Original scientific paper

Sense, Existence and Justice, or, How to Live in a Secular World?

Ignaas Devisch ; Ghent University, University College Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent, Belgium
Kathleen Vandepute ; Ghent University, University College Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent, Belgium

Abstract

It has been taken for granted that in western modernity we are dealing with a secularised world, an atheistic world where religion is no longer reigning the public sphere. In other words: a world where sense lies outside the world towards a world where sense is situated within it. If we follow the line of thought French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy sets out in his books The Sense of the World and Dis-Enclosure, we have to think world not as what has its sense within itself, but as what is sense itself. To live in a secular world, means to live in a world which is sense, a world that has become responsible for itself but never closes in itself. Nancy, thereby inspired by Martin Heidegger, claims that in a secularised world it is no longer a question of whether the world has sense, but that the world is sense. If we want to be atheists today, Nancy concludes, we no longer have to do with the question, “why is there something in general?” but with the answer, “there is something, and that alone makes sense.

Keywords

sense; existence; world; secularization; Christianity; Jean-Luc Nancy; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Martin Heidegger

Hrčak ID:

58435

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/58435

Publication date:

2.8.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian french german

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