An Awareness of What is Missing

Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745694705
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 83

Book Description
In his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.

Religion and Rationality

Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745692591
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
This important new volume brings together Habermas' key writing on religion and religious belief. Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on the one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. In so doing, he examines a range of important figures, including Benjamin, Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz and Gershom Scholem. In a new introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas' engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas' writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how the essays in Religion and Rationality, one of which is translated into English for the first time, foreground an important, yet often neglected, dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview, also in English for the first time, in which Habermas develops his current views on religion in modern society. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theology, religious studies and philosophy, as well as to all those already familiar with Habermas' work.

Between Naturalism and Religion

Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745694608
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.

Religious Education in a Post-Secular Age

Author: Olof Franck
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030475034
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
This book analyzes the changes and shifts in religious education in Europe over the past 50 years. In a post-secular age, it has become increasingly difficult to make sharp distinctions between what is religious and non-religious, confessional and non-confessional. Reforms in religious education in Sweden in the 1960s appeared as part of a process of wider secular liberalization, giving more credence to the idea of absolute neutrality in religious education. However drastic shifts in society, culture and the European religious landscape raise the need for a reevaluation of the foundations of religious education. Drawing on a range of case studies from across Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of religious education as well as post-secular education more generally.

Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age

Author: David Lewin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317410556
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age reinterprets post-secular insights for educational theory by recognising that the persistence of religion in contemporary life raises new questions about the place of religion in education. Two common assumptions are critically examined: first, that the better educated a society becomes, the more secular it becomes, and second, that religion can and should be separated from public education. For too long, religion has had an uneasy relationship with education, being seen either as a foreign invader, a problem to be solved, or as a mechanism by which to reinforce particular religious, cultural or national identities. In order to move educational theory beyond the debates about indoctrination and competing rights between parents, children and nation states, the argument undercuts rationalist conceptions of religion and education that tend to frame the debates in terms of competing truth claims or worldviews. Drawing on a diverse range of theological, philosophical and educational sources, this book demonstrates the continuing significance of the Christian mystical tradition to educational theory. It proposes an exploration of democratic education that brings together two apparently irreconcilable poles: the meaning of religion in education and contemporary life, and the need for a deliberative democratic process that is fit for the post-secular age. It argues that religious literacy can be served by democratic encounters in public religious education. Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of the philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, education policy, politics, anthropology and cultural theory. It will particularly appeal to those, of both secular and religious persuasions, interested in the place of religion in education and public life.

Church, Faith, Future

Author: Louis J. Cameli
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814645909
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
In this challenging but hopeful new book, Church, Faith, Future: What We Face, What We Can Do, Father Louis J. Cameli renders a carefully composed portrait of the church in North America today. Drawing on philosophy, history, cultural analysis, and sociology, he offers a sobering picture of where church and faith stand in our society and where they seem to be headed. Identifying several possible ways forward, Fr. Cameli points out the way he sees as the most promising and most faithful to Catholic tradition. In a fascinating afterword to the book, Cardinal Blase Cupich enters into dialogue with Fr. Cameli’s thinking, describing how the Archdiocese of Chicago has begun to address the issues and the directions indicated.

Finding Faith in Foreign Policy

Author: Gregorio Bettiza
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190949465
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Since the end of the Cold War, religion has become an ever more explicit and systematic focus of US foreign policy across multiple domains. US foreign policymakers, for instance, have been increasingly tasked with monitoring religious freedom and promoting it globally, delivering humanitarian and development aid abroad by drawing on faith-based organizations, fighting global terrorism by seeking to reform Muslim societies and Islamic theologies, and advancing American interests and values more broadly worldwide by engaging with religious actors and dynamics. Simply put, religion has become a major subject and object of American foreign policy in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. In Finding Faith in Foreign Policy, Gregorio Bettiza explains the causes and consequences of this shift by developing an original theoretical framework and drawing upon extensive empirical research and interviews. He argues that American foreign policy and religious forces have become ever more inextricably entangled in an age witnessing a global resurgence of religion and the emergence of a postsecular world society. He further shows how the boundaries between faith and state have been redefined through processes of desecularization in the context of American foreign policy, leading the most powerful state in the international system to intervene and reshape in increasingly sustained ways sacred and secular landscapes around the globe. Drawing from a rich evidentiary base spanning twenty-five years, Finding Faith in Foreign Policy details how a wave of religious enthusiasm has transformed not just American foreign policy, but the entire international system.

Deprovincializing Habermas

Author: Tom Bailey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000571386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
This book provides a rich and systematic engagement with Jürgen Habermas’ political theory from critical perspectives outside its Western locus. It constructively examines the theory’s implications for non-‘Western’ contexts ranging from Latin America and the Middle East to India and China, and for themes ranging from cosmopolitanism, democracy and human rights to colonialism, feminism, care, modernity, and religion. The chapters added to the second edition explore Habermas’ own recent response to the charge of ‘provincialism’. The book will be of special interest to scholars and students of political theory, global justice, international affairs, philosophy, and critical theory, and also to those working in postcolonial studies, religious studies, sociology and cultural studies.

Climate Change, Justice and Sustainability

Author: Ottmar Edenhofer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400745400
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
Analysing and synthesising vast data sets from a multitude of disciplines including climate science, economics, hydrology and agricultural research, this volume seeks new methods of combining climate change mitigation, adaptation, development, and poverty reduction in ways that are effective, efficient and equitable. A guiding principle of the project is that new alliances of state and non-state sector partners are urgently required to establish cooperative responses to the threats posed by climate change. This volume offers a vital policy framework for linking our response to this change with progressive principles of global justice and sustainable development.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion

Author: Mark Knight
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135051100
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
This unique and comprehensive volume looks at the study of literature and religion from a contemporary critical perspective. Including discussion of global literature and world religions, this Companion looks at: Key moments in the story of religion and literary studies from Matthew Arnold through to the impact of 9/11 A variety of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and literature Different ways that religion and literature are connected from overtly religious writing, to subtle religious readings Analysis of key sacred texts and the way they have been studied, re-written, and questioned by literature Political implications of work on religion and literature Thoroughly introduced and contextualised, this volume is an engaging introduction to this huge and complex field.