The Critical Theory of Religion

"The Critical Theory of Religion explores Jurgen Habermas's universal pragmatic, theory of communicative action, communicative ethics, and discourse theory of right and of the democratic constitutional state. This study pays particular attention to Habermas's communicative theory of religion. It is spread over his entire universal pragmatic and as such is an integral part of his theory of communicative action. It also shows that Habermas's fundamental intuition refers back to religious traditions such as those of Jewish and Christian prophecy and mysticism and of the related German idealism successful, unspoiled nearness, of vulnerability and complementary caution. This study finally aims at not an abstract, but rather determinate, concrete, and specific negation of Habermas's communicative theory of religion in direction of a critical theory of religion and political theology, able to break through its main aporia: the damage of even the most undamaged intersubjectivity in the death of the other."--BOOK JACKET.