Secular Powers
Synopsis
Secularism is usually thought to contain the project of self-deification, in which humans attack GodOCOs authority in order to take his place, freed from all constraints. Julie E. Cooper overturns this conception through an incisive analysis of the early modern justifications for secular politics. While she agrees that secularism is a means of empowerment, she argues that we have misunderstood the sources of secular empowerment and the kinds of strength to which it aspires. Contemporary understandings of secularism, Cooper contends, have been shaped by a limited understanding of it as a shift from vulnerability to power. But the works of the foundational thinkers of secularism tell a different story. Analyzing the writings of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau at the moment of secularityOCOs inception, she shows that all three understood that acknowledging oneOCOs limitations was a condition of successful self-rule. And while all three invited humans to collectively build and sustain a political world, their invitations did not amount to self-deification. Cooper establishes that secular politics as originally conceived does not require a choice between power and vulnerability. Rather, it challenges usOCotoday as thenOCoto reconcile them both as essential components of our humanity. "
- Derechos de autor:
- 2013 University of Chicago Press
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- ISBN-13:
- 9780226081328
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- Date of Addition:
- 2015-11-01T00:29:50Z
- Idioma:
- English
- Categorías:
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.