Abstract

The term »Aufklärung« [enlightenment] fulfills a crucial function in Hermann Lübbe’s political philosophy which advocates the implementation and conservation of Western democratic thought as an effective means to establish the political norms of the secular age. From early on, Lübbe has argued for the liberalizing effects of secularization as a win-win-situation that emancipates politics from religious doctrines and at the same time sets religion free from the state. Intensified by the ramifications of 1968, Lübbe’s position regarding the legacy of the enlightenment became controversial. In opposition, especially to Jürgen Habermas’s »Projekt der Moderne« [project of modernity], Lübbe has developed a concept of philosophy »nach der Aufklärung« [after enlightenment} which aims at securing the contents of secular liberalism and fending off new ideological attacks against the liberal state and industrial society. At the same time, Lübbe insists that religion remains important for modernity as an irreplaceable means of coping with and making sense of contingency.