A critique of Sheikh Murad
I have taken below issue with Sheikh Murad's reading of Gray and Habermas (as an example) to show that he does not have in depth knowledge of issues he is talking about.
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Murad and Gray:
"Another problem is the constant confusion between correlation and causality. When Max Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he wanted to study a range of correlations, but not to make Protestantism the cause of capitalism or the reverse."
Globalised Islam: The Search for a New 'Ummah' pp. 328-329
The distinction between 'correlation' and 'causation' is important given the increasing analysis of phenomena such as Islamism, Al-Qaeda etc. in terms of Modernity, Enlightenment and Globalisation. Roy himself is not totally innocent in this regard as he confuses the two issues in the very book that he draws our attention to this distinction.
There is a further distinction which needs to be called forth in this context. In the case of 'cause' itself we should distinguish between 'reductive cause' and 'non reductive cause'. Reductive cause would be when one phenomenon can be exhaustively explained in terms of the concept(s) invoked, while it would be a case of non reductive cause when the concepts invovked are meant to explain the phenomenon only partially or in certain aspects.
In my own studies, I have previously contrasted the Wahabi movement with the Protestant movement. Similarly I have described the modernist influences in contemporary Islamic movements and their nature. However it has never been my intention to portray Wahabism as the product of Protestantism or Islamic movements as the product of Modernity. That would have been fallacious reasoning.
However writers like T J Winter (aka Abdul Hakim Murad) seem not to be aware of any such distinctions or of the need to avoid fallacious reasoning. His recent article (which is only superficially rich, an impression which is created by a barrage of related and unrelated quotations form various sources many of which it seems are not thoroughly read or understood by the author). The key feature of this article is the inability of the author to make obvious conceptual distinctions like the one mentioned above. The article is full of outlandish reasoning and logical fallacies.
Winter's typical argument goes like this:
Islamists are terrorists (this is assumed, no where is the term terrorism or Islamist defined. Maududi, Qutb, Al-Qaeda and Hamas are all Islamists)
Traditional Islam does not sanction such acts (this is obvious and does not need any argumentation. One would have thought as a self proclaimed traditionalist he should have given reference to legal treatises on the issue, specially the rulings related to legitimate cases of retaliations)
Western history is littered with examples of terrorism (obviously Winter does not find much difficulty in coming up with examples of such acts)
So it must follow from the above that Islamist terrorism has its roots in the West and not in Islamic history
The above is obviously fallacious reasoning. There are many ways in which the above can be false. For example why cannot one assume that the purported Islamist terrorism is innovative and self originating?
When disentangled of quotations this is what Winter's reasoning amounts to.
Another sort of reasoning Winter marshals in this piece reminds me of something I read in an Australian newspaper not long after the S11 events. A letter from a reader went more or less like this: Osama Bin Laden is a hypocrite. The proof? He wears a Swiss watch but hates the West at the same time!! In fact this is exactly how Winter argues in his piece.
Winter argues that Islamists and Al-Qaeda are modern, i.e. they are products of modernity, they borrow their "spiritual, as well as (their) material, armament from Western modernity." (By the way, Winter does not tell us what an "Eastern" Modernity might look like). At this point Winter (approvingly) quotes John Gray:
"No cliche is more stupefying than that which describes Al-Qaida as a throwback to medieval times. It is a by-product of globalisation. Its most distinctive feature - projecting a privatised form of organised violence worldwide - was impossible in the past. Equally, the belief that a new world can be hastened by spectacular acts of destruction is nowhere found in medieval times. Al-Qaida’s closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late nineteenth-century Europe." Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern pp. 1-2
Winter accepts Gray's claim that Al-Qaeda is a "by product" of Globalisation. Earlier in the paper Winter decries and bemoans the postmodernist abolition of freedom and autonomy: "It is against the backdrop of this culture that the scientists, now far beyond Ataturk's ‘Science is the Truest Guide in Life’, raise the stakes with their occasionalism, and, for the neurologists, the increasing denial of the autonomy of the human will - a new predestinarianism that makes us always the consequence of genes and the present, not the remembered past." However Winter does not feel any irony in describing Al-Qaeda as the by-product of Modernity and at the same time decrying postmodernist abolition of the conception of autonomy!
I will focus on the Gray quote cited above to show the limited understanding and conceptual grasp of Winter. I do not know whether Winter has read John Gray thoroughly or not, but his thought bears some crucial resemblance to that of Gray. Like John Gray Winter is an anti Universalist. Winter's convoluted references to the pragmatist, realist, compromising Islam (which he wrongly equates with Sunnism. In fact Winter's natural source is Qadianism and not Sunnism, but on this more in later posts) are in fact the denial of the Universalist claim of Islam. No wonder he describes the Islamic claim of Truthhood (Islam) versus Falsehood (what is opposed to Islam) as dualism! Both John Gray and Winter are seemingly arch enemies of the Enlightenment. However this would be a misleading impression. What John Gray criticises is not the ideals of Enlightenment but its essentialism, its belief that the only way to Modernity is the Enlightenment way. John Gray however believes that there are many ways to be Modern and not just one way. Winter, like Gray, rejects this Enlightenment essentialism. Like Gray he rejects the possibility of the Truth overcoming falsehood. He thinks that the compromise between truth and falsehood is an ultimate human situation. Hence both John Gray and Winter emphasise "compromise" and both reject the idea of a universal civilisation. Both John Gray and Winter accept key elements of the Enlightenment ideals however what they reject is Enlightenment's conception of Universal civilisation or Enlightenment’s claim to universality.
John Gray's conception of Modernity (to be modern) is fairly complex and needs acquaintance with his key writings specially his earlier book False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. As I have argued elsewhere** Gray uses Modernity in two senses. In one sense he equates modernity with material and technical progress (including progress in value neutral or instrumental rationality). On the other hand Gray at times also understands modernity as an Enlightenment project of universal civilisation. In this sense modernity is the project of establishing a universal civilisation that prescribes the only possible way to be modern in the first sense of the term. Modernity in the second sense includes values such as freedom, equality, secularism and progress. Enlightenment claimed that there is only one way to be modern in the first sense and thus tried to impose this way on all nations everywhere. All nations were to become the same. It is in this sense that Gray understands globalisation as an Enlightenment project. It is also in this context that Gray links Enlightenment with Christianity. Of course Gray is not saying that the Enlightenment is a religious or Christian movement, what he is saying is that the Enlightenment shares Christianity's ambitions of imposing a universal civilisation on the rest. Thus there is more of a structural resemblance between Christianity and Enlightenment than any substantive convergence. The Enlightenment zeal for imposing its only true version of events on the rest of World is what makes it 'religious':
"The conflict between Al Qaeda and the West is a war of religion. The Enlightenment idea of a universal civilisation, which the West upholds against radical Islam, is an offspring of Christianity" Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern pp. 116-117
What is 'religious' in Enlightenment is the notion of universal civilisation and since Al Qaeda also adheres to the same notion the clash between Al Qaeda and the West is a war of religion (since they adhere to structurally same movement however hold clashing ideals as far as the content is concerned).
The second element of comparison between Enlightenment ideology and al Qaeda is that they both are driven by this mad urge to impose their own values on the rest. Al Qaeda through attacks on two towers destroyed the Western myth that its values can be imposed on the rest, however Al Qaeda is guilty of the same, as it continue to harbour the myth that the world can be remade in its own image through terror. This is what makes Al Qaeda modern apart from its belief in the universality of its values (civilisation):
"Western societies are ruled by the myth that, as the rest of the world absorbs science and becomes modern, it is bound to become secular, enlightened and peaceful -as, contrary to all evidence, they imagine themselves to be. With its attack on Twin Towers, Al Qaeda destroyed this myth; and yet it continues to be believed. Al Qaeda is driven by the belief that the world can be transformed by spectacular acts of terror. This myth has also been repeatedly disproved; but still it persists."
Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern p. 118
Thus Gray's comparison of Enlightenment and Al Qaeda is structural and not substantive. He regards Al Qaeda as modern because of its two structural similarities with Enlightenment: a) it claims universality for its ideals b) It believes in imposing its own civilisation on everyone else (through violence).
Now Winter has no idea of the complexity of analysis to which we have just alluded to in the above. He only knows how to quote from an array of authors in order to overwhelm his average educated Western Muslim audience. What we need to ask Winter is this: In which of the above two senses does he claims Al Qaeda to be modern? Obviously he cannot explicitly deny the universality of Islamic civilisation (its claim to universality as well as its claim to truthhood). Though as we have noted he essentially does deny that as is implied in his emphasis on value pluralism, his jibes against Sharia, his dubbing of 'exclusive' claims as 'dualism' and his emphasis on a pragmatic and realistic interpretation of Islam (where we go by give and take). However he cannot deny the universality of Islam explicitly without damaging his standing among his orthodox Muslim audience.
On the other hand if he claims that Al Qaeda is modern in the second sense then he would have to revise his 'Ethicist Puritanism' here. John Gray might be forgiven for repeating the propaganda but Winter surely must know that Al Qaeda whatever it is has never claimed to aspire for imposing 'Islam' on others through terror. Al Qaeda has consistently dubbed its campaign as the defence of Islamic lands against Western offence. One is free to agree or disagree with Al Qaeda or anybody else for that matter but one should, however criticise it for what it stands for, not for what Western propaganda makes us believe that it stands for. Winter boasts that "For theists, the ethical can never be suspended; on the contrary, it is needed most when most under strain", however his own description of Al Qaeda and Islamism is evidence of blatant intellectual dishonesty.
Whatever might be the case, our brief analysis of Gray's conception of modernity shows that Winter is a propagandist not a serious thinker.
Murad and Habermas:
"To succeed, then we must be able to realise that self-judgement, that greatest and most irreplaceable gift of the Abrahamic religions, is more than an evolutionary confidence trick. Consider Jürgen Habermas’ latest book, which reflects on human nature as challenged by genetic science.[83] Postmodernism seems to problematise self-judgement; and its associated ethical practice seems to reduce Aristotle’s greatness of soul, which he, against later monotheist reaction, considered a virtue, to superbia, greatest of the seven deadly sins. But Habermas reminds us that confronted by genetic science, we are required, after a long hiatus, to judge ourselves. For science seeks our permission to rebuild our bodies to reduce the suffering of future generations; yet in the process it must ask us to define what we presently are. Liberal ethics, which resist both such definitions, and any exercise in using human beings for our own purposes, however idealistic, are thereby interrogated. Habermas is quite clear that the West’s conception of virtue is a Christian ghost, rooted in a Kantianism that has been the basis of liberal notions of individual autonomy. Yet he seems convinced that this ghost still lives, and can be maintained perpetually, and may even serve as the stable basis of ever more ambitious projects for universal codes of human rights, in the arena of bioethics, as elsewhere. This will include, presumably, the war on Carrelian Islamism."
In this post I shall comment on T J Winter's take on Habermas. He seems to agree with Habermas that postmodernism makes 'self-judgment' (Winter's rephrasing of Habermas' concept of reflection and self reflection). Moreover Winter agrees with Habermas that self reflection is the "greatest and most irreplaceable gift of the Abrahamic religions" to humanity. However he disagrees with Habermas on whether self reflection can be explained through recourse to evolutionary theory (which Habermas ultimately does - see his Truth and Justification particularly the introduction).
I want to concentrate in this post on Winter's shocking acceptance of Habermas' absurd claim that 'self-reflection' is the greatest gift of Abrahamic religions. As I will show it is actually the rejection of the very core of the message that is the hallmark of Abrahamic religions (and not their greatest gift as Winter and Habermas have us believe). It will also become clear that Winter accepts the core concepts of Modernity through this absurd assertion.
Habermas' defines his conception of Modernity through his notion of reflection (including self reflection). According to Habermas the defining characteristics of Modernity is that it creates a space for reflection (including self reflection). Reflection and its possibility has a specific meaning in Habermas' discourse in this context. In order to understand Habermas' unique conception of reflection we need to understand his conception of Modernity.
In order to describe his conception of Modernity Habermas contrasts the modern conception with mythical worldviews. For Habermas the defining characteristic of mythical worldviews is that they are closed systems with no real alternatives. For Habermas Modernity on the other hand creates the possibility of alternatives. Modernity does not have any positive content except this creation of possibilities to choose in such a way that there is always room for revising and altering choices (whether this is possible is another question which I leave aside for the moment). Modernity does this by questioning the 'given' and the 'factual'. In mythical worldviews the 'given' and the 'factual' holds sway, the power of questioning as normative power has not emerged yet, so that agents cannot posit a reflective distance vis a vis what they do and believe and their own selves. The transcending power of reflection is missing from these worldviews. It is ushered in with Modernity.
Obviously Habermas is not claiming that in mythical worldviews people do not make choices. What he is saying is that choices are arbitrary and contingent in the sense that there is no normative basis for transcending the given and the factual in these societies. Thus what mythical worldviews lack is a normative conception of choice and reflection. Unless they have this conception any move from A to B would be a contingent fact with no normative force. In the absence of this normative power it becomes impossible to question and possibly transcend the 'given' in a principled way. There is no principled opposition to the 'given' or 'the factual' possible within mythical world order. This only becomes possible within modernity. This is the power of self reflection/self judgment that Winter talks about as the greatest gift of Abrahamic religion. So we need to make the connections clear.
Habermas follows Weber in understanding the transition from mythical worldviews to Modernity through the route of world religions specially Abrahamic religion. It is a complicated story but for our purposes we can summarise the idea as following: Mythical worldviews were ruled by pure immanence, everything is connected to everything else, there is no normative principle through which the given could be criticised or transcended. World religions provide the first way out of this impasse. Through their conception of transcendent God they provide the principle which can be counterposed to the 'given'. Similarly through their conception of salvation through 'good works' they provide the basis for intervention in the world on a moral and technical level. Habermas, again following Weber, is not concerned with the teachings of Abrahamic religion from the perspective of their content. He considers them exclusively on structural grounds. He considers the greatest achievement of the Abrahamic religions as providing the ground for transcending the presumed immanence of the mythical worldview. For him Abrahamic religions provide the basis for the emergence of reflective distance vis a vis the 'given'. However Habermas, like Weber, sees this as only a half solution as the principle on the basis of which Abrahamic religion opposes the 'given' of the mythical worldview becomes 'given' in turn. In other words, though Abrahamic religions provide a critical principle that critical principle is only critical in a limited sense since ultimately you cannot criticise and hence transcend the principle itself. Hence the need to transit further. It is here that Modernity comes in. It gives, for the first time, a notion of critique that is thorougly genuine, where nothing remains beyond question. So what Habermas is saying is that the greatest gift of Abrahamic religions is that they paved the way for a way of life in which nothing remains beyond question or questioning!!
Is this what Winter is saying as well? I do not know. But if he understands Habermas well he cannot mean anything else. However if he does not he should stop talking about issues he does not have any clue about.
---
Related posts:
related post
------------------------------------------------
**References: Extended Review of John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusion of Global Capitalism Pakistan Business Review Vol. 2 No. 2 pp. 89-96 July 2000.
---
Murad and Gray:
"Another problem is the constant confusion between correlation and causality. When Max Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he wanted to study a range of correlations, but not to make Protestantism the cause of capitalism or the reverse."
Globalised Islam: The Search for a New 'Ummah' pp. 328-329
The distinction between 'correlation' and 'causation' is important given the increasing analysis of phenomena such as Islamism, Al-Qaeda etc. in terms of Modernity, Enlightenment and Globalisation. Roy himself is not totally innocent in this regard as he confuses the two issues in the very book that he draws our attention to this distinction.
There is a further distinction which needs to be called forth in this context. In the case of 'cause' itself we should distinguish between 'reductive cause' and 'non reductive cause'. Reductive cause would be when one phenomenon can be exhaustively explained in terms of the concept(s) invoked, while it would be a case of non reductive cause when the concepts invovked are meant to explain the phenomenon only partially or in certain aspects.
In my own studies, I have previously contrasted the Wahabi movement with the Protestant movement. Similarly I have described the modernist influences in contemporary Islamic movements and their nature. However it has never been my intention to portray Wahabism as the product of Protestantism or Islamic movements as the product of Modernity. That would have been fallacious reasoning.
However writers like T J Winter (aka Abdul Hakim Murad) seem not to be aware of any such distinctions or of the need to avoid fallacious reasoning. His recent article (which is only superficially rich, an impression which is created by a barrage of related and unrelated quotations form various sources many of which it seems are not thoroughly read or understood by the author). The key feature of this article is the inability of the author to make obvious conceptual distinctions like the one mentioned above. The article is full of outlandish reasoning and logical fallacies.
Winter's typical argument goes like this:
Islamists are terrorists (this is assumed, no where is the term terrorism or Islamist defined. Maududi, Qutb, Al-Qaeda and Hamas are all Islamists)
Traditional Islam does not sanction such acts (this is obvious and does not need any argumentation. One would have thought as a self proclaimed traditionalist he should have given reference to legal treatises on the issue, specially the rulings related to legitimate cases of retaliations)
Western history is littered with examples of terrorism (obviously Winter does not find much difficulty in coming up with examples of such acts)
So it must follow from the above that Islamist terrorism has its roots in the West and not in Islamic history
The above is obviously fallacious reasoning. There are many ways in which the above can be false. For example why cannot one assume that the purported Islamist terrorism is innovative and self originating?
When disentangled of quotations this is what Winter's reasoning amounts to.
Another sort of reasoning Winter marshals in this piece reminds me of something I read in an Australian newspaper not long after the S11 events. A letter from a reader went more or less like this: Osama Bin Laden is a hypocrite. The proof? He wears a Swiss watch but hates the West at the same time!! In fact this is exactly how Winter argues in his piece.
Winter argues that Islamists and Al-Qaeda are modern, i.e. they are products of modernity, they borrow their "spiritual, as well as (their) material, armament from Western modernity." (By the way, Winter does not tell us what an "Eastern" Modernity might look like). At this point Winter (approvingly) quotes John Gray:
"No cliche is more stupefying than that which describes Al-Qaida as a throwback to medieval times. It is a by-product of globalisation. Its most distinctive feature - projecting a privatised form of organised violence worldwide - was impossible in the past. Equally, the belief that a new world can be hastened by spectacular acts of destruction is nowhere found in medieval times. Al-Qaida’s closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late nineteenth-century Europe." Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern pp. 1-2
Winter accepts Gray's claim that Al-Qaeda is a "by product" of Globalisation. Earlier in the paper Winter decries and bemoans the postmodernist abolition of freedom and autonomy: "It is against the backdrop of this culture that the scientists, now far beyond Ataturk's ‘Science is the Truest Guide in Life’, raise the stakes with their occasionalism, and, for the neurologists, the increasing denial of the autonomy of the human will - a new predestinarianism that makes us always the consequence of genes and the present, not the remembered past." However Winter does not feel any irony in describing Al-Qaeda as the by-product of Modernity and at the same time decrying postmodernist abolition of the conception of autonomy!
I will focus on the Gray quote cited above to show the limited understanding and conceptual grasp of Winter. I do not know whether Winter has read John Gray thoroughly or not, but his thought bears some crucial resemblance to that of Gray. Like John Gray Winter is an anti Universalist. Winter's convoluted references to the pragmatist, realist, compromising Islam (which he wrongly equates with Sunnism. In fact Winter's natural source is Qadianism and not Sunnism, but on this more in later posts) are in fact the denial of the Universalist claim of Islam. No wonder he describes the Islamic claim of Truthhood (Islam) versus Falsehood (what is opposed to Islam) as dualism! Both John Gray and Winter are seemingly arch enemies of the Enlightenment. However this would be a misleading impression. What John Gray criticises is not the ideals of Enlightenment but its essentialism, its belief that the only way to Modernity is the Enlightenment way. John Gray however believes that there are many ways to be Modern and not just one way. Winter, like Gray, rejects this Enlightenment essentialism. Like Gray he rejects the possibility of the Truth overcoming falsehood. He thinks that the compromise between truth and falsehood is an ultimate human situation. Hence both John Gray and Winter emphasise "compromise" and both reject the idea of a universal civilisation. Both John Gray and Winter accept key elements of the Enlightenment ideals however what they reject is Enlightenment's conception of Universal civilisation or Enlightenment’s claim to universality.
John Gray's conception of Modernity (to be modern) is fairly complex and needs acquaintance with his key writings specially his earlier book False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. As I have argued elsewhere** Gray uses Modernity in two senses. In one sense he equates modernity with material and technical progress (including progress in value neutral or instrumental rationality). On the other hand Gray at times also understands modernity as an Enlightenment project of universal civilisation. In this sense modernity is the project of establishing a universal civilisation that prescribes the only possible way to be modern in the first sense of the term. Modernity in the second sense includes values such as freedom, equality, secularism and progress. Enlightenment claimed that there is only one way to be modern in the first sense and thus tried to impose this way on all nations everywhere. All nations were to become the same. It is in this sense that Gray understands globalisation as an Enlightenment project. It is also in this context that Gray links Enlightenment with Christianity. Of course Gray is not saying that the Enlightenment is a religious or Christian movement, what he is saying is that the Enlightenment shares Christianity's ambitions of imposing a universal civilisation on the rest. Thus there is more of a structural resemblance between Christianity and Enlightenment than any substantive convergence. The Enlightenment zeal for imposing its only true version of events on the rest of World is what makes it 'religious':
"The conflict between Al Qaeda and the West is a war of religion. The Enlightenment idea of a universal civilisation, which the West upholds against radical Islam, is an offspring of Christianity" Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern pp. 116-117
What is 'religious' in Enlightenment is the notion of universal civilisation and since Al Qaeda also adheres to the same notion the clash between Al Qaeda and the West is a war of religion (since they adhere to structurally same movement however hold clashing ideals as far as the content is concerned).
The second element of comparison between Enlightenment ideology and al Qaeda is that they both are driven by this mad urge to impose their own values on the rest. Al Qaeda through attacks on two towers destroyed the Western myth that its values can be imposed on the rest, however Al Qaeda is guilty of the same, as it continue to harbour the myth that the world can be remade in its own image through terror. This is what makes Al Qaeda modern apart from its belief in the universality of its values (civilisation):
"Western societies are ruled by the myth that, as the rest of the world absorbs science and becomes modern, it is bound to become secular, enlightened and peaceful -as, contrary to all evidence, they imagine themselves to be. With its attack on Twin Towers, Al Qaeda destroyed this myth; and yet it continues to be believed. Al Qaeda is driven by the belief that the world can be transformed by spectacular acts of terror. This myth has also been repeatedly disproved; but still it persists."
Al-Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern p. 118
Thus Gray's comparison of Enlightenment and Al Qaeda is structural and not substantive. He regards Al Qaeda as modern because of its two structural similarities with Enlightenment: a) it claims universality for its ideals b) It believes in imposing its own civilisation on everyone else (through violence).
Now Winter has no idea of the complexity of analysis to which we have just alluded to in the above. He only knows how to quote from an array of authors in order to overwhelm his average educated Western Muslim audience. What we need to ask Winter is this: In which of the above two senses does he claims Al Qaeda to be modern? Obviously he cannot explicitly deny the universality of Islamic civilisation (its claim to universality as well as its claim to truthhood). Though as we have noted he essentially does deny that as is implied in his emphasis on value pluralism, his jibes against Sharia, his dubbing of 'exclusive' claims as 'dualism' and his emphasis on a pragmatic and realistic interpretation of Islam (where we go by give and take). However he cannot deny the universality of Islam explicitly without damaging his standing among his orthodox Muslim audience.
On the other hand if he claims that Al Qaeda is modern in the second sense then he would have to revise his 'Ethicist Puritanism' here. John Gray might be forgiven for repeating the propaganda but Winter surely must know that Al Qaeda whatever it is has never claimed to aspire for imposing 'Islam' on others through terror. Al Qaeda has consistently dubbed its campaign as the defence of Islamic lands against Western offence. One is free to agree or disagree with Al Qaeda or anybody else for that matter but one should, however criticise it for what it stands for, not for what Western propaganda makes us believe that it stands for. Winter boasts that "For theists, the ethical can never be suspended; on the contrary, it is needed most when most under strain", however his own description of Al Qaeda and Islamism is evidence of blatant intellectual dishonesty.
Whatever might be the case, our brief analysis of Gray's conception of modernity shows that Winter is a propagandist not a serious thinker.
Murad and Habermas:
"To succeed, then we must be able to realise that self-judgement, that greatest and most irreplaceable gift of the Abrahamic religions, is more than an evolutionary confidence trick. Consider Jürgen Habermas’ latest book, which reflects on human nature as challenged by genetic science.[83] Postmodernism seems to problematise self-judgement; and its associated ethical practice seems to reduce Aristotle’s greatness of soul, which he, against later monotheist reaction, considered a virtue, to superbia, greatest of the seven deadly sins. But Habermas reminds us that confronted by genetic science, we are required, after a long hiatus, to judge ourselves. For science seeks our permission to rebuild our bodies to reduce the suffering of future generations; yet in the process it must ask us to define what we presently are. Liberal ethics, which resist both such definitions, and any exercise in using human beings for our own purposes, however idealistic, are thereby interrogated. Habermas is quite clear that the West’s conception of virtue is a Christian ghost, rooted in a Kantianism that has been the basis of liberal notions of individual autonomy. Yet he seems convinced that this ghost still lives, and can be maintained perpetually, and may even serve as the stable basis of ever more ambitious projects for universal codes of human rights, in the arena of bioethics, as elsewhere. This will include, presumably, the war on Carrelian Islamism."
In this post I shall comment on T J Winter's take on Habermas. He seems to agree with Habermas that postmodernism makes 'self-judgment' (Winter's rephrasing of Habermas' concept of reflection and self reflection). Moreover Winter agrees with Habermas that self reflection is the "greatest and most irreplaceable gift of the Abrahamic religions" to humanity. However he disagrees with Habermas on whether self reflection can be explained through recourse to evolutionary theory (which Habermas ultimately does - see his Truth and Justification particularly the introduction).
I want to concentrate in this post on Winter's shocking acceptance of Habermas' absurd claim that 'self-reflection' is the greatest gift of Abrahamic religions. As I will show it is actually the rejection of the very core of the message that is the hallmark of Abrahamic religions (and not their greatest gift as Winter and Habermas have us believe). It will also become clear that Winter accepts the core concepts of Modernity through this absurd assertion.
Habermas' defines his conception of Modernity through his notion of reflection (including self reflection). According to Habermas the defining characteristics of Modernity is that it creates a space for reflection (including self reflection). Reflection and its possibility has a specific meaning in Habermas' discourse in this context. In order to understand Habermas' unique conception of reflection we need to understand his conception of Modernity.
In order to describe his conception of Modernity Habermas contrasts the modern conception with mythical worldviews. For Habermas the defining characteristic of mythical worldviews is that they are closed systems with no real alternatives. For Habermas Modernity on the other hand creates the possibility of alternatives. Modernity does not have any positive content except this creation of possibilities to choose in such a way that there is always room for revising and altering choices (whether this is possible is another question which I leave aside for the moment). Modernity does this by questioning the 'given' and the 'factual'. In mythical worldviews the 'given' and the 'factual' holds sway, the power of questioning as normative power has not emerged yet, so that agents cannot posit a reflective distance vis a vis what they do and believe and their own selves. The transcending power of reflection is missing from these worldviews. It is ushered in with Modernity.
Obviously Habermas is not claiming that in mythical worldviews people do not make choices. What he is saying is that choices are arbitrary and contingent in the sense that there is no normative basis for transcending the given and the factual in these societies. Thus what mythical worldviews lack is a normative conception of choice and reflection. Unless they have this conception any move from A to B would be a contingent fact with no normative force. In the absence of this normative power it becomes impossible to question and possibly transcend the 'given' in a principled way. There is no principled opposition to the 'given' or 'the factual' possible within mythical world order. This only becomes possible within modernity. This is the power of self reflection/self judgment that Winter talks about as the greatest gift of Abrahamic religion. So we need to make the connections clear.
Habermas follows Weber in understanding the transition from mythical worldviews to Modernity through the route of world religions specially Abrahamic religion. It is a complicated story but for our purposes we can summarise the idea as following: Mythical worldviews were ruled by pure immanence, everything is connected to everything else, there is no normative principle through which the given could be criticised or transcended. World religions provide the first way out of this impasse. Through their conception of transcendent God they provide the principle which can be counterposed to the 'given'. Similarly through their conception of salvation through 'good works' they provide the basis for intervention in the world on a moral and technical level. Habermas, again following Weber, is not concerned with the teachings of Abrahamic religion from the perspective of their content. He considers them exclusively on structural grounds. He considers the greatest achievement of the Abrahamic religions as providing the ground for transcending the presumed immanence of the mythical worldview. For him Abrahamic religions provide the basis for the emergence of reflective distance vis a vis the 'given'. However Habermas, like Weber, sees this as only a half solution as the principle on the basis of which Abrahamic religion opposes the 'given' of the mythical worldview becomes 'given' in turn. In other words, though Abrahamic religions provide a critical principle that critical principle is only critical in a limited sense since ultimately you cannot criticise and hence transcend the principle itself. Hence the need to transit further. It is here that Modernity comes in. It gives, for the first time, a notion of critique that is thorougly genuine, where nothing remains beyond question. So what Habermas is saying is that the greatest gift of Abrahamic religions is that they paved the way for a way of life in which nothing remains beyond question or questioning!!
Is this what Winter is saying as well? I do not know. But if he understands Habermas well he cannot mean anything else. However if he does not he should stop talking about issues he does not have any clue about.
---
Related posts:
related post
------------------------------------------------
**References: Extended Review of John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusion of Global Capitalism Pakistan Business Review Vol. 2 No. 2 pp. 89-96 July 2000.
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