The article reconstructs the double movement of departure and return to Emile Durkheim’s sociology that Jürgen Habermas realized in his work in order to define the theoretical paradigm of communicative action and revive the original project of Critical Theory. It highlights, in the first part, how Habermas first used Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to assign a phylogenetic function to ritual practices and explain modernity, from an evolutionist perspective, as the final result of a progressive linguistification of the sacred, having substituted the communion of minds in rites with the communication of reasons in the public sphere. After having discussed the two main objections that Habermas addressed to Durkheim at the time of The Theory of Communicative Action, the second part shows how he recently revised his rationalist framework through a new anthropological reading of The Elementary Forms, aimed at demonstrating, in the context of a more complex account of evolution, why the requirement of justice discloses, even in modernity, the active presence of the sacred in language and orientates the critical work of reason in the search of solidarity. Pointing out the new directions in which the hypothesis of a linguistification of the sacred must be seriously revised, it ends by suggesting how the question of social justice may open the path to a positive cooperation between sociology and Critical Theory.

中文翻译：

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作为语言神圣的正义：涂尔干和哈贝马斯在现代性和批判的终极基础上

文章重构了于尔根·哈贝马斯在其著作中实现的埃米尔·涂尔干社会学的出发和回归双重运动，以界定交往行为的理论范式，复兴批判理论的原始计划。在第一部分，它强调了哈贝马斯如何首先使用涂尔干的《宗教生活的基本形式》为仪式实践分配系统发育功能，并从进化论的角度解释现代性，作为对神圣的渐进语言化的最终结果，取代仪式中的思想交流与公共领域中的理性交流。在讨论了哈贝马斯在《交往行动理论》时代对涂尔干提出的两个主要反对意见之后，第二部分展示了他最近如何通过对《基本形式》的新人类学阅读来修改他的理性主义框架，目的是在更复杂的进化描述的背景下展示为什么正义的要求即使在现代性中也揭示了积极的存在语言中的神圣，并将理性的批判性工作定位在寻求团结的过程中。指出必须认真修改神圣语言化假设的新方向，最后提出社会正义问题如何为社会学和批判理论之间的积极合作开辟道路。语言中神圣的积极存在，并引导理性的批判性工作以寻求团结。指出必须认真修改神圣语言化假设的新方向，最后提出社会正义问题如何为社会学和批判理论之间的积极合作开辟道路。语言中神圣的积极存在，并引导理性的批判性工作以寻求团结。指出必须认真修改神圣语言化假设的新方向，最后提出社会正义问题如何为社会学和批判理论之间的积极合作开辟道路。