5.09.2007
Why I'm Not a Secularlist
I picked up a book at the library yesterday titled Why I'm Not a Secularist, by William Connolly (apparently the title is a riff on Bertrand Russel's Why I'm Not a Christian). Connolly is in the political science department at Johns Hopkins. I had a chance to read the introduction and it seems like an interesting book, and extremely relevant for some of the conversations we've been having. Perhaps if some of you have the time we could try to read a couple chapters of it. Connolly deals with a range of philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, Arendt, Deleuze, and Foucault and at least in some of the chapters he applies these ideas to very concrete political issues in order to argue against secularism, at least in the manner that it's practiced in the west today. If you all can't get to the book I'll try to do some reading and maybe paraphrase Connolly's arguments in a future post, if they are actually as useful as I suspect they might be.
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3 comments:
I'm intrigued, though don't know if I could actually locate a copy of the book. What is the manner in which secularism is practiced in the west today?
I think reading and discussing a book is a good idea. This one might be a good choice. I couldn't tell where he was going just from reading the first few pages available on Amazon, though. I don't think I'll have time to read it now. If you read it and like it, I may give it a try after school is out, or see if I can get by by just reading parts of it.
What's the alternative to secularism? A religious state? Yikes!
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