Associate Professor, Department of Systematic Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Aarhus.

Project: "Religion, power and communication - Philosophical reflections on the significance of religion in modernity viewed from the crossfield between Foucault and Habermas."

My research project aims at completing a dissertation titled ‘Religion, power and communication – Philosophical reflections on the significance of religion in modernity viewed from the crossfield between Foucault and Habermas’. One of the major aims is to reframe the so-called Foucault-Habermas debate in terms of problems relating to the role of religion in contemporary globalized and multicultural society. Whereas Habermas’ theory of communication basically defends the importance of reason – and the free exchange of arguments – for the constitution of norms in the public sphere, Foucault’s analytics of power carries out a critique of various forms of rationalizations that render such a view problematical. From a critical reading and juxtaposition of the concepts of communication, rationality and power, found in the writings of Habermas and Foucault, it is argued that some shared conceptions of ethical and aesthetic experience may, in principle, open up for a dialogue ‘between them’. Ultimately, the aim is to ask anew, from these premises, how to justify the meaning, form and significance of religion in a modern world.