Secularisation and Violence
Opening the World
Keywords:
Desacralisation, Gianni Vattimo, Jean-Luc Nancy, René Girard, Secularisation, ViolenceAbstract
This study starts out as a search for a connection, not between religion and violence, as is often superficially claimed, but between secularisation and violence. If secularisation is synonymous with nonviolence and with peace, then, obviously, secularisation holds an ethical appeal and should be radicalised, as it might well be the secular translation of charity itself. This is clearly the position of Gianni Vattimo. If, however, secularisation is a modern option that carries no historical or theological imperative whatsoever, then secularisation is open to evaluation and should, if desirable, at least be suspended. This is the position of René Girard.
References
E. Meganck, “Philosophia Amica Theologiae: Gianni Vattimo’s Weak Faith and Theological Difference,” Modern Theology 31 (2015) 3, 387398.
René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, London/New York: Continuum, 2003, 141-142.
René Girard, The Scapegoat, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
René Girard, Christianity, Truth, and the Weakening Faith, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, 23-26.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, 19.
Jean-Luc Nancy, Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity II, New York: Fordham University Press, 2013, 32.
Heidegger, “The Ontotheological Constitution of Metaphysics,” in Identity and Difference, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, New York/Toronto: Random House, 1974, 32; 37.
