A review of Paul Cliteur’s The Secular Outlook

J. Caleb Clanton reviews Paul Cliteur’s The Secular Outlook, which aims “to show how religious believers and unbelievers can live peacefully together and what principles the state should try to stimulate in its citizenry to achieve social harmony and social cohesion.”

Cliteur thinks we need this instruction because of the growing global threat of religiously inspired injustice, coercion, violence, and terrorism. As an antidote, he recommends a moral and political vision which he calls “a ‘secular outlook’ on life” (1). Its four main components are atheism, criticism of religion, free speech, and “moral autonomy” (11).

Read the full review at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Charles Gelman is a contributing editor of The Immanent Frame and an associate editor of Frequencies. A former program assistant at the Social Science Research Council, he is currently a doctoral student in comparative literature at New York University. He earned his B.A. from the Gallatin School, NYU, in 2009.

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