Secularism and Cosmopolitanism

Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics

Étienne Balibar, G. M. Goshgarian

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231547130
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

What is the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism—the worldwide and the worldly? While cosmopolitan politics may seem inherently secular, existing forms of secularism risk undermining the universality of cosmopolitanism because they privilege the European tradition over all others and transform particular historical norms into enunciations of truth, valid for all cultures and all epochs. In this book, the noted philosopher Étienne Balibar explores the tensions lurking at this troubled nexus in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism itself.

Balibar argues for the idea of the universal against its particular dominant institutions. He questions the assumptions that underlie popular ideas of secularism and religion and outlines the importance of a new critique for the contemporary world. Balibar holds that conflicts between religious and secular discourses need to be reframed from a point of view that takes into account the cultural hybridization, migration and mobility, and transformation of borders that have reshaped the postcolonial age. Among the topics discussed are the uses and misuses of the category of religion and the religious, the paradoxical genealogy of monotheism, French laïcité's identitarian turn, and the implications of the responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks for an extended definition of free speech. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference that seeks to make room for a renewed political imagination.

INDEX

Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

Abraham (biblical figure), ix, 28, 70, 82, 190n6

“absolute capitalism,” 169n7

“abstract universalism,” 14

acculturation, 44, 165, 228n14

accumulation, xxxiv, 20, 39, 169n7

Actuality of Critique, Social Theory, and Critical Sociology in France and Germany, The. See ANR-DFG CActuS

Aeschylus, 71–72

Afghanistan, 26–27

Agamben, Giorgio, xxx, 189n4

“aleatory materialism,” 171n23

Algeria, 78, 113

älteste System programm des deutschen Idealismus, Das, 79

Althusser, Louis, 41, 46, 170n20, 171n21, 171n23, 211n40

Altneuland (Herzl), 98

’am (“chosen people”), 176n2

American Indians, 189n5

American University of Beirut, 3, 175n2

Amer-Meziane, Mohamed, 220n3

Anderson, Benedict, 100

Anis Makdisi Memorial Lecture (2009), vii, 175n2

ANR-DFG CActuS (The Actuality of Critique, Social Theory, and Critical Sociology in France and Germany), 168n1

anthropological difference: citizenship and, 42–43; problem of, 59–60; religion and, 45–47

anthropology, 42, 58, 172n29, 183n6, 189n3; bifurcation within, xxvii; cultural, 25, 61; philosophical, xxvi, 171n24

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Kant), 172n29

anti-Semitism, 99, 107, 108

Arabs, 99, 104, 106, 190n6, 208n26, 210n35. See also Palestine

Aragon, Louis, 182n9

Arendt, Hannah, 22, 100, 103, 108, 208n25, 209n27

Arianism, 75, 76, 77, 90

Arnaldez, Roger, 198n17

Arnaud, Pierre, 216n30

Article 6 of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 214n14

articulation citoyenne (civic articulation), 50

Asad, Mohammed, 183n6

Asad, Talal, 26, 167n3, 183n6, 184n10, ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Preface
• Introduction: Critique in the Twenty-First Century: Political Economy Still, Religion Again
• Saeculum
• Essays
• Statements
• Notes
• Index
• Series List