Secularism of understanding” “

In France “the having sidelined the teaching of religions – if not the Republic’s flaunted mistrust in its ‘eternal enemies’ – has led to an ignorance which has not only afflicted the young generations, but has deprived universities of the opportunity to invest in whole fields of human knowledge”. This is a misconception of secularism. In the view of PAUL VALADIER , professor at the Centre Sèvres (the Jesuit Faculty in Paris) and director of the “Archives of Philosophy”, secularism needs to be rethought in terms of a “secularism of understanding”. Writing in the June number of “Études”, the monthly review of contemporary culture founded by the Jesuits in 1856, Valadier argues that “the State cannot but be secular, in the sense that it must not in any way depend on the Churches or religions”, but if it “wants to be attentive to social aspirations, which it must regulate after having listened to them, its relations with religions, and the idea of secularism itself, needs to be revised”. THE ‘IDEOLOGICAL DANGER’. In the past “the French Republic experienced various dangers”: the “external” ones linked to foreign enemies, and the “internal” ones posed by numerous challenges to its authority, mounted by extremist ideologies either of the right or the left”. Nonetheless, in Valadier’s view, “it seems that in our own time the danger is posed by the Republic’s own philosophy” because “if the Jacobin Republic was able to support itself on a strong and coherent political theory, everything leads one to think that this same theory is now revealing weaknesses such as to permit one to speak of ‘ideological danger'”. According to its conception of “sovereign State”, the French Republic “does not conceive citizens as individuals seeking to pursue their own interests, or already organized in linguistic, cultural or religious communities and groups”. Instead, the Republic, continues Valadier, “attributes to itself educational tasks and forges an almost mystical relation with schools”, with the aim of “forming citizens in reason and in ‘citizenship'”: by countering “the particularisms of society (different languages, social mores, religions) and the prejudices inculcated by traditions or by ignorance, the Republic postulates that traditions are accompanied by ignorance”. This conception, which claims to “emancipate man from the protection of religions”, is linked to “an idea of the republic of Jacobin type” and to a misconception of secularism. A SECULARISM OF UNDERSTANDING. “Instead of thinking of secularism in terms of fracture or separation, if not even in terms of exclusion – warns the Jesuit – we ought rather to consider it in terms of recognition. That does not mean that the State ought to be ‘concordat-minded’. It suggests, for example, that in terms of the teaching of religion, it ought to pass from a ‘secularism of incompetence’ or of ignorance to a ‘secularism of understanding’, as hoped by Régis Debray in his Report on ‘The teaching of religion in secular schools’ of 2002”. “The vacuity of certain high-level publications, when they treat the questions of religion, has something disturbing about it – remarks Valadier -, but is the consequence of a secularism that is the source of ignorance and hence of obscurantism”. In the view of the philosopher, “the current rigidities on the model of suspicion and exclusion” reveal that “secularism in the French mode is feeling its own foundations quake” and “considers it simpler to draw a caricature of legitimate social aspirations that reform its own prejudices”. STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY. Valadier asks whether “is it up to the State to define the good of society, or whether it is this latter, in its various components, that should express aspirations which the State is called to take into account and address”. Today, he continues, “the global relation of the republican State with civil society is being placed in question”; a debate aimed at clarifying whether the role of the State is that of being a “regulator of society”, or whether it “should be limited to a more modest role, respectful of civil freedoms and social and cultural diversities without claiming that nothing exists above or beyond the Republic”. In other words, “without pursuing any longer the vain, and more especially dangerous, mission of wishing to abolish any trace of transcendence in spirits”, the State should recognise instead that “man cannot be reduced to a mere citizen, but is structured in a diversity of bonds and relationships that a Republic conscious of its own limits ought to encourage in dialogue and co-existence”. To overcome “the ‘provincialism’ of this conception of the State and tackle the new problems posed by society”, concludes Valadier, “a profound re-interpretation of republican principles is needed”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1307 N.ro relativo : 47 Data pubblicazione : 24/06/2004