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Document Details : Title: Sortie de la religion, sortie de la politique? - Leaving Religion, Leaving Politics? Subtitle: Trois questions à Marcel Gauchet - Three Questions to Marcel Gauchet Author(s): LOOSE, Donald Journal: Bijdragen Volume: 66 Issue: 3 Date: 2005 Pages: 239-253 DOI: 10.2143/BIJ.66.3.2002067 Abstract : In The disenchantment of the world Marcel Gauchet defined Christianity as the religion of the exodus from religion, which also functions as a paradigm for a political interpretation of religion and the understanding of modern secular politics. However, Gauchet himself asserts that he considers the primitive heteronomous religion as the standard for understanding any religion. I intend to show on the contrary that he is mainly relying on modern auto-critical and hermeneutical Christian religion as the interpretative scheme for all religion and modern politics. This raises the question whether we can ever leave the auto-reflexivity of that auto-critical religion. Can there ever be any religiosity (du religieux) without a religion (la religion). If not, does it make sense to speak of religiosity without religion, finding its way out in the political, or do we come across the same aporias: how to define the modern political without empirical politics? I conclude that modern, empirical politics benefit from the auto-critical, self-obliging, ethical attitude of the Christian religion and that the modern constitutional state as well as the religious expression might suffer from leaving it. The alternative seems to be the loss of social cohesion as well as the rise of religious fundamentalism. |
