Abstract

Religion in a post-secular age. The echoes of feuerbachian’s anthropotheism on Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty’s thought This paper questions the role and future of religion in a post-secular age by considering the philosophical perspective of Ludwig Feuerbach, one of the main opposer of Christian religion. The core idea is that a close relationship exists between Holy and Secular. Furthermore, I discuss the idea that religion, even purified from dogmatic stances and metaphysical backdrop, might be a reliable discourse in God’s Death era. The very analysis proposed by Feuerbach about the anthropological essence of Christian religion could be intended as a viaticum to the current debates dealing with the idea of an authentic religious experience in a post-metaphysical era. With regard to this, Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty’s contributions, despite the temporal distance to Feuerbach, are characterized from similarities. Indeed, they share with Feuerbach the view of religion as something deeper than mere faith in a transcendent Entity and as something whose essence stands in brotherhood, charity and openness to alterity. Vattimo himself, who is a believer, starts his reflection from a perspective different from Rorty’s, the latter being anticlerical. Nevertheless, religion once stripped away its metaphysical dogmas shows that anti-essentialism of XIX and XX centuries would lead to more tolerance between atheists and theists of different kind.