Modernity and collective subjectivity in Marcel Gauchet

Bibliographic Data

ID4481073
AuthorsMark T Hewson (Fiji National University, Fiji, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume175
Issue1
Pages43-62
Publication date2023-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/07255136231168650
OpenAlexW4377102269
LanguageEN
References cited17

This article examines Marcel Gauchet's claim that the political history of religion is the key to a new understanding of contemporary liberal democratic societies in the shape that they have come to assume since the 1970s. The Disenchantment of the World presents a history of religion starting out from the thesis that, from the perspective of universal history, the primary function of religion can be identified with the production of the unity and identity of societies. Present-day liberal democracies, it is argued, perform the same function through an alternative disposition of the constitutive elements of collective life. Where religions institute the identity of the society by accepting dependence upon a supernatural origin, contemporary society is organized as a 'subjective form of social functioning', in the sense that it is able to create and transform itself. Gauchet argues that the central structural features of contemporary society - the administrative state, the separation of civil society and the freedom of individuals, and the global orientation to the future - allow the practical accomplishment of the ideal of autonomy announced by the tradition of modern and revolutionary political thought. The explication of this logic establishes the preconditions for the criticism of these societies, by showing the historical decision and the internal articulations that give them their cohesion

Civil society · Collective identity · Criticism · Democracy · Disenchantment · Epistemology · Explication · Individualism · Liberalism · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Philosophy · Philosophy, Sociology, Political Theory · Religion and Society Interactions

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