Ma`rifat Farhangi Ejtemaei

Nowadays, some liberal thinkers talk about post-secularism, or accepting the presence of religion in a secular society. Among them is Jürgen Habermas who has proposed this idea and discussed about the circumstances of the presence of religion in modern world and its role and position. Although, he tries mostly to declare the end of the age of religion, and to replace the religion with reason, he has modified his previous views and emphasized on some of the unique functions of religion in his recent works and remarks. He has referred to the role of religion in giving meaning to the life, and accepted that religious language has an extraordinary ability and capacity in the realm of ethics, which cannot be disregarded. However, his recent remarks cannot be regarded as the emergence of a real evolution in his attitude toward religion. He continues to see the religion from a secular thinker’s point of view, and not only allocates very limited and marginal position to religion, but also tries to explain the very same moral and spiritual functions of religion in secular terms. Present paper discusses his views on these issues and evaluates their strong and weak points.