Abstract
In this chapter the question is asked what constructive steps Western secular and religious people alike may take towards a post-secular social order where the religious and the political are in dialogue rather than at war. This question is answered on the basis of, first, a possible genealogy of Western secularism with regards to the legacy of William of Ockham; the adoption of neutral, linear time after the invention of the mechanical clock between 1270 and 1330; and the emergence of the modern territorial state from the fifteenth century onwards. Second, a diagnosis of liberal secularism after World War II with regards to these three strands is offered, and further nuanced with Bernard Stiegler’s notion of the hyper-industrial society.
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Notes
- 1.
Quasi-theology in the sense that consumerism feeds off a number of theological motifs such as promising its adherents a better life, a better self, an improved destiny and a good life, elevating the trappings of consumption to the centre of the adherent’s life—but with the adherent in the place that God would occupy for the believer—and striving for the same type of authority that accompany religious beliefs.
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Rossouw, J. (2014). Spirit Matters: Life After Secularism and Religion?. In: Sharpe, M., Nickelson, D. (eds) Secularisations and Their Debates. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7116-1_5
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