The 21st century will be religious or it will not be at all
Article summary proposed by the Contacts review with LLM assistance
This article by Bertrand Vergely examines the relationship between religion and modernity, two realities that common opinion tends to radically oppose. Adopting a philosophical and theological approach, the author rejects both religious anti-modernism and Enlightenment anti-clericalism, in order to defend a thesis of reciprocal implication: authentic religion is fundamentally modern, and authentic modernity is fundamentally religious. Drawing on Kant, Gauchet, Girard, Dolto, Baudrillard and Meister Eckhart, Vergely shows that nihilism and fanaticism are not the respective fruits of modernity and religion, but two faces of the same reification of the world. The central theological contribution lies in the figure of Christ as "living word," master of symbolic language against all idolatry of things, thus offering a way of transcending the conflict between the sacred and desacralization, and opening the prospect of a "noble man" reconciling mystical interiority and modern freedom.
This article has not been translated yet — it is available in its French version here.
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