Pope Benedict XVI, Jürgen Habermas, and
the ‘cognitive
substance’ of religion
The period known as ‘The Enlightenment’ is usually taken to have
ushered in an intensely secular phase of modernity, in which faith in religion
was displaced by a naturalistic, scientific approach to life and living.
However, whereas
latter day proponents of Enlightenment, such as Richard Dawkins, tend to place
science and reason on one side against religious faith and authority on the
other, such an opposition was not one shared by many of the key Enlightenment
thinkers. One need only mention the deism of the likes of Voltaire and
Jefferson. Rather than an attack on religious faith, Enlightenment thinkers
tended more towards a questioning of religious authority. A key element
of deist thinking was that God could be known by rational, and perhaps even
scientific, means. Voltaire was adamant in his denunciation of religious
authority, but advocated a rationally justified belief in God.
What the
Enlightenment insisted on was not so much scientific materialism — although
this tendency was very much present in thinkers such as La Mettrie — but rather
on the public presentation of good reasons for any belief whatsoever
whether that of church, science, state, or tradition.
It is the
materialist, mechanistic strand of Enlightenment thinking that has drawn the
greatest fire but also the most passionate support. However, simply to divide
the legacy of the Enlightenment into a materialist, scientific rationalism on
the one hand, as opposed to a religious obscurantism on the other is to ignore
the varieties of Enlightenment thinking that not only existed historically but
which still promise a creative engagement between science, reason, and
religion.
The
Enlightenment project of scientific, universal rationality has also had its
fair share of
non-religious critics. Theodore Adorno and Herbert
Marcuse, of Frankfurt school fame, argued, variously, that science was a form
of
instrumental (or means-ends) rationality that had its roots in the
philosophy of Francis Bacon. For Bacon, the acquisition of knowledge about the
natural order was intimately connected to increasing our power to control
nature — nature’s secrets were to be wrested from it in order that we might
make it our servant. Their charge against the Enlightenment was that it brought
about a new historical form of scientific social domination. Once human beings
were seen as the creations of nature alone then a Baconian imperative of
domination through scientific knowledge would follow. Furthermore, economic
life became the domain in which the domination of scientific rationality was
realised and justified: human-beings became enmeshed in a system of
things
in which they also became a
thing.
The Frankfurt
school philosopher Jürgen Habermas has attempted to develop the
anti-authoritarian social and political role of reason, inherited from
Enlightenment thought, whilst overcoming the instrumental use of science as a
means of dominating human-beings. As an advocate of rational secular interests,
it is significant then that Habermas has recently engaged with Pope Benedict
XVI in dialogue — they are the co-authors of short book titled ‘The Dialectics
of Secularization: On Reason and Religion’. For Habermas, not only is a
rapproachment between rationality and religion feasible, but furthermore he uses
the evocative phrase ‘the cognitive substance of religion is not yet
exhausted’.
Whilst
Habermas argues that the constitutional basis of the state must be grounded in
public, secular processes of rational deliberation, he also argues that,
When secularized citizens act in their
role as citizens of the state, they must not deny in principle that religious
images of the world have the potential to express truth. Nor must they refuse
their believing fellow citizens the right to make contributions in a religious
language to public debates.
It seems that
Habermas and Pope Benedict XVI are seeking, through such public dialogue, to
find a way beyond the increasingly stagnant debates between scientific,
materialist conceptions of reason and those of faith that are offered without
rational warrant.
But what of
the ‘cognitive substance’ of which Habermas speaks?
One might
suggest that the cognitive substance of religion is expressed through, at
least, three aspects: the ethical, the intangible value of religious signs, and
the concept of God — this latter without reference, necessarily, to
arguments about whether God exists or not. Given that the ethical is a
well-trodden path in both secular and religious contexts, let's concentrate on
these other two aspects.
The
intangible value of religious signs. Whereas it is easy to see the value of
tangible things such as everyday objects, it is much harder to understand the
value of intangible signs such as images, words, and rituals. One might say
that whereas the value of tangible things may be exhausted — the value of food
is exhausted once it is eaten and digested — the value of certain intangible
signs appears to increase the more they are used, and seems to be
inexhaustible.
Religious
imagery is an example of inexhaustible, intangible value. Think of the
image
of the risen Christ from Grünewald's Isenheim alterpiece. The exact meaning
of this image is hard to pin down. However, in attempting to grasp its meaning
it continues to evoke not only further thought but also a sense of the
numinous. It stimulates cognitive effort whilst also shaping that effort — but
we are never
done with it.
The cloaking
of religious thought and experience in artistic form tells us a great deal
about the particularity of religions and their cultural background. In
practice, religious images, words, and rituals are interwoven with other
aspects of cultural life – think, for example, of the great many people who
carry and use rosary beads. It is the
particularity of religious images,
such as Grünewald’s, that provoke the mental effort that in turn generates
cognitive value or substance. In attempting to make this value explicit we are
in the realm both of reason (cognition) and religion (the numinous).
The concept
of God. A great deal of effort has been expended by both religious and
non-religious thinkers to determine whether we ought to believe that God exists
or not. The question of whether there is evidence or not for the existence of
God, what might constitute such evidence, whether this is a matter of faith, or
rational inquiry, or is open to scientific investigation, are all questions
that have been deeply debated. However, one might consider the concept
of God in distinction to the question of whether God does or does not exist.
That is, not as a matter of faith or belief, but rather as a wider question
concerning concept acquisition and use.
In thinking
about God, one also thinks about a great many other things. One might ask, for
example, what God would have to be like in order to possess powers such as
omniscience or omnipotence. But then one must conceptualise the nature of
omniscience. What does omniscience actually entail? And if such a power is
available to God, how does God know all things at once? Further questions such
as the relation between time, knowing and causation immediately arise. The
theologians of old asked such questions within a faith-based context. However,
if we bring both philosophical and scientific reasoning to our questions, we
may then think about our concepts of knowledge and time, and so on, relative to
our concept of God. We do not have to believe in God as such, to find the
deployment of the concept of God of great cognitive value.
Following such
a
conceptualist approach, reason, science, and religion are taken then
to be complementary aspects of a broader search for Enlightenment. Pope
Benedict XVI and Jürgen Habermas seem to propose that such a variety of
Enlightenment thinking has an intellectual force and a cultural value that is
consonant with both religious and secular interests. The cognitive substance of
religion is not yet exhausted because reason is still not done with it.
Shivdeep Singh Grewal is the author of
Habermas and European integration, which was recently published by Manchester University Press. Until the end of October 2012, MUP blog readers can purchase a copy of Grewal's title with at a special 15% discount. Simply contact our distributors on +44 (0)1752 202301, or
orders@nbninternational.com, quoting the discount code OTH304.
