Abstract

In his early books and the Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Habermas has criticized religion as a pre-modern way of life. But in later texts, especially Nachmetaphysisches Denken, he acknowledges religious intuitions as indispensable for the critical continuation of culture. On the base of an accurate analysis of his propositions on transcendence, metaphysics and metaphors we can conclude, that he thinks too quick to have a rational and objectivating grip on these matters. At the same time metaphors function in his theory and the life world gets a transcendent status. Further his very rational discourse ethics are a more abstract and less human way of life than religious morality. Habermas's conception of religion could be made consistent, if we situate religion immediately next to the life world, which is neither pre-modern nor modern. Of course some definite forms of religious thinking have grown more modern, e.g. the individual beliefs and the internal criticism. When in the end Habermas asserts, that the continuation of modern culture, especially the sustaining of rationalisation, depends on the substantial influence of the life world, than this also applies to the influence of religion