On January 28-29, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia will host a conference on “Secularism in the Late Modern Age: Between New Atheisms and Religious Fundamentalisms.” Speakers include: Manuela Achilles, Rajeev Bhargava, José Casanova, Jocelyn Cesari, Daniel Doneson, Silvio Ferrari, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Slavica Jakelić, Adam Lipszyc, Ekaterina Makarova, Neeti Nair, Christopher Nichols , Abdulaziz Sachedina, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Kevin Shultz, William Schweiker, George Thomas, Carl Trindle, Stephen White, and Wesley Wildman.
From the Institute’s website:
Contrary to the usual focus on the clashes between secularisms and religions, this project will bring together an international group of scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to consider areas of consensus between religious and secular worldviews as well the philosophical, historical, political, and institutional conditions conducive for their coexistence. The analytic goal is to investigate the range of meanings of secularity and secularism and how they play out in encounters with religion in specific contexts and communities. The normative goal is to consider the questions: Must the relationship between religions and secularisms be one of animosity and confrontation? If, as Charles Taylor reminds us, both modern Western Christianity and most forms of modern Western secularism were shaped by the same moral drive—the impulse to reform individuals so that they might apply themselves to creating a better world—can we retrieve that moral drive for our age and in our pluralistic world? In an age defined by vitality of religions, do secularisms need to undergo an intellectual renewal if we are to sustain pluralistic societies in which religions and secularisms can coexist?
Registration is required. Click here for more information.