An Awareness of What is Missing

In his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has
challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience
and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the
global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than
the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different
forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism.

Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two
conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of
secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the
universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely,
secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning
truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction
to the conception of the relation between faith and reason
formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address.

In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title 'An
Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit
School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's
essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply
to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to
understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our
time.