Like many others who have taught contemporary (#Islamic) thought I have had occasion to discuss in class The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity of Jurgen Habermas (b. 1929) 1/

I always felt that within his theory of communicative reason and the intersubjective ethics of the public sphere his treatment of religion and culture was ever wanting 2/

While his attachment to modifying and rehabilitating the #Enlightenment project was understandable given his generation and the experience of post WW2 Europe 3/

It cannot deal with the complexities of both the social experience and entirely rebuff #Marxian #postmodernist and now #decolonial critiques 4/

His recent monumental history of philosophy in many ways is the culmination of a career suhrkamp.de/buecher/auch_e… 5/

But others have noted the shortcomings of his approach - Raymond Geuss (Cambridge) who was one of the first to engage his thought - indicated in this opinion piece thepointmag.com/politics/a-rep… 6/

Others have noted the democratic deficit and Kantian over optimism in the rationality of agency in his theory of communicative reason eprints.lse.ac.uk/955/1/Weakenin… 7/

Furthermore the critical turn in the study of religion and especially #Islam has found Habermas’ approach to be inadequate journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20… 8/

Here is another study which like many others questions the commitments and assumptions of Habermas’ post-secular society queensu.ca/religion/sites… 9/

Returning to the history of philosophy this is an excellent review that makes the case for engagement with Habermas while acknowledging the somewhat dated (perhaps even naive) valorisation of optimistic liberal democracy bostonreview.net/philosophy-rel… 10/

In the age of #blacklivesmatter and of unfettered #islamophobia #antisemitism and myriad forms of discrimination #gender #sexualities what future is there for Habermas’ optimistic rational subject? 11/

Clearly in Habermas’ case critical theory has not give way to global categories and decolonial practice that provincialise Europe and take the non-West seriously without either giving into nativism or letting go of the notion of rationality 12/

Nevertheless it is striking to find Muslim intellectuals embracing #Habermas and his somewhat #Kantian assumptions jstor.org/stable/4311902… in perhaps a late stage of #MuslimModernism ? 13/

That article was part of a wider book project discussed here radiozamaneh.com/307442 14/

There are plenty of translations and studies of #Habermas in Persian 15/

At what point does one go beyond the rather simple championing versus trashing a thinker 16/