I was perusing the New York Times this week and came upon a pretty interesting op-ed by Stanley Fish. It’s titled, “Does Rationality Know What’s It’s Missing?” In it, he discusses German philosopher Jurgen Habermas’ recent change of heart concerning religion; once a staunch secularist, he is conceding that religion plays an important role in our post-metaphysical world (with a few caveats). He even goes further to say that we need it, which, according to Fish, is a pretty radical turnaround from Habermas’ previous devotion to the principle of rationality. The central claim is that, in ignoring religion, we have begun to lose our common humanity and our sense of “common moral action.”
A couple housekeeping items: First, if you’re interested in reading the full article, you can find it here. Second, I have to say that I haven’t read Habermas’ whole text, so what I’m commenting on is just Stanley Fish’s conclusions as to what he thinks Habermas said. Hopefully a review of the book itself will be forthcoming in the next issue of the Ichthus! (I know, I know, shameless plug.)
So what I thought was interesting was that Habermas’ claim is somewhat predicated on the failures of science and the shortcomings of a faith founded “naively” in science. Habermas defines a faith as, “science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.” In essence, science in and of itself lacks some sort of general implication, that, as many have argued against religion, it fails to provide a substantial argument for why we should continue to pursue it and pursue it to a certain goal. Science fails to give us a certain human “self-awareness,” and is simply unable to satisfy that need at either the individual or group level.
That’s interesting, but what’s Habermas’ solution? For Habermas, the post-secular world is one in which both sides make caveats in order to pursue this common good of an enlightened but also self-aware world. However, even Fish concedes that this exchange is largely one-sided, and religion is asked to give up authority in most areas of life. Habermas argues that religion should transfer its authority to reason in “law, government, morality, and knowledge,” while reason is only asked to respect the presence and, essentially, personal emotional importance of religion.
So I have to admit that I was initially kind of excited about all this. Not that I pit religion against rationality (I’m writing for the Harvard “Magazine of Christian Thought,” after all), but I would like to see a world in which both are equally respected and important. I agree with Habermas in that religion should probably relinquish its authority in certain areas, mostly in order to begin the process of finding a middle ground that satisfies most sections of the moral spectrum in a diverse world of moral convictions. However, what I have a problem with is Habermas’ demand that religion give up its authority in the sphere of knowledge; in and of itself, religious knowledge is still knowledge; if religion did not have authority in knowledge, then Habermas wouldn’t need to write about it. He also doesn’t support his claim that religion provides a common point around which human beings can rally; he seems to emphasize the more personal importance of religion rather than its benefits for humanity as a whole.
In the end, I was disappointed. As expected, religion was relegated to an inferior status to reason. Every time this happens, it always begs the question, “Why?” I’ve never been able to understand why religion was considered irrational, and I have to say that I still don’t completely understand. Fish’s article still leaves me without an answer, still in search of some kind of balance. Perhaps I’ll provide my own answer to the post-secular world question in a future post… Interesting question to ponder in the meantime.
Comment! What does a post-secular world look like to you?
The “authority of religious knowledge”.
Which body of people possesses this “authority”?
Sophormoric true believers such as you and your friends (who are barely out of nappies)!!
And which tradition of “religious knowledge”?
The great non-dual Sages such as Nagarjuna, Shankara, Gautauma Buddha Ramana Maharshi and Hui Neng would laugh at the self-serving preposterousness of your sophomoric “religious knowledge”.
Speaking of which, there is NO evidence whatsoever of a Spiritually informed religious Consciousness to be found on this blog–never ever.
We live in a time when the entire Great Tradition of humankind, and every point of view ever written down (whether Spiritual, “religious” or secular) is now freely available to anyone with an internet connection.
Have YOU gone to school and really examined this vast and complex Great Tradition? And thus de-provincialized your self of your inherited essentially naive mommy-daddy ideas about “God” and Reality.
Do you really live in a post-secular world?
Just because you prattle on about “God”, “Jesus” and the Bible does not mean that you have gone beyond the secular world-view or paradigm that has dominated (and thus patterned) ALL of Western “culture” for over three centuries now.
Every minute fraction of your body-mind complex has been patterned by the dominant secular paradigm. And every minute fraction of USA culture too–with NO exceptions, including every one who presumes to be so-called religious.
Plus every Western “university”, including all the seminaries, and theology and religion and religious studies departments, operate entirely within the now long dominant secular paradigm.
Do you think that Jesus (or any other radiantly-alive Saint) would be even RECOGNIZED by you or any of your friends if he happened to appear at Harvard?
It takes much much more that you have even begun to imagine to dis-entangle your self from this secular paradigm.
In fact it cant even be done–except by Divine Grace.
But where does that come from?
Certainly not from long ago brutally murdered Jesus hanging on a cross.
And of course the “resurrection” never ever happened.
[...] and admits that religion isn’t going away any time soon. Stanley Fish reviews the book, and Chelsea Carlson reviews Fish’s review at the Harvard Ichthus’s Fish Tank blog, and both find Habermas’ treatment of religion [...]
You have never been able to figure out why religion is considered irrational? Start by reading the above reply… sescondly ask yourself what religious thought rests upon… that’s right: Faith! Faith is belief in something that has no rational evidence to support it. You may claim that you “rationally” deduce God’s attributes through the “revealed” Word of the Bible… but the Bible is a document so fraught with incongruities and direct inconsistencies that the only way to see it as a coherent whole is Faith. The attibutes given regarding God are interpreted as literally true and are used to make certain logical assumptions regarding His nature… however it takes a great deal of Faith to think that you are choosing the correct attributes in the first place. Secondly, the fact that the logical paradoxes which exist within arguments for the existence of God or something like Divine Command theory are only soluble through a leap of Faith. Rationality denotes that something makes sense if it is observable, reasonable and logicically sound. The religion of which you speak seems to embody none of these qualities. There is nothing wrong with religion… it is just not rational. Rationality may not be the be-all end-all, but it is the way we know the world around us in any apprehensible way… I am not sure how you would be unaware of the fact that religion is not a rational thing, especially the kind that has an ancient book with an invisible God who implicitly and explicitly condones rape, genocide, murder, and slavery.
Hath thou an arm like the Lord?