Rethinking Secularization, Liberalism and Religion

Abstract

My view of the Renaissance as an era inspired by the joy and pride of pursuing intrinsic goals, leading to the perfection and professionalization of action spheres such as science, commerce and art, implies a number of changes in the understanding of the modern age that the Renaissance started. Here I want to point to a consequence incompatible with the usual opposition of the secular and the religious. We can no longer understand secularization, which does characterize the modern age, as replacing religious values with liberal ones. We must understand it as the replacement of extrinsic with intrinsic goals. Secularization seems to oppose religion, but in fact it insists that religions pursue their specific intrinsic goal of providing meaning in life rather than mixing this goal with goals of power and science.