The postsecular condition and the genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking

Habermas has been engaged in the German and European public sphere for more than half a century (Matuštík, 2001; Specter 2010; Müller-Doohm 2016). He was engaged in the debates in the late 60s with the youth movement around questions of the use of violence; he held a public debate with Niklas Luhmann on the conservative dimensions of systems theory; he debated Gadamer on similar grounds on the lack of self-reflexivity of certain versions of hermeneutics; he was a vociferous critic of German historians who advocated for a ‘normalization’ of German history that in Habermas’ view would lead to a normalization of the holocaust; he advocated for a revision of the German law on naturalization and path to citizenship of non-Germans (Holub 1991); over the last two decades, furthermore, he has advocated the constitutionalization of the EU, and, in tandem, he has been a severe critic of nationalistic, xenophobic, and racist discourses that aim to close borders and exclude allegedly non-whites and non-Europeans from the EU. It is against Habermas’ position on constitutionalizing the EU, the modification of the citizenship laws in Germany, and his call for a postconventional moral position that takes the form of what he calls ‘constitutional patriotism’ that his adoption of the term postsecular must be contextualized (Müller-Doohm 2008).