What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.

The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield. Worldviews bring with them substantive long-term goals that serve as a check against local desires. Worldviews furnish those who live within them with reasons that are more than merely prudential or strategic for acting in one way rather than another.

The Liberal state, resting on a base of procedural rationality, delivers no such goals or reasons and thus suffers, Habermas says, from a “motivational weakness”; it cannot inspire its citizens to virtuous (as opposed to self-interested) acts because it has lost “its grip on the images, preserved by religion, of the moral whole” and is unable to formulate “collectively binding ideals.”

Does Reason Know what it is Missing?. — Wayfarer

The borrowings and one-way concessions Habermas urges seem insufficient to effect a true and fruitful rapprochment. Nothing he proposes would remove the deficiency he acknowledges when he says that the “humanist self-confidence of a philosophical reason which thinks that it is capable of determining what is true and false” has been “shaken” by “the catastrophes of the twentieth century.” The edifice is not going to be propped up and made strong by something so weak as a reminder, and it is not clear at the end of a volume chock-full of rigorous and impassioned deliberations that secular reason can be saved. There is still something missing.

This phase of Habermas' thought - he has a massive corpus - is associated with the phrase 'post-secular'. I think that's an interesting phrase. — Wayfarer

A world without truth could not be, as there would be no actuality. Of course it is something each must realize by themselves, which is the task of philosophy.

And furthermore the statement ‘there is no truth’ is self contradicting: if it is true then there is a truth. If it is not it is false. — Wayfarer

The X in X=X is already an abstraction from the world we perceive because nothing remains the same from one moment to the next. If we take that pre-linguistic understanding to things like logic, truth and the law of non-contradiction, then its easy to see why these would have limits — ChatteringMonkey

In a philosophical register the absolutely crucial thing is to understand why life matters. Neitszche and Heidegger both foresaw the upsurge of nihilism, which is basically 'nothing matters'. People who think nothing matters often do appalling things - because it doesn't matter. So we have to find a way for life to matter for us. Having a family often does that, as your children's wellbeing will matter, but of course it's not limited to that. A sense of wonderment, and of gratitude, also helps.

Our 'cosmic context' also matters. This is what religion provided: a cosmic story that you were part of — Wayfarer

10. Maybe someone else I missed. — Astorre

Some will say the overarching problem is religion or the human tendency to form dogmatic ideologies, and of course, others will say the overarching problem is the loss of religion — Janus

The picture of the world that is still being taught today (I can see this from my children’s textbooks) looks roughly like this:

1. A problem has one correct answer.
2. Facts are objective.
3. The world is linear, comprehensible and obeys rules. — Astorre

This is where I highlight the problem: claiming one or the other as true; claiming the truth of both, or claiming the futility of everything. That's the problem.

For the first time in history, an external, universal, generally accepted authority (God, Reason, Inevitable Progress) has disappeared, one that would say, "None of this is accidental; it's all part of a greater, meaningful plan."

Before, Chaos was an accident amidst necessity (God, Law). Now, Order is perceived as a short-lived, fragile, localized accident amidst universal, fundamental Chaos.

And at the center of this is a contemporary, raised on the positivist notions of the 19th century. — Astorre

Yet people from your closest circle keep telling you about your numerological number, zodiac sign and retrograde Mercury. — Astorre

Perhaps I received an outdated education, but it taught me that gender is an objective biological fac — Astorre

I might add that we were also taught that if you want a higher chance of certainty and predictability in your world, you need to be rich. Predictably is a by product of power and wealth is how you obtain control. I think that has a certain logic to it, though it never left me with a motivation to make money. — Tom Storm

Outside of this, my education left me with a view that certainty is there to be overthrown and the world is chaotic. — Tom Storm

Now, Order is perceived as a short-lived, fragile, localized accident amidst universal, fundamental Chaos. — Astorre

And they came to similar conclusions:
Outside of this, my education left me with a view that certainty is there to be overthrown and the world is chaotic.
— Tom Storm
and
Now, Order is perceived as a short-lived, fragile, localized accident amidst universal, fundamental Chaos.
— Astorre — Astorre

However, as writers of contemporary history, we have the opportunity to find out the answer to this question: can a person live peacefully with a private understanding of truth, instead of global narratives? — Astorre

Good point. But when we say that perceptual or felt experience is pre-conceptual, this doesn’t have to indicate there is no ideal component to it. Rather, conceptuality understood as formal, representational predication is a derivative modification of the more primary idealizing process of sense-making. — Joshs

The picture of the world that is still being taught today (I can see this from my children’s textbooks) looks roughly like this:

1. A problem has one correct answer.
2. Facts are objective.
3. The world is linear, comprehensible and obeys rules.

But the world we live in keeps showing us that something is wrong. Let me give some examples from my own experience. — Astorre

This story is not about me deciding to shout “THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD” or accusing everyone of incompetence. I simply wanted to share my observations about how people like us adapt to all this. Based on what I’ve seen, I have identified the following groups: — Astorre

1. Retreat into denial and traditionalism: “let’s go back to the roots, everything was clear there.”
2. Try to stretch the old picture of the world onto the new reality. They argue and try to prove there is one single cause for everything.
3. Break down: anxiety, depression, apathy. And seem to remain in that state forever.
4. Go with the flow, no longer trying to build anything; this very flow doesn’t even leave time to think about anything. They surf the waves of uncertainty and stop looking for the “true cause” of everything.
5. Contemplate and write long forum posts or books like “The Burnout Society.”
6. Those who instead of the old Newtonian world built a new "solid" world of data, metric and "scientifically proven". They believe neither in God nor in progress, but in tests, randomized studies, effective altruism, AI safety, longevity studies.
8. Those who are looking for an explanation in numerology, astrology, or tarot.
9. Those who are developing their own ontology
10. Maybe someone else I missed. — Astorre