German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas is among the most influential thinkers of our time, and in his new work that he presented simultaneously with the age of 90 years titled "This is also the history of philosophy." The philosopher - born in 1929 - tries to answer a question that he always occupies about the function of philosophy in today's world. .
Habermas seeks by studying the history of more than 3 thousand years of the history of philosophy, in his recent project issued in two volumes and about 1700 pages, a comprehensive reformulation of human history, considering that the fragmentation and division of modern life exhausted the ability of philosophy on bold questions, and the German philosopher studies the progress of humanity through an analysis The “public mind” and its development history.
Habermas studies how today's dominant forms of "post-metaphysical" thought emerged using an analytical perspective on the relationship between faith and knowledge emanating from centuries-old traditions central to the Roman Empire; Habermas tracks how philosophy separated itself from religion and became secular.
Nevertheless, Habermas asserts that religious experience is closely related to contemporary philosophy of modernity despite attempts to secularize it, and from a methodological perspective and in great detail, it presents decisive conflicts, lessons learned and turning points in the history of philosophy, in addition to the accompanying transformations that I have synchronized in the fields of science, law, politics and society.
Unfinished Enlightenment
In times of crisis, Habermas suggests that humanity does indeed possess the necessary resources that can be balanced by directing it towards the common good, and benefiting from the Frankfurt school philosophical heritage and postmodern criticism, he considers history to be a “story of human learning” and a record of the problems solved and the challenges that Be overcome.
Habermas explains that "new knowledge about the objective world" along with "social crises" creates "cognitive dissonance", and these contradictions push societies to embrace new patterns of understanding and interaction, according to Harvard University academic Brandon Bloch's presentation of Habermas's new book.
The German philosopher devotes space to the study of language or "the source of human rationality, the storehouse of accumulated knowledge" as he calls it, and the means by which knowledge can be modernized and developed, and it also discusses multiple problems on the issue of "enlightenment" and modernity.
Habermas was born in the context of the Protestant middle-class community in West Germany, becoming the most prominent contemporary philosopher of Europe with a professional history spanning nearly 7 decades, during which he developed a philosophical system that linked knowledge of linguistics, sociology, politics, religion and law.
German biography
Habermas's philosophical texts appeared in more than 40 languages, and Habermas distinguished himself as a strong defender of the public role of the thinker, and his conversations with prominent philosophers such as the American John Rolls and the French Michel Foucault sparked controversy through the humanities, and his political comments formed differences over topics such as historical memory, European unity, and even Genetic Engineering.
The Habermas philosophical project emerged from the post-World War trauma of Germany, as it miraculously escaped wartime military conscription, and was 15 years old at the time of the Nazi collapse; To hear later the radio broadcasts of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.
Determined to reveal the path in which German history has gone extremely wrong and in an attempt to explore whether German culture has resources to rebuild the country, Habermas abandoned the idea of studying medicine to pursue philosophy lessons, rejecting prevailing ideas of existentialism and cultural despair; Instead, he became one of the leading theorists of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy with Max Durkheimer and Theodore Adorno who co-built their Institute for Social Research, which has become a haven for critical discussion amid declining academic culture after the war in West Germany.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde recently, the famous German philosopher analyzed the results and the moral and political implications of the current global health crisis, and urged the European Union to help the most affected member states, saying, "We must strive to abolish neoliberalism."
The German philosopher - who is described as the heir to the legacy of the Frankfurt School that invented philosophical concepts such as technical hegemony and the instrumental mind - warned of the growing danger of national populism and the extreme right, considering that political authorities had turned a blind eye to him under the pretext of the dominant anti-communism.
Religion and secularism
Habermas’s book represents a third stage of his philosophical project, the stage in which questions of faith and religion have gained increasing importance; In a speech one month after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Habermas described contemporary Western democracies as “post-scientific societies” and said that the public sphere must accommodate religious diversity and allow religious citizens to participate, according to Bloch’s offer to the Boston Review (bostonreview). ).
Habermas went further in his 2005 article that followed a discussion with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI later), believing that religious and secular citizens should not only enjoy equal access to the public sphere, but also religious contributions should not be excluded from the knowledge field because they Of particular importance.
For some of Habermas’s secular interlocutors, these intellectual “concessions” of religion betrayed the rational promises of critical social theory, which Habermas attributed, and Harvard University academic Brandon Bloch says he has evidence of Habermas’s participation in “Marxist Christian” working groups in the early 1960s and discussions with scholars Christian theology in the 1980s supported his idea that religious citizens could contribute moral insight in the public sphere, and that they did so in democratic Germany.
While Europe (and Germany) is absorbing new waves of Muslim immigrants, Habermas has sought to combat xenophobic rhetoric, stressing the importance of democracy in dealing with religious differences.
In his latest book, Habermas remained clear about the founding role of Western Christianity in modern philosophy, and tracked the rise of rationality, considering that "the process of secularization is still incomplete" as there is no alternative to the ethics of justice and religious love, as he put it.
Religious heritage
Habermas explained that the Western (Jewish-Christian) religious heritage was not just a passing stage in the emergence of modern thought and politics, but rather - and may still contribute - to shaping its core essence.
Habermas says that while Judaism remained highly associated with its language and sacred texts to interact with its surroundings. The unique circumstances of early Christian confrontation with Greek philosophy and the Roman state stimulated the process of learning and cross-fertilization between faith and knowledge; This resulted in the synthesis of Roman Emperor Augustine in the fourth century AD between Christianity and Platonism, and later, bringing the legal system inspired by Western Christianity to the realm of power politics.
Crossing the conflicts between the church and the state in medieval Europe, Habermas arrives in Italy in the 13th century as a new turning point, or a location where early forms of primitive capitalism such as functional differentiation and division of labor in society emerged.
Thomas Alaquini, the famous thinker of the period, left the tradition of the Platonic Christian synthesis of Augustine, establishing the separation of theology and philosophy as different disciplines, and thus reason and faith became completely independent paths to salvation.
Although Alaquini remained in favor of the monarchy, his formulation of the "natural law", which God planted in the human mind, opened the door to nascent democratic theories, and with unprecedented criticism of the Pope, Alquini's successors viewed in the late Middle Ages of the law as limiting the authority of both the Church And the authority of the state, and thus began a new era.
In his historiography of the rise of the Protestant doctrine that was inaugurated by the German monk Martin Luther (died 1546), Habermas argues that Luther's attack on ecclesiastical authority not only exacerbated the schism of the Church and the state, but rather a rational establishment in which power was given to the most convincing argument and not the ability to understand the sacred text.
In general, Habermas reconstructs the interactions between Christian faith and worldly knowledge not as a process of conflict, but rather as a space for mutual learning and acculturation.