A Genealogy of Faith and Freedom
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2020
Abstract
The review highlights how Habermas reconstructs the historically constitutive function of religious thought regarding essential categories through which to appropriate our practical freedom. It articulates the three essential bifurcations taken along the way: to opt for Judeo-Christian dialogism versus other axial age world religions; for a Lutheran Kantianism of an unconditional normativity versus an empiricist naturalism; and for the hermeneutic discovery of a validity-oriented communicative agency versus a Hegelian metaphysics. Recognizing our normative indebtedness to religious roots in modernity is to enable the renewal of an unabashed commitment to 'rational freedom,' thus serving as a bulwark against currently fashionable scientistic worldviews. Such a hermeneutic genealogy may also provide one promising resource to reconstruct shared normative ideals in a cross-cultural dialogue.
Publication Title
Theory, Culture and Society
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1177/0263276420957735
ISSN
02632764
E-ISSN
14603616
Citation Information
Kögler, H.-H. (2020). A Genealogy of Faith and Freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 37(7–8), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420957735