The 11 theses of Paolo Flores d’Arcais “Against Habermas”

by Rossella Guadagnini Jürgen Habermas, one of the main heirs of the Frankfurt school, is considered the most important philosopher of the last fifty years on an international level. Paolo Flores d’Arcais, director of MicroMega, in his new essay “Against Habermas” – just published by Nino Aragno – engages in a critical confrontation with the German philosopher, which concerns the temptations of faith, the illusions of ethical cognitivism and finally renounce the struggle for radical democracy. Flores d’Arcais believes that, starting from the dialogue held in Munich with the then Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, Habermas has “progressively sweetened his political positions, renouncing the emancipatory perspective of ‘radical democracy’ and retreating on the contribution that religions must / can give to a democracy otherwise in crisis, because it is unable to guarantee the normative conditions of freedom-equality-brotherhood on which it is based “. Indeed, for post-secular Habermas it is “a good thing that religions rediscover a public role – recalls Flores d’Arcais – under penalty of the inability of democracy to face the challenge of pluralist cohabitation caused by unstoppable immigration or the agonizing bioethical dilemmas, where no one can have certain answers “. The German philosopher recently dedicated an essay-conference to the analysis of post-secular society that is going around the world, also through repeated readings in various countries and continents. “I would like to critically examine his theoretical-practical proposal – says the director of MicroMega – through 11 theses to counter the new perspective indicated by Habermas”. According to the thought of the German philosopher, democracy should rediscover the virtues of religions. In other words, explains d’Arcais, “to have a tomorrow, democracy must today renounce the ‘separation wall’ between political life and religious faiths, which – starting from Jefferson’s America – marked the birth and accompanied diffusion. That is, it must send the classic concept of secularism into the attic “. “Moreover, and worse – adds Flores d’Arcais, tenacious and rigorous supporter of the Enlightenment – since its future is inexorably multicultural, democracy according to Habermas must fight in the present any ideological waste that continues to judge religions as an illusion , rather than recognizing them as irreplaceable resources: ethical, political and even of true knowledge “. These are the basic theses of the last Habermas. “Disconcerting is the least that can be said – comments the director of MicroMega – Habermas is not one voice among many. He has been, for almost two generations, the philosopher (at least on the continental scene), the heir of the Frankfurt school, of a radically critical thought towards every ‘establishment’. In short, it is the public intellectual who has been able to give “civil commitment its most recent guise, that of constitutional patriotism, a paradigm capable of providing the progressive world with a theoretical answer- politics with the extinction of Marxisms. n this universe of discourse (and of possible consequent practice), an intransigent secularism seemed to be taken for granted. But now for Habermas – conquered to the ‘politically correct’ – secularization has become a Eurocentric blunder “.