Religions without God? Hans Kelsen, Anthropologist of Modernity
Keywords:
secular religion, modernity, secular morality, relative values, absolute values.
Abstract
In 2012 an unpublished book by the Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen, Secular Religion, has been posthumously published. This book, written by Kelsen between 1952 and 1964 in the United States, severely criticizes those theories of politics and culture that misinterpret modern social philosophy, science and politics as new religions, mainly adopting the controversial concept of “secular religión.” In the first part of the paper, we reconstruct the genesis of the book and the complex events that led to its final version, and we underline the motives that led Kelsen to write this vehement polemic in defense of the spirit of modernity, and eventually to withdraw it. In the second part of the paper, we investigate some of the main methodological and theoretical contributions that this work, albeit its critical tenor, is able to give to an anthropology of modernity.Downloads
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How to Cite
Di Lucia P. y Passerini Glazel L. (2015). Religions without God? Hans Kelsen, Anthropologist of Modernity. Revista de Antropología Social, 24, 221-243. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_RASO.2015.v24.50654
Section
Monographic
License
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