The last Habermas. Religion in the public sphere of modern societies

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas, German philosopher and sociologist, is one of the most important and influential thinkers in present, for all persons interested in the critical knowledge of modern society. If during largely of this work he not almost to became interest in religion, conceived it like an stage of the sociocultural evolution of humanity, whose destination was be overtaken and replace for the communicative reason, his opinion had changed in a considerable way in the two last decades, to the point that to represent nowadays a relevant role in his vision of the modern world. In this article we propose to approach therefore this “last Habermas”, that to deal with religion in the public sphere of the modern societies, for the first time, and to analyze his principal ideas, whichmany of them represent an important change with regard to previous ideas and, which is no less important, represent a qualitative change in his own perception of the present occidental modernity.