Locke, Secularism and the Justice of the Secular Solution: Towards a Self-Reflective Transcending of Secular-Self Understanding

Abstract

This paper focuses on Habermas’ 2006 paper ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’. In that text Habermas offers a post-secularist position that moves beyond the limits of a Rawlsian approach whilst seeking to maintain fidelity with a liberal democratic outlook. Part of Habermas’ project is to offer a response to religious critics of Rawls such as P.J. Weithman and N. Wolterstorff, without either completely rejecting the substance of their complaints or embracing the kind of extreme secularism of R. Audi. The paper will pay particular attention to the idea that we ought to “expect” secular citizens to achieve a “self-reflective transcending of a secularist self-understanding of Modernity” in Habermas’ response. From here the paper will both affirm and to some degree criticise Habermas’ position. Affirmatively it will seek to contribute to that transcending of a secularist self-understanding of modernity by turning to a consideration of the history of secular thought, negatively it will consider something unthought in Habermas’ discussion of it, and that is the rather deep connection between secular thinking and the Christian tradition. This historical understanding of secularity provides an interesting critical insight into the limitations of secularity in a pluralistic context and offers resources for a sharper criticism of: the religious critics of Rawls and his hyper-secularist supporters (such as Audi).