1st Edition
Pluralizing Humanism Religions and Secularisms Beyond Power
Introduction: From Humanism to Humanisms 1. The Powers of Religions and the Challenge of Pluralism 2. The Ethics of Secularisms and The Problem of Pluralism 3. Pluralizing Humanism: Particular, Not Parochial 4. Identity, Dignity, and Dialogue: The Humanist Ethos of Polish Solidarity 5. From Resistance to Freedom: Humanisms and the Imagining of a New South Africa Conclusion: Humanizing Politics, Sustaining Democracies
Biography
Slavica Jakelić is Richard P. Baepler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Christ College, Valparaiso University, USA. She has edited or coedited a number of journals and volumes, including The Future of the Study of Religion. She is the author of Collectivistic Religions: Religion, Choice, and Identity in Late Modernity and Both Freedom and Belonging: Essays on Religion, Nationalism, and Solidarity (in Croatian, I sloboda i pripadanje: Eseji o religiji, nacionalizmu, i solidarnosti).
"Pluralizing Humanism explores the implications of a descriptively acute and normatively profound understanding of the pluriform character of religious and non-religious ways of life in the late modern world. Jakelić’s mastery of sociological and religious studies methodologies combines into a truly interdisciplinary work that scrutinizes actors’ complex moral and metaphysical landscapes in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of ‘chastened’ religious and secular humanisms, and to recommend an astute dialogical and collaborative strategy for diverse humanisms that seeks common positive aims amidst the irreducible truth of pluralism. Theoretically ambitious and empirically meticulous, this work will be very significant for the fields of religious studies and sociology of religion, for studies of community identity and violence, and for understanding modernity in general."
- Charles Mathewes, Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
“In this illuminating comparative study, Jakelić makes a powerful case for the importance of humanistic discourses in the Polish and South African freedom struggles of the 1980s. Importantly, these discourses were plural—fed by multiple sources and traditions and sustained within unlikely religious-secular partnerships. Pluralizing Humanism offers hope for efforts to sustain the pursuit of common goods in the midst of the radical divisions that plague contemporary societies around the globe today.”
- Jennifer Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Yale Divinity School, the author of Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition
