Freedom of Religion/History/Country sources/Continental Philosophy/Frankfurt School
What have religious and philosophical traditions contributed to our understanding of this right?
Continental Philosophy/Frankfurt School
The notion of the freedom of religion is difficult to situate within the work of the Frankfurt School. In the early 20th century, a group of Western Marxist intellectuals founded the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt, an interdisciplinary research initiative that implemented a new approach to the social sciences (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Their distinctive "critical theory" revised "traditional theory," which sought merely to establish timeless, universal truths around specific subjects, seeking instead to further interpret scientific findings in a normative light (Horkheimer, 1937, 199). In other words, where traditional theory tells us merely how things are, critical theory tells us how they are and how they should be. This new project was, thus, in a sense, a radical marrying of philosophy and social sciences. As most of its 'first-generation' members took a Marxist or Freudian approach to their research, a 'freedom of religion' was not much discussed, perhaps more due to their suspicion of 'private liberties' than disdain for religion. However, we find in the work of the school's 'second-generation' thinkers (particularly in the work of Jurgen Habermas) a more complex philosophical discussion of both human rights and the relationship between religion and the state.
The “First-Generation” Members of the so-called 'first generation' of the Frankfurt School saw value in religion's inclination towards social justice and concern for objective, 'non-instrumental' knowledge. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, two of the school's most notable theorists, were deeply critical of "instrumental reason," human rationality directed towards mere means rather than proper ends (Horkheimer, 1944). Their critique is too detailed to be fully treated here, but simply put, instrumental reason reduces rationality as a tool for exploiting nature and fellow man (particularly as a tool in capitalism) (Horkheimer, 1944). Prioritizing this form of reason reduces the value of knowledge to mere 'usefulness' or 'practicality' at the expense of bedrock, "objective truth" (Horkheimer, 1944, 156). To the intellectuals of the early Frankfurt School, religion shared with critical theory a concern for truth about the ends of human life and society (e.g., the nature of justice and goodness), topics lost in the thoughtless dogmatism of an age defined by instrumental rationality. Further, religion also shared a spirit of practical social activism, seeking not only to outline the 'ideal world' but also to realize it (Brittain, 2012, 207). Where capitalist society had dogmatically accepted that one's ultimate aim was to use instrumental reason to extract value from nature and man, religion offered a necessary alternative towards higher truth and worldly justice. A critical theory of religion, then, could provide unique value for the project of critical theory as a whole. However, first-generation theorists largely ignored the discussion of universal human rights. We might attribute this fact to Marx's cynical view on private liberties, as expressed in his essay "On the Jewish Question." In this work, Marx claims that personal rights create a harmful division between the private or "civil sphere" and the public or "political sphere" (Marx, 1843). Such rights allowed individuals to retract from a concern for the universal, communal good into a private sense of happiness (Marx, 1843). As such, religious freedom was harmful in encouraging individuals to value their religion over their "species-being," their being part of a unified humankind (Marx, 1843). With this in view, we can understand why the early Marxist critical theorists might have discussed the value of freedom of religion: perhaps rights were irrelevant to their vision for society.
The "Second-Generation" Most of the so-called "second-generation" critical theorists (whose work began in the 1970s) put less emphasis on religion, though we can see parallels with the first-generation views in the later work of Jurgen Habermas. Early in his career, Habermas reduced religion's status to that of a primitive socializing force (Habermas 1981). The need for religious attitudes was to be overcome by secular rationality in the form of his theory of communicative action, a philosophical system Habermas hoped would ground "the social sciences in a theory of language (Habermas 1988, xiv). In the mid-1980s, Habermas became less disparaging of religion, recognizing it as a source of necessary consolation for a suffering world (Habermas 1990). This positive view continued to develop through his later career, with Habermas eventually recognizing that religious ideas were a well of moral truth necessary in combating the moral decay of the techno-capitalist age (Habermas 2006). Though Habermas continued to advocate for a separation between law and religion, he believed that the public sphere could gather valuable moral intuition from religious teachings (Habermas 2006). Though nothing like a theocracy (the direct imposition of religious authority into the state apparatus) should exist, a respectful friendship between religion and state could prove essential in preserving society's ethical integrity. Furthermore, the later Habermas also defends the individual's right to freedom of religious practice (Habermas 2006). We see here both a growing similarity and marked difference to the first-generation theorists' view of religion, with Habermas acknowledging the value of religious teachings while also endorsing a more classically liberal respect for the freedom of religion.
Human rights Habermas also engaged in a comprehensive discussion of human liberties per se. His treatment of rights is situated within his "discourse theory," in which he seeks to resolve various epistemological, political, and ethical issues by analyzing inter-subjective communication (Habermas 1992, between facts and norms). Broadly speaking, Habermas asserts that society maintains itself over time only when its constituents view it as legitimate (Habermas 1996). The dawn of modernity, with its growing differences in religious and philosophical opinions, presents a challenge here: groups seek to impose their personal views of justice and happiness on others to their detriment and embitterment (Habermas 1996). Therefore, spheres of private freedom needed to arise to resolve this tension. Insofar as individuals can pursue their own visions of happiness (without interfering with the freedom of others), society can maintain its legitimacy (Habermas 1996). Rights are the legal feature that maintains such spheres of personal liberty. But for these private rights to be legitimate, individuals must have a say in the system that grants and manages them (Habermas 1996). This demand for public rights (i.e., the right to participate in government) makes democracy "co-original" with private rights; they rationally presuppose one another (Habermas 1996). The fundamental freedoms to be protected are determined through the rational deliberation of a constitutional democracy.
We find in Habermas a more coherent account of both rights and the freedom of religion than we do in the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Thinkers like Horkheimer and Adorno saw great value in a critical analysis of religion, but they left the notion of freedom of religion largely untreated. Though Habermas never gives a systematic account of why freedom of religion ought to be a sanctioned right, he asserts its intuitive importance to a healthy and just society. He also gives us much more to think about when it comes to the concept of human rights as such. This is not to say that first-generation critical theorists provide no insight into the relationship between religion and society. One can indeed gain much understanding of the topic from both scholarly eras, though later work gives us a more robust treatment of the freedom of religion.