Crying in the Desert? Speaking About God in Our Time

This article offers a critical analysis of some contemporary attempts to bring up the issue of God and religion again in philosophical discourse, after the disenchantment of the project of Enlightenment. At first the author analyses G. Vattimo’s recent book Belief, in which he repudiates the violence and oppression of technically manipulating and politically controlling reason. In order to put an end to this violence, Vattimo argues in favour of a complete historicisation and secularisation of Christianity, which has caritas as its limit. The author criticises Vattimo on the point that his thinking leads to a subjectivation of religion and truth, and therefore is unable to stop the violence of reason. Secondly, Ch. Taylor’s interpretation of the malaise of modernity is analysed. He considers Christianity as a safeguard of the intrinsically true and good, which enables contemporary thinking to overcome its subjectivism. As a conclusion, the author stresses the importance of the philosophical and religious idea of irreducible transcendence as confining the violence of self-willed thinking.