Post-Secularism: Between Public Reason and Political
Theology
A Special Issue of THE EUROPEAN
LEGACY
Guest
Editors: Camil Ungureanu (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) and Lasse Thomassen
(Queen Mary, University of London)
This special issue is scheduled for late 2014.
This special issue is scheduled for late 2014.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
In recent years, leading
philosophers, including Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and or
John D. Caputo, have criticized "old-style" secularism and proposed instead
a post-secular model for understanding the relation
of religion and democracy, faith and reason. There are however profound
theoretical and practical divergences in the post-secular models proposed.
First, what are the precise characteristics of post-secularism as a
philosophical alternative? In what sense could it be said to break with
secularism? Second, what are the practical political and legal
consequences of adhering a post-secular approach? From a critical
theoretical perspective, Habermas focuses on a revised concept of public reason
and deliberation in promoting an active interaction of democracy and religion.
From a hermeneutical perspective, Taylor’s recent work centres on the new
"conditions of belief" and the dilemmas inherent to both religious and atheist
experience. In contrast, Caputo and Richard Kearney develop a Derridean aporetic
understanding of the nexus of democracy and religion, faith and reason, whereas
Hent de Vries, William Connolly and Simon Critchley reject Habermas’s
rationalist approach and propose a distinct understanding of post-secularism by
focusing on Schmitt’s and Benjamin’s re-appropriation
of the tenets of Saint Paul in their political-theological works. Although these
trends have been studied to some extent, there has been no sustained attempt so
far to subject them to a comparative analysis that would more fully address the
issue of “post-secularism.”
Our "Call for Papers" invites
scholars to submit a study, with a comparative dimension, that addresses both
the philosophical import and the practical-political effects of the
post-secular alternative. The work of the following authors will be at the
centre of our proposed special issue: Habermas, Taylor, Caputo, Critchley,
Connolly, Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben,
and Jean-Luc Nancy. Comparative studies that focus on various
religious traditions (Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, etc.) and
theologians, and those that focus on the public role of religion in democracy
(e.g., Rawls, Weithman, Wolterstorff) are particularly welcome.
Possible topics include, but are
not limited to:
-
Significance and varieties of
post-secularism
-
Open secularity, post-secularism or
political theology?
-
Deliberative post-secularism or political
liberalism
-
Post-secularism: religious imagination and
practice (Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, etc.)
-
Discussion of (legal, moral or political)
practical cases from a post-secular perspective
-
Is political theology useful for
re-thinking democracy?
-
Varieties of political theology
today
-
Re-thinking the legacy of Saint
Paul
-
Visions of sovereignty: between
proceduralism and political theology
-
Faith: religious? secular?
-
Post-secularism and feminism
-
The state of exception between
deliberation and political decision
-
Rethinking solidarity from a postsecular
perspective
Deadline for submissions: 27
October 2013
Length of essay: 6,000 – 8,000
words, including notes. (For the referencing style, please consult http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cele20/current)
Potential contributors are welcome
to contact the editors to discuss their proposed essay.
Camil Ungureanu (camil.ungureanu@upf.edu)
Lasse Thomassen (l.thomassen@qmul.ac.uk)
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