do not only move beyond the religious and the metaphysical, but also beyond
the secular, as for example, expressed in positivism and fascism, toward alter-
native Future III: a post-modern and post-secular society, in which faith and
knowledge would be reconciled in a post-secular reconstructed form, as well
as personal autonomy and universal solidarity (Adorno 1997b; 1973; Habermas
2001; 1990).
Radical Enlightenment and Critical Religion
It is against the Hegelian background and prototype that this essay explores
the fundamental motive and motivation of Horkheimer ’s and Adorno’s crit-
ical theory of society, which were no longer constituted by faith in the Kingdom
of Heaven, Eternity, or Beauty, as it had been present in the old world-reli-
gions and world-philosophies, but rather by the longing and the hope for the
totally Other than nature, civil society, political state, or world-history, which
transcends the religious as well as the secular: beyond the dialectic of reli-
gion toward critical religion, which penetrates the depth of the theodicy –
the theological glowing fire, and beyond the dialectic of enlightenment toward
radical enlightenment, which goes to the roots of humanity (Horkheimer
1996; Adorno 1970; 1973; Benjamin 1977). The radicalization of theology leads
into a humanistically reconstructed historical materialism. The radicalization
of historical materialism leads into theology and theodicy. At the roots of the
class struggle lies the longing for the totally Other as perfect justice and
unconditional love. To be sure, concerning the deep and still further widen-
ing and globalizing modern dichotomy between the religious and the secu-
lar, revelation and autonomous reason, mythology and enlightenment, the
critical theorists have stood decisively on the side of radical enlightenment
(Hegel 1986m; Horkheimer and Adorno 1969; Adorno and Kogon 1958; Adorno
1997; Habermas 1990). As this had been true for the first generation of the
critical theorists – Horkheimer, Adorno and Benjamin – thus this is still true
today for the second and third and even fourth generation. For Horkheimer,
the process of enlightenment was marked out in the first thought a human
being conceived of (Horkheimer 1996a). According to Horkheimer, of this
same process of enlightenment Hegel had said in his Phenomenology of the
Spirit that if it had once started, it was irresistible (Hegel 1986c; Horkheimer
1996a). It is the purpose of this essay to follow the critical theorists as they,
as radical enlighteners, and as being at the same time motivated by their
longing for the totally Other, tried to mitigate at least alternative Future I –
78 • Rudolf J. Siebert