religion, true religion is the critical consciousness and expression of human-
ity’s finitude of suffering and death, which thus, produces the longing that
this world is not the absolute end. Such religious or theological longing for
the totally Other can then be put into the moral praxis of resistance against
the making of anything finite into the Absolute. Religion, therefore, cannot
be secularized – brought into conformity as an ideological social function of
any existing social totality – without giving it up. It is thus a futile hope that
the churches will ever reclaim its original negative, prophetic, Messianic and
eschatological critique of longing for the totally Other and its revolutionary
social praxis. According to Horkheimer, due to religion’s betrayal of itself, of
its critical function of negatively expressing this longing for the totally Other
and its ideals of justice, truth, freedom, etc., this critical content has thrown
off its religious form and has transformed itself into a secular, materialistic
theory and praxis of historical struggle for a more reconciled future society.
Unlike the positivistic bourgeois materialism of the Rational Choice Theory
of religion, Horkheimer ’s critical theory of society and religion is a modern,
dialectical materialistic heir of this prophetic, Messianic and eschatological
labor for the creation of a more reconciled future society as the concrete
expression of the longing for the totally Other.
150 • Michael R. Ott