment, 12.

35. Habermas, “On the Relations.”

36. Audi and Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square; and Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Jurgen Habermas.”

37. Wolterstorff, “An Engagement with Jurgen Habermas,” 95–105.

38. Habermas, “Reply to My Critics,” 385.

39. Lafont, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 248; and Lafont, “Religion and the Public Sphere.”

40. According to the above distinction, “secularist citizens” refers to the proponents of “secularism-as-ideology” as opposed to “secularism-as-principle.”

41. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 118–22.

42. Ferrara, “Separation of Religion and Politics”; and Lafont, “Religion and the Public Sphere.”

43. Walhof, “Habermas.”

44. Chambers, “How Religion Speaks,” 216–17.

45. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 333.

46. Ferrara, “Separation of Religion and Politics”; and Urbinati, “Laïcité in Reverse.”

47. Urbinati, “Laïcité in Reverse,” 5.

48. Casanova, “Religion, European Secular Identities”; and Kuru, Secularism and State Policies.

49. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason,” 768; and Rawls, Political Liberalism.

50. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 472–77.

51. Benhabib, “Democratic Iterations.”