Name Calling in the Public Sphere

I want so badly to like Neo-Marxists. I do. They just won't let me. Take Jürgen Habermas for a brief word: hier to the Frankfurt school, world-renound voice on politics and international relations, likely the most significant living philosopher. His accomplishments both in the academic world and with successful globalization efforts are remarkable. There seems no reason that I should have a problem with him. Yet last year he published a little piece called Religion in the Public Sphere, which ruffled quite a many feather. For the most part, however, it was received well in academia, well enough to earn him the Holberg International Memorial Prize, whose first winner was Julia Kristeva.

As a blanket statement, the fundamental notion of Habermas is appealing. In watered-down terms, Habermas' idea is that in order to come upon the truth of anything, we have to talk about it. We are not, however, meant to simply talk arbitrarily, but rather to strive to fight fair when we discuss such matters. He thus puts an ethical intonation on public discourse. The point which is emphasised here is that truth does not merely concern truth, but also the relationships between those who are striving for it. Many can agree: the paradigm is practical and engaging. His interests and the problems to which he seeks solutions are also quite similar to mine.

His most unquieting claim, in any case, is that religion has no place in such discourse. The idea at work here is that though people may have religious motivations for making their decisions or for voting in a certain way, these faith-based reasons are incoherent in the public sphere and obscure what should be clearly expressable in other terms. This is secularization at its best. It seems a bit unfair, though, to assume that religious people and their ideas are meaningless in the political realm, or in any forum, and beyond that, that they should not be heard by the public ear. Perhaps faith should not be the driving force behind politics, but this does not and must not necessitate the exclusion of religion. That position would hold what it calls communicative reason on a pedistal. It seems contradictory to say that this paradigm (exhaulted ever so religiously I might add) denies a usefull role to religion.

All cultures in all eras have had religion. The attempt to go beyond himself is a fundamental part of man. If this were not so, then politics would not even exist naturally. It would have to be forced upon us. Man has a spiritual nature, so why can we not discuss, for example, a person's dignity in light of different religious traditions? Reason is not the only facet of human life that produces meaning. I would then ask you Mr. Habermas, what reason do you have for completely eradicating religion from your ideal discourse? It doesn't seem justified even by your own ideals. And let's face it, though vehemently against religion on paper, Karl Marx was himself a great prophet, and his vision for the future was highly in tune with the Hebrew understanding of justice following the Babylonian Exile. What gives?