Abstract
In this essay, I critically examine Habermas’ approach to fundamentalism, a question that explicitly and implicitly alike bears influence on the formation of his postsecular thesis. The overview of his theory is followed by a combined analysis, depending on Torkel Brekke’s sociological study on fundamentalism, on the one hand, and a joint study by Adam Seligman and others in the field of anthropology and social theory. In this regard, questions of sincerity and authenticity are in the focus of my examination, underlying that philosophical relevance of the question. On the basis of this combined analysis I argue that fundamentalism can be best analysed as an essential though specific element of modernity. I state that despite its critical attitude towards many developments of modernity (modernism as ideology), fundamentalism is not only reactively but, in its attitudinal core, a proactively modern phenomenon, and needs be interpreted accordingly as part of the evolving postsecular scenario.
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Notes
The Future, 102, italics added.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Fundamentalism, 13.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 69.
Ibid., 72–73.
Ibid., 268.
Ibid., 59.
Ibid., 267.
Ibid., 4.
Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 28.
Ibid., 24.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 21.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 25.
Ibid., 27, italics added.
Ibid., 105.
Ritual, 24.
Ibid., 8.
In a similar way, and much more explicitly, Seligman’s Modernity’s Wager can be read as a political theology presented in the form of social philosophy. It is not a critical remark from my side, on the contrary: a more essential study could creatively point to these political theological dimensions and involve them into a programmatic investigation on the problem of postsecularism. On the relevance of the problem of Gnosticism in the formation of the modern views on religion, especially in romanticism
Ritual, 126.
Ibid., 139.
Modernity’s, 131.
Ritual., 161.
Ibid., 161–162.
Ibid., 162.
Ibid., 8.
From Comunicative, 145.
Ibid., 23.
Sincerity, 26.
Ibid.
Ibid., 26.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 24.
Ibid., 12.
Ritual, 106.
Understanding, 73–84.
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Acknowledgments
During the completion of this essay, I received very important comments from the following scholars: Torkel Brekke, Paul Cortois, John Rundell, and Aakash Singh. Hereby I would like to thank for their help.
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Losonczi, P. Modernity, Postsecularism, Fundamentalism. Philosophia 44, 705–720 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9585-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9585-7