{"title":"After Political Religion: Special Aspects of Russian Post-Secularism","authors":"A. Matetskaya","doi":"10.30570/2078-5089-2022-106-3-48-64","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The concept of a post-secular society proposed by Jurgen Habermas has become quite popular in Russia, and not only within the framework of scientific discourse. However, in the Russian context, the very concept of “post-secular” is most often interpreted through the prism of desecularization. According to the author’s conclusion, the special aspects of the religious revival in the country after the collapse of the Soviet regime can largely explain this. The article shows that the transition to a post-secular state in Russia included not only a rethinking of the perspectives of religion in a secular society and an awareness of the need for the participation of believers in public discussions, but also a change in the institutional position of religion, the rapprochement of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the authorities, the formation of a new idea of collective identity on the basis of Orthodoxy as the dominant confession, as well as an attempt to construct an official ideology, or a secular religion, an important element of which would be the symbolic heritage of Orthodoxy. Religion turned out to be in demand primarily for solving social and political problems: determining national specifics, reviving lost cultural traditions, and legitimizing political power. Religious revival in that form did not imply proper religious conversion and thus was not accompanied by a noticeable increase in real religiosity. The author explains the predominantly “secular” perception of the functions of religion by the authorities and a significant part of society by the legacy of the Soviet political religion, which pushed traditional religions with their transcendent sacred to the periphery of social life and gave rise to specific forms of the secular sacred.","PeriodicalId":47624,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Political Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30570/2078-5089-2022-106-3-48-64","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The concept of a post-secular society proposed by Jurgen Habermas has become quite popular in Russia, and not only within the framework of scientific discourse. However, in the Russian context, the very concept of “post-secular” is most often interpreted through the prism of desecularization. According to the author’s conclusion, the special aspects of the religious revival in the country after the collapse of the Soviet regime can largely explain this. The article shows that the transition to a post-secular state in Russia included not only a rethinking of the perspectives of religion in a secular society and an awareness of the need for the participation of believers in public discussions, but also a change in the institutional position of religion, the rapprochement of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the authorities, the formation of a new idea of collective identity on the basis of Orthodoxy as the dominant confession, as well as an attempt to construct an official ideology, or a secular religion, an important element of which would be the symbolic heritage of Orthodoxy. Religion turned out to be in demand primarily for solving social and political problems: determining national specifics, reviving lost cultural traditions, and legitimizing political power. Religious revival in that form did not imply proper religious conversion and thus was not accompanied by a noticeable increase in real religiosity. The author explains the predominantly “secular” perception of the functions of religion by the authorities and a significant part of society by the legacy of the Soviet political religion, which pushed traditional religions with their transcendent sacred to the periphery of social life and gave rise to specific forms of the secular sacred.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Political Philosophy is an international journal devoted to the study of theoretical issues arising out of moral, legal and political life. It welcomes, and hopes to foster, work cutting across a variety of disciplinary concerns, among them philosophy, sociology, history, economics and political science. The journal encourages new approaches, including (but not limited to): feminism; environmentalism; critical theory, post-modernism and analytical Marxism; social and public choice theory; law and economics, critical legal studies and critical race studies; and game theoretic, socio-biological and anthropological approaches to politics. It also welcomes work in the history of political thought which builds to a larger philosophical point and work in the philosophy of the social sciences and applied ethics with broader political implications. Featuring a distinguished editorial board from major centres of thought from around the globe, the journal draws equally upon the work of non-philosophers and philosophers and provides a forum of debate between disparate factions who usually keep to their own separate journals.