[FRA:] H-Net Book Review: The Early Frankfurt School and Religion

[Kenneth MacKendrick]

-----Original Message-----
From: theory-frankfurt-school-bounces at srcf.ucam.org
[mailto:theory-frankfurt-school-bounces at srcf.ucam.org] On Behalf Of Ralph
Dumain
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:24 PM
To: Discussion of Frankfurt School Critical Theory
Subject: Re: [FRA:] H-Net Book Review: The Early Frankfurt School and
Religion


>Jurgen Habermas has tried to sort some of this out by noting that discourse
>of liberation are in fact indebted to the Judaic-Christian legacy of
>salvation history (a term he borrows from Karl Lowith, I think) but that in
>modernity salvation history is transformed: no gods before me = freedom of
>religion; the wholly Other becomes the pluralism of others, perfect justice
>and redemption = justice through argumentation, ethics. He also suggests
>that religious language, like art, is indispensable as long as it serves as
>a source of inspiration but - it must forfeit its theological claims as
>unique.

There is something methodologically mistaken about all this. There's a 
causal attribution to religion that contravenes a Marxist understanding of 
society. If ideology is an expression of society, and society and its 
accompanying ideology undergo a historic shift accompanied by 
secularization, what exactly is to be claimed by asserting that liberation 
has its roots in the notion of salvation? All ideas have their roots in 
human need, do they not? Habermas' formulation, at least as you summarize 
it here, is uninformative, and seems rather weak-kneed, i.e. doesn't go 
beyond liberal tolerance. It is also possible that Habermas dimly remembers 
his dialectical heritage and it's getting garbled in translation.

KGM
a) I think Habermas has taken this approach to complement his theory of
social evolution, which aligns religion with premature enlightenment
(animism-religion-science)
b) If we assume that German Idealism has anything to say about the
Enlightenment we can't ignore the contributions that theology and religious
thought made to the German Idealists. Thus, we've inherited - sublimated -
salvation history in our normative self-understanding of modernity. This
speaks to the history of ideas, not to anthropological needs or interests.
C) In an anthropological sense, all concepts and practices have their roots
in human needs and desires (self-preservation) [from within a modern,
post-metaphysical perspective].
d) Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but does Habermas still identify
with the Marxian heritage of critical theory? I thought his revised work
starting with Communication and the Evolution of Society was really a
"good-bye" to historical materialism (via Freud and Marx) and "hello" to
social evolution (cognitive studies and systems theory).

ken