A. From Judaism to Enlightenment
The main purpose of Hegel’s philosophy of religion had been the reconcili-
ation of the modern antagonism between the religious and the secular, between
faith and reason, between revelation and enlightenment (Hegel 1986m; 1986n).
This is still the purpose of the Left Hegelian critical theory of society, inso-
far as it is concerned with faith and knowledge (Habermas 2001).
Faith and Knowledge
This is so, because Hegel’s idealistic reconciliation between the sacred and
the profane had succeeded as little as that of Goethe or Beethoven (Hegel
1986n). Of course, the materialistic critical theory of society is not able to rec-
oncile the modern antagonism between the religious and the secular (Siebert
2001; 2002). But it tries at least to keep open this dialectic between the sacred
and the profane, and to prevent under all circumstances that it is closed pre-
maturely either fundamentalistically or scientistically and positivistically. It
is the purpose of this essay to clarify and to develop further a new critical
theory of religion, and to develop an open dialectic between the religious
and the secular. The goal of this essay is indeed to develop further a critical
theory of religion, which would have its foundation in the theological dimen-
sion of the original critical theory of society – its negative, inverse, cipher or
semblance theology – but would also go beyond it (Horkheimer 1985a; Haber-
mas 1991; 2001; Siebert 2001; 2002). The essay also aims at the clarification of
the fact that the longing for the imageless and nameless totally Other than
history – what Hegel had called in his philosophy of history the slaughter-
bench, or the holocaust altar, or the Golgatha, or the skull hill of nature and
world –, was indeed not only the manifest fundamental motivation of the
critical theory of society of the first generation of critical theorists, but remained
that also – at least latently – for the second and third and fourth generations
(Hegel 1986k; Adorno 2001; Todenhöfer 2003). This longing for the entirely
Other has so far prevented the critical theorists of society from falling victim
to dull positivism, into which the great bourgeois enlightenment, and some-
times even the Marxian and Freudian enlightenment, have degenerated,
and beyond that from regressing back into mythology (Adorno 1970; 1966;
Horkheimer and Adorno 1969; Marx 1972:18–20, 1964:43–44; 1961; 1953;
Feuerbach 1957; Freud 1964; 1962; Jones 1961; Horkheimer 1985a; Benjamin
1978; Lonitz 1994; Adorno and Kogon 1958). This longing for the totally Other
62 • Rudolf J. Siebert