Author(s): Bengül GÃNGÃRMEZ AKOSMAN
The aim of the present paper is to focus on modernity and the absence of God in modern times. With the death of God, we are not talking about the absence of God but about the “experience” of death of God. The Death of God of Christian tradition is an historical event which Nietzsche declared witnessing to the advent of a secular form of the World. From the religious perception of Henri De Lubac this process can be named as “The Drama of Atheist Humanism”, from the philosophical perspective of Eric Voegelin it can be named as “gnosticism”, from the sociological perspective this can be named as “secularism”, “worldliness” and etc. Secularism means denial of Christian past and turning away from God by people of the West. It refers special historical process in which religion loses social and cultural value and significance. According to Lubac, in modernity, man is getting rid of God in order to regain possession of the human greatness The Enlightenment confidence in human reason’s ability to understand everything and transform the human nature or society through konwledge and political action is the most fundamental characteristic of this process. This confidence is also cause of the great crisis of modern times and the reason of the tyranny, revolutionary political movements, totalitarian ideologies, violence, enlightened despotism, disorder and collective crimes in modern times. According to Voegelin, modernity is gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of reality. In this paper modernity and the social process of secularization will be examined according to Eric Voegelin, Henri De Lubac, Karl Löwith and other political philosophers. Expecially, with the Eric Vogelin’s concepts secularization process will be evaluated within the context of “the emergence of secularized history”, in the context of the political religions, namely gnosticism.
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