De uitdaging van het postseculiere perspectief. Jürgen Habermas over religie en de publieke rede

Abstract

Recently, Jurgen Habermas has joined the debate on the acceptability of religious reasons in the public debate. Discussing both the exclusionist position of Robert Audi and the inclusionist position of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Habermas ultimately advocates a middle ground position which, in many respects, resembles the view of John Rawls. In this paper, we analyze the specificity of Habermas's account of the post-secular public sphere and situate his current views in the larger context of his work. In the final sections, we argue that Habermas, in spite of his increasingly open stance towards religion, still fails to fully appreciate the proper nature of religious faith and, therefore, still underestimates the presumably ineliminable tension between public reason and religion.