Habermas se ha valido a menudo de la expresión "sociedad postsecular" para referirse al proceso de aprendizaje mutuo entre la razón ilustrada y la conciencia religiosa en el seno de las sociedades modernas. Esa expresión es utilizada por el pensador alemán en dos acepciones distintas. Unas veces la emplea como categoría sociológica descriptiva y otras como categoría filosófica de carácter normativo. En este trabajo rechazamos el uso descriptivo del concepto de sociedad postsecular, haciéndonos eco de las críticas que contra (...) él se han vertido desde la sociología de la religión contemporánea. A la vez, reconocemos el interés que reviste la propuesta normativa de Habermas. Tras exponer el sentido preciso de esa propuesta, examinamos la principal acusación que contra ella cabe formular: la de funcionalismo religioso. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se interroga la atencionalidad propia del amor en cuanto que experiencia privilegiada y primordial del cuidado. En busca de un acceso al fenómeno del amor, se propone interrogarlo conforme al tipo de atención que promueve, asumiendo y discutiendo los recursos aportados por la fenomenología husserliana, así como por las fenomenologías contraintencionales, en particular la de Waldenfels. De este modo, si para describir este fenómeno es preciso dar cuenta del fundamento afectivo de la atención, también hay que reconocer que el (...) amor es vivido como un hecho original o un acontecimiento que implica para el amante una reorientación existencial y atencional. ABSTRACT The article inquires into the attentionality inherent to love as a privileged and primordial experience of care. Seeking access to the phenomenon of love, we suggest inquiring into it according to the type of attention it promotes, drawing on and discussing the resources provided by Husserlian phenomenology, as well as by counter-intentional phenomenologies, particularly Waldenfels'. Thus, while it is necessary to account for the affective grounds of attention in order to describe this phenomenon, it is also essential to recognize that love is experienced as an original fact or as an event that entails an existential and attentional reorientation of the lover. (shrink)

De repente, la religión recobra una relevancia que parecía olvidada en Europa. Sin embargo, no había dejado de desempeñar un papel en las sociedades europeas, pero era un papel discreto que vuelve al primer plano debido a la llegada de inmigrantes que profesan creencias diferentes a las mayoritarias y llevan a los europeos a identificarse como parte de sociedades postseculares. En este contexto, se cuestiona el modelo liberal de la libertad de conciencia y la construcción de la (...) idea de tolerancia, cuyo paradigma normativo es el liberalismo político de John Rawls. Autoras como Martha Nussbaum plantean la importancia de primar la idea de respeto sobre la de tolerancia. En este trabajo se tratan algunos problemas que pueden derivar de ciertas concepciones de respeto. (shrink)

En la obra de Aranguren la dimensión religiosa es crucial, cuando la trata desde la perspectiva de los “estudios religiosos” y cuando se ocupa de ella desde la perspectiva ética. En este segundo caso, Aranguren habla de una “ética abierta a la religión”. El artículo trata de mostrar que en este segundo caso se produce una evolución en el pensamiento de Aranguren, en la que cabe distinguir dos etapas. En la primera de ellas la religión se presenta como la culminación (...) de todas las aspiraciones del hombre desde una ética fundamentada en la metafísica. En la segunda etapa Dios aparece como posible respuesta a preguntas abiertas desde una ética hermenéutico-narrativa. (shrink)

En una perspectiva �postsecular�, siguiendo a Habermas, puede afirmarse que no sólo la ratio sino también las culturas basadas en fides, pueden contribuir con �traducciones� que aporten significativamente a la comprensión del ser sí mismo humano y su télos, reflexión exigida por la filosofía moral hoy. El artículo propone algunos elementos del pensamiento de San Agustín que podrían abrirse a un diálogo fecundo con la ética contemporánea, tales como: el ser sí mismo capaz de ratio y veritas; la interioridad como (...) pilar último de la comunidad y de la sociedad; temporalidad y anhelo de felicidad; la experiencia del mal y la supremacía del bien; la tensión entre caritas y cupiditas; libertad y gracia; ciudadanía terrena y celeste. (shrink)

Este trabajo consta de dos partes, ligadas entre sí por el concepto de ciudadanía democrática. La primera intenta diseñar los trazos de un modelo de democracia deliberativa como el más apropiado para encarnar la sustancia misma de la democracia. De ahí que presente el sentido de la democracia deliberativa, sus rasgos, sus ventajas frente a otros modelos, las condiciones de su puesta en marcha, sus límites y el tipo concreto de democracia deliberativa que sería más adecuado y que recibe el (...) nombre de «comunicativa»; todo ello en diálogo con sus principales representantes. La segunda parte aborda la cuestión concreta del lugar de la religión en las sociedades que se autocomprenden como democracias deliberativas, sociedades que cabe entender como seculares, postseculares, o mejor, pluralistas. Entrando en el debate entre los defensores de un espacio público-político y los de una esfera pública polifónica, entre los partidarios de una razón pública secular o pública sin más adjetivos, el trabajo propone un modelo de espacio público-social como lugar de descubrimiento, en que la diversidad de las voces garantiza el respeto a la ciudadanía compleja y posibilita juegos de suma positiva. (shrink)

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a (...) new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to re-engage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time. (shrink)

"Postsecular Benjamin"explicates Benjamin's engagements with religious traditions as resources for contemporary debates on secularism, conflict, and identity.".

In this essay, I critically examine Habermas’ approach to fundamentalism, a question that explicitly and implicitly alike bears influence on the formation of his postsecular thesis. The overview of his theory is followed by a combined analysis, depending on Torkel Brekke’s sociological study on fundamentalism, on the one hand, and a joint study by Adam Seligman and others in the field of anthropology and social theory. In this regard, questions of sincerity and authenticity are in the focus of my examination, (...) underlying that philosophical relevance of the question. On the basis of this combined analysis I argue that fundamentalism can be best analysed as an essential though specific element of modernity. I state that despite its critical attitude towards many developments of modernity, fundamentalism is not only reactively but, in its attitudinal core, a proactively modern phenomenon, and needs be interpreted accordingly as part of the evolving postsecular scenario. (shrink)

By drawing mainly, but not only, on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, I suggest that the postsecular turn provides a more substantial and insightful contribution to the understanding of religious pluralism in contexts of late secularization thanks to its focus on how the self-understanding of religious and secular actors is affected by their co-implication within the same discursive space. The ensuing attention for the processes of self-critique and reciprocal learning allows for a fairer distribution of the burdens (...) of participation, consistently with standards of parity which can be properly, but not exclusively, understood within an egalitarian liberal outlook. The participation to a shared conversation about the primary goods is seen, here, as a primary good in itself. I argue that it is possible to move away from this problem while still retaining the distinct awareness that the postsecular stance articulates about the role played by self-critical understandings of religious and secular views when it comes to the cooperative effort necessary to realize conditions of genuine epistemic parity and equal access to public discourse. To this purpose, I suggest that three further steps should be taken: the boundary between the religious and the secular should be more decisively conceived as a shifting and porous border, the resources of public discourse shouldn’t be too rigidly divided between argumentative and non-argumentative, and the presence of stoppers and enablers of public conversation should be acknowledged both in the religious and in the secular domain. The resulting kind of postsecular perspective will turn out to be relevant at two levels: that of the relationships between individuals who actively engage in public discourse and that of the relationships between religious and secular institutions. (shrink)

The claim that we are entering a “postsecular” age supposedly marks a new openness toward public religion, which was expected to wither as societies modernized. Similarly, postcolonial theory has attempted to think through the public resurgence of indigenous culture after the collapse of “Western” political regimes, which also predicted and prescribed its privatization. Drawing on the work of Partha Chatterjee, this paper argues that the “postsecular,” particularly as it is deployed by Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre, seeks to seduce religious (...) believers and practitioners into just this same logic of self-colonization so that they might be recognized as defenders of an increasingly insecure, liberal nation-state against those who might seek to take advantage of its vulnerability. (shrink)

In this article I explain the origin of the concept “postsecular”. I argue that such concept, spread by Jürgen Habermas since 2001, has its origin in the reformist Jewish thought from 70’s in the United States. In this context, the postsecular is drafted as a phase which Jewish Theology is experiencing as result of its contact with secular lifestyle. Such contact summons to a reflection on ethic values which secularization missed. I argue that some of the meanings of the current (...) concept of “postsecular”, which Habermas articulates, were already present in the first uses of such concept from Eugene B. Borowitz and Emil Fackenheim. Finally, I argue that it might be set up a correlation between the ethical origins of the postsecular and the Habermas’s as “awareness of what is missing”. (shrink)

The concept of the postsecular is a challenge to systematic theological thought, as it points to some context where the opposition between the religious and the secular, or between theism and atheism, is weakened or even surpassed. In this perspective, the postsecular is not about the visibility of religion in the public sphere, but about the way in which we interpret ourselves in the world in order to find orientation and fulfillment. In a postsecular context, religious perspectives and secularist outlooks (...) are no longer opposed of necessity, but draw on a common religious and secular heritage. In this article, Richard Kearney’s Anatheism and Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Deconstruction of Christianity are presented as exemplifications of postsecular thought that may open up new perspectives to systematic theology. In different ways, Kearney and Nancy reflect on a transcendent dimension in our experience or in the world, which is beyond the secular. Yet they distinguish themselves due to a religious transcendence-oriented approach and a secularist world-oriented approach, which shows that the opposition between the religious and the secular may be weakened, but the demarcations between the two still have their impact. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with three overlapping expressions of the increasingly postsecular cast of social and cultural theory. These currents — guided, respectively, by genealogical critique, neo-vitalist social philosophy and postcolonial anti-historicism — seek to problematize the frame of previous radical theorizing by exposing definite connections between the epistemological and political levels of secular understanding, and by assuming that the nature of those linkages counts heavily against secularism. As well as offering an interpretive overview of these contributions, I suggest (...) that they are traversed by a number of conceptual flaws and inconsistencies. The tensions, I argue, stem from the fact that in spite of appearing to be driven by a strong anti-secular thrust, these positionings remain thoroughly intra-secular in character. This needs to be more emphatically acknowledged if the ‘postsecular turn’ is to be productive. (shrink)

In Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State, Robert Audi addresses disagreements among equally rational persons on political matters of coercion by analysing the features of discussions between epistemic peers, and supporting a normative principle of toleration. It is possible to question the extent to which Audi’s views are consistent with the possibility of religious citizens being properly defined as epistemic peers with their non-religious counterparts, insofar as he also argues for some significant constraints on religious reasons in (...) public debates, and he advocates secular reasons being considered as equivalent to natural reasons. I shall also consider Jürgen Habermas’s criticism of Audi’s stance. One of Habermas’ main points focused on Audi’s strong division between religious and non-religious arguments that requires religious citizens to artificially split their reasons, while non-religiously affiliated citizens are not met with any similar requirement. Also, analysing the concept of epistemic parity, we can as well grasp some of the main features of the Habermasian idea of postsecularism. The difference between secular and postsecular views can be framed as hinging on what it means to be epistemic peers, thus bearing consequences on the understanding of the relationship between church and state—particularly regarding the nature of state neutrality and the different status of churches and organised secular groups. (shrink)

This article responds to philosophers and literary critics who espouse concepts about an endemic postsecularity in western nations that encroach across the globe. Postsecularity accounts for the resurgence of a religious consciousness in the face of challenges to secularity in the forms of accommodating minority religions; the yearning for spiritual expression as an antidote to capitalist materialism; and posthuman concerns about the engineering of biological human identities, artificial intelligence, and anthropogenic climate crises. Poetry, with its non-verbal cues, can both animate (...) and also reach beyond the purely rational discourses of philosophy. Accordingly, poems by T.S. Eliot, Stevie Smith, and Carol Ann Duffy span a century of thought and literary evocations of the interstices and crossovers of theocentric belief and unbelief. They illuminate the postsecular elements of partial faith, spiritual plurality, and resacralization. These elements disrupt binary polarizations of atheism and faith. (shrink)

This article responds to philosophers and literary critics who espouse concepts about an endemic postsecularity in western nations that encroach across the globe. Postsecularity accounts for the resurgence of a religious consciousness in the face of challenges to secularity in the forms of accommodating minority religions; the yearning for spiritual expression as an antidote to capitalist materialism; and posthuman concerns about the engineering of biological human identities, artificial intelligence, and anthropogenic climate crises. Poetry, with its non-verbal cues, can both animate (...) and also reach beyond the purely rational discourses of philosophy. Accordingly, poems by T.S. Eliot, Stevie Smith, and Carol Ann Duffy span a century of thought and literary evocations of the interstices and crossovers of theocentric belief and unbelief. They illuminate the postsecular elements of partial faith, spiritual plurality, and resacralization. These elements disrupt binary polarizations of atheism and faith. (shrink)

This paper is an analysis of John Caputo’s philosophical interpretation of ‘the event’ as a form of revelation with specific reference to political theology and in dialogue with the theological notion of ‘interruption’ by the fundamental theologian Lieven Boeve. Following Charles Taylor’s interpretation of the post-secular, the argument is that Boeve’s ‘radical hermeneutics of religion’ is more postmodern than Caputo because it presents religion as co-constituted with language, particularity, and contingency and grounded within the specificity of the Christian narrative.

This article analyses how recent critiques of secularism in political philosophy and cultural anthropology might productively be combined and contrasted with each other. I will show that Jürgen Habermas' postsecularism takes insufficient account of elementary criticisms of secularism on the part of anthropologists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. However, I shall also criticize Saba Mahmood’s reading of secularism by arguing that, in the end, she replaces the secular–religious divide with a secularity–piety divide; for example, in her reading of (...) Nasr Abu Zayd’s secular Islamic hermeneutics. This inhibits the use of her framework of analysis for a criticism of a problem central to Habermas' postsecularism, namely that it remains focused on specific intensities of belief. I shall then argue that, combined with the anthropological critiques of the secular, the political-historical nature of the fanaticism–piety–violence nexus should be integrated into political philosophical debates on secularism and postsecularism. (shrink)

The epoch of Augustine is marked by several crises that settled in the Roman society. These crises did not escape from the sharp look of Saint Augustine. He showed how the political action of his contemporaries was something excessively ineffective to answer the wishes of a fair society, integrated by several people and races. This society, that had conquered in history, with mistakes and cleverness, power and glory, booth in the field of science and technology, for itself, the ways that (...) make sure to its citizens a prosper life, gradually succumbed. Thus, this article aims to exposes to the reader some aspects experienced by this society and make note that when policy is practiced by men who possess as premises the power and his own advantages, there is no richness or organization that will sustain such state or nation. (shrink)

This article critically engages the postsecular turn in feminism by focusing on recent contributions by Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, and Saba Mahmood, whose stance can be seen as symptomatic of the postsecular moment. The article demonstrates that their conjoint theoretical moves have unintended yet important implications, which are left unexamined. Whilst recognizing the importance of the effort of postsecular feminism to think of agency beyond the limitations of Eurocentric theorizing, the article argues that it remains unclear whether the particular conceptualization (...) of agency, as detached from autonomy, can have counter-hegemonic effects. The article is concerned with the politics that the postsecular turn in feminism authorizes, and for this purpose it questions to what extent postsecular feminist theorizing risks the neutralization of critical social theory itself, because abandoning autonomy as the foundation of political subjectivity does not allow for the interrogation of arbitrary authorities and the social inequalities that they sustain. (shrink)

Continental philosophy of religion has been dominated for two decades by "postsecular" and "postmodern" thought. This volume brings together a vanguard of scholars to ask what comes after the postsecular and the postmodern that is, what is Continental philosophy of religion now? Against the subjugation of philosophy to theology, After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion argues that philosophy of religion must either liberate itself from theological norms or mutate into a new practice of (...) thinking in order to confront the challenges religion presents for our time. The essays do not propose a new orthodoxy but set the stage for new debates by reclaiming a practice of philosophy of religion that recovers and draws on the insights of a distinctly modern tradition of Continental philosophy, confronts the challenge of rethinking the secular in the light of the postsecular event, and calls for a move from strictly critical to speculative thought in order to experiment with what philosophy can do. This collection of essays is indispensable for anyone interested in the relationship between philosophy and theology, political questions regarding religion and in what contemporary speculative Continental philosophy has to add to philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This article explores the various uses or – according to some authors, such as the sociologist James Beckford – misuses of the term ‘postsecular’. The variations in its use are indeed so broad that the question is justified whether the terminology as such has much analytical value. The prominence of the ‘postsecular’ in present-day debates in my view primarily indicates the inability among scholars, intellectuals and religious interest groups to come to grips with what – for some at least – (...) is an unexpected presence and resurgence of religion in the public domains of presumably secular societies. The work of the cultural anthropologist Talal Asad shows that the secular does not preclude the religious. All kinds of religious arguments, organizations, and agents are very much present in modern ‘secular’ societies. From this perspective, the emergence of the ‘postsecular’ refers to very real phenomena, most importantly the intertwinement of the secular and the religious. For instance, religious actors do not accept the barriers of secular society and claim a role for religion in public and secular arenas. This insight could be one of the most important driving forces behind the popularity of the term ‘postsecular’ in recent years. (shrink)

The tendencies of postsecularism in the social life of today's Ukraine are especially significant in their influence on the quasi-religious context of religious worships practiced in the country. These factors erode the modernity basis of the society, and Ukraine appears in the contradictory situation of its intention to complete the modernisation process and oppose the antiglobalistic isolationism. The neo-Protestant teachings and practices are obviouly connected with the principles of liberalism and consumerism. Neo-Oriental and new syncretic religions show that they produce (...) significant influence on spreading globalistic views in the Ukrainian society. The marginality characteristics of new religions prove the idea that their values are a challenge to the essentialistic dichotomies of the Ukrainian traditional churches. The sociocultural and political context of globalisation and postmodernism includes religious transformations axiomatically, and the impact of both on the late capitalism stage is evident in different contexts. The culture of postmodernism makes this process complicated in the countries which are still between modernity and postmodernity. The processes of 'label change' are important with the stress on the substitution of the rationalistic foundation by quasi-scientific teachings. The conclusions demonstrate that the very incompleteness of the modernity has led to the expansion of the quasi-religious techniques in the social and cultural life of Ukraine. The erosion of the modernity values results in spreading new religions, which became vivid at the end of the last century. As globalisation promotes syncretic and neo-Oriental religions, antiglobalistic movements are supported by neo-pagan techniques and practices. (shrink)

Desinformação enquanto um fenômeno social criou uma nova desordem global, onde as novas condições de produção, circulação e consumo de informação fizeram das notícias falsas um importante instrumento geoestratégico que, associado às técnicas híbridas, coloca as ações das mídias comunicacionais em sintonia na geração de notícias falsas. Analisamos a maneira como os meios de comunicação disseminam informações tomando como base cinco filtros indicados por Chomsky e Herman (2003): Filtro 1: Importância, propriedade e orientação dos benefícios dos meios de comunicação; Filtro (...) 2: A publicidade como principal fonte de renda; Filtro 3: O fornecimento de notícias para a mídia; Filtro 4: As medidas corretivas como método para disciplinar a mídia; Filtro 5: Anticomunismo como mecanismo de controle. A análise realizada demonstra que, além de notícias falsas, as notícias reais são manipuladas e orientadas para polarizar ideologicamente, requerendo uma adaptação da sociedade na construção de marcos regulatórios, ao passo que as empresas (desenvolvedoras das redes sociais, por exemplo) e seus logaritmos não conseguem contrariar as redes globais da desinformação que atravessam países, continentes e línguas. (shrink)

This article critically examines the postsecular literature with the aim of dispelling the scepticism about the concept’s theoretical import, critical power and analytical utility. It first presents an overview of the literature identifying two major fields, social theology and politics, within which three major critical leitmotifs are developed: (1) disenchantment and the loss of community; (2) the impossibility of absolute secularity; and (3) the exclusion of religion from the public sphere. In the second section, the shortcomings of problematizations (1) and (...) (2) are highlighted, originating from social theology, and it is argued that they have limited critical potential as they intend to renaturalize the religious. Instead, it is asserted that the concept has critical power when used within the context of a postreligious denaturalization of the secular. In the last section, the focus shifts to the analytical utility of the concept, and the article examines ‘postsecular society’ and ‘postsecularization’ in the light of the previous discussion. (shrink)

Ananda Abeysekara contends that democracy, along with its cherished secular norms, is founded on the idea of a promise deferred to the future. Rooted in democracy's messianic promise is the belief that religious—political identity-such as Buddhist, Hindu, Sinhalese, Christian, Muslim, or Tamil—can be critiqued, neutralized, improved, and changed, even while remaining inseparable from the genocide of the past. This facile belief, he argues, is precisely what distracts us from challenging the violence inherent in postcolonial political sovereignty. At the same time, (...) we cannot simply dismiss the democratic concept, since it permeates so deeply through our modernist, capitalist, and humanist selves. In _The Politics of Postsecular Religion_, Abeysekara invites us to reconsider our ethical-political legacies, to look at them not as _problems_, but as _aporias_, in the Derridean sense-that is, as contradictions or impasses incapable of resolution. Disciplinary theorizing in religion and politics, he argues, is unable to identify the aporias of our postcolonial modernity. The aporetic legacies, which are like specters that cannot be wished away, demand a new kind of thinking. It is this thinking that Abeysekara calls mourning and un-inheriting. Un-inheriting is a way of meditating on history that both avoids the simple binary of remembering and forgetting and provides an original perspective on heritage, memory, and time. Abeysekara situates aporias in the settings and cultures of the United States, France, England, Sri Lanka, India, and Tibet. In presenting concrete examples of religion in public life, he questions the task of refashioning the aporetic premises of liberalism and secularism. Through close readings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, Butler, and Agamben, as well as Foucault, Asad, Chakrabarty, Balibar, and Zizek, he offers readers a way to think about the futures of postsecular politics that is both dynamic and creative. (shrink)

A partir de los análisis que Edith Stein realiza de la empatía y la solidaridad se arriba a la necesidad de indagar fenomenológicamente por la constitución esencial de las estructuras de la comunidad, la sociedad y el Estado. Desde esta perspectiva este trabajo se propone mostrar que el objeto de la indagación de Edith Stein es substancialmente la relación entre el individuo-asociación humana. En su minucioso análisis, no condicionado por ningún presupuesto, el sujeto es tomado en su singularidad. El ser (...) humano no puede vivir aislado, sino que es considerado como un microcosmos abierto y en cuya abertura se encuentran la empatía y la solidaridad como trazos fundamentales para la investigación de nuestra filósofa, que no considera ni lo particular ni la totalidad como absolutos, sino que apela a la importancia del individuo en un contexto más amplio. (shrink)

This review essay reflects on two works that pertain to the postsecular: Josef Bengtson, Explorations in Post-Secular Metaphysics ; and Florian Zemmin, Colin Jager, Guido Vanheeswijck, eds., Working with a Secular Age: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Charles Taylor’s Master Narrative. The profound influence of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is well illustrated in these two works under review. The review essay situates postsecularity in the context of debates on secularization and the sociological expectations this process generates. By treating postsecularism in terms (...) of contextualisation, metaphysics arises as a default position pertaining to transcendence in Bengtson’s work. The efforts in the Zemmin, Jager, and Vanheeswijck work to steer the Taylor work in the direction of Islam are given a critical appraisal. A particular outcome of postsecularity is to render as untenable sociology’s customary detachment of religion from theology. Lastly, for Catholicism, postsecularism draws attention to a long-standing and long-denied crisis in the reproduction of belief in modernity and in a secularized Europe in particular. A singular exception to this crisis occurs in Scandinavian countries, notable for their absence of religion, which are experiencing a small, but significant renaissance of Catholicism. This opens out a positive side to debates on postsecularity which indicates that it is not solely about mirages which give comfort to secularized forms of sociology. (shrink)

This book examines contemporary relations between religion, politics and urban societies from a theoretical perspective. Special attention is paid to those authors (e.g. Habermas, Taylor) who analyze new global constellations in terms of a shift from the secular to the postsecular.

Current debates on ‘the postsecular’ focus on the alleged new visibility of religion in the public sphere. They overcome earlier neglect or indifference toward religion by acknowledging its importance and cast doubt on traditional binaries between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’. How should systematic theology take up the challenge of these debates? Is ‘the postsecular’ a chance to reconsider religion beyond modernist critiques or should one be critical of too easy celebrations of ‘the return of religion’? As an introduction to a special (...) issue on this theme, this article argues that theology should take it as a chance for new dialogues with unexpected allies, opponents, and critics. This calls for an attitude of openness and a willingness to think anew, without losing one’s roots in a specific orientation. Theology’s contribution can be rethinking core notions from the theory of religions, asking for the specific perspective that religion may introduce and the constructive reinterpretation of – partly forgotten – symbols of religions. After discussing the state of the art in debates on ‘the postsecular’ in the first article, the other contributions of this special issue take up these theological tasks in dialogue with thinkers like Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Paul Ricoeur. (shrink)

The fact that ethics, as understood and practiced in our Western culture, has definitively come to a dead end, is overlooked only by those academic philosophers for whom it is still an esoteric and self-sufficient matter of proper reasoning regarding morality. Both religiously and secularly conceived theories have failed; it is especially evident in the fact that we have never thought about ethics as much and acted according to moral principles as rarely as today. Ethical reflection and moral conduct have (...) long ago become incompatible worlds, and relate to each other in an inversely proportional relationship. On this background an eternal question is raised once again: Can the difference between ethical thought and moral action on one side, and secular and religious approaches on the other, be overcome within a single ethical-moral concept? This paper presents an investigation of a postsecular ethics together with examining its basis and possibilities of bringing action motivated beliefs together with critical, responsible thinking based on personal autonomy in a consistently experienced and, at the same time, reflexive constellation. (shrink)

What is referred to as the “postsecular” situation is most properly conceived as an arc of trans-Atlantic self-understanding unfolding dialectically in the face of and in response to traumatically rapid, unprecedented patterns of globalization. I am myself so deeply immersed in the postsecular debates1 that I do not know whether this—what is meant to be—straightforward thesis strikes the reader as simple and self-evident, or rather as profoundly confused and jargon-riddled. Either way, my intention in this paper is to unpack the (...) terms used in my claim, flesh out their content and contexts, and attempt thereby to make the proposition as…. (shrink)

A partir do século XVIII, a imposição do controle das principais instituições políticas e sociais à população passa a ocorrer precipuamente por meio de estratégias urbanísticas. A arquitetura revela o objetivo de disciplinamento dos corpos de modo a prepará-los para a inserção na incipiente sociedade capitalista, seja na forma das escolas, fábricas ou prisões. Objetivamos num primeiro momento refletir, por meio da trajetória histórica e arquitetônica da Biblioteca Pública Municipal de Marília, se a biblioteca antiga tem preponderância de uma instituição (...) disciplinar; para, em um segundo momento, apresentar a arquitetura no novo prédio, verificando se o novo modelo de biblioteca pode evidenciar a transição do modelo disciplinar ao de controle. Metodologicamente, trata-se de uma pesquisa de natureza qualitativa, documental e bibliográfica, na qual utilizamos o método Análise de Conteúdo da Bardin para analisarmos categorias de entrevista. Para tanto, nos valemos um pouco do pensamento de Foucault e Deleuze acerca do tema, bem como o histórico, arquitetura e um pouco da organização das coleções da biblioteca em questão, nos espaços e tempos diferentes. Concluímos que a nova biblioteca não é melhor do que a anterior. Ela apenas se adequa melhor aos ditames dos novos tempos, com novas perspectivas sociais e tecnológicas. A antiga biblioteca teve uma função muito importante na história da cidade e dos seus usuários. Somente não estava mais apropriada ao século XXI, necessitando de novo aspecto e sentido. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Reason, religion, and public culture have been of significant interest recently, with critics reevaluating modernity's conception of secularism and calling for a “postsecular” public discourse. Simultaneously, one sees rising religious fundamentalisms and a growing style of antirationalism in public debate. These conditions make a reconceptualization of public reason necessary. The main goals of this article are to establish agnostic public reason as the conceptual guide and normative ethic for public debate in liberal democracies by considering the secular/religious reason boundary (...) explicitly and to argue that this ethic of public reason requires a commitment to reason giving and a particular epistemic attitude but that it does not, nor should it, take precedence over first-order judgments. An ethics of citizenship based on the process of reason giving with the appropriate epistemic stance might be one step toward rectifying the problem of an increasing separation between enclave publics, even if, by design, it cannot solve fundamental disagreement. (shrink)

En 1967, el francés Guy Debord escribía un resonante texto, La sociedad del espectáculo, en el que nos ofrece una penetrante y aguda reflexión sobre la sociedad de consumo —cuya experiencia directa vive en la Francia de la posguerra—, donde florece la economía de la abundancia, la industria del ocio, la generalización de los medios de comunicación audiovisual y la propagación del llamado american way of life. Anclado fuertemente en las ideas de Marx sobre la alienación y el fetichismo mercantil, (...) Debord analiza la sociedad en que vive como un perenne espectáculo, entendido este, en lo fundamental, como falseamiento de la naturaleza esencial de un sistema. En muchos sentidos, La sociedad del espectáculo parece más haber sido escrita por estos días que hace más de 50 años. Desde la denuncia de la conversión de la política en un show business, pasando por la espectacularización vacía del arte y de la cultura en general, la prensa del escándalo y el sensacionalismo como gancho para subir el rating, hasta los reality shows que, desprovistos ya de todo pudor, asumen descarnadamente su función de hacer espectáculo por espectáculo, sin importar qué se meta adentro, todo ello, parece haber sido retratado ya en el libro de Debord como una consecuencia inevitable de esta nueva etapa de la enajenación humana, abarcadora de toda la espiritualidad y en la que terminan por perderse las fronteras entre show y vida. (shrink)