Utopia, religion and memory

This article explores utopianism and the memory of religion. It examines the way in which the forward glance of utopianism necessarily draws heavily on the backward glance, which is discussed here in terms of memory. The religious focus is justified in terms of the recent post-secular turn in political theory, which has itself gained energy and further necessity by the global upsurge in highly visible religio-political movements. It explores the themes of tradition and community in religion and the way in which different theorists have sought to feed this material into forward-looking political visions. Finally, it contrasts the moderate utopian use of religion in Rawls and Habermas with the deployment of the religious sublime found in Ernst Bloch, but argues that each approach has its proper place in a modern religious-sensitive politics. Notes 1. M. Morris (Ed.), William Morris: Artist Writer Socialist Vol. 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936), p. 289. 2. On memory and utopia see: V. Geoghegan, 'Remembering the future', Utopian Studies, 1 (2), 1990, pp. 52–68; also R. Baccolini, '"A useful knowledge of the present is rooted in the past": memory and historical reconciliation in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Telling', in R. Baccolini and T. Moylan (eds), Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 113–134, and R. Baccolini, 'Sometime, between Memory and Forgetting', Mediazioni: Rivista online di studi interdisciplinary su lingue e culture. http://www.mediazionionline.it/baccolini_ita.html 3. On post-secularism see V. Geoghegan, 'Religious narrative, post-secularism and utopia', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 3 (2–3), 2000, pp. 205–224; on the broader 'turn to religion' in contemporary thought see H. de Vries, 'Introduction: Before, around, and beyond the theologico-political', in H. de Vries and L.E. Sullivan (Eds), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), pp. 1–88. 4. E. Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 1193. 5. S.N. Balagangadhara, 'The Heathen in His Blindness ...' Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2005). 6. P.C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 7. Cicero, The Nature of the Gods (London: Penguin, 1972), pp. 152–153; see also R. King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and 'The Mystic East' (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 35. 8. Balagangadhara, op. cit., Ref. 5, p. 42. 9. Balagangadhara, op. cit., pp. 31–64. 10. Julian, The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 135. 11. See King, op. cit., Ref. 7, p. 36. 12. K. Ahmed 'WORD FOR WORD: Zulqarnain—Alexander or Cyrus'. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page = story_14-11-2004_pg3_4 13. Augustine, Confessions (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 269. 14. Augustine, Confessions (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961)., p. 223. 15. M. Landmann, 'Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korcula, 1968', Telos, 25, 1975, pp. 178–179. 16. On this see D. MacCulloch's discussion in Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 132, which itself draws on the historical work of Christopher Hill. 17. K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds), Collected Works, Vol. 11 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1979), p. 103. 18. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 125. 19. P. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 122. 20. C. Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 28. 21. É. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 46. 22. A. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 50–52. 23. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)., p. 51. 24. Ricoeur, op. cit., Ref. 19, p. 122. 25. Landmann, op. cit., Ref. 15, p. 177. 26. E. Bloch, On Karl Marx (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), p. 108. 27. Landmann, op. cit., Ref. 15, pp. 178–179. 28. D. Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 123. 29. Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000)., pp. 144–145. 30. Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000)., p. 123. 31. Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000)., p. 143. 32. D. MacCulloch, op. cit., Ref. 16, p. 285; L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 25–28. 33. A. Williamson, 'Review of Robert Applebaum, Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-Century England', H-Ideas, H-Net Reviews, October 2003. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path = 215951070961366 34. H. Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 73. 35. R. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin 1999), p. 171. 36. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin 1999), p. 171. 37. C. Taylor, 'A Catholic modernity?', in J.L. Heft (Ed.), A Catholic Modernity? (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 13. 38. J. Rawls, Justice As Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 4. 39. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. XVI. 40. J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 128. 41. J. Rawls, 'Commonweal Interview with John Rawls', in J. Rawls (Ed.), Collected Papers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 617. 42. J. Habermas, 'Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights', Philosophy, 79, 2004, pp. 11–12. 43. Habermas, 'Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights', Philosophy, 79, 2004., p. 17. 44. Habermas, 'Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights', Philosophy, 79, 2004., p. 12. 45. Habermas, 'Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights', Philosophy, 79, 2004., p. 13. 46. J. Habermas, 'Religion in the Public Sphere', 2005. http://www.sandiego.edu/pdf/pdf_library 47. I am grateful to Laurence Davis for his comments on the notion of the radically better. 48. L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 33. 49. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. 6. 50. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. 12. 51. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. 13. 52. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. xxxviii. 53. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. 32. 54. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)., p. 186. 55. K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. Introduction, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds), Collected Works, Vol. 3 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), p. 176. 56. R. Rorty, 'Persuasion is a good thing', in E. Mendieta (Ed.), Take Care of Freedom and Truth will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 73–74. 57. R. Rorty, 'The best can be an enemy of the better', in Mendieta (Ed.), op. cit., Ref. 56, p. 105. 58. Bloch, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 1197. 59. T. More, Utopia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 68–69. 60. R.M. Unger, Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative (London: Verso, 1998), p. 74

Dystopia · Secularism · Sublime · Utopia · Vision · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy

• Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights

  Open Access•Jürgen Habermas, Nicole Curato•Philosophy•2004

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• Religion in the Public Sphere

  Open Access•Jürgen Habermas•European Journal of Philosophy•2006

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