ABSTRACT
Secularism is mainly concerned with controlling religion. Its task is to define the place of religion in public life and to keep it firmly in this location. The point of state neutrality is precisely to avoid favoring or disfavoring not just religion positions but any basic position, religious or non-religious. In many Western countries we have moved from an original phase in which secularism was a hardwon achievement warding off some form of religious domination to a phase of such widespread diversity of basic beliefs, religious and areligious, that only clear focus on the need to balance freedom of conscience. The rejection of cosmic-religious embedding was accomplished by a new conception of "the political," which involved its own representation of political authority, but one in which the central spot remains paradoxically empty. Politics became, intellectually speaking, its own realm deserving independent investigation and serving the limited aim of providing the peace and plenty necessary for human dignity.
