Habermas on Christianity and Liberalism

Jurgen Habermas is asked about the following quote:

Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Habermas
• Yale
• Christianity
• Democracy
• Liberalism

[DJmiguels1]

asd I think you are misunderstanding the criticism he is making of both post-modern secularists and evangelical theists. They are both indebted to the universalizing conception of morality, not the universal morality that either declaim or claim at their inception. It is a point about the general parameters of the debate, not the particulars of its content.

[Canada3381]

needs a transcript.

[natmanprime]

sound is SHIT

[asdfzzxcv723]

Habermas has fallen victim to neoliberalist triumphalism. Just as he believes secular sources of resistance to neoliberalist hierarchy and exploitation have withered, he looks into the past and imagines that Christianity was the only source of humane norms. In fact, Christianity, to the extent that it can be said to support egalitarianism and mutual respect despite its mystified authoritarianism, is an attempt to conjure up divine sanction for norms that have a mundane basis in social life.