Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 24 No. 2, 2009.
Original scientific paper
The Other Side of Globalisation. The New Power of Religion as a Cultural and Political Challenge
Gottfried Küenzlen
; Bundeswehr University Munich, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Neubiberg, Germany
Abstract
Religion has returned as a political and cultural factor. After the political ideologies, whose secular and worldly promises of salvation had influenced the history of the 20th century in such a radical manner, had been (for the time being, at least) invalidated, the reappearance of religion on a global level cannot be overlooked: as a focal power as to how to conduct one’s life, as a guarantor of cultural identity, and as religious-political creativity. We cannot understand the current state of the world, its crises, conflicts and wars, but also the selfperception and self-awareness of non-European cultures and peoples anymore, if we do not also realise that religion as a “power of life” (Max Weber’s “Lebensmacht”) has returned.
In addition to sketching this process, this essay raises the question: what are the cultural and political challenges which especially the secular societies of the West are to face?
Keywords
globalisation; religion; religion and politics; fundamentalism; culture; clash of civilisations; secularisation; Europe and Islam; values
Hrčak ID:
48740
URI
Publication date:
3.2.2010.
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