Abstract
Recent terrorist attacks show the extent to which Europe faces a double threat: on one hand fundamentalist religion, on the other negative secularism. France is a paradigmatic example of negative secularism, which attempts to discredit religion altogether. I propose instead that Europe should subscribe to a positive understanding of secularism, which can be understood as a political or as an ethical project. Either way, the point of positive secularism is to distance itself from religion in order to embrace diversity of all types, religious and non-religious. Political secularism relies on the hope of reaching overlapping consensus between religious and non-religious people. Ethical secularism aims instead to protect diversity by promoting the establishment of a marketplace of religions, which acknowledges a public role for religion while regulating it. The marketplace of religions promotes religious pluralism and helps to iron out the different treatments between religions. Ethical secularism aims to be a worldview of worldviews, creating the preconditions for all religious and non-religious people to live well together.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Freedom of Religion, Secularism, and Human Rights |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Pages | 141-162 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780198812067 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2019 |
Keywords
- ECtHR
- Ethical secularism
- Inbuilt biases
- Marketplace of religions
- Political secularism
- Religious pluralism
