Decolonizing philosophy? Habermas and the axial age

Rees, Dafydd Huw 2017. Decolonizing philosophy? Habermas and the axial age. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 24 (2) , pp. 219-231. 10.1111/1467-8675.12267

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Abstract

The “postsecular” phase in Jürgen Habermas's work began as an attempt to decolonize philosophy. Ever since his address at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt in October 2001, Habermas has linked the goal of developing a postsecular approach in philosophy and politics to the need to redress the balance between the West and the rest of the world.1 It is no longer possible, he says, to take secular European society as the global norm. Philosophy and political theory must acknowledge the fact that “occidental rationalism,” rather than being a model for the rest of the world, is in fact the Sonderweg or deviant path.2 For Habermas, this Eurocentrism takes the form of an unreflexive secularism: assuming, based on European experience, that the decline of religion is inevitable, that religion has no place in politics, and that philosophical reason has nothing in common with religious faith. Modifying the secular assumptions of philosophy and political theory is therefore the first step towards a rapprochement with the non-Western world — a rapprochement that is desperately needed if Western thinkers are not to appear as “crusaders of a competing religion or as salespeople of instrumental reason and destructive secularization.”3 Although it is rarely acknowledged, this anti-Eurocentric impulse is at the heart of Habermas's postsecular project.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1351-0487
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	7 January 2024
Date of Acceptance:	2017
Last Modified:	02 Feb 2024 17:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/165328

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