Sacred Values in Secular Politics
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Steven Lukes
Abstract
What role does sacredness play in the secular politics of the liberal democracies of the United States and Europe today? One approach, focusing on the sources of political unity, suggests that they are integrated by a kind of civil religion, however flawed. This suggestion is criticized empirically as ever less plausible and as blind to the currently feasible limits of social solidarity. A second approach, focusing on the growing democratic crisis of liberal democracies due to ever-deepening social divisions, leads to the suggestion that sacredness is increasingly at work in secular politics. As attachment to organized religion declines so does the public deliberation and negotiation of conflicting interests-the arguing and the bargaining that democracy requires.
© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial
- Sacred Values Today
- Ethics and the Sacred: Can Secular Morality Dispense with Religious Values?
- Making Secular Sense of the Sacred
- Traditional Morality and Sacred Values
- Sacred Values and Interreligious Dialogue
- Protected Values and Other Types of Values
- Sacred Values in Secular Politics
- General Part
- Religion beyond Communicative Reason
- An Empirical Critique of Re-Sacralisation
- Comment on Steve Bruce
- The Requirements of Justice and Liberal Socialism
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial
- Sacred Values Today
- Ethics and the Sacred: Can Secular Morality Dispense with Religious Values?
- Making Secular Sense of the Sacred
- Traditional Morality and Sacred Values
- Sacred Values and Interreligious Dialogue
- Protected Values and Other Types of Values
- Sacred Values in Secular Politics
- General Part
- Religion beyond Communicative Reason
- An Empirical Critique of Re-Sacralisation
- Comment on Steve Bruce
- The Requirements of Justice and Liberal Socialism
