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THE SECULAR LIBERAL STATE AND RELIGION

in Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx. With no initial theological intention, a reason that is
becoming aware of its own limits steps beyond itself toward an Other—whether in mysti-
cal union with an encompassing cosmic consciousness, in the despairing hope of the
historical event of a redeeming message, or in the form of a forward-pressing solidarity
with the downtrodden and humiliated, a solidarity that desires to hasten the arrival
of messianic salvation. These anonymous gods of post-Hegelian metaphysics—
encompassing consciousness, the inconceivable [unvordenklich] event, an unalienated so-
ciety—are easy prey for theology. They offer themselves up to be decoded as pseudonyms
for the trinity of the personal God engaged incommunicatio sui.
Still, these attempts to renew philosophical theology after Hegel are more agreeable
than the kind of Nietzscheanism that simply borrows the Christian connotations of hear-
ing and understanding [Vernehmen], devotion and expectation of grace, arrival and event,
in order to call a thinking that has been propositionally emptied out back into the unde-
termined archaic that precedes Christ and Socrates. By contrast, a philosophy that is aware
of its fallibility and fragile position within the differentiated framework of modern society
insists upon the generic, but by no means pejoratively intended, distinction between a
secular mode of speaking, which requires itself to be generally accessible, and a religious
mode of speaking, which depends upon the truths of revelation. Unlike in Kant and
Hegel, this grammatical distinction does not bring with it the philosophical requirement
of determining for itself what part of the contents of religious traditions—above and
beyond the societally institutionalized knowledge of the world—is true or false. The re-
spect that goes hand in hand with this cognitive decision to refrain from judgment is
founded on respect for persons and for ways of life that clearly derive their integrity and
authenticity from religious convictions. But respect is not everything: philosophy has
reasons to be willing to learn from religious traditions.

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Unlike the ethical restraint that characterizes postmetaphysical thought—which eludes
every generally binding concept of the good and exemplary life—holy writings and reli-
gious traditions articulate, subtly spell out, and hermeneutically keep alive over thousands
of years intuitions about fall and redemption, about a saving exit from a life experienced
as being without salvation. That is why something that has elsewhere been lost and that
cannot be restored using the professional knowledge of experts alone remains intact in the
life of religious communities, so long as they avoid dogmatism and the moral constraint of
a prescribing of conscience. By this something I mean sufficiently differentiated possibili-
ties of expression and sensibilities for misspent life, for societal pathologies, for the failure
of individual life plans and the deformation to be seen in distorted life contexts. Philoso-
phy’s willingness to learn from religion can be grounded in the asymmetry of epistemic

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