The Enlightenment Project and Post-secular Thinking: Belief and Reason
The Enlightenment project most clearly expressed in I. Kant's theoretical heritage was based on the persuasion in the unlimited power of the public use of reason and its critical ability. In the light of the human reflexive capacity, the difference between knowledge, opinion, and practical, doctrinal, and moral types of belief became apparent. However, the Enlightenment project also revealed the limits of reason and the vast horizon of the field of meanings open for human mind. Thus, it contained in itself a set of premises used by its critics and opponents in the cultural situation often characterized as 'postmodern'. The mosaic postmodern vision of reality inherited the Enlightenment critical reflexive pattern combining it with the Romantic irony. It facilitated the rise of different version of "post-secular" thinking from J. Habermas to A. MacIntyre, G. Vattimo and J. Derrida proclaiming that belief and reason, religion, science, and other cultural forms should be understood as standing in no opposition and mutually complementary within the totality of culture under the condition of postmodern 'weakening the feeling of reality". In its contemporary hermeneutical capacity, reason confronted with the Eternity is functioning in affiliation with belief producing multiple images of reality in a variety of language forms.