Genealogies of Political Modernity by Antonio Cerella;

Author:Antonio Cerella;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Plurality, universality, identity

Schmitt’s genealogy of modern politics, although heavily conditioned by a Christian conception of history,55 has the undisputed merit of making explicit the aporiae and the underlying weaknesses of Western statehood and liberal democracy. His analysis helps us identify with greater clarity the problems raised by contemporary pluralism (in both its religious and its cultural forms) and the limitations of Habermas’s post-secular project. It goes without saying that Schmitt’s genealogy is useful only if we neutralize its dangerousness and recognize its anachronism, that is, only if we seek to find a different solution to the problems raised by his reflections. As will be disclosed, however, there is a specular polarity between Schmitt’s deconstruction of modern political categories and Habermas’s post-secular discourse. Faced with the crisis of political space and with the resurgence of religious and cultural pluralism, Habermas proposes a theoretical framework that is unable to overcome the dichotomous categories of modernity, as it is deeply rooted in their logic of inclusion–exclusion.

To begin with, Habermas’s proposal to reorder religious and cultural pluralism within ‘firmly entrenched’56 states is highly problematic. If it is true that this new plurality has emerged as a consequence of the border-crossing dynamics of globalization (a point that Habermas acknowledges), it is unclear how ‘nations’ can still be considered ‘firmly entrenched’. The plurality of which Habermas speaks is not only created by these dynamics but it is a modality of globalization (if by this term we denote a border-crossing phenomenon, which shapes itself through a continuous mobilization and hybridization of cultures and borders). Even when Habermas abandons the political framework of the nation state in favour of a ‘constitutional patriotism’, he takes pains to define, in concrete terms, the organization of contemporary pluralism. Essentially, whether from a state-centred or from a constitutional perspective, his aim is to transform the public sphere, through rationalizations and translations, into a liberal amalgam. He argues:

Positions that do not wish to subject the political influence of religious voices to formal constrains blur the limits without which a secular state cannot maintain its impartiality. What must be safeguarded is that the decisions of the legislator, the executive branch, and the courts are not only formulated in a universally accessible language, but are also justified on the basis of universally acceptable reasons. This excludes religious reasons from decisions about all state-sanctioned – that is, legally binding – norms.57

Habermas accepts religious pluralism as a sociological fact, but politically he reduces religious diversity, through translations and reifications, to a flat, abstract and rationalized homogeneity. In his view, the threshold that determines access to power and political participation can be determined and modified only by secular reason. ‘The contents of religious expressions’ – he writes – ‘must be translated into a universally accessible language before it can make it onto official agendas and flow into the deliberations of decision-making bodies.’58 ‘The result of such an operation’ – Chantal Mouffe has aptly argued – ‘is to reify the identity of the people by reducing it to one of its many possible forms of identification.

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