Religion and Rationality Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity Jiirgen Habermas Edited and with an Introduction by Eduardo Mendieta polityCopyright © this collection Polity Press 2002. Please see the acknowledgements for further copyright information. Chs 1-7 originally published in German © Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981, 1991, 1997. First published in 2002 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Editorial office: Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Marketing and production: Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 UE, UK All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0-7456-2486-3 ISBN 0-7456-2487-1 (pbk) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Berling by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper.Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The German Idealism of the Jewish Philosophers On the Difficulty of Saying No Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in this World To Seek to Salvage an Unconditional Meaning Without God is a Futile Undertaking: Reflections on a Remark of Max Horkheimer Communicative Freedom and Negative Theology: Questions for Michael Theunissen Israel or Athens: Where does Anamnestic Reason Belong? Johannes Baptist Metz on Unity amidst Multicultural Plurality Tracing the Other of History in History: Gershom Scholem’s Sabbati Sevi A Conversation About God and the World: Interview with Eduardo Mendieta Index 37 60 67 95 110 129 139 147 168