Evil and the Secular

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Evil and the Secular An interesting intellectual challenge that is likely to face European thinkers in the coming generation is how it chooses to define its moral identity. For the last millennium, there have been two broad paradigms of how Europeans have defined and perhaps more importantly imagined themselves as moral agents; one is the legacy of Christianity and the other is the secular enlightenment. Both are of course indebted to Plato and the grandeur of a single universal essence that puts together apparent multiplicity under the 'really real'; reason, the logos or love. Recently religious and secular thinkers have mediated upon the current state of intellectual flux. The former archbishop Rowan Williams has suggested that Britain be reconceived as a post-Christian society in recognition of the plurality of faith and non-faith mosaic constituting contemporary Britain. Whilst the German social theorist Jurgen Habermas believes Europe is entering into an era of post-secularity defined less by universal commitment to subject orientated reason but an intersubjective consensus amongst rival communities from a standpoint of post-metaphysical alignments between secular and religious/traditional reason.