Abstract

Today, most liberal states are torn between attempts to accommodate different religions within floating limits of tolerance, and at the same time trying to uphold a sense of national identity. The traditionally liberal way to negotiate this dilemma has, put bluntly, been to address religion as a generic category, relegate it to the private sphere, and to make religion an object of tolerance. This idea of a strict separation between religion and the secular rests on an Enlightenment notion of a secular reason disembodied from tradition. Against such an understanding post-secular philosophers have sought to make tacit assumptions about the nature of reality explicit, and consequently, to make metaphysics relevant. This book explores the metaphysical assumptions that underlie different interpretations of the relationship between religion and the secular, faith and reason, and transcendence and immanence. Questioning the notion of secular reason as a neutral and ultimate adjudicator of religious difference, different answers to how people of diverse religious and cultural identities can live together peacefully are explored.