Introductory
summary by Ted Honderich of Jurgen Habermas’s Royal Institute of Philosophy
Annual Lecture
RELIGIOUS
TOLERANCE – THE PACEMAKER FOR CULTURAL RIGHTS
What is called continental
philosophy, which is not all of the philosophy in continental Europe, is often
distinguished from philosophy in the English language, often with at least the
implication that one is at least superior. Maybe, despite diversity, it is safe
to say that against what is called our analytic philosophy, continental
philosophy is more concerned with human experience in the sense of lived lives,
often more akin to reflective literature, perhaps more informed by both the
history of philosophy and several other disciplines, and less affected by
physical and other sciences.
The attention paid to it in American
and English universities is one fact that is relevant to the inclusion of
Jurgen Habermas in the Royal Institute annual lectures. A larger justification
is his achievement, the philosophy written. In terms of his long university
life, he is best known for his leading role in an institute at Frankfurt
university, an institute in a way Marxist in the past, one that continues to
bring together philosophy with sociology, with what is probably better named
social theory. In terms of his public life, Habermas is known for his liberal
interventions in many German social and political controversies. He has been
Germany's most eminent public intellectual.
The lecture is in part an
explanation of how claims to cultural rights have come about, this being their
emergence from the history of religious tolerance. But it is in the main an
assertion of and argument for these cultural rights, an argument depending on
an analysis of their nature. These aims of the lecture are achieved in four stages,
discursively and with reprises.
(1) A distinction having been made
between toleration and tolerance, behaviour and legality, consideration is
given to Goethe's superiority to toleration on the ground that it involves a
line drawn, not only an acceptance of behaviour on one side of the line but
also a rejection of behaviour on the other side. A practice of tolerance
includes intolerance. One part of Habermas's response is that what tolerance
puts on the prohibited side must be defensible in that it is owed to
reciprocity in the drawing of the line, not authoritarianism or worse but
rather democracy and liberal co-existence.
(2) Another part of the response to
Goethe is the insistence that democracy must defend itself by drawing a line,
perhaps including the outlawing of certain political parties. It must also
defend against terrorism, now both politically ideological and fundamentalist
in religion. But democracy must also pass a litmus test in accepting civil
disobedience, and it must remember that 'enemies of the state' may be radical
defenders of democracy.
(3) In reflection on kinds of
reasons in this whole area, there is consideration for example of the need not
merely not to tolerate racism but to condemn it. There is the necessity of
demanding of racists that they give up their racism, give up their their
commitment to what is called an ethos and their denial of the liberal ethos.
(4) Examples are given in a footnote
of many claims presumably of cultural rights, claims made and disputed, one
concerning Muslim calls to prayer by loudspeaker where churches are allowed to
ring their bells. There is further reflection on the necessary neutrality of
the state. This and what has gone before issues and culminates in an analysis
or theory of the cultural rights we have been considering. They have to do at
bottom with the maintaining and protecting of personal identity, and also
collective identity. They are to be distinguished from the subject of
distributive justice as it can be conceived. This value of identity itself is
fundamental to the defence of cultural rights. It is to me a new thought, of
great interest.
Evidently philosophy can come
together with other things. The resulting coalitions, no doubt, may make for
gains, if gains at a price. Continental philosophy implicitly makes the case
for particular wider concentration. The widening in the case of Habermas does
indeed include kind of social and political theory, to very good effect.