Is secularism history

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4480919
AutoresG Mclennan (0000-0002-0248-4497, University of Bristol, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen128
Número1
Páginas126-140
Fecha de publicación2015-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513615587405
OpenAlexW1661118721
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas26

In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner's work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today's postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner's project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless to distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm 'bottom lines' from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner's essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner's stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner's critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics

Environmental ethics · Historicity (philosophy · Ideology · Multiculturalism · Political science · Politics · Secularism · Secularity · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious Education and Schools · Religious studies