{"title":"On the relationships between critical theory and secularisation: The challenges of democratic fallibility and planetary survival","authors":"Daniel Chernilo","doi":"10.1177/13684310221135500","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at the contribution of secularisation debates to a critical theory of society. As the relations between the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ aspects of modern life grow more vexing, it argues critical theory must eschew its previous secularisation-as-progress metanarrative. Instead, processes of secularisation are better understood as those relationships between public and private beliefs and practices that take place at the boundaries between modern society’s commitment to procedural institutions and substantive value commitments. The article then revisits four different understandings of secularisation that, coming from a variety of intellectual traditions, help us redefine it beyond an exclusive focus on institutional religions: normative questions on the rise and decline of autonomous values; temporal questions on the self-positing of modernity as an historical epoch; political questions on the desacralisation of modern sovereignty and practical questions on the non-technological dimensions of technology. This framework is put to the test in relation to the procedural challenge of democratic fallibility and the substantive challenge of planetary survival.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":"26 1","pages":"282 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Social Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310221135500","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This article looks at the contribution of secularisation debates to a critical theory of society. As the relations between the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ aspects of modern life grow more vexing, it argues critical theory must eschew its previous secularisation-as-progress metanarrative. Instead, processes of secularisation are better understood as those relationships between public and private beliefs and practices that take place at the boundaries between modern society’s commitment to procedural institutions and substantive value commitments. The article then revisits four different understandings of secularisation that, coming from a variety of intellectual traditions, help us redefine it beyond an exclusive focus on institutional religions: normative questions on the rise and decline of autonomous values; temporal questions on the self-positing of modernity as an historical epoch; political questions on the desacralisation of modern sovereignty and practical questions on the non-technological dimensions of technology. This framework is put to the test in relation to the procedural challenge of democratic fallibility and the substantive challenge of planetary survival.
期刊介绍:
An internationally respected journal with a wide-reaching conception of social theory, the European Journal of Social Theory brings together social theorists and theoretically-minded social scientists with the objective of making social theory relevant to the challenges facing the social sciences in the 21st century. The European Journal of Social Theory aims to be a worldwide forum of social thought. The Journal welcomes articles on all aspects of the social, covering the whole range of contemporary debates in social theory. Reflecting some of the commonalities in European intellectual life, contributors might discuss the theoretical contexts of issues such as the nation state, democracy, citizenship, risk; identity, social divisions, violence, gender and knowledge.