Ritual as Deficiency Guarantee? Habermas’ Anthropological Classification of the Evolutionary Function of the ‘Sacred Complex’
Abstract
Jürgen Habermas has repeatedly referred to the work of Michael Tomasello to determine the difference between humans and animals on the basis of a theory of the evolution of human language. It is no surprise then that in his most recent work Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie key passages on topics like sacredness, ritual, and religion in general are influenced by Tomasello’s evolutionary anthropology. The fact that religion offers special contents for philosophical thinking is explained by the form and function of the cultural human evolution understood in terms of a learning process. To absorb the risk inherent in the cultural evolution of this learning process, the human species develops what Habermas calls the ‘sacred complex’. The sacred complex constitutes an anthropologically deep-seated mechanism that can provide a kind of ‘deficiency guarantee’ in the event of crises of communicative socialization that can lead to disintegration and anomie, violence, and rebellion. Thus, Tomasello’s research serves as a scientific foundation and modernization of Habermas’ understanding of the relation between religion and secular post-metaphysical thinking. In the final section, the sociological account of religion developed by Emilé Durkeim and Georges Bataille is introduced to discuss the recent transformation and the future of religion.