The Secularization Theorem in the Long Nineteenth Century (SECULAR)

– Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 898294

SECULAR aims to analyze how society and politics in 19th century Europe are understood and explained in terms of secularized religious content. This means that modern phenomena are interpreted by reference to earlier, theological categories. The focus is on the social and political theory of the long 19th century, from 1789 to 1914: the phase from the French revolution until the outbreak of WWI, which sees the birth of modern social science as well as the rise of various ideologies. SECULAR studies the idea of secularization as a category fundamental to conceptions of social and historical reality. By centering on the triadic relationship between early socialism, the counter-enlightenment and classical sociology – with special consideration of 19th century Zionism – SECULAR offers new perspectives on how an emerging modern age imagines itself.

Guiding general questions are: What is the place of secularization within modern social and political theories? How exactly can social and political facts be described as secularized religious structure? Importantly, how does the theorem of secularization influence and shape historical knowledge? This comparative approach on European ideas and their contexts, understood in the general framework of secularization theory, will offer historiographical and epistemological insights. It adds a new narrative to the entanglement of European social and political ideas. At the same time, SECULAR has a contemporary impact: social and political theories about the relation between religion and society have a history and this history needs to be studied in order to better comprehend more recent discourses. SECULAR aims at a historical and theoretical understanding of the emergence of the idea of secularization. This understanding will explain the fragmentation, incoherence and interconnectedness of social and political theories in the larger framework of secularization as a key philosophical problem of modernity.

Herausgeberschaften

-   Karl Löwith. Welt, Geschichte und Deutung. Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 47 (mit Galili Shahar),  Wallstein 2019

-   Politische Repräsentation und das Symbolische. Historische, politische und soziologische Perspektiven (mit Paula Diehl), Springer 2016

Aufsätze und Artikel

-    Löwith and Nietzsche: Notes on Recurrence. In: G. Shahar, F. Steilen (eds.), Tel Aviv Yearbook of German History, Wallstein 2019

-    Zur Politischen Ikonologie der Palmach. In: Leviathan, Sonderband 34, 2018

-    Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie In: H.-P. Müller, T. Reitz (eds.), Simmel Handbuch. Begriffe, Hauptwerke, Aktualität, Suhrkamp 2018

-    Geschichtsphilosophie; In: H.-P. Müller, T. Reitz (eds.), Simmel Handbuch. Begriffe, Hauptwerke, Aktualität, Suhrkamp 2018

-    Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der Theorie historischer Repräsentation In: P. Diehl, F. Steilen (Hrsg.), Politische Repräsentation und das Symbolische. Springer 2016

Im Erscheinen

-   Albert Salomons Ideengeschichte der Freiheit; In: B. Thériault, C. Marty (Hrsg.), Kulturkritik im Namen der Freiheit. (submitted)

-   Nineteenth-Century Social Complexity. Adventures of a Concept from Rousseau to Spencer. In: M. Lutz-Bachmann, H. Schwalbe (Hrsg.), Complexity in Science and in Society. (submitted)

-   Werk 1.4. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1892 (=Problems of the Philosophy of History 1892), In: G. Hartung (Hrsg.), Georg Simmel. Leben - Werk - Wirkung, J.B. Metzler 2020 (submitted)

-  Werk 5.2. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1905/1907, In: G. Hartung (ed.), Georg Simmel. Leben - Werk - Wirkung, J.B. Metzler 2020 (submitted)

-  Rezension zu Christian Marty: Max Weber. Ein Denker der Freiheit. Weinheim, Basel 2019; Historische Zeitschrift. (submitted)

Übersetzung

-  Frank Ankersmit: Vom Mittelalter zur Demokratie und wieder zurück (Englisch zu Deutsch, Erstveröffentl.). In: P. Diehl, F. Steilen (Hrsg.): Politische Repräsentation und das Symbolische. Springer 2016

Reviews

- Jacques Rancière: Die Nacht der Proletarier. In: Zeitschrift für Philosophische Literatur. Vol. 2, Nr. 2 (2014)

- Johannes Rohbeck: Zukunft der Geschichte. In: International Network for the Theory of History, INTH Reviews (2013)

- M.C. Bienert, U. Schaper, H. Wentker: Hauptstadtanspruch und symbolische Politik: Die Bundespräsenz im geteilten Berlin 1949–1990. In: H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews (2013)