Being in the World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis

9. Post-Secularity and (Global) Politics: A Need for Radical Redefinition

137 9. Post-Secularity and (Global) Politics A Need for Radical Redefinition I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts. —Jeremiah 31:33 In recent intellectual discussions, the term post-secularity has acquired a certain currency or prominence. Like other hyphenated terms (post-modernism, post-metaphysics), the word exudes a certain irenic quality, in the sense that the harsh features of traditional conflicts—between faith and reason, religion and agnosticism—are presumably mitigated if not laid to rest. Unfortunately, this hope may be mistaken. Like many similar labels, the term post-secularity papers over disputes of interpretation that cannot be brushed aside. For some interpreters—clinging to the prefix post—the term signals the end of a loathed or despised aspect of modernity, its lapse into irreligion and agnostic “secularism,” thus heralding a return to old-style religious orthodoxy (possibly under clerical auspices). Seen from this angle, the hyphenated expression means the correction of an errancy, an outgrowth of what Gilles Kepel has called “the revenge of God.”1 For another type of interpreter—attached to secularity or secularism—the phrase is a concession to the Zeitgeist , to the inevitably multicultural and multidimensional character of contemporary democracy. Averse to dogmatism and stirred by their “liberal” conscience, secular agnostics are willing to accommodate or tolerate deviant nonconformists, including religious peo- 138 Being in the World ple—provided their conduct and utterances submit to the dominant language game. Thus, underneath the seemingly irenic phrase, the older animosities and resentments still persist; behind the facade of a hyphenated term, traditional culture wars continue. In some fashion, for both sides of the dispute, the terms secularism and secularity designate a “worldly ” domain basically immune from “other-worldly” intrusion, a realm of “immanence” categorically opposed to religious “transcendence.” The two sides differ in placing their evaluative preference respectively in opposing domains; the hyphenated phrase reflects mainly a pragmatic compromise. The question remains, however, whether the stipulated dichotomy—often styled “two-world” theory—can really be maintained. At a closer look, the dichotomy is quickly thrown into disarray. On a purely logical level, the two terms—immanence and transcendence—presuppose each other as mutual conditions of possibility —which means that they cannot be radically separated. More important, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, simple etymology contests such separation. Deriving from the Latin saeculum (age/century ), secularism basically refers to the necessary time dimension of human experience—a temporality that inevitably permeates both reason and faith, both “worldly” cognition and religion (thus undercutting their presumed contrast). In the following I want to pursue these issues further. In a first step, I review the persisting conflict within “post-secularity,” that is, the conflict between post-secular “secularists ” and post-secular (or post-modern) religious traditionalists. What this review yields, I believe, is a basic commonality: namely, the shared and inevitable reliance on interpretation or hermeneutics—a point developed in a second step. By way of conclusion, I want to indicate the genuine relevance of “post-secularity”—properly interpreted— for both domestic democracy and the emerging global cosmopolis. Secularity versus Faith In mainstream liberal-democratic theory, the political regime is supposed to be removed from, and hence basically neutral toward, religion(s) or what are called “comprehensive worldviews.” This conception was formulated most famously in the early writings of philosopher John Rawls. In subsequent years, however, this formula of Post-Secularity and (Global) Politics 139 sequestering religion in a private faith, removed from the public domain , was found to be too rigid and also not quite compatible with democratic standards (mandating the “free exercise of religion”). Hence, religion was allowed—within limits—to reenter the public realm, provided certain conditions regarding public conduct and linguistic discourse were met.2 It is at this point that Jürgen Habermas— one of the originators of the term post-secularity—joins the debate. In several writings published during the past decade, he has sought to pinpoint clearly the conditions under which religion might reenter the public sphere. Thus, in an essay published in 2008 entitled “An Awareness of What Is Missing,” Habermas stressed the stark distance separating modern enlightened reason from religious faith, a distance that also reflects stages of historical development. “The philosophically enlightened self-understanding of modernity,” we read, “stands in a peculiar dialectical [conflictual?] relationship to the theological self-understanding of the major world religions which intrude into this modernity...