Georg Neugebauer

The frequently diagnosed complexity of modernity is largely attributed to the progressive differentiation of social subsystems. But there is, despite the pluralization and segmentation of life, a common base of reflection - the claim to rationality. However, the assumption that all areas of social reality committed to the rationality paradigm were absorbed into its logical character is false. This research project aims to examine the relationship between rational and irrational elements within the establishment of religion,. To approach the goal of a systematic explication of the problem it makes sense to start with an author who is considered the protagonist of enlightened rationality - Immanuel Kant. The philosopher from Königsberg discussed the constitutive conditions of religious consciousness on the different levels of theoretical and practical reason in order to explain the complexity of the issue. At the same time, however, he also shows the limits of what is accessible to a rational reconstruction of historical religion and what not. With this dual procedure Kant set standards that influence the following attempts to decipher the structure of religious influence. Both dimensions of the theory – the theoretical and the practical – have validity even under the conditions of modern cultural-scientific methods. This can be demonstrated in the work of Rudolf Otto on the one hand, and Max Weber on the other. This approach, starting from Kant to those two classics of modern theory of religion, shall provide a contribution to the elucidation of the historical impact of the Enlightenment in the 20th Century.