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Conceptions of the Self for Post-secular Emancipation: Towards a Pilgrim's

Guide to Global Justice
Mariano Pasquale Barbato
Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2010 39: 547 originally published online 29
November 2010
DOI: 10.1177/0305829810386867
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies

Forum Article

Conceptions of the Self for

Post-secular Emancipation:
Towards a Pilgrims Guide
to Global Justice

Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
39(2) 547564
The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.
uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0305829810386867
mil.sagepub.com

Mariano Pasquale Barbato

University of Passau, Germany

Abstract
Global capitalism claims to offer emancipation as liberation from the bureaucratic cage of working
routines, and justice as a result of global growth. The price for this model of emancipation and
justice is constant change and flexibility of the self. I agree with Richard Sennett, who I take here
as a representative of a pragmatic approach in critical theory, that this development leads to a
corrosion of character, ultimately threatening the foundations of democracy and preventing the
creation of a global community of political agency. What is needed is a cultural narrative enabling
the self to act for a global community of political agency that favours ways to global justice.
However, contrary to Sennett, I argue that this new self cannot be reinvented as the classical
homo faber. I argue that the homo faber concept still breathes the obsolete notion of a powerful
working class which is, like capitalism, based solely on production and consumption and cannot
meet the ongoing fundamental change of the global age where the rise and fall of powerful subjects
is as uncertain as is material growth. Drawing upon a constructivist perspective and engaging
with critical theory, I turn to the post-secular concept of Jrgen Habermas. In the perspective
of Habermass post-secular society, I search for a narrative informed by religious semantics. The
semantics of the pilgrim, common to almost all traditions of faith, stand for this emancipated self
searching for ways to global justice and are offered here in a post-secular translation.

Keywords
globalisation, political theory, religion

Introduction
The theory of international relations started with E. H. Carrs fabulous construction of
the first debate where the punching ball of idealism was created to foster the realist

Corresponding author:
Mariano Pasquale Barbato, University of Passau
Email: mariano@barbato.de

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Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(2)

conception of international relations as power politics and clear it, almost, from ethical
concerns.1 However, Carrs sympathy for Marxism secured utopia a place in the picture.
Reasonable politics bring the needs of reality together with the moral visions of utopia
as a guide for a better world.2 Contrary to a one-sided realist argument, the English
School, critical theory and constructivism emphasised that practice of international relations is based on rules and social interaction.3 These branches of International Relations
theory laid the ground for the current endeavour spearheaded by Chris Brown and others
to develop a Political Theory of International Relations.4
Jrgen Habermas, whose concept of deliberation informed IR even beyond critical
theory,5 made almost 10 years ago his widely debated proposal for a post-secular society.6 Post-secular emancipation, as I would like to term the project, argues that a liberal
society must allow religious citizens the right to bring their arguments forward from a
religiously informed perspective and even in a religious language.7 In the perspective of
an emerging global public where a religious majority is here to stay,8 this post-secular
emancipation of the religious masses from the secular elite9 is pretty much in line with
1. Peter Wilson, The Myth of the First Great Debate, in The Eighty Years Crisis, eds Tim Dunne, Michael
Cox and Ken Booth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 115.
2. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1962), 10739.
3. See, for instance, Kratochwils and Linklaters work: Friedrich Kratochwil, The Puzzles of Politics:
Inquiries Into the Genesis and Transformation of International Relations (London: Routledge Chapman
& Hall, 2010); Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations:
A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Andrew Linklater,
Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty, and Humanity (London: Routledge,
2007).
4. Chris Brown, Pratical Judgement in International Political Theory (London: Routledge, 2010); Chris
Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2002).
5. For an overview, see Thomas Diez and Jill Steans, A Useful Dialogue? Habermas and International
Relations, Review of International Studies 31, no. 1 (2005): 12740.
6. Jrgen Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, in The Future of Human Nature, ed. Jrgen Habermas
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 10115; Jrgen Habermas, Pre-political Foundations of the Democratic
Constitutional State?, in The Dialectics of Secularization, eds Jrgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger
(San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2006), 1952. For the IR perspective, see Mariano Barbato and
Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Towards a Post-secular Political Order?, European Political Science Review 1,
no. 3 (2009): 31740.
7. Jrgen Habermas, Religion in the Public Sphere, European Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2006):
125.
8. Even Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart agree on this point of Peter Bergers for the time being. They
explain that Bergers thesis of desecularisation depends on two related factors: faith depends on the feeling
of vulnerability, and the world population which faces vulnerability to social and physical risks has a
higher fertility rate. Thus, religion is not declining. Their argument, however, continues that, thus, the
secularisation theory can be defended. However, I believe, given the uncertainty of progress, this is rather
an argument fostering the desecularisation thesis. See Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and
Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 46; Peter L.
Berger, The Desecularization of the World. A Global Overview, in The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter L. Berger (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy
Center, 1999), 118.
9. Berger, The Desecularization of the World, 1011.

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Hegels struggle for recognition.10 However, Habermass argument reaches further. He

claims that religious semantics can improve a political culture which struggles to defend
its secular concepts of justice against the pathologies of neo-liberal modernisation and
globalisation.11
The idea that religion can make a positive difference to IR thinking and theorising
about emancipation and justice is not completely alien to IR scholars. It has a significant
role in the writing of theorists from Herbert Butterfield12 to Vendulka Kublkov13 and
Scott Thomas,14 particularly with regards to the growing significance of religion in the
search for global justice.15
However, the secular bias of IR theory and political thinking in the West still directs
the search towards a secular solution. From a broader perspective of IR theory, which
takes sociology into account, Richard Sennett is, together with Zygmunt Bauman, one of
the most prominent critics of new global capitalism16 but he still believes that a materialist culture can do the job.17 Sennett together with Bauman provides an excellent critique
of the false promise of emancipation from the old routine of capitalism solely by the
constant changes neo-liberal globalisation offers. They show that progress turns too
quickly into liquidity18 and drift.19 Both understand that the global transformation asks
for a new concept of the self to create a new global community and thereby a global
political agency. However, the proposed secular solution of the homo faber, favoured by
Sennett, cannot deal with the task of creating global community and agency because it
depends too much on modern ideas of class and state. Instead of Sennetts secularism,
I opt for Habermass post-secularism because I agree with Habermas that religious
semantics can better meet the challenges of globalisation as they harbour concepts of
self, community and agency beyond class, state and secular concepts of humanity.
Drawing upon the perspective of Friedrich Kratochwils pragmatic constructivism,
10. See Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1995).
11. Habermas, Pre-political, 434.
12. Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (London: George Bell, 1949); Herbert Butterfield,
Christianity, Diplomacy and War (London: Epworth, 1953).
13. Vendulka Kublkov, Towards an International Political Theology, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies 29, no. 3 (2000): 675704.
14. Scott M. Thomas, Taking Religious and Cultural Pluralism Seriously. The Global Resurgence of
International Society, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2000): 81541. Scott
M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations. The
Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
15. Kublkov, International Political Theory, 704.
16. Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
17. Religion is included but from a secular and materialist perspective: Friendly to the senses, the cultural
materialist wants to map out where pleasure is to be found and how it is organised. Curious about things
in themselves, he or she wants to understand how they might generate religious, social, or political
values. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Penguin Books, 2008), 8.
18. Bauman has published a series of books on the liquidity of life, from love to fear. See, particularly,
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times (Oxford: Polity Press, 2007).
19. Richard Sennett, The Corosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
(New York: Norton, 1999).

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I argue that Critical theory in International Relations can profit from Habermass postsecular turn to religious semantics.
Semantics that is, sets of words, signs and symbols and their interpretation are
developed and used by communities to communicate about what is meaningful to them.
Religious semantics refers to the relationship between religious symbols and what they
stand for in a religious community. Making religious semantics accessible for IR
discourse requires a decoding and rephrasing of the language of the community of origin.
The aim of the study of religious semantics as proposed by Habermas is to develop meaningful translations for the post-secular age that are transferable and useful to the experience of the non-religious while remaining as authentic and faithful as possible to the
original semantics of the religious.
The article attempts to achieve this for the pilgrim. The particular contribution is a
translation of pilgrimage in order to address more adequately questions of self, community, and agency debated by Sennett and others. My first claim is that the concept
of pilgrimage offers with its semantics of leaving home and being on the way a
notion of the self which is open to constant and deep change, crucial for the condition
of globalisation. My second claim is that the religious semantics of fullness prepare
the self to constitute a global community; in addition, agency can be developed even
under poor conditions. This is possible because the religious semantics support an
emancipation from a narrow materialistic self, thus offering the potential to free
politics from the dominance of the economic realm. The post-secular perspective can
thus help to reclaim politics for projects of emancipation and justice.
To make good on these claims, I elaborate in the first section on questions of critical
theory in International Relations, then on possible answers Habermas could give, and
finally I argue that the perspective of a post-secular pragmatic constructivism can bring
these questions and answers together. Sennetts secular pragmatism is then introduced
as an example to discuss the stalemates of secularism in order to foster a common
ground of critical theory and constructivism in a post-secular perspective. The second
section, in which I will follow Sennetts critique, deals with the question of the self as
a nomad captured between the promises and vices of capitalism. The third section deals
with Sennetts suggestion of the homo faber as a remedy for the illness of the nomad.
However, I will argue, this remedy is no cure. Before I suggest in the fourth section the
proposed self-conception of pilgrimage, I have to deal with misinterpretations of the
pilgrim in the work of Sennett and in the related thoughts of Bauman. To deal with
these misconceptions is crucial since they serve to strengthen secular prejudices and
prevent the translation of religious semantics. I then offer the translation of the pilgrim,
which brings leaving home and being on the way together with fullness. Leaving
home and being on the way are concepts of emancipation, understood as the process
of liberation from the selfishness of individuals and communities, which is a precondition to deliberating ways towards global justice via constituting a global community of
agency. The term fullness, taken from Charles Taylor and developed with the works
of Hannah Arendt and Ignatius of Loyola, is linked with this understanding of emancipation and justice. Global politics is more than a mere continuation of economics by
other means.

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Critical Theory and Pragmatic Constructivism

Critical theory is about change, deep change, and it has a positive attitude to it. Cox
famously defined critical theory for IR in opposition to problem-solving theory. Whereas
problem-solving theory tries to keep the existing order in place by solving its problems
on the level of function, critical theory is prepared to question the current order itself by
dealing with its more fundamental problems.20 The most fundamental political change of
globalisation takes place on the level of community and is thus transforming concepts of
the self and joint political agency- Andrew Linklater has discussed this problem widely.21
As Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner argued in relation to modern national communities that succeed the previous more local feelings of belonging, economic forces put an
end to existing communities and foster the emergence of new ones.22 In this context, the
wide debate of a global democracy, started by David Held,23 takes place.24 The existing
communities of the nation states harboured the constituency, the demos of democracy.
Global democracy, however, lacks such a demos and would need the whole of mankind
as its constituency. The existing demoi, however, are not prepared to give way to this
new constituency. Heikki Patomki and Teivo Teivanen are thus arguing for democracy
as a process of participation instead of the representation of a given community.25 We
need such notions and narratives of a new participatory global constituency to be in the
offing. Indeed, one of the most important and most difficult tasks for critical theory is to
overcome the split into national communities and to support the semantics of mankind as
a political term. Changing the constituency of the national democracy for the sake of a
global community, however, is giving up one of the most precious goods of politics for
something unknown. A surgery on the democratic constituency is a surgery on the heart
of democracy as we know it. This surgery is necessary but bears a high risk.26
I would like to present Jrgen Habermass project of a post-secular order as a promising resource for dealing with this situation.27 Habermas is well known for his strong,
20. Robert W. Cox, Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10, no. 2 (1981): 12655, 12830.
21. Andrew Linklater, Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity
(London: Routledge, 2007); Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical
Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); Andrew Linklater, Men
and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London: Macmillan Press, 1990).
22. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
23. David Held, Reimagine Political Community (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1998); David
Held, Prospects of Democracy (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1993); David Held and Daniele
Archibugi, eds, Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1995).
24. For a recent debate, see David Held, Restructuring Global Governance: Cosmopolitanism, Democracy
and the Global Order, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37, no. 3 (2009): 53547.
25. Heikki Patomki and Teivo Teivanen, A Possible World: Democratic Transformation of Global
Institutions (London: Zed Books, 2004), 24.
26. See also for an Aristotelian project of forming a new community, Mark A. Neufeld, The Restructuring
of International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 929.
27. Habermas, Faith and Knowledge; Habermas, Pre-political.

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deliberative version of democracy. His concept of deliberation is also debated in the

context of International Relations.28 His thinking reflects the constitution of the social
bond of democracy and the emergence of joint agency by the process of deliberation.
This process of deliberation is not only crucial for national democracies but also for the
emergence of a global participatory community. Political deliberation depends on participants who are able to frame their selves; it is about the participants self beyond a
narrow version of the homo oeconomicus. In addition, they need semantics to imagine
new possibilities they can argue for. For the global community these semantics are rather
rare. Religious semantics offer resources for fueling deliberation processes with notions
of arguing beyond narrow concepts of self-interest and for imagining a new community
beyond the given ones. That is the reason why Habermas turns to religious traditions and
why this turn is so promising for the questions of critical theory in International Relations.
Nevertheless, Habermass argument in favour of religion in the public sphere comes
at first as a surprise. Although critical theory places itself beyond Marxism,29 the Marxian
legacy of the opium of the people might not be completely forgotten. However, Habermas
was not the first to take a positive interest in religion the founders of the Frankfurt
School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were already open for religious figures of thought.30 The new left, from Alain Badiou31 to Slavo iek,32 also draws heavily
on the semantics of Christian heritage, at least partly influenced by the postmodern turn
to religion.33 Common to all of them is the Kantian idea of translating the kingdom of
God into an ethical community on earth.
Habermas, however, takes a particularly elaborated position insofar as he is not only
translating fragments of a religious heritage. He is prepared to make a more fundamental
turn towards religion. He claims that it is necessary to leave the Kantian position that
Enlightenment philosophy can decide on its own premises what can be translated or
not.34 His idea of a post-secular society emancipates itself from a narrow secular thinking
and reflects the ongoing change towards secularism even in European politics.35 Instead
Habermas claims that secular and religious citizens alike owe each other respect for their
worldview. In particular secular citizens have to acknowledge that their religious counterparts might have good reasons to keep their faith. The idea is not only to give a voice
28. See, for instance, Nicole Deitelhoff, The Discursive Process of Legalization. Charting Islands of
Persuasion in the ICC Case, International Organization 63, no. 1 (2009): 3365. For an overview, see
Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth, eds, Anarchie der kommunikativen Freiheit. Jrgen Habermas und
die Theorie der internationalen Politik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007).
29. Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism. Critical Theory and International Relations (New York:
St. Martins Press, 1989).
30. See, for instance, Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Lives (London: New
Left Books), 247.
31. Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press,
2003).
32. Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute: Or Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for? (London: Verso,
2009).
33. See, for instance, Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, eds, Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
34. Habermas, Pre-political, 42.
35. Jrgen Habermas, Notes on Post-Secular Society, New Perspectives Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2008): 1729.

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to a marginal discourse but rather to keep the modern project of Enlightenment going.
Habermas hopes that by a new openness towards religious traditions the overlooked
conceptual richness of religious thinking can bring new insights for the public sphere.36
Habermass particular focus is on the breaking of social bonds of national democracies which are under pressure from globalisation. He argues that a strong version of
democracy, which understands political deliberation as an ethics-informed project guided
by reason, is in danger because the economic rationale of self-interest has expanded from
the economic sphere into the political sphere.37 According to Habermas, religious thinking can be used as a kind of barrage against this. In religious communities the idea of
moral arguing is still alive when elsewhere it has been marginalised.38 Thus, the public
sphere could benefit from opening up to religious thinking if it starts to translate religious
ideas into a discourse which is open for both religious citizens and those who are religiously unmusical.39
From this first focus on the social bond of existing national democracy, Habermas
moved on to the question of the emerging post-secular world society.40 It is here that a
genuine interest of International Relations theory is rooted. This interest, however, has
been developed from a constructivist perspective in International Relations and not from
its critical theory.41 As Vendulka Kublkov has explained from her perspective, constructivism here must also not be confused with the positivist-friendly forms of
constructivism.42 The approach here depends on the constructivism that Friedrich
Kratochwil has developed. He positioned himself towards critical theory in a perspective of friendly critique43 and focused on the co-constitutive character of religion and
politics within the field of religion.44 From this perspective, one can argue that in the
emerging globalised public sphere religious argumentation has to be viewed as legitimate right from the start. In contrast to domestic orders or the secular international
Westphalian system, the emerging public sphere has no secular compromise. The cosmopolitan concept to demand or impose secularism relies on the validity of the equation of
modernisation and secularisation. However, this equation has turned out to be false or is
at least not suitable for our times. If religion is a vital social and political factor and not
reducible to fundamentalism and terror it will be an integral and important part of the
emerging world society. This is of particular interest because the social bond, which
Habermas wants to prevent from breaking on the domestic level, has still to be developed
on the global level. This is an immense task, and if we follow Habermass thinking, it
would be irresponsible not to tap into the community-building resources which religious
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.

Habermas, Pre-political, 4352.

Ibid., 2939.
Ibid., 43.
Ibid., 50.
Rethinking Secularism: A Postsecular World Society? An Interview with Jrgen Habermas, posted by
Eduardo Mendieta, see: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/02/03/a-postsecular-world-society/
Barbato and Kratochwil, Towards a Post-Secular Order.
Kublkov, International Political Theology, 677.
Friedrich Kratochwil, Looking Back from Somewhere: Reflections of What Remains, Critical in
Critical Theory, Review of International Studies 33, Supplement l (2007): 2545.
Friedrich Kratochwil, Religion and (Inter-)National Politics: On the Heuristics of Identities, Structures,
and Agents, Alternatives 30, no. 2 (2005): 11340.

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Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(2)

thinking can offer. Thus, a strong reading of a post-secular society, as suggested in line
with Simone Chambers and Maeve Cooke,45 which takes into account even strong religious implications like God or Heaven, might not only serve the demand of a religious
majority in the global public sphere. It could also deliver the powerful potential which
can be translated into a new narrative that can help the coming generations to overcome
the borders of given communities in order to embark on a journey towards a global
community.46
This strong reading of Habermass post-secular concept might sound like a heavy
burden for the secular citizen. However, the idea is not to impose a religious regime
instead of a secular one. Rather, it is about the search for a middle position,47 avoiding
cultural clashes48 and focusing on a common agency towards demanding global problems.
Thus, a strong reading frees the discourse from a narrow and infertile debate as to which
parts of religious belief might be acceptable from a rational perspective.49 It allows us
to probe deeper into religious thinking to find figures of thought which might enable
narratives that are up to the task of creating a global community of agency.
Developing a kind of global social bond for the sake of common agency can start with
the focus on the self. The self which feels its own community to be under pressure should
be empowered not only to keep the given social bonds or survive after they break but also
to participate in the construction of a new global social bond. In the perspective of a
wider understanding of International Relations including sociological perspectives,
Sennett has presented the most elaborated contribution on the self. Sennett understands
his work as part of a left thinking pragmatism.50 This enables a common ground with a
constructivist perspective which has turned to a pragmatic perspective.51 However, a
pragmatic version of constructivism is more open to religion than Sennett seems to be.
This perspective of a pragmatic and post-secular constructivism stands in the background
of the friendly critique of Sennett over the following pages.52

45. Barbato and Kratochwil, Towards a Post-Secular Order, 3348; Simone Chambers, How Religion
Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion, Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007):
21023. Maeve Cooke, A Secular State for a Postsecular Society? Postmetaphysical PoliticalTheory and
the Place of Religion, Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 22438.
46. Barbato and Kratochwil, Towards a Post-Secular Order, 32939. Mariano Barbato, Postskulare
Internationale Beziehungen, Zeitschrift fr Internationale Beziehungen 17, no. 1 (2010), 11934.
47. See also Peter L. Berger, ed., Between Relativism and Fundamentalism. Religious Resources for a Middle
Position (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010).
48. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 2249.
49. For this problematique, see Taylors argument that even strong religious notions demand for themselves
the same rationality as Kant does for his philosophy in Rethinking Secularism: Jrgen Habermas
and Charles Taylor in Conversation, http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2009/11/20/rethinking-secularism-jurgenhabermas-and-charles-taylor-in-conversation/
50. Sennett, Craftsman, 28696.
51. Friedrich Kratochwil, Of false Promises and Safe Bets: A Plea for a Pragmatic Perspective in Theory
Building, Journal of International Relations and Development 10, no. 1 (2007): 115, 1114; Friedrich
Kratochwil, Of Communities, Gangs, Historicity, and the Problem of Santa Claus: Replies to my Critics,
Journal of International Relations and Development 10, no. 1 (2007): 5778.
52. For another approach to pragmatism in IR, see Daniel Bray, Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism: A Deweyan
Approach to Democracy beyond the Nation-State, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37,
no. 3 (2009): 683719.

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Conception of the Self I: The Nomad and the Capital

Vices of the Capitalist Age
Marxism and liberalism alike understand politics as driven by economic concerns and
the necessity and forces of productive life. From the perspective of production, questions
of emancipation and justice are raised and are at stake in the realm of politics. Whereas
the Marxist idea to emancipate man by the socialisation of the means of production was
arguably a failure, the liberal attempt to set both man and market forces free cannot be
denied to have been pretty successful. However, this economic success has its price. The
process of globalisation turns out to be a transformation which does not only shrink the
national welfare states capacity to act but which also challenges political agency in
general. Even after a deep and disturbing financial and economic crisis and the ecological disasters stemming from the exploitation and pollution of natural resources, the homo
oeconomicus still has the upper hand against the homo politicus. A number of authors53
dealt with the question of the self in the age of the global transformation when all that
was achieved as solid melted again into air.
The neo-liberal narrative attempts to make this change palatable by emphasising the
positive qualities of flexibility, the benefits of greed and the end of scarcity by growth.
Instead of the ossified bureaucratic forms in the way of life in the fixed careers of the old
capitalism, the new economy promises to the individual more flexibility and more
choices for managing his or her own life. Instead of the caged existence of the employee
or bureaucrat la Weber, we are confronted with the prospect of everybody becoming an
entrepreneur. Creativity is all that matters.54
To deconstruct this narrative and to understand the real situation of the global nomad,
Sennett discusses flexibility by contrasting it to routine. His aim is to unmask the false
emancipatory promise of neo-liberalism. The controversy about routines in the industrial age, he argues, is as old as the routines themselves.55 The emancipation, however,
which the neo-liberal narrative promises is in Sennetts opinion only true for those in
command Davos men, as Sennett calls them after the meeting place of the greats.56
For the weak ones the neo-liberal narrative of the sweetness of flexibility turns out to be
a subtle but all the more real whip. It is here that the self-understanding of the flexible
nomad has its origin. He is continuously on the way in order to find new grazing grounds
as he can no longer trust the traditional routes. The old paths lead all too quickly to
overgrazed places. Rarely can he determine the new strategy which is decided by the
caravans head but still he has to bear the risk. It is hardly surprising that this form of
being on the way results in chaos and nihilism. As the classical nomad, the global
nomad often has to be a looter to make a living:
53. I focus here on Baumann and particularly on Sennett, but see also, for example, Jean Bethke Elshtain,
Sovereignty, God, State, and Self (New York: Basic Books, 2008) or Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Passion
(New York: Free Press, 1984).
54. Ulrich Beck, The Brave New World of Work (Malden: Polity Press, 2000); Richard L. Florida, The Rise
of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Richard L. Florida, Cities and the Creative Class
(London: Routledge, 2005); Matthias Horx, How We Will Live: A Synthesis of life in the Future (Frankfurt
am Main: Campus, 2006).
55. Sennett, Corrosion of Character, 3248.
56. Ibid., 612.

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If all risk-taking is a journey into the unknown, the voyager usually has in mind some
destination. Odysseus wanted to find his way home. The modern culture of risk is peculiar in
that failure to move is taken as a sign of failure, stability seeming almost a living death. The
destination therefore matters less than the act of departure. To stay put is to be left out.57

Thus, change means just drift.58 With all his criticism Sennett does not want to
dismiss every promissory note for new possibilities of organising ones life. But he
does emphasise the deeper problems which the new cardinal virtue of flexibility entails
for man:
How do we decide what is of lasting value in ourselves in a society which is impatient, which
focuses on the immediate moment? How can long-term goals be pursued in an economy
devoted to short term? How can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in institutions
which are constantly breaking apart or continually being redesigned. These are the questions
about character posed by the new, flexible capitalism.59

Sennetts concerns about the self under the condition of global capitalism make clear
that a social bond spanning around the globe to create a global community and global
political agency might not rest on solid ground if it depends on individuals as nomads.
Libert and galit, to use the famous phrasing of the French Revolution, are only possible in combination with fraternit. The French Revolution turned the third estate into the
nation while turning the peasant into the Frenchman.60 Something like this would have
to happen globally. If the working class of the democratic nation state, however, is turned
into global drifters and nomads, the neo-liberal project of emancipation is doomed to fail.
In addition, it is not only that the social bonds of the nation states are weakened by
global economic forces robbing the nation states ability to organise solidarity between
its members. The real need stems from the dark side of the liberal consuming welfare
state which was based on the exclusion of the South and the generations to come by
exploiting natural resources. On the technological basis we have now, the consuming self
is doomed as much as the French aristocrat was 200 years ago. However, the process of
globalisation is not searching for remedies but spreading the illness. Consuming life, as
Bauman has argued most prominently,61 is one of the main features of globalisation.
Thus, to put the complex problems of globalisation in a nutshell, the false virtue of
flexibility can be put in the context of a larger narrative of the seven capital vices of
capitalism: greed as Gordon Gekko told us already in the 1980s in Oliver Stones Wall
Street is good. It is the fuel and engine of capitalism. The reward is lust and gluttony.
There is a major dispute over the question of lust. Norris and Inglehart argue that there is
the root conflict between secular and religious citizens of the global village to come.62
Gluttony is certainly a central issue for the haves and the have-nots some are dying of
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.

Ibid., 87.
Ibid., 30.
Ibid., 10.
Francois Furet and Denise Richet, The French Revolution (New York: MacMillan, 1970).
Zygmunt Bauman, Consuming Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular, 241.

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adiposis and others starve to death while millennium goals are failing. Of course, for
those who do not want to or cannot join the consuming life of lust and gluttony wrath is
an issue. Combined with envy of sinners and pride of ones own rigidity, this can become
a deadly cocktail of terror. McWorld versus Jihad, as Barber framed this narrative,63
might add the capital vices of religious fundamentalism to those of global capitalism.
However, sloth might be the most deadly sin after all. It is the inability or unwillingness
to overcome the status quo. Political agency to create a social bond of a global community
which is able to act for the search for global justice, and the taking leave to be on the
way upon these paths, is the most important task of international political theory.

Conception of the Self II: Homo Faber

If agency is the issue, the homo faber, the craftsman, the man of its own making, comes
easily to mind. Thus, in order to overcome the described situation, Sennett proposes Pico
della Mirandolas solution to the question how should I fashion my life:
Pico is the first modern voice of homo faber, that is, man as his own maker. Pico asserted that
man is an animal of diverse, multiform, and destructible nature. In this pliant condition, it is
given to [man] to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills. Rather than
maintaining the world as we inherited it, we have to shape it afresh. Our work in the world is
to create, and the greatest creation is to shape our own life histories.64

Sennetts project of a flexible homo faber is supposed to set things straight. In Sennetts
view, the flexible homo faber has to understand life as a self-made trajectory, and he
has to use this narrative to counter the dangers of drifting. Thus, when failing, man
retains his dignity and gains the upper hand over the vicissitudes of life. Obviously,
Sennett does not want to excuse the fragmented postmodern self from constructing such
a narrative in the form of an authoritative narrator. Thus, even when admittedly the projection of a viable future remains difficult, the reflection upon the past and its embedding
into a plot has to be achieved.65 This self-confident homo faber can again form a We
with a capital letter, the dangerous pronoun66 as Sennett calls it. Like the working class
of yore, with this We one could master the future. As soon as the homo faber is not only
part of a mass but discusses as part of a We the questions that preoccupy him, he learns
to rely on others in this identity-creating enterprise. The men of Davos could thereby be
confronted with effective counterparts.
But does this discussion between the We-homo faber and the Davos men really offer
a model for justice and emancipation? Or does such an endeavour not simply end in the
Aristotelian observation of the basic conflict of the many who are poor and the few who
are rich, without offering any solution or further way of dealing with the dilemma?
63. Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).
64. Sennett, Corrosion of Character, 1012; Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 56.
65. Sennett, Corrosion of Character, 11835.
66. Ibid., 13648.

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Sennett has elaborated his idea of the homo faber in The Craftsman67 unfortunately
without much improvement. His line of argumentation has already in the prologue a
strange kind of twist when he dissents from his old teacher Hannah Arendt. He is trying
to make the argument that there is not, as Arendt suggested, a demarcation line between
the homo faber and the animal laborans; but the animal laborans can be a homo faber
which is even able to keep Pandoras box of technological risks under control.68 From the
classical Greek perspective, which Arendt cherished, the homo faber is producing a good
by using means while the animal laborans turns into a mean literally a slave in the Greek
Polis while working. Sennett insists that the animal laborans can become a homo faber
in the legacy of the craftsman, who is determined to create not just any commodity but
something which is really good according to his mastery. The worker is able to become
his own maker. He is prepared to accept that the man-made world has its ambivalences,
risks and evils, clubfoots so to speak, but he resumes in the image of the Greek myths, that
the clubfooted Hephaestus the coppersmith who invented the chariot proud of his
work if not of himself, is the most dignified person we can become.69
Surprisingly, in this praise of labour, Sennett overlooked the fact that for Arendt the
most important demarcation line was between production on the one hand, and politics
on the other. Production was the task of slaves and craftsmen labour for the slave and
work for the craftsman, both were part of the Greek Oikos not of the Polis politics
was the task of free men. They were free because their practice was not bound to given
ends but their freedom was only restricted by the freedom of the other citizens thus
creating a community of the free. The openness of free men for other free men created
the social bond of their political agency of deliberation. Hence, the praxis of politics
was for Arendt an end in itself in contrast to production which was bound to the necessity of the Oikos.70
Contrary to Arendt one can argue that politics does not have to be an end in itself
but has to tackle questions of emancipation and justice which are raised by the abovementioned cleavage between the Davos men and the have-nots. However, with Arendt
we have in politics a realm of its own which is not based on production alone as in the
crypto-Marxian version of pragmatism put forward by Sennett. Sennetts praise of the
homo faber falls short of the doctrine of his teacher. This becomes particularly clear in
the importance he ascribes to usefulness for the conception of the craftsmans self.71
Arendt was not interested in usefulness but in what Charles Taylor termed as fullness.72 She understands the political community of action as a place to experience
fullness. To create the global community of action a spiritual, post-secular widening of
this idea of fullness is needed. Otherwise it is likely that the self and the existing communities will not be prepared to embark on this risky adventure. However, one can learn

67.
68.
69.
70.

Sennett, Craftsman.
Ibid., 18.
Sennett, Craftsman, 296.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: The University Press of Chicago, 1958). See
Mariano Barbato, Regieren durch Argumentieren (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005), 4354.
71. Sennett, Culture of New Capitalism, 18993.
72. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 516, 6007, 72930, 7689.

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also from the Greek Polis that control is beyond the scope of politics and tragedy is part
of the story.73
When measured against the goal of providing a conception of self that is suited for
meeting the current challenge of sloth and inactivity, Sennetts model of homo faber
comes off even worse. In his The Conscience of the Eye Sennett tries to promote as part
of his homo faber project:
[t]he Apollonian ideal [...] of the centered human being. The ancient Greek word for centeredness
is sophrosyne, which could be translated as balance or grace or poise. This ideal in the modern
world might indicate the condition of something living out in the world; by being exposed to
differences, the person could find his or her balance.74

In short, what Sennett proposes is a tranquillised homo faber or a homo faber on

tranquillisers. However, what is needed is a self which is prepared to interact with strangers, a self which is prepared to participate in the construction of the world of our
making.75 Thus, instead of offering the global nomad a conception of the self that
enables a global social bond of solidarity, and which in turn creates a global community
of agency, we have the homo faber who turns out to be another modern shelf-warmer of
a self-centred individual. Like Arendt, we should look instead for a political self which
is open to constitute itself in the deliberation with others. With Habermass post-secular
project this deliberation can be nourished by the translation of religious semantics. The
next section will offer the pilgrim as a conception of the self that can cope with this task
of combining constant change with the creation of a new global community of political
agency in the perspective of emancipation and justice.

(Mis)Conception of the Self III: The Pilgrim

The proposal of the pilgrim is not new to the debate of the self. Sennett has tried to
explore this string of argumentation in The Conscience of the Eye76 but fell victim to a
thorough misinterpretation, which then was unfortunately continued by Bauman.77 This
misinterpretation prevented a translation of the pilgrims rich potential into a critical,
post-secular perspective. The conception of pilgrimage has something to do with leaving
home, leaving the given set of life, leaving the world so to speak. For Sennett, as we
will see, this is the problem. However, as I will argue, taking leave is part of the solution.
Taking leave opens up a new horizon which can lead to critique and change of the old
73. Mark Chou and Roland Bleiker, The Symbiosis of Democracy and Tragedy: Lost Lessons from Ancient
Greece, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37, no. 3 (2009): 65982. Richard Ned Lebow,
The Tragic Vision of Politics. Ethics, Interests, Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
74. Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social Life of Cities (New York: Random House,
1990), 252.
75. Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making. Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations
(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
76. Sennett, Conscience of the Eye, 252.
77. Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995),
82104.

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rules and routines crucial for critical theory. The new horizon, which the pilgrim searches
for, is heaven. However, this search for heaven takes place on earth and changes the
world. Pilgrimage appears in a variety of forms but all of them share a very active version
of contemplation. The pilgrims walk the earth. For this purpose, they leave home and the
secure walls of their gated communities and become dependent on others, thus forming
new communities. This religious conception should be translated for a post-secular
world society.
In the misconception of Sennett and Bauman pilgrimage has been translated already.
Baumans take is that in order to leave the vanity of the actual world behind the pilgrim
has to make off for the desert. Occasioned by the epochal change to modernity through
the Reformation the desert becomes the world via the inner-worldly pilgrimage invented
by Webers Protestants.78 This prepared the ground for the deserts of capitalism.
According to Bauman, the flexible nomad of today faces thus only degenerated forms of
the pilgrim: the stroller, the vagabond, the tourist, the player.79
For Sennett the entire problem boils down to the notion of taking leave. For him
there is only one city and in this earthly city man is supposed to live. With the idea of
taking leave a person remains a foreigner in the world, distinguishing between the real
inside and the outward phenomena, and even the outside becomes divided in the
medieval city into the sacred district of the cathedral and the rest of the secular city with
its market.80
As crown-witness for such a reductionism, Sennett81 and Bauman82 introduce
St Augustine since his civitas terrena is only a transitory stage towards the civitas Dei.
Two sentences are notorious:
Now it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, while Abel, as though he were merely a pilgrim
on earth, built none. For the true City of the saints is in heaven, though here on earth it produces
citizens in which it wanders as on a pilgrimage through time looking for the Kingdom of
eternity.83

Sennetts and Baumans understanding of the translation of St Augustines religious

notion seems to be rather shallow. To use Habermass remark about secular translations
of religious semantics for this concrete example: Secular languages which only eliminate the substance once intended leave irritations.84 To translate the substance of
St Augustines conception of the two cities one has to notice his historical background.
Then one will understand that his downgrading of the earthly city results from the shock
of Romes demise. As also Bauman knows: Rome lay in ruins humbled, humiliated
and sacked and pillaged by Alarics nomads.85 It is the already pillaging nomads of the
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.

Ibid., 835.
Ibid., 929.
Sennett, Conscience of the Eye, 1019.
Ibid., 59.
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 8295.
St Augustine, The City of God (New York: Image, 1958), 325.
Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, 111.
Bauman, Life in Fragments, 83.

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Barbarian Invasion who allegedly make the world a desert. The sometimes catastrophic
disruption of the world makes it necessary to place the destiny of man beyond the world
and not identify it with any city of the prevailing order. The key point addressed by the
metaphor of the pilgrim is the fashioning of the self beyond a given community. Thus,
the self remains alive in all changes and catastrophes and is empowered to create new communities. St Augustines distinction between the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena, of
heaven and earth, is designed to safeguard the criterion of justice as a constitutive element of any community from the empirical evidence of both the fall of the eternal
Rome and many functioning associations that were little more than marauding brigands. In the age of global transformation which we face now, such a perspective beyond
given communities is crucial to create a new social bond of a global community of
agency. It is not necessary to believe like Paul Kennedy in the circle of the rise and fall
of great powers,86 and thus to equalise the West with Rome, but the global transformation of globalisation might be a fundamental transformation in any case. Hence, figures
prepared to develop agency under the circumstances of fundamental change might be the
interesting ones to translate.
Such figures can be found amongst pilgrims throughout the ages. The time between
the fall of Rome and the Reformation, the thousand years of the Middle Ages, represent
the apogee of Christian pilgrimages but they are hardly mentioned in Sennetts and
Baumans treatments of the pilgrim. The pilgrim of these times is the central figure in the
network of hospitals, churches, roads and movements of people throughout Europe, from
the Anglo-Saxon wandering monks of the early Middle Ages to the pilgrims of Santiago
de Compostela in the late Middle Ages.87
To elaborate on what I mean by the pilgrims potential for emancipation in the global
age I will draw on the work of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, particularly
his self-description as a pilgrim in his autobiography.88 From the perspective of critical
theory, Ignatius of Loyola is seen as a very problematic figure to deal with.89 Here again
a new start to the translation is needed.
Ignatius and his companions work was part of the first wave of globalisation.90 It
provided an alternative path towards modernity in a world characterised by the transformative changes of the Reformation, discoveries and the breakdown of the old estate
order. The world and not a monastery should become their house, suggested Nadal, one

86. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
87. For more examples, see Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims (University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 10754.
88. Ignatius of Loyola, The Autobiography, in Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works,
ed. George E. Ganss (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 65111. See also, J. Ignacio Tellechea Idgoras,
Ignatius of Loyola. The Pilgrim Saint (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1994); and James Bodrick,
St Ignatius of Loyola: The Pilgrim Years 14911538 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1956).
89. For Ludwig Marcuse, Ignatius felt a victim of his own power. Ludwig Marcuse, Soldier of Christ: The
Life of Ignatius Loyola (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1939). See also, Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier,
Loyola (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 3875.
90. By 1565 the Society of Jesus had well over three thousand members, dispersed in many countries of
Western Europe as well as in India, Japan, Brazil and other exotic places. John OMalley, The First
Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 51.

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of the first leading Jesuits.91 It was also Nadal who phrased the combination of bringing
work and prayer closer together. It was no longer ora et labora (pray and work), as in
Benedict of Nursias thinking, but Ignatius was described as simul in actione contemplativus (being contemplative even in action).92
Ignatiuss conception of the pilgrim does not separate the inside from the outside as
Sennett suggests in his misinterpretation of pilgrimage but it combines the services to
others and the world with an awareness of the transcendent. It is here that the global
nomad of today can find a model as to how he or she could better handle transformation
in a global age.
As other Renaissance mystics, Ignatius of Loyola recognised that in times of transformative change, when traditional structures disintegrate, man has to sharpen his
awareness of his mediaeval status as a pilgrim rather than return to the ideal of man as
his own maker. Only in this way can man develop his abilities and become effective. He
must not let himself be captured by either the self or the world, but has to commence
his journey with freedom and openness. Emancipation from the self and the world
becomes the key for justice. Ignatius introduces in this context the concept of indifference (equanimity) and of the magis (the more, the greater fullness).93 Instead of quick
and dexterous adaptation to the situation at hand similar to Sennetts sophrosyne
Ignatius uses the concept of indifference for stressing the need to defer to the will of God.
In the so-called Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises this aim of the
exercises is made clear:
Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of
this to save their souls. To do this, I must make myself indifferent to all created things, in
regard to everything which is left to my freedom of will and is not forbidden.94

This notion seems to be hard to translate for a critical perspective. However, it seems to
bear a rich potential in the combination of indifference and magis (here implicitly
mentioned by the definition of human destiny). The pilgrim cannot promise the nomad a
return to stability and satisfaction animating the various attempts of self-construction,
because indifference is a more exacting standard than flexibility. The latter pretends to be
the strategy of gaining maximal satisfaction through maximal adaptation; the indifference of the pilgrim, on the other hand, means above all distance from ones own desires
and wishes. But this is no stoic suffering of what one must do. It is rather a distance
formed by the idea of magis. Change gets a direction towards fullness which prevents it
from becoming mere drifting. However, this heavenly direction can be translated into a
pilgrimage on earth which might develop a potential to change the world. The imagination of a spiritual fullness can thus support a political agency and community which is
close to the political fullness of Hannah Arendts idea.
91. Ibid., 68.
92. Ignatius of Loyola, Introduction to the Spiritual Diary, in Ganss, Ignatius of Loyola, 22934, 231.
93. For the spirituality of Ignatius, see William Meissner, To the Greater Glory A Psychological Study of
Ignatius Spirituality (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1999); Harvey Egan, Ignatius Loyola
the Mystic (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987).
94. Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, in Ganss, Ignatius of Loyola, 130.

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Pilgrims and Globalisation

Ignatius of Loyolas self-understanding of his pilgrimage serves as an alternative to
Sennetts version of Pico della Mirandolas Renaissance project.95 Its relevance for today
lies in the focus on ongoing change without any nostalgic feelings for the modernity of
the past. There is no way back to the national welfare state based on the working middle
class. The new realm is the world as a whole an entity we cannot grasp yet. In addition,
we have to admit that the welfare state of the West fostered justice only within its borders
and its generation. Contrary to the meta-narrative of progress and the promises of neoliberalism there is no sign that the world population can be changed into a working and
consuming middle class modelled after the roaring 1960s in America and Europe. Thus,
capitalism and its freedom might in the middle-ranging perspective not lead to global
prosperity but into a struggle for a share of shrinking resources.96 Contrary to some concepts influenced by Marxist thinking, this is not likely to lead to a united human race of
the multitude.97 There is therefore an urgent need to create a new social bond to prevent
global distribution conflicts between communities. The political agency of this new
global community will have to rest on a new conception of the self which is open to
fundamental change but has a horizon on a perspective from which this change can be
mastered.
In order to fulfill this task the translation of the pilgrim has been offered. My first claim
is that the pilgrim, in the version of Ignatius of Loyola, is a conception of the self which is
open to constant and deep change and thus can cope with the human condition of globalisation in the first place. He understands the condition of the nomad and is not offering
fantasies of a homo faber. Second, the pilgrims horizon of heaven enables the indifferent
self to act in the perspective of magis that of the greater, of fullness. The indifferent
pilgrim can cope with difficulties along the way without becoming a drifter. He is open to
strangers on the way which are understood as pilgrims too. Thus, a new social bond and a
new community of pilgrims can develop out of strangers. They constitute a common
agency which does not believe in omnipotence of the homo faber but is able to build a
culture of comradeship, building cathedrals and hospitals, culture and care along the way.
The pilgrim can do so because indifference emancipates the pilgrim from his narrow self
and shows him how to take leave and to be on the way to global justice and fullness.
From this post-secular perspective of fullness, Hannah Arendts Aristotelian concept
of politics as a realm of emancipated selves debating the common good can be revisited.
In her view, participating in such a kind of political realm is an end in itself, it is to use
these terms the magis, the greater beyond the narrow self-interest of the household. For
95. Pico della Mirandola himself was particularly interested in scholastic and Jewish writings, not only in
the fashionable Greek and Roman writing. See Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien
(Stuttgart: Krner, 1988), 1445.
96. For a debate on liberalism, see among others: G. John Ikenberry, The Liberal International Order
and its Discontents, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38, no. 3 (2010): 50921; Michael
Cox, E.H. Carr and the Crisis of Twentieth-Century Liberalism: Reflections and Lessons, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies 38, no. 3 (2010): 52333.
97. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The
Penguin Press, 2004).

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emancipating the self from the narrow self-interest of its nation and household and for
creating a global community of action a strong new narrative is needed. The imagination
of this political fullness might be fostered by religious semantics as offered here in the
pilgrims concept of fullness.
The European Union can serve as an alarming example to illustrate the need for such
a strong narrative. The European Union, which has been understood as a normative
power98 in its external relations, has huge problems to create an internal narrative of solidarity. As a case in point, the European rescue of Greece in the financial crisis was hardly
argued for from a perspective of political solidarity but mainly from the perspective of
economic necessity. Taking the weak Greeks into the community of the strong Euro had
thus been interpreted as a mistake which should have been avoided or which should even
be reverted. The European people did not feel much solidarity for each other and the elite
was not able to present a convincing narrative. Such an attitude, however, can hardly be
the basis for the shared identity and common agency that the European Union aspires to.
If Europes cosmopolitan narrative of community99 is like this, for the much more difficult construction of a global solidarist community of agency strong readings of postsecular translation are in demand. Or to quote Heidegger pace Habermas only a God
can save us100 and it does not have to be a God of a pagan tradition, as Habermas is
afraid of in the case of Heidegger.101
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Birgit Altmann, Melanie Barbato, Thomas Diez, Katharina Hlscher,
and Sarah Marfeld, as well as the editors and reviewers who have commented on earlier
versions of this article. Special thanks to Fritz Kratochwil for his excellent support of the
wider research project of which this article forms a part.
Author Biography
Mariano Pasquale Barbato is Professor of International Relations at the University of
Passau, Germany. Research for the project was done at the University of Bamberg,
Germany, while he was a DFG-Post-doc and during his Max Weber Fellowship at the
European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Among his recent publications in the field
of politics and religion are Towards a Post-Secular Order, in European Political Science
Review 1, no. 3 (2009): 31740, together with Friedrich Kratochwil; and Christianity,
Christendom, Europe: On the Role of Religion in European Integration, in Ars 59
(2008): 2535, together with Thomas Diez.
98. Ian Manners, Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?, Journal of Common Market
Studies 40 (2002): 23558. For a critical view, see Thomas Diez, Constructing the Self and Changing
Others: Problematising the Concept of Normative Power Europe, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies 33, no. 3 (2005): 61336.
99. Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
100. Martin Heidegger, Only a God Can Save Us, in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, ed. T. Sheehan
(Chicago, IL: Precedent, 1981), 4567.
101. Habermas, Faith and Knowledge, 113.

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