Habermas and humanism

Here's the Notre Dame Philosophical Review of Habermas latest book Postmetaphysical Thinking II. For example, this excerpt:

"He then argues, building on Durkheim, that religious ritual functions as a compensating mechanism, stabilizing the newly fluid norms of social life by re-enacting the process of their generation. This means, Habermas suggests, that — still in the present day — believers, through the liturgical practices which are integral to any faith, have access to ‘an archaic experience’ and to ‘a source of solidarity’ which is closed to the ‘unbelieving sons and daughters of modernity.’"

It is relevant to discussions we're having in our local humanist group. We humanists, as adherents of Enlightenment reason, lament that we don't have the sort of solidarity that religious folks share. We tend to be cats that cannot be herded because of our rejection of herd mind or tribal affiliation.

Another part of that is lack of any contemplative or meditative "archaic experience" around which to bind ourselves. Humanists tend to stereotype this as just superstitious nonsense outside of rational inquiry. Whereas many in the integral community do partake of such practices and have such shared "archaic" experiences.


But then there's still the question of postmetaphysics, a key ingredient for Habermas. Those religious or meditative experiences still are not direct access to reality as such or even some sort of pure consciousness free of 'defilements' or biases. It's still a very sticky wicket. Syntegrity seems to come from a balancing act of both separating and fusing the validity spheres, maintaining some autopoetic distance yet finding those sweet spots where they intersect. Those spheres share in their intersection yet still constrain each other in their separation: Dynamic tensegrity as syntegrity.

As a supplement I suggest Edwards et al. discussion on syntegrity. For some reason it can no longer be read online so you'll have to download it.