November 23, 2009 (Catholic education, Catholic schools)

The SSRC blog The Immanent Frame: Secularism, religion and the public sphere has a four part audio series on the topic “Rethinking Secularism: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere”.  It features speeches by Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West.

Jürgen Habermas: “‘The Political’ – The Rational Sense of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology”

Charles Taylor: “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism”

Judith Butler: “Is Judaism Zionism? Religious Sources for the Critique of Violence”

Cornel West: “Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization”

For the above four addresses LINK HERE

This is followed by an additional conversation between Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in a post tiled Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in conversation.  There is both an audio and written exchange.

By way of example the moderator Craig Calhoun begins by asking of Habermas:

Part of the burden of Charles’s talk was to suggest that religion should not be considered a special case, either with regard to political discourse or with regard to reason and argumentation in general; but, rather, that religion is simply one instance of the more general challenge of diversity, including diversity and comprehensive views of the good, in Rawls’s language. …

Does this make sense to you? Would you buy this argument? If not, does it give you a chance to elaborate your position a little, to clarify why?

For his answer and Taylor’s response LINK HERE

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