Jürgen Habermas Gives Neo-Atheists A Headache

Several years ago there was a minor kerfuffle on some of the upper mid-brow atheist websites over a widely spread misquotation by the German atheist philosopher Jürgen Habermas.   Other than it being rather charming to find that people who would normally have dismissed the entire field of philosophy as an archaic and irrelevant hangover from the medieval university were straining at gnats to make the thing go away, the most important thing about it was that even when they cleaned it up, what Habermas said wasn't congenial to the current program of the neo-atheists.  Yes, someone mentioned it the other day, which is why I'm writing it out.

I first heard anything of it while listening to a lecture, in English, by the Oxford professor of Mathematics and Christian apologist,  John Lennox.  I don't remember the form of the quote he gave, though, since I've also listened to him give lectures at a rather sophisticated level in an academic setting in German,  something I doubt most of the atheist bloggers could do, I would be surprised if it wasn't one of those claimed to have been close to the original German.  So I don't know if the version given as a misquote is what he gave.  It is given, on the  Habermas Forum , clearly anxious for its adherence to atheist decorum, as:

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 [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.

Which, I will point out, I'm not posting here as a quote because the Forum website says it was actually Sandro Magister's summary of what he heard Habermas say in an interview he conducted with him.  If there is a tape of the interview or if he wrote it from his notes, I don't know, I don't know if Magister and Habermas were speaking a language they both were fluent in. I've listened to Habermas in English on this topic and it is rough going, so I don't know how accurate a summary of what he said in the interview it might be.  Interestingly, in that tape, Habermas attributes the quote in question to an interview he did with a professor whose name I can't catch but he clearly says "It is a quotation from an interview I did with Professor...." so the Forum's "The genealogy of a misquote" has problems, as well.   I can't hear that Habermas  disowned the quotation on that recording.

You can see why today's atheists would have a problem with such a prominent atheist and eminent academic saying such a thing.  And, clearly, he really did say the substance of that, more than once, even the Forum is able to present what it says is the accurate quote:

"Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an auonomous [autonomous?] conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk (p. 150f)."

Egalitarian universalism, equality springing from ideas of freedom and social solidarity, etc.  all attributed to Judaism and Christianity, it's a neo-atheist nightmare that entirely undermines the entire neo-atheist genealogy of morals.  And worse, he notes that it was appropriated - I assume by secularists, such as Habermas - and there is continuing value in it as "we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage".   It's a far cry from the "Death to Christianity" that is the substance of 99.94/100% of the neo-atheists.

In the Forum article they are anxious to distance Habermas from his atheist apostasy by noting his claims that in the modern world those values derived from the metaphysical moral commandments from the Hebrew religious tradition are safely de-metaphysicalized in modern secular society where they can be transmitted among atheists and, the implication is, that religion is no longer required, though in no where did I see where Habermas favored the end of religion.

In a recent comment Habermas has emphasized that his intention was to say that moral universalism - at least in our Occidental world - has its source in Jewish and Christian monotheism.  At a public lecture a student asked Habermas about his remark on Christianity, and Habermas's reply can be heard here:
sciencestage.com/v/958.  

According to Habermas human rights today are neither religious nor metaphysical "founded" or "grounded" on any specific religion, ideology or culture. In the same interview he says: "Notwithstanding their European origins, human rights today represent the universal language in which global relations can be normatively regulated" (p. 155).

The recording linked to resulted in a dead link so I can't check to see if it says what the Forum says it did.  I will point out that the stipulation "at least in our Occidental world"  is rather odd, since in the quote they give right after that Habermas explicitly attributes them to,  "their European origin".   And so inescapably the product of a culture saturated in Christian moral teachings, if not always Christian practice, ideals inescapably originating in the minds of those formed through Christian belief.

As to the claims that, in today's secular age, they can be sustained,  I am a total skeptic because I see any secular retention of those values cut off from their religious origin as being adrift at best.  It is hard enough for Christians and Jews to follow them, believing that they are commanded by God, I doubt that others who deny that and merely follow them out of commonly shared cultural habits will more successfully practice them.

I think an atheist majority society, especially one governed by what scientists claim about human behavior based on natural selection, will gradually abandon those values, especially in the political expression of them.  I think that is what has happened here, in the United States, as the origins of liberalism in Christian religions has given way to "science" and the attractions of modernism and consumerism.  I don't see them taking root securely anywhere else in the world without that metaphysical - religious foundation.  Most of the non-Western democracies I see are formally democratic while being oligarchic, plutocratic or various power centers fighting for control using the forms of democracy as tools, at least temporarily.   Much like happens here, increasingly, as we, as well, reject that moral heritage.  As the Republican right shows, you can even reject the teachings of The Prophets, including Jesus, while still propping up the trappings of Christianity.   When it comes to making those values real in society and in political action, the trappings aren't enough, you really, really have to believe you are required to DO THEM.

Update:  Damn I Forgot I Typed That Out

When I decided to write about this,  in response to the claim that Habermas was being hijacked and abused by "the right and Christians,"  I looked to see if that was true.   I mean, equality, universal rights, the rest of the virtues Habermas attributed to the Hebrew religious tradition aren't unwelcomed by liberals as they comprise the very substance of the American liberal position and are hardly welcomed by the right.  Here's someone who is an undisputed champion of liberalism and not a Christian,  Eric Alterman.

For the purposes of defining liberalism today, the most common objection to the Rawlsian pardigm comes from the communitarians, who borrow considerably from the same republican precepts of America's founders that come into conflict with the more liberal ideas popular at the time of America's origins more than two hundred years ago.  To what degree, asks the political philosopher Michael Sandel, are our liberal virtues fashioned in relative isolation, and to what extent can they be found embedded in relations with others?   Are we, ultimately, atomistic, individual beings or members of various interlocking communities?   "Rawlsian liberalism defines certain actions as beyond the bounds of a decent society,"  Sandel complains, "but wherein lies its commitment to the good, the noble of purpose, the meaning, as it were, of life?"

For guidance in these intractable liberal positions,  the historian James T. Kloppenberg suggests we turn to one of civilizations oldest moral traditions, and one whose roots are shared by most Americans:  Christianity.  Conceptually,  Kloppenberg notes, the central virtues of liberalism descend directly from the cardinal virtues of early Christianity:  "prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice."   He adds that "the liberal virtues of tolerance, respect, generosity, and benevolence likewise extend St. Paul's admonition to the Colossians that they should practice forbearance, patience, kindness and charity." 

This view is reinforced by the arguments of Jurgen Habermas, post war Europe's most significant liberal philosopher and perhaps the last great voice of the once preeminent (and neo-Marxist) Frankfurt School. "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultiimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civiliaztion,"  Habermas told then cardinal Joseph Ratinger, now Pope Benedict, during a January 2004 conversation,  "To this day, we have no other option [than Christianity].  We continue to nourish ourselves from this source.  Everything else is postmodern chatter."  No one understood this better than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.   Asked by a reporter about his political philosophy,  FDR replied, "Philosophy?  I am a Christian and a Democrat -  that is all."

Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America
 By Eric Alterman

Alterman goes on to note that in addition to the irony of liberalism being directly the result of taking the virtues of Christianity seriously, something that the "Christian" right certainly doesn't, he goes on to note that they also misrepresent Adam Smith whose idea of a good society includes economic equality, the right of a worker to the product of their labor, a society in which no one is destitute or kept in the miserable subsistence level that is characteristic of British liberalism and even socialism [For details of which, of course, you can read Marilynne Robinson, Mother Country].