Post-Secularism, Realism and Utopia ─ Transcendence and immanence from Hegel to Bloch

This project addresses the recent rise in post-secularism in the humanities and social sciences. Post-secularism is the proposition that the secular project begun by the Enlightenment has come to an end. If we define secularism as the historical process of increasing marginalisation of the religious from contributing to debates in the public sphere and the process of public policy formation then it is in crisis. This opens up the intriguing possibility that there may be opportunities for renewed debate about the nature of our "secular age" and the role of religion in modern society. Evidence for such a renewal of the religious may be found in the alarming rise of religious fundamentalism in the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries, especially in the Islamic world and the United States, the resurgence of Catholic conservatism under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI or the increasing popularity of more esoterical quasi-religious New Ageism.

This book will be of great interest to those scholars currently working in the area of post-secularism (a very popular area of research in political philosophy); Hegelian and Marxist scholars; the Critical Realist community. It will also be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in Utopian Marxism, Critical Theory, Critical Realism, post-Hegelian German philosophy, philosophy of religion and the interface between political philosophy and religion.

Jolyon Agar teaches political theory at the Queen's University of Belfast. He is the author of Rethinking Marxism: From Kant and Hegel to Marx and Engels (Routledge 2006).