World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 410

be moment of surprise and astonishment. This could be the moment of getting wonder, about by the expression 'again religion!' It may also be seen as implying a question: 'why religion again?' Such skeptical responses might be stemming from an unwelcome occurrence of something which is thought to be improbable in an age of society where the process of transformation is under way. But when the aberrations of modernity are on the hold, the direction of transformation seems to on the counter-path. The dominance or influence of religious voinces in determining the socio-political affairs in an age of modernity, which is defined by irreligious traits, is taken to be bearing an internal contradiction. The nature of the change that happens in the domain of religion in general has often been characterized as the 'return of religion'. Thus, the present perception of religious change in terms of its return might clearly points to a historical context wherein religious-fact had become a thing of the past. Philosophical and sociological proclamation of death of god', 'end of religion', 'end of theocracy', 'end of theology', 'death of savior', 'religion without god', 'spirituality without religion', 'secular religion', 'humanistic religion', 'civic religion', 'natural theology', 'political theology', 'liberation theology', 'green theology', 'eco-spirituality', 'feminist theology', 'anthropologic god', and the like could be seen as some of the representative notion or expression which would bear the mar of spirit of that context. Thus, the perceived apprehension on the return of religion clearly points to a historical context wherein religious-fact had become a thing of the past. Hence an apprehension of the reappearance of religion might be following (conveying) from the occurrence of something that was thought to be dead or eliminated. Can the present surge of religion be taken to mean (the return of particular religion?) its possibility of being persist forever? Or is it only saying that time has yet to be matured for a total extinction of religion, because the process of the reach of rational consciousness requires a longer period of time in the history?
The term 'return' may simply mean an occurrence of coming back or going back of something. It may also signify the coming back or revival of something, which has come to non-existence or dysfunction. However in the case of the expression 'return of religion', it may be difficult to construe the sense of the term 'return' entirely to an event or process of making presence of religion from a condition of its total invisibility or non-existence. If that is the case of understanding or usage of the term 'return of religion' it requires a critical appraisal the ways in which the 'return of religion' would be making sense. In order to locate the intellectual source of the problem of return of religion, we shall now draw here an instance of an intellectual, rather philosophical, discussion on the theme of religion in our world', which took place at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Study, in 1994. While capturing the context or the 'sprit of the time' in which such a theme has assumed the centrality of intellectual attention, Gianni Vattimo, Italian Philosopher,
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