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The Secularization Theorem in the Long Nineteenth Century

Project description

The emergence of secularisation

Nineteenth century Europe (especially the period between the French Revolution in 1789 and the beginning of World War I) witnessed the emergence of new ideologies as well as conflict over the relationship between state and religion. Secularism was central to the debate among politicians, social scientists and theologians. The EU-funded SECULAR project studies the role of secularisation within modern political and social theories, and the way it influenced and formed historical knowledge. The project will consider how secularised structure can be described in political and social practices. SECULAR will contribute to a historical and theoretical understanding of the emergence of secularisation, through its research into the history of the relationship between religion and society.

Objective

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.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 162 806,40
Address
KAISERSWERTHER STRASSE 16-18
14195 BERLIN
Germany

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Region
Berlin Berlin Berlin
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 162 806,40
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