For centuries, philosophy was regarded as “ancilla theologiae”, as the mere handmaid of theology. It provided the logical and conceptual tools to substantiate the doctrine of God as the supreme of all sciences. Their emancipation to whip-wielding dominatrixes, under whose blows at least the monotheistic religions tremble, could not be stopped in the course of secularization.

Every whimpering contradiction with an attempt to crawl into a last argumentative corner resulted in further sanctions. At least since Jürgen Habermas’ peace prize speech in 2001, which brought the term “post-secular society” into circulation, there has been reason to redefine the relationship.

It’s not about a relapse into past times. Philosophy as the art of well-founded thinking, which today does not shy away from the help of empirical science, is and remains the opposite of theology. However, it has reason to secure its own religious remnants and to transfer these, whether they be of a moral, cultural or merely linguistic-metaphorical nature, into secular content as far as possible.

reason and religion

This was Jürgen Habermas’ project, which in 2019 resulted in the 1800 pages of “A History of Philosophy”, a study on the relationship between belief and knowledge. On the way there, Joseph Ratzinger, the late Pope Benedict XVI, was an important interlocutor. Their meeting, which took place in the Catholic Academy in Bavaria in 2004 and is documented under the title “Dialectic of Secularization – About Reason and Religion”, became famous.

If in the obituaries of Benedict there is talk again and again of the meeting of two great spirits, this certainly does not fail to reflect the intellectual abilities of the two, but the character of their dialogue: Ultimately, they had to remain deaf to each other.

The philosopher Habermas, with his “post-metaphysical” thinking in two senses, cannot counter the theologian Ratzinger’s resort to the truths of revelation. Was this a lesson for the outcome of similar summit meetings? In any case, Ratzinger, who is now given an all too mild halo, benefited from Habermas – and not the other way around.