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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
What role does religion play in modern societies? Is it merely an anachronism that hinders our economic growth? Is it a kind of superstition that people should be left to enjoy in private but should refrain from discussing in public? It is no secret that the Christian churches in Western societies have massive problems - quite apart from the recent scandals. Shrinking congregations are just one sign of their diminishing relevance. But what would happen to democracy if the resonance of religion were to fade entirely? Leading sociologist Hartmut Rosa addresses this fundamental question in a way that makes us think afresh about religion and the role it plays in our contemporary democratic societies. He argues that religion fosters a culture of dialogue, listening and reflection that allows us to form connections with others and experience the world as meaningful. This, in turn, helps citizens cultivate a democratic sensibility that can serve as an anchor in unstable times. With his characteristic clarity and insight, Rosa analyses our contemporary societies and dares to ponder what would happen if the centuries-old reservoir of wisdom embedded in religion were to be lost in an ultra-modern age.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Democracy Needs Religion
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Begin Reading
End User License Agreement
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Democracy Needs Religion
Hartmut Rosa
Translated by Valentine A. PakisWith a Preface by Charles Taylor
polity
Originally published in German as Demokratie braucht Religion. Über ein eigentümliches Resonanzverhältnis © 2022 by Kösel Verlag, a division of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe GmbH, München, Germany.
This English translation © Polity Press, 2024
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6124-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939815
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com
Preface
Our contemporary civilization has reached an unprecedented level and intensity of control over our natural environments. We are becoming more and more aware of this and its potential (catastrophic) downsides. But the instrumental stance to the world is hard to shake. It’s not just that we are attached to the results. This way of treating nature has produced spectacular growth, and thus more and more of the goods and services we desire. It is also that, once astride the galloping horse of growth, it is increasingly hard to dismount.
In path-breaking work over the last decade, Hartmut Rosa has shown some of the features of our societies and economies that make it very difficult to change course. One of the most important is the one he calls “dynamic stabilization”: our contemporary industrial societies can only retain their stability by growing – and, indeed, at a faster and faster pace. This is a tendency built in to our globalized capitalist economy. Globalization permits us to make and sell products more cheaply, and thus to more consumers. We in the rich countries of the West can do this by having them produced in whole and in part in the less affluent countries of Asia. But to pull this off, we have to make huge investments in transport: containers, ships, ports. Otherwise, our economies will grind to a halt – as we saw in the bottlenecks which occurred in the supply chains as we emerged from the pandemic. Growth (in sales) forced growth (in the means of transport).
But this is not the only way that growth generates more growth. Some people’s skills become relatively less in demand as the economy develops, and other skills are needed. People have to be retrained (or new entrants have to acquire the new skills). Failure to respond to this requirement means not only bottlenecks, but also unemployment, hence widespread dissatisfaction, which threatens sociopolitical stability.
In all these ways, growth impels more growth. There are systemic mechanisms at work here. And we haven’t even begun to consider the subjective side: how mass production can tempt us to possess more (furniture, books, records, iPhones, etc.), and how cheap air travel can induce us to take holidays in exotic places hitherto out of the question for us.
Hartmut has charted some of the downsides to this. Greater opportunities tempt us to do more things, travel to more places, undertake more tasks. We find ourselves chronically short of time, over-committed, and striving to keep the pace, catch up. To-do lists lengthen beyond any possible fulfillment of the tasks they enumerate. Often, that way lies burnout, a very common complaint in our time.
But, beyond specific psychic catastrophes such as burnout, Rosa wants to make us aware that we are closing the door on the deepest, most important human fulfillments. The phrenetic stance of control inhibits our capacity to be interpellated, moved by the world we experience – interpellated as we are by music, for instance, or poetry, or visual art. Or riveted at the sight or scent or feel of nature in a cultivated field or in the wild. Rosa has a word for this kind of experience: “resonance.” These experiences resonate in us; there is an affinity here which is felt.
We are getting close to understanding the title of this book: Democracy Needs Religion. Why these terms? First, why “democracy”? Because we feel as though this mode of government, which is very important to us and cherished by those who live in democracies, is under threat, externally (Putin) and internally (Trump and his counterparts elsewhere). This mode requires, calls for, listening – listening attentively and openly to grasp what our fellow citizens feel, aspire to, are appalled by. For all the messages that are exchanged in our public “debates,” we find a decreased willingness to listen, to take in what is really going on in the other. Politics approaches the mindset of civil war. And in our age, which has seen the mass migration of refugees as well as serious attempts to realize the ethic of rights and equality inscribed in our constitutions, the issues turn around who really belongs: who are really American, or quintessential first-class Americans, or Frenchmen, or Britons, Québécois, Hungarian, etc. Tempers and hatreds flare up, and we need ever more “listening hearts,” the term Rosa borrows from King Solomon.
Then, why “religion”? Is religion the only zone where resonance can come about? I am sure Rosa doesn’t think that. But there is an element of provocation in the use of this term; there are certainly many people today who resonate with, say, nature, who have either consciously turned their back on religion or were never drawn to it. So what is Rosa saying here? Maybe I’m wrong, but I interpret him in the following way: He wants to challenge the notion (shared by both some believers and some non-believers) that a sharp line can be drawn between religion and unbelief. But the feeling of awe that a “secular” person might feel, standing on the edge of a primeval forest, and the awe felt by the believer entering Chartres Cathedral, are not all that far apart. And what those who rarely enter a church may feel when they attend Christmas midnight Mass? This may be hard to situate, because it’s on the boundary of the religious and non-religious.
So the message of the book might read: Citizens of today’s democracies, listen – the only antidote to your self-enclosing, self-damaging obsessions (with control, with growth, with more) is openness to interpellation by resonant experiences.
Charles Taylor
Democracy Needs Religion
Ladies and Gentlemen,*
First, I would like to thank you sincerely for inviting me to the reception today at your diocese. It’s a matter close to my heart to enter into dialogue with people of various backgrounds, convictions, and orientations, for my experience has shown that such dialogue can indeed be extremely fruitful. This is especially true for the ways in which I’ve developed my own theories, which have benefited from being challenged from a wide variety of perspectives and experiences. In fact, I’ve often noticed that many ideas that required great effort for me to conceive as a sociologist, especially when it comes to resonant relationships, have already been formulated in a theological context. It is often the case, moreover, that such relationships are then put into practice in religious settings. I’m therefore all the more pleased to have the opportunity to discuss things with you here today and engage in conversation.
