I’ve taken a few shots at Habermas for his recently expressed views on the role of religion in public life. Stuff about about secular people learning from the religious and the like. However, in a recent, lengthy and considered interview he says:
What must be safeguarded is that the decisions of the legislator, the executive branch, and the courts are not only formulated in a universally accessible language, but are also justified on the basis of universally acceptable reasons. This excludes religious reasons from decisions about all state-sanctioned – that is, legally binding – norms. Apart from that I do not believes that secular citizens can learn anything from fundamentalist doctrines that cannot cope with the fact of pluralism, with the public authority of the sciences, and with the egalitarianism of our constitutional principles.
So it looks like there’s not much to be learned from religion after all. Well, thank God for that.
