Secularism: The Golden Lie

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
Graham Ward
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Scientific Atheism

In contemporary rhetoric, secularism, modernity, and atheism are invoked as the end of a linear narrative of historical progress, but with the anthropological insights of Bruno Latour regarding scientific atheism, Graham Ward argues that secularism and modernity are abstract, mythological concepts, a “golden lie” upon which the modern state is built (as in Plato’s Republic). Latour recognized the exclusion of the concept of “God” in scientific investigation, while at the same time scientists raised the level of “fact” to that which is absolutely true (i.e., outside of time and space). In a similar way, the demythologizing project of the Enlightenment sought to exclude religious traditions and history from the modern, secular state, but in the process, it developed a new mythology of the anti- or a-religious that began circa 1500. Instead, the basic concepts of this worldview, such as the “immanent frame,” the “buffered self,” disenchantment, and “exclusive humanism” imply their own falsehood. Even the French laicité has shifted from an antagonism toward religion to an attempted neutrality for the sake of inclusivity and the bureaucratic state.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandrism — Theologizing at the Meeting Point of Hinduism and Christianity

Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-303
Author(s):  
Jyri Komulainen
Keyword(s):  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
Theology Of Religions ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Radical Pluralism ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy

AbstractRaimon Panikkar (b. 1918), a Catalan-born Hindu-Christian, is a prominent theorist of interreligious dialogue. This article provides an analysis of his theology of religions. On the basis of the most recent sources available, it appears that even his 'radical pluralism' cannot eschew the inherent problems characteristic of pluralistic theologies of religions.Unlike other pluralists, Panikkar does not subscribe to the Enlightenment tradition. Instead, his plea for the transformation of religions is based on an idiosyncratic 'Cosmotheandrism', which draws on both primordial religious traditions and existentialist philosophy. The prerequisites of interreligious dialogue, as outlined in his work, thus entail commitment to a particular cosmology and mode of consciousness.

scholarly journals The Phenomenon of Culture in the Philosophy of the French Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Svetlana Georgievna Gutova
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Brain Culture

The most relevant features of the French Enlightenment are studied in the article. One of the features is ambivalence, that was expressed in most of the theoretical judgments by representatives of the era. The main ideas of the French Enlightenment are presented through the prism of the historical formation of the basic concepts: nature, human brain, culture. It is emphasized that the main achievement of the enlighteners in the cultural reformation of society was to combat religious and moral prejudices. It is noted that the value of enlighteners is in their innovative attempt to create a progressive model of cultural development based on a naturalistic and mechanical and deterministic picture of the world. The philosophical and cultural analysis revealed the internal dynamics of the enlighteners' ideas from civilizational optimism to criticism of civilizational progress. It is concluded that the philosophical and theoretical legacy of the Enlightenment, in the framework of the development of a single paradigm, is integral, logical and actually complete, that made the most use of its methodological and heuristic potential.

Religion, critique of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
Critique Of Religion

During the Enlightenment a new philosophy of religion arose, one which was not connected with metaphysics or philosophical theology. It asked to what extent religion could be legitimated philosophically, to what extent it could be shown to be reasonable. The reasonableness of religion was taken to be significant for the political as well as the confessional clash between Christian denominations in Europe, all of which tried to justify their conflicting religious doctrines by reference to a supernatural revelation. The philosophical debate that began in the Enlightenment with regard to the criteria and arguments for a religion connected either to human nature or to public reason can be called a ‘critique of religion’ (Religionskritik), although the expression is not common before the critical philosophy of Kant and his school. Hegel followed the programme of Kant’s philosophy, maintaining a philosophical concept of religion as falling ‘within the limits of reason alone’. The radical left-wing school of Hegelianism transformed Hegel’s approach, which was a critical legitimation of religion, into its destruction. Presupposing materialism in ontology and atheism, Feuerbach held that religion should be interpreted as a kind of anthropology. Marx claimed that religion is an expression of a certain sort of ideology and a necessary illusion within a class-structured society. In twentieth-century philosophy, the critique of religion can be found in two positions. The first is a rational reconstruction of the practical intentions or semantic content of religious belief; the second is a continuation of the interpretation of religion as ideological or illusory. In addition, we can identify certain other varieties of the critique of religion, including the theological critique of religion (found, for example, in the work of Barth and Bonhoeffer) and the philosophical critique of particular religious traditions (found, for example, in the romantic and postmodern rejections of Christian monotheism by Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Klages and Heidegger).

Dissent in the American Colonies before the First Amendment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Brekus
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Early America ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The Enlightenment

Many of the early migrants to the American colonies came from Dissenting backgrounds. There were many reasons why it was difficult to enforce religious uniformity across the Atlantic, including the diversity of religious traditions and the rise of the Enlightenment, particularly Locke’s emphasis on the sanctity of conscience. However, the role played by Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers in arguing for freedom of conscience needs to be acknowledged as well. Their pressure to create a formal separation of Church and state was vital. The 1689 Toleration Act and the revivals of the Great Awakening undermined the principle of church establishment in early America and led to divisions between different religious groups. In 1789, Dissenters contributed to the passage of the First Amendment, which guaranteed religious freedom and prohibited the establishment of a national church.

The social power of the Bible in culture and politics

Theology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-116
Author(s):  
Peter Gent
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biblical Texts

Biblical texts hold social power, acting in and through the religious traditions that hold the Bible authoritative, with far-reaching impact on culture and politics. Work by Bruno Latour and others on the agency and action of artefacts provides a set of concepts that make possible analysis of how social power is delegated to the Bible and how the Bible in turn holds power over its readers and broader society. Tracing the action of the Bible in this way enables reflection on the performative impact of how the Bible is read and interpreted.

scholarly journals Cognitive rules, institutions, and economic growth: Douglass North and beyond

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVNER GREIF ◽  
JOEL MOKYR
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Douglass North

AbstractDouglass North's writing on institutional change recognized from the very start that such change depends on cognition and beliefs. Yet, although he focused on individual beliefs, we argue in this paper that such beliefs are social constructs. We suggest that institutions – rules, expectations, and norms – are based on shared cognitive rules. Cognitive rules are social constructs that convey information that distills and summarizes society's beliefs and experience. These rules have to be self-enforcing and self-confirming, but they do not have to be ‘correct’. We describe the characteristics of such rules in the context of a market for ideas, and illustrate their importance in two developments central to the growth of modern economies: the rise of the modern state with its legitimacy based on consent, and the rise of modern science-based technology that was the product of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment and Religion in Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter on Enlightenment and religion in Europe brings together the evidence relating to an understanding of the relationship seen in broader terms. Manichean interpretations arguing for the total incompatibility of Enlightenment and religion are no longer tenable. Evidence from the history of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Judaism is discussed in order to illustrate how reflection on ideas of natural religion, natural law, and the interplay of reason and revelation, by thinkers firmly grounded in traditions of religious faith, allowed a broadening of mutual understanding between the Enlightenment and European religious traditions and contributed to the growth of ideas of toleration.

Dispossession and the Mass Party

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Edwin F. Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Destructive Processes

This chapter argues that Marx and Weber were right to relate party emergence with capitalism and the modern state. But understanding the nature of this relationship requires a 1) rethinking of the unique characteristics of the party as a political-organizational modality and 2) a focus on the destructive processes associated with the ascent of a market economy and a bureaucratic state apparatus. A reading of Marx and Weber through the prism of Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of the party-form and Bourdieu’s insights on political representation moves us in this direction. Capitalism and the modern State transform political organization, as it ceases to be an act of direct presentation to a territorial outsider and becomes an act of re-presentation whereby a specialized intermediary agent (party, union, civil societal organization) articulates private sectoral interests that cut across local communities. This transition from “territorial presentation” to “social sectoral representation” requires two primitive accumulations, and economic and a political one.

10. Human Rights and Religion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roja Fazaeli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Court ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the ways in which theoretical and practical relationships between religion and human rights are constructed and understood. It begins with a historical background on the relationship between religion and human rights, focusing on religious traditions from which human rights discourses have inherited or rejected a number of ideas; one is the tradition of natural rights, which was debated throughout the Enlightenment. It then considers the formation of the international human rights system, along with contemporary concerns regarding religion and human rights such as the treatment of women, religious expression and rights claims in multicultural contexts, and the significance of religious symbols. It also discusses questions of religious authority and concludes with a review of two European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) cases that demonstrate growing edges for questions of human rights and religion: the Lautsi case and the Şahin case.

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