Abstract
Modernity is based on the demand for the emancipation of human beings, starting from their liberation from the shackles of social determination in its earlier traditional forms. This liberation called for the abandoning of the dominant forms of legitimating power–in the family, in the communities within which ways of life and production are organized, in the State–based up to then on a metaphysics, generally of religious expression. It therefore implies the separation of the State and religion, a radical secularization, which is the condition for the deployment of modern forms of politics.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published in: Eurocentrism (New York: MR Press, 2009, second ed.), chapter 1.
- 2.
Israel Shahak: Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Tears (London: Pluto Press, 2004).
- 3.
I have developed this concept of ‘under-determination’ in history in Spectres of Capitalism: A Critique of Intellectual Fashions (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), Chapter 3.
- 4.
George Tarabishi: The Trajectory of Philosophy in the Christian and Islamic Countries (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 1998), in Arabic.
- 5.
Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) sought the return of Islam to its sources, the Koran and the Sunna.—Trans.
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Amin, S. (2014). Modernity and Interpretations of Religions. In: Theory is History. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03816-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03816-2_3
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