Introduction

Dwelling, in the proper sense, is now impossible. —Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia This book is a meditation on a philosophical and religious theme. In it I explore the problem of secularization, not as a social process, but as a conceptual gesture that appears with some prominence in the writings of three key theorists: Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor W. Adorno. The fact that all three of these writers were affiliates of the Institute for Social Research, the so-called Frankfurt School of social philosophy and cultural criticism, may encourage the impression that they agreed upon a common doctrine, though in fact their differences were often profound. This is especially clear when we examine their distinctive views on secularization, a topic that surely ranks among the more controversial problems in modern social theory. Philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, and historians continue...

Conclusion

Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country. —Genesis 12:1 In a 1978 lecture on the occasion of Gershom Scholem’s eightieth birthday, Jürgen Habermas offered a summary of his friend’s understanding of secularization. The lecture bears witness to the enduring friendship between two of the most consequential intellectuals of the modern era, and it testifies to the postwar reality of a “German-Jewish dialogue” whose existence in pre-Holocaust Europe Scholem himself had dismissed as little more than a myth. Of greater relevance here, however, is Habermas’s sympathetic attempt to reconstruct a theoretical justification for the persistence of religious concepts in profane life. Scholem, claims Habermas, grasped the dialectical principle that secular society might still need religion: “Only those who can bring essential elements of their religious tradition, which points beyond the merely ...

Horkheimer; or, The Longing for the Wholly Other

Examines the concept of secularization in the writings of Max Horkheimer, with special emphasis on his shift from a more dialectical conception of religion in his early writing to his late appeal to the concept of God as “wholly other” and as the only resource for critical resistance.

Benjamin; or, The Ambivalence of Secularization

Examines the concept of secularization in the writings of Walter Benjamin, with a special emphasis on the unresolved ambivalence that surrounds his treatment of this idea.