The Postmetaphysical

Abstract

The example of Gianni Vattimo provides a fluid transition to the second part of this monograph. His work sheds lights on the reality of secularisation as a lived-in, historicist contingency, which at the same time offers a philosophical route out of secularisation in a philosophy of actuality founded on the kenotic incarnation of being. This real philosophical trajectory mirrors the overarching contours of this book, from the sociopolitical and cultural effects of secularisation on religion in their republican, democratic, modern, postmodern, individualised and collective manifestations, to the sea change in Continental philosophy (mainly in France) that brought religion back into the fold of philosophical discourse. At the centre of this transition from reality to philosophy, from Part 1 to Part 2, is the critical conjuncture between the supremacy of the individual citizen (believer) in the 1980s and beyond, elevated by democratisation, relocated in post-secularism and renewed in his religious identity, and the philosophical erosion of this subject as cogito, only for this to lead to his salvific appropriation by new theo-logies.

True theology needs, therefore, ‘God without Being’. Theology needs to cease being modern theology in order to become again theology.

Jean-Luc Marion God Without Being