Preliminary communication
BELATED SECULARIZATION
Davor Rodin
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author suggests that the multilayered concept of secularization
should be understood as the dezideologization of culture, religion,
nation, language, economy, opening the space for democratic decision-making in the European Union, and consequently the space for politics with the capacity for collectively binding decisions in the
democratically generated pluralism, and not in the historically generated pluralism of the old Europe. Secularization originally meant the transfer of clergy (priests or monks) from regular to secular thereby making them secularis or laypersons. Since the Westphalian Treaty of 1647 the word secularization has meant the transfer of ecclesiastical property to civil possession or use. Secularization means a strict separation of the church and the state. It also means a secular implementation of Christian postulates of universal equality of equals among equals. Today, the concept of secularization is used metaphorically as dezideologization i.e. as the criticism of state forms
such as fascism and communism which possessed only ideological
and not democratic legitimacy. In that sense the thesis of the cultural
or spiritual unity of Europe as its legitimizing grounds is undemocratic
as it replaces and conditions democracy with a vague concept
of culture or spoken communication.
Keywords
secularization; European Union; democracy; de-ideologization; Luhmann
Hrčak ID:
20144
URI
Publication date:
20.6.2007.
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