New book on Habermas and the problems of the "post-secular" condition

Péter Losonczi & Aakash Singh (eds.): Discoursing the Post-Secular: Essays on the Habermasian Post-Secular Turn has been published by the LIT Verlag (2010, 184 pp).

"This collection of fresh and lively essays analyzes the Habermasian post-secular turn as it has been evolving over the last decade triggering intensive debates in social and political theory, but at the same time aims to situate the arising postsecular discourse(s) within the larger intellectual environment shaped by the complex influence of the alleged 'return' of religion or the religious. The volume includes studies from as diverse fields as cultural theory, social theory, political philosophy, and theory of religion, as well as theology and bioethics. Key issues such as tolerance, the nature and challenges of modernity, pluralism, knowledge and faith, human dignity, ritual, idolatry or transcendence are brought into the discussion in an inventive way, and Habermas's work is reflected upon in comparison with figures like Levinas, Vattimo, and Agnes Heller." (Publishers blurb.)

Table of contents:

Editors’ Introduction

1. John Rundell: "Multiple Modernities, Sacredness, and the Democratic Imaginary: Religion as a Stand-in Category"

2. Devrim Kabasakal: "The Relevance and the Limits of the Notion of a Post-Secular Age In Jurgen Habermas’s Theory of Toleration"

3. Patrick Loobuyck & Stefan Rummens: "Beyond secularization? Notes on Habermas’s Account of the Postsecular Society"

4. Aakash Singh: "Habermas' Postsecularism: The Penetration/Preservation of the (European) Political Public Sphere"

5. Péter Losonczi: "Habermas, Levinas and the Problem of the Sacred: Postsecular Strategies in Resonating Divergence"

6. Matthias Riedl: "The Permanence of the Eschatological: Reflections on Gianni Vattimo’s Hermeneutic Age"

7. Nicholas Adams: "Habermas on Religion: The Problem of Discursive Extraterritoriality"

8. Edmund Arens: "What is Religion, and What is Religion For? Toughts in Light of Communicative Theory and Communicative Theology"

9. Michael Hoelzl: "Towards a Thicker Description of Transcendence"

10. Gábor Viktor Orosz: "Human Dignity and Genetics in a Postsecular Age: Habermas’s Ideas Concerning Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis and Enhancement in the Context of Theological Tradition".