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In response to the breakdown of the sacred, Habermas argues that the sacred transformed through a process of moralization. This moralization transformed the sacred into a framework to stand above and outside the existing framework of mythical thinking. If "the thesis is correct", this happened not just for Jewish monotheism but for the other axial worldviews. Namely, three innovations:
- the breakthrough to a worldview perspective that, with God (or a divine law) as its point of reference, transcends everything within the world;
- the linking of the communicative (or a functionally equivalent) access to God (or the divine) with a path of salvation that connects the promise of savings justice with observance of a universalistic ethic and fosters an individualization of redemptive communication with the divine;
- a form of cult concentrated around sacred scripture that 'disenchants' the practices rooted in magical thinking.
The next 7 sections are the climax of the book and the thesis that sets the groundwork for the remaining series. To recap, Habermas wants to claim that the dialectic of faith and knowledge is not something that is isolated to Western philosophy, and that the learnings a result of the dialectic of Jewish monotheism, Greek metaphysics, Christian faith, and Roman law mixing together to create Western philosophy is something that is valid even for non-Western philosophy and religions because the sacred core is present in all the axial worldviews, East vs West.