The Decentering of the Secular

Di Blasi, Luca Daniele (2015). The Decentering of the Secular. In: World Religions in Secular Societies in the Age of Globalization: Problems and Chances (pp. 50-72). Religious Culture Press

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The so-called “return of religion” is deeply related to a shift of the main Western antagonist from communism to Islam after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Against the background of Islam, the split and inner connection between Christianity and the secular has become more visible, meaning that the secular lost its apparent neutrality. This paper analyzes different Western attempts of the last 20 years to respond to what I would call the decentering of the secular: the affirmation of the split and connection between the secular and Christianity and the claim of the exemplarity and universality of this western model (conservative liberalism); the attempt to recenter the secular as “post-secular” on the basis of the accepted persistence of religions (leftist liberalism); the affirmation of a culturally radical relativized secularization (Gianni Vattimo). Finally, I will indicate post- and decolonial approaches that are critical towards a complicity of Christianity and secularization and, based on that, suggest possibilities to deal with a radical decentering of the secular.

Item Type:

Book Section (Book Chapter)

Division/Institute:

01 Faculty of Theology > Department of Protestant Theology [discontinued] > Institute of Systematic Theology [discontinued] > Dogmatics and the History of Philosophy [discontinued]

UniBE Contributor:

Di Blasi, Luca Daniele

Subjects:

100 Philosophy > 190 Modern western philosophy
200 Religion > 210 Philosophy & theory of religion

ISBN:

978-7-5188-0214-2

Publisher:

Religious Culture Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Luca Daniele Di Blasi

Date Deposited:

19 Aug 2016 08:47

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:57

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/85961

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/85961

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