The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

*Winner of the American Philosophical Association's 2020 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This essay offers a novel account of the secularity of Latin American liberation philosophy. It challenges the accepted notion that liberation philosophy applies the methods and approaches of Latin American liberation theology to the philosophical arena, thus putting liberation theology on secular grounds. While this formulation is true insofar as liberation philosophy is not bound by the hermeneutics of any particular religious tradition, this formulation could be misconstrued (...) given that liberation philosophy does not premise such secularization in an undialectical understanding of secularity as secularism that disavows religion. Rather, liberation philosophy’s secularity is dialectical in that it requires constant engagement with re-ligion, not in the hermeneutics of any specific tradition but with “the traditional question of the Absolute.” Due to this often-misunderstood element of liberation philosophy, it has frequently been “ghettoized and relegated to the ‘safe’ area of theological studies,” as Eduardo Mendieta argues. However, I contend that liberation philosophy’s secular grounds offer an original contribution to philosophy as a decolonial and postsecularist liberation philosophy, one that conceives of secularism as an aspect of coloniality to be overcome, an obstacle rather than a benefit for Latin American philosophers seeking to gain a better understanding of our historical conditions. (shrink)

Moral pluralism poses a foundational problem for secular clinical ethics: How can ethical dilemmas be resolved in a context where there is disagreement not only on particular cases, but further, on...

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

How secular is contemporary society? Are pockets of sectarianism embedded in societies of developed countries? This timely book examines the interweaving of politics and religion, and of tradition and innovation in a variety of cultural settings. Eminent scholars from four continents examine here current turmoil in religious beliefs, practices, and organization--not only in the Western world, but in South America, Africa, South Asia, New Zealand, and Japan. They scrutinize evidence of religious change, decline, and revival; investigate challenges posed by new (...) religious movements; and locate religious change and conflict in the context of broader shifts in consciousness and culture. Contributors include Richard Fenn, Phillip E. Hammond, David Martin, Philip Rieff, Roland Robertson, and Mark Schibley. With its focus on the interplay of secularization, rationalism, and sectarianism, this work offers a fitting tribute to Bryan Wilson, who has made so many contributions to the sociological understanding of these phenomena. (shrink)

Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India's electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly 'Western' concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary elaborates upon an intellectual history (...) of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state. (shrink)

From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. _Post-Secular Philosophy_ is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by modern (...) philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, _Post-Secular Philosophy_ presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking. (shrink)

The national standards for clinical ethics consultation set forth by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities endorse an “ethics facilitation” approach, which characterizes the role of the ethicist as one skilled at facilitating consensus within the range of ethically acceptable options. To determine the range of ethically acceptable options, ASBH recommends the standard model of decision-making, which is grounded in the values of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. has sharply criticized the standard model for presuming (...) contentful moral claims in circumscribing the range of ethically acceptable options, which, he argues, cannot be rationally justified in a pluralistic context. Engelhardt’s solution is a secular clinical ethics based on a contentless principle of permission. The first part of this article lays out Engelhardt’s negative claim, that reason cannot establish contentful moral claims, and his positive claim, that secular clinical ethics ought to be based on a contentless principle of permission. The second part critiques these negative and positive claims. The purpose of this paper is to defend secular clinical ethics expertise—defined as the ability of ethicists to offer justified moral recommendations grounded in consensus positions endorsed by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities—from the radical critiques of Engelhardt, who argues that no moral or metaphysical claims, and hence no bioethical consensus, can be rationally justified. Engelhardt’s critiques have caused some to worry that secular clinical ethics is in a state of theoretical crisis; this article concludes that Engelhardt’s view is an unstable basis for that worry. (shrink)

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

In his 2010 article, ‘Secular Spirituality and the Logic of Giving Thanks’, John Bishop recalls a striking theme in a recent address by Richard Dawkins in which he appeared to enthusiastically endorse the appropriateness of a ‘naturalised spirituality’ that involved ‘existential gratitude’, and this led him to investigate the notion of a naturalised or secular spirituality with particular reference to Robert Solomon’s Spirituality for the Skeptic (2002). This essay looks to pick up on Bishop’s engagements with both Dawkins and Solomon, (...) but to extend the conversation well beyond them in order to defend the credibility and integrity of secular spirituality in its movement of ontological gratitude. In this way it looks to offer a first sketch of what might be termed a ‘hermeneutics of ontological gratitude’. To this end – and via a distinction between gratitude for existence and life – the essay considers Dawkins’ argument and Solomon’s work in further detail, before turning to consider various other perspectives on the problem including Kenneth Schmitz’s existential Thomist notion of ontological contingency, Hannah Arendt’s concept of primary natality, and Emmanuel Levinas’ sketch of the self in its interiority and economy. My claim is that any serious naturalistic spirituality needs to take into account not only a gratitude for one’s existence per se, but for the whole context of individual and collective being. (shrink)

Considering the enormous outpouring of scholarly work on Schmitt over the last two decades, the absence of an adequate treatment in English of Schmitt's concept of history and the problem of secularization is quite surprising. After all, it is Schmitt himself who claims that “all human beings who plan and attempt to unite the masses behind their plans engage in some form of philosophy of history,” such that the attempt to make sense of Schmitt's program remains incomplete without a (...) serious treatment of his philosophy of history. This article is an attempt to address this problem by means of his exchange with Hans Blumenberg who, more than any other critic of Schmitt, was privy to the political intentions behind Schmitt's metaphorical use of theology. While their discussion is extensive and wide-ranging, I focus here on their diverging philosophies of history, precisely that aspect that is most relevant to gaining a more expansive understanding of Schmitt's arguments, and indeed the relationship between political thought and historical thought. (shrink)

From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. _Post-Secular Philosophy_ is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by modern (...) philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, _Post-Secular Philosophy_ presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking. (shrink)

In `Secular Womynism: A View From The Left', I introduced and articulated a viable alternative approach to the concept known as `Traditional Womanism'. In so doing, the term `Feminist Womynist Philosopher/ Philosophy were born as an epistemological construct. As a further explication of the definition and praxis of the term, I now offer, Secular Womynism: Part II: An Epistemology…It IS… What It IS!' This article will serve as a more focused prolegomena involving the fiftyeight components of which the term, feminist (...) womynist philosopher is comprised. The aforementioned components constitute the foundation of what will, at some point in the evolution of Womynist Theory, come to be called, `Womynist Ways of Knowing: A Womynist Epistemology', and will serve as the first such concrete claim within the discourse of Womynist thought. (shrink)

Drawing on group rights theory, author argues that a group organized around a religious motif should neither be summarily excluded from nor unduly favored in secular deliberations as to public policy and practice. To arrive at this conclusion he examines the implications of each of the following claims: (1) individuals need to operate in and through groups to influence government; (2) a political system faces moral difficulties if it is open to group-generated input; (3) worthy causes can be better advanced (...) by organized groups than by unconnected individuals; and (4) this is so whether the cause is advanced by a religious or by a non-religious group. (shrink)

_An essential collection of Stephen Batchelor’s most probing and important work on secular Buddhism_ As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream Western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular (...) rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor’s writings on these themes, he explores the complex implications of Buddhism’s secularization. Ranging widely—from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice—he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world. (shrink)

This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

The authors revisit the idea that Enlightenment spearheaded secularization. This book invites all to look at the Enlightenment religiosity as founded on a merger of religious criticism and heterodoxy.

Why do scientists do experiments? What do their experiments reveal? Scientifically, can we decide what to believe? Is evolution a scientific theory? Such apparently simple questions are brilliantly investigated by celebrated philosopher and professor Alan Musgrave in order to interrogate the worldviews we inhabit - and their consequences. Musgrave brings to these questions an expansive historical knowledge, provoking readers to enter the now-discredited belief-systems of earlier ages in order to compare these with their own beliefs. Discursive, entertaining, and provocative, Secular (...) Sermons contains fourteen essays by Musgrave - New Zealand's leading contemporary philosopher - examining the basic assumptions of science, religion, and mathematics. The book is an insightful introduction to the philosophical thought of Aristotle, Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Darwin, and Einstein, among others. It puts modern science in a broader historical perspective and offers an entertaining introduction to the philosophical paradigm of Critical Rationalism. (shrink)

Secular people are strangely ambiguous. They feel a tension between what they don't share and what they have in common-between avoiding religion and embracing something like it. An event as ordinary as a wedding can be uncomfortable if it feels too religious, and even for those who are indifferent to religion, a passing reference to God can be cringeworthy. And yet, religion is tough to avoid completely without living in its remainder. The Secular Paradox explains why. Relying on several years (...) of ethnographic research among secular activists and organized nonbelievers in the United States, Blankholm shows how secular people are both absolutely not religious and part of a religion-like tradition, which includes beliefs and institutions, as well embodied practices. Recovering this tradition makes legible what secular people share with one another and explains why the secular movement in the United States remains predominately white and male. Humanistic Jews, Hispanic Freethinkers, Ex-Muslims, and black nonbelievers are secular misfits whose stories reveal the contours of the secular most clearly by proving to be more and less than what remains when Christianity is removed. The Secular Paradox offers a radically new way of understanding secularism and secular people by explaining the origins of their inherent contradiction and its awkward effects on their lives. This new understanding matters for anyone who has ever avoided something because it felt too religious, everyone who considers themselves secular, and all those who want to understand them better. (shrink)

Beck discusses the works on religion of the six philosophers he considers most germane to contemporary issues: Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, James, and Santayana. "I have tried to choose men whose independence of mind was such that they often appeared to their contemporaries to be enemies of religion". He first addresses the question, What is secular philosophy? And then explains the differences between the "families" of secular philosophers, before examining both their life and works.

There are indications that simple reaction time might have slowed in Western countries, based on both cohort- and multi-study comparisons. A possible limitation of the latter method in particular is measurement error stemming from methods variance, which results from the fact that instruments and experimental conditions change over time and between studies. We therefore set out to measure the simple auditory reaction time (SRT) of 7,081 individuals (2,997 males and 4,084 females) born in Sweden 1959-1985 (subjects were aged between 27 (...) and 54 years at time of measurement). Depending on cut-offs and adjustment for ageing related slowing on SRT, the data suggest that SRT has increased between 3 and 16 ms in the 27 birth years covered in the present sample. The slowing is unlikely to be explained by attrition, as evaluated by comparing the general intelligence × birth-year interactions and standard deviations for both male participants and dropouts, utilizing military conscript cognitive ability data. The present result is consistent with previous studies employing alternative methods, and may result from several synergistic factors, such as possible recent micro-evolutionary trends favouring lower g in Sweden and the effects of industrially produced neurotoxic substances on peripheral nerve conduction velocity. (shrink)

How has philosophy contributed to bringing about a secular age? What role has philosophy played in bringing about a secular age in which belief and unbelief are both viable options? This paper does not address philosophy in general but rather focuses on a single thinker, Immanuel Kant, to argue that the consequences—both intended and unintended—of Kant's critical philosophy has had the greatest philosophical influence on making unbelief a legitimate alternative to faith in a transcendent God. Initially, the thesis may seem (...) paradoxical because Kant was a firm believer, a Christian who came from a strong pietistic background. He believed that Christianity was the true, universal, and rational religion. Yet the text posits that Kant not only provided a rationale for religious faith but did more than any other modern philosopher to support and legitimize those who seriously question faith in a transcendent God. (shrink)

Some atheists are attracted to the idea of a secular spirituality that carries no commitment to the existence of God or anything similar. Is this a coherent possibility? This paper seeks to define what we mean by a ‘spirituality’ by examining Robert C. Solomon’s defence of spirituality for the religious skeptic, and pursues the question of its coherence by reflecting on what is implied by taking thankfulness to be a proper response to our existence.

An exploration of the relationship between secular humanism and politics, from a liberal perspective.

What is secularity? Might it yield or define a distinctive form of reasoning? If so, would that form of reasoning belong essentially to our modern age, or would it instead have a considerably older lineage? And what might be the relation of that form of reasoning, whatever its lineage, to the Christian thinking that is often said to oppose it? In the present volume, these and related questions are addressed by a distinguished group of scholars working primarily within the Roman (...) Catholic theological tradition and from the perspectives of Continental philosophy. As a whole, the volume constitutes a conversation among thinkers who agree in their concerns but not necessarily their conclusions. Taken individually, each essay concentrates on a range of historical developments with close attention to their intellectual and sometimes pedagogical implications. Secular reason, they argue, is neither the antipode of Christian thought nor a stable and well-resolved component of it. Christian thinking may engage with secular reason as the site of profound difficulties, but on occasion will also learn from it as a source of new insight. _Christianity and Secular Reason_ contributes to the contemporary discussion of secularity prompted especially by Charles Taylor’s book _A Secular Age_. Unlike Taylor's work, however, this collection concentrates specifically on secular _reason_ and explicitly on its relation to Christianity. In this sense, it is closer to Michael J. Buckley’s _At the Origins of Modern Atheism_ or, to a lesser degree, Louis Dupré’s _Passage to Modernity_, which concern themselves with broad cultural developments. "This volume offers a variety of perspectives, some historical, some normative/constructive, on the questions of the relations between politics/culture/religion and the relations between selfhood/humanity/world. The essays are, without exception, of high quality in both scholarly-exegetical terms, and constructive-normative ones. The writers are learned, sometimes witty, and often interesting." —_Paul Griffiths, Duke Divinity School _ "This is no other volume I know of that covers just this ground. There is a substantial literature on, for example, the Habermas/Ratzinger exhange, and on Kant's view of the relation between philosophy and religion, and on the twelfth century background for thirteenth century reflection on this relation. The merit of _Christianity and Secular Reason_ is that it holds these threads together, and others besides, in a new and fruitful way." —_John E. Hare, Yale University_. (shrink)

_Secular Theology_ brings together new writings by some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers on the viability of secular theology. Critically assessing Radical Orthodoxy and putting American radical theology in context, it provides new resources for philosophical theology. Themes covered include postmodern theology, ethics, psychoanalysis, the death of God and medieval theology.

Jeremy Bentham was an ardent secularist convinced that society could be sustained without the support of religious institutions or beliefs. This is writ large in the commonly neglected books on religion he wrote and published during the last twenty-five years of his life. However his earliest writings on the subject date from the 1770s, when as a young man he first embarked on his calling as a legal theorist and social reformer. From that time on, religion was never far from (...) the centre of his thoughts. In Secular Utilitarianism, James Crimmins illustrates the nature, extent, and depth of Jeremy Bentham's concern with religion, from his Oxford days of first doubts to the middle years of quiet unbelief, and finally, the zealous atheism and secularism of his later life. Dr Crimmins provides an interpretation of Bentham's thought in which his religious views, hitherto of little interest to Bentham scholars, are shown to be integral: on the one hand intimately associated with the metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological principles which gave shape to his system as a whole, and on the other central to the development of his entirely secular view of society. (shrink)

Charles Taylor in A Secular Age describes the modern secular age as one in which ‘the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing … falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people’. This article reflects on his historico-analytic investigation of the emergence of modern secularity and his account of how it shapes the current conditions of belief. Taylor challenges the widespread presumption against belief mainly on ethical considerations, especially what counts as human fulfilment. The article argues (...) that he fails to deal adequately with epistemic considerations bearing on belief and unbelief. Furthermore, his argument is weakened by a surprising absence of attention to the primary account of human fulfilment in Greek philosophy as a central element in the Christian tradition. (shrink)

The existence of evil is often held to pose philosophical problems only for theists. I argue that the existence of evil gives rise to a philosophical problem which confronts theist and atheist alike. The problem is constituted by the following claims: (1) Successful human beings (i.e., those meeting their basic prudential interests) are committed to a good-enough world; (2) the actual world is not a good-enough world (i.e., sufficient evil exists). It follows that human beings must either (3a) maintain a (...) state of epistemic ignorance regarding the nature of the actual world or (3b) abandon their basic prudential interests. Theists resolve this problem by rejecting (2), only to confront the problem of evil as it is traditionally understood. Successful atheists also reject (2), but without adequate grounds for doing so. (shrink)

The expression "post-secular" has emerged in the context of contemporary culture. But it is especially due to the Radical Orthodoxy movement, especially its extension of the thematic concerns advanced by La nouvelle théologie about how to best conceive the supernatural in our times, that two important possibilities have come to the fore: firstly, the rethinking of the relationship between philosophy and theology; secondly, the reconsidering of Christian orthodoxy's potential to resituate the human experience in regard to orthodoxy's most daring proposal: (...) theosis. In the spirit of this reconsideration, the thinking of Maurice Blondel and St. Gregory Palamas in relation to theosis is explored against the background of postsecularity and its interest in explicating the riches of immanence and corporality. A expressão "pós-secular" tem emergido no contexto da cultura contemporânea. Mas é sobretudo devido ao movimento Ortodoxia Radical, especialmente como estende a preocupação temática da Nouvelle théologie quanto ao modo de conceber o sobrenatural nos nossos tempos, que duas possibilidades importantes se têm apresentado: primeiramente, o repensar da relação entre a filosofia e a teologia; em segundo lugar, o reconsiderar da capacidade da ortodoxia cristã de situar de novo a experiência humana na perspectiva da proposta mais audaz da ortodoxia: theosis. No espírito desta reconsideração, os pensamentos de Maurice Blondel e de São Gregório Palamas em relação a theosis são vistos no horizonte da pós-secularidade e o interesse que esta tem em explicitar a riqueza da imanência e da corporalidade. (shrink)

Many religions offer hope for a life that transcends death and believers find great comfort in this. Non-believers typically do not have such hopes. In the face of death, they may find consolation in feeling contented with the life they have lived. But do they have hopes? I will identify a range of distinctly secular hopes at the end of life. Nothing stops religious people from sharing these secular hopes, in addition to their hope for eternal life. I will distinguish (...) between hopes about one’s life, hopes about one’s death, hopes about attitudes of others, and hopes about the future. But before turning to these hopes, I will reflect on the following question: What is it that would keep a person from hoping for eternal life? (shrink)

_Secular Theology_ brings together new writings by some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers on the viability of secular theology. Critically assessing Radical Orthodoxy and putting American radical theology in context, it provides new resources for philosophical theology. Themes covered include postmodern theology, ethics, psychoanalysis, the death of God and medieval theology.

Controversies arise over abortion, assisted dying and conscientious objection in healthcare. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between attitudes towards these bioethical dilemmas, and secularity and religiosity. Data were drawn from a 2017 web-based survey of a representative sample of 1615 Norwegian adults. Latent moderated structural equations modelling was used to develop a model of the relationship between attitudes. The resulting model indicates that support for abortion rights is associated with pro-secular attitudes and is a main (...) “driver” for support for assisted dying and opposition to conscientious objection. This finding should be regarded as a hypothesis which ought to be tested in other populations. If the relationship is robust and reproduced elsewhere, there are important consequences for CO advocates who would then have an interest in disentangling the debate about CO from abortion; and for health systems who ought to consider carefully how a sound policy on CO can safeguard both patient trust in the services and the moral integrity of professionals. It is suggested that if religiosity wanes and pro-secular and pro-abortion attitudes become more widespread, support for CO might decline, putting into question whether present policies of toleration of conscientious refusals will remain acceptable to the majority. (shrink)

This article analyzes the compound of the categories of secularization and reoccupation in its variations from Hans Blumenberg's philosophy to Carl Schmitt's political theory and, ultimately, to Reinhart Koselleck's conceptual history. By revisiting the debate between Blumenberg and Schmitt on secularization and political theology with regard to the political-theoretical aspects of secularization and the methodological aspects of reoccupation, I will provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension-ridden elements at play in Koselleck's theorizing of modernity, history, and (...) concepts. For Schmitt, secularization is inherently related to the question of political conflict, and, correspondingly, he attempts to discredit Blumenberg's criticism of secularization as an indirectly aggressive, and thereby hypocritical, attempt to escape the political. To this end, I argue, Schmitt appropriates Blumenberg's concept of “reoccupation” and uses it alternately in the three distinct senses of “absorption,”“reappropriation,” and “revaluation.” Schmitt's famous thesis of political concepts as secularized theological concepts contains an unmistakable methodological element and a research program. The analysis therefore shows the relevance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt debate for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck. I scrutinize Koselleck's understanding of secularization from his early Schmittian and Löwithian theory of modernity to his later essays on temporalization of history and concepts. Despite Blumenberg's criticism, Koselleck holds onto the category of secularization throughout, but gradually relativizes it into a research hypothesis among others. Simultaneously, Koselleck formalizes, alongside other elements, the Schmittian account of reoccupation into his method of conceptual analysis and uses the term in the same three senses—thus making “reoccupation” conceptually compatible with “secularization,” despite the former notion's initial critical function in Blumenberg's theory. The examination highlights a Schmittian residue that accounts for Koselleck's reserved attitude toward Blumenberg's metaphorology, regardless of a significant methodological overlap. (shrink)

This paper explores the distinction between secularism as ideology and secularism as statecraft principle. By secularism as statecraft principle, I understand simply some principle of separation between religious and political authority, either for the sake of the neutrality of the state vis-à-vis each and all religions, or for the sake of protecting the freedom of conscience of each individual, or for the sake of facilitating the equal access of all citizens, religious as well as nonreligious, to democratic participation. Such a (...) statecraft doctrine neither presupposes nor needs to entail any substantive "theory," positive or negative, of "religion." Indeed, the moment the state holds a particular view of "religion" one enters the realm of ideology. Secularism becomes an ideology the moment it entails a theory of what "religion" is or does. It is this assumption that "religion," in the abstract, is a thing that has an essence or that produces certain particular and predictable effects that is the defining characteristic of modern secularism. (shrink)

Offers a philosophical appraisal of secularization in light of re-emergence of religion in the past several decades. This book explores the adequacy of classical theories of secularization, as well as what might be offered in their place. It asks the question to what extent philosophy itself has nourished and inspired these kinds of prophecies.

After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann is a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of 18th-century German philosopher, J. G. ...

In _Secular Grace_ Dana Freibach-Heifetz addresses the crisis of modernity, proposing an ethic of love based on a new philosophical concept of “secular grace" as intersubjective relations.

In this essay, I maintain that although atheism, minimally construed, consists simply of the belief that there is no God or gods, atheists must embrace a secular worldview of one kind or another. Since they cannot be without a worldview, atheists must develop an alternative to the religious, especially the theistic, worldviews which they, by implication, reject. Further, I argue that there are, at the very least, two options available to atheists and that these should not be conflated or treated (...) as one and the same. The two options that I explore and distinguish are scientism and secular humanism. I also maintain that the things that might count as good grounds for or against secular or religious worldviews are shaped significantly by whether atheists embrace scientism or secular humanism. (shrink)

This study argues that the bond between ‘secularization’ and ‘de-legitimation’ is not only borne out in debates over grand historical narratives relating to the status of modernity, as argued by Hans Blumenberg, but in debates over the appraisal of specific modern philosophical programs as well. It does this by examining how the category of ‘secularization' is used to delegitimize Martin Heidegger's thought, from both theological and secular perspectives, by two of his former students, Hans Jonas and Karl Löwith. (...) By analysing their interpretation of Heidegger and their understanding of secularization, legitimacy, and the philosophy-theology relationship, this study sheds light on the intellectual projects of these three thinkers – master and two students – and demonstrates the application of secularization as a hermeneutical category of de-legitimization on the basis of ‘insufficiency’ – either insufficiently secular or insufficiently religious. (shrink)

Both in ethics and in epistemology one source of scepticism in its contemporary version is the realization, often belated, of the full consequences of atheism. Modern non-moral philosophy looks back to Descartes as its father figure, but disowns the Third Meditation. But if God does not underwrite one's cognitive powers, what does? The largely unknown evolution of them, which is just a version of Descartes’ unreliable demon? “Let us … grant that all that is here said of God is a (...) fable, nevertheless in whatever way they suppose that I have arived at the state of being that I have reached, whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method — since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my being the less powerful”. (shrink)

This article shows that the conspicuous and consistent idiosyncrasy of Grotius's Biblical interpretation is an important part of his revolutionary effort to secularize natural law. In De iure praedae and related works, Grotius systematically deployed a range of exegetical techniques in order to demonstrate that the Bible, like all texts, is open to multiple interpretations and susceptible to hijacking by rival agendas. This strategy aimed to render the Bible inadmissible as evidence in legal disputes and political legitimacy claims. The consistent (...) instrumentality of Grotius's use of the Bible in IPC cannot be dismissed as mere legalistic opportunism or described as an atheistic move. Rather, Grotius's exegetical strategy was motivated by pacifism and a desire to protect religion from politicization. The article positions this secularization strategy in the intellectual environment of the Leiden Circle, and shows how competing Catholic, Calvinist, and Mennonite political readings of the same key biblical passages during the Dutch-Iberian conflict provided the immediate occasion for writing IPC. In order to construct a natural law theory that was independent from, and therefore acceptable to, all religious sides, it was necessary to ensure that the Bible have no final word in law or politics, lest its invocation link disagreements to belief and thereby render them impossible to resolve. (shrink)