Abstract
In 1980, Marcel Gauchet, a respected French philosopher and sociologist, could confidently predict that the development of democracy from Christian sources would lead to the “tomb of religions.” Girard, for his part, responded by saying: “Christianity is not the religion of the exit from religion, as Marcel Gauchet thinks. … Our celebrated humanism will turn out to have been nothing but a brief intermission between two forms of religion.” We will look at what allowed Girard to see things in this way below, but it is more from the viewpoint of a Gauchet than a Girard that we speak of a “return of religion.”
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Further Reading
Casanova, José and Hans Joas. Religion Und Die Umstrittene Moderne (Globale Solidarität). Kohlhammer, 2010.
Lilla, Mark. The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. New York: Vintage, 2008.
Palaver, Wolfgang. René Girard’s Mimetic Theory. Translated by Gabriel Borrud. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013.
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Alberg, J. (2017). The Return of Religion. In: Alison, J., Palaver, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_47
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