Caritas in Veritate and Critical Theory: Locating Religion in the Public Sphere

Horizons ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-53
Author(s):  
Erin Brigham
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pope Benedict Xvi ◽  
Benedict Xvi ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Caritas In Veritate ◽  
Practical Model ◽  
Social Tradition ◽  
The Public Sphere

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the debate on the public voice of religion from two perspectives: contemporary critical theory and the Catholic social tradition. Using the recent conversation between Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) on religion and secularization as a point of entry, I argue that critical theory offers a framework of rationality that promotes dialogue between religious and secular individuals while the Catholic social tradition's principle of subsidiarity provides a practical model for how this dialogue can occur.

scholarly journals The Clash of Cultures of Radical Enlightenment and Humanism Open to Transcendence. The Perspective of Pope Benedict XVI

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Janusz Węgrzecki
Keyword(s):  
Positive Answer ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pope Benedict Xvi ◽  
Benedict Xvi ◽  
Radical Enlightenment ◽  
Clash Of Cultures ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Role Of Religion

The article analyzes the content of the Pope’s speeches discussing, reconstructing and interpreting the concept of two dominant western cultures and their mutual relationships to the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI, who calls them the culture of radical enlightenment and the culture of humanism that is open to transcendence. The article identifies fundamental contentious issues including: anthropological issues, human dignity, political anthropology, freedom, reason, its rationality, and the role of religion in the public sphere. Thus, the article provides a positive answer to the question of whether the perspective of the clash of cultures outlined by Samuel Huntington can be cognitively used in interpreting the contrast of cultures presented from the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI. However, contrary to Huntington, who describes the clash of western cultures with other, non-western cultures, Pope Benedict XVI claims that there is a clash between two dominant western cultures.

Member of a school or exponent of a paradigm? Jürgen Habermas and critical theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Müller-Doohm
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
The Public Sphere

The label ‘Frankfurt School’ became popular in the ‘positivism dispute’ in the mid-1960s, but this article shows that it is wrong to describe Jürgen Habermas as representing a ‘second generation’ of exponents of critical theory. His communication theory of society is intended not as a transformation of, but as an alternative to, the older tradition of thought represented by Adorno and Horkheimer. The novel and innovative character of Habermas’s approach is demonstrated in relation to three thematic complexes: (1) the public sphere and language; (2) democracy and the constitutional state; and (3) system and lifeworld as categories for a theory of modernity.

On Theory (as Pedagogy) in a Time of Excess

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-26
Author(s):  
Jessica Radin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere

Drawing on the articles collected by Aaron W. Hughes in the newly published "Theory in a Time of Excess", this article argues that critical theory in religion has an important role to play in the public sphere of 2017. This is particularly true if scholars take seriously the suggestion of several of the authors in this edited volume, that critical theory in the study of religion must consist of the constant questioning both of specific theories, and of the social, political, and historical paradigm in which both theories and methods are chosen by scholars.

Justice as the sacred in language: Durkheim and Habermas on the ultimate grounds of modernity and critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Callegaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theory Of Communicative Action ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Public Sphere

The article reconstructs the double movement of departure and return to Emile Durkheim’s sociology that Jürgen Habermas realized in his work in order to define the theoretical paradigm of communicative action and revive the original project of Critical Theory. It highlights, in the first part, how Habermas first used Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to assign a phylogenetic function to ritual practices and explain modernity, from an evolutionist perspective, as the final result of a progressive linguistification of the sacred, having substituted the communion of minds in rites with the communication of reasons in the public sphere. After having discussed the two main objections that Habermas addressed to Durkheim at the time of The Theory of Communicative Action, the second part shows how he recently revised his rationalist framework through a new anthropological reading of The Elementary Forms, aimed at demonstrating, in the context of a more complex account of evolution, why the requirement of justice discloses, even in modernity, the active presence of the sacred in language and orientates the critical work of reason in the search of solidarity. Pointing out the new directions in which the hypothesis of a linguistification of the sacred must be seriously revised, it ends by suggesting how the question of social justice may open the path to a positive cooperation between sociology and Critical Theory.

Legitimating reason or self-created uncertainty? Public opinion as an observer of modern politics

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Corsi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The Public Sphere

Theoretical approaches to public opinion are hard to find in the sociological literature, with the exception of the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas. One important alternative, although almost unknown in the English-speaking world, is offered in a few contributions by the systems theoretician Niklas Luhmann. Both critical theory and systems theory start from a historical analysis of the conditions that led to the rise of a public sphere and understand its function as the limitation and control of the arbitrariness of power. Critical theory considers the public sphere as a social space where citizens can (or should) participate and discuss freely and without constraints. Thus, it legitimizes political power. Systems theory presents a completely different concept of the public sphere and conceives of it in terms of second-order observation. Through public opinion the modern political system observes itself and stimulates as well as limits its decision-making processes. This paper argues that both approaches share the idea that the political system, like every other social subsystem, must generate a system-specific uncertainty (i.e. specific conditions that it cannot control) in order to limit its own arbitrariness and to be able to develop its decision-making potential. Both approaches locate this uncertainty in the sphere of public opinion. But they radically differ in the way they conceptualize public opinion’s effects on modern politics. Such differences between critical theory and systems theory are illustrated by an analysis of recent political events.

Public Sphere, Postmodernism and Polemic

1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Johnson ◽  
Dana R. Villa
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Theories of the public sphere, as standardly formulated, aim to specify the minimal, necessary conditions for a discursive realm free of coercion or manipulation. In his article in this Review in September 1992, Dana Villa urged us to reconsider this standard account. He argued that when read in light of postmodernist theory, Hannah Arendt provides the basis for a revised conception of the public sphere that privileges plurality and difference over consensus. Jim Johnson suggests that Villa's analysis is a thinly veiled polemic against critical theory. Johnson argues that, as critique, Villa's argument is neither decisive nor encompassing, and that as polemic it blinds Villa to potentially fruitful disagreements with critical theorists. Villa replies that Johnson misses the synthetic thrust of the original article because he identified public realm theory too narrowly with Habermas. Thus, he misconstrues the dialogue Villa sought to facilitate between Arendt and postmodernism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document