The postmodern condition as a Religious revival

Abstract

"The ghosts of skeptical philosophers like David Hume or Bertrand Russell are likely chagrined right now that religion has withstood the onslaught of the Enlightenment project. Indeed, one of the benefits of Western culture’s “postmodern condition” is that it has produced a revival of religion in the academic community. Modern thought, the brainchild of the Enlightenment, failed in its promise to emancipate humanity from the fetters of metaphysics. Given the scientific “rationalization” of war, genocide, the exploitative aspects of globalization in the twentieth century, and the collision of faiths after 9/11, it is understandable that many scholars express incredulity toward Reason’s grand narrative. As Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer correctly put it in Dialectics of Enlightenment, “Enlightenment is mythical fear radicalized.” “Enlightenment” became the very thing it tried to destroy: a religion. And in the course of this (not so) surprising discovery, what intellectuals once silenced as self-alienation and wish fulfillment is now clamoring for attention. Religion, including theology, demands not only a place at the intellectual table, but also integration in all areas of belief and practice"