HOBBES ON THE PROBLEM OF SECULARISM

Year 2022, Issue: 33, 61 - 74, 21.05.2022

Aydin Müftüoğlu

https://doi.org/10.53844/flsf.1016066

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Secularism is one of the major topics in political philosophy in our age. The reason why it’s so, is that the secularized religion is still a strong social glue and moral source in our day. Secularism, to say shortly, refers to the religion’s abandoning of all its worldy demands, especially its political demands by turning into a cultural body among the others. In fact, the secularism, as a cultural process, had begun in the mid of Medieval Age. But neither reconciliation between religion and science/philosophy nor nominalism were sufficient for secularism; because the relation between culture and religion needed to be reconstructed and the question was how this goal could be achieved without neglecting the religion’s autonomy and by holding it as a moral source. The answer requires an effort to create a new morality, a new politics, a new science and of course a new epistemology. Hobbes was the first who made this effort to overcome the problem by using the theoretical equipment told above. This article takes what Hobbes did to achieve the goal and examines his thought in respect of its relation with secularism.

Keywords

secularism, religion, law, power, contract, right, liberty

HOBBES VE SEKÜLARİZM SORUNU

Abstract

Sekülarizm çağımızda politika felsefesinin başlıca konularından biridir. Bunun nedeni sekülerleşmiş dinin hala güçlü bir toplumsal tutkal ve bir ahlaki kaynak olarak hizmet etmeye devam etmesidir. En genel anlamıyla sekülarizm, dinin başka kültürel yapılar gibi bir kültürel yapıya dönüşerek tüm dünyevi taleplerinden, özellikle politik taleplerinden vazgeçmesini ifade eder. Aslında, bir kültürel süreç olarak sekülarizm, Ortaçağ’da başlar. Ancak Ortaçağ’ın din ile felsefeyi uzlaştırma çabası ve nominalist bakış açısı sekülerleşme meselesini tam olarak çözemez. Buradaki esas mesele, kültür ve din arasındaki ilişkiyi yeniden yapılandırmak, yani dinin otonomisini göz ardı etmeden onu sadece bir moral kaynak olarak tesis etmekti. Bu ise yeni bir epistemoloji, yeni bir ahlak ve yeni bir politika anlayışını zorunlu kılmaktaydı. Hobbes, Ortaçağ’dan devraldığı teorik birikimi kullanarak bu sorunu çözmeye çalışan ilk modern filozoftur. Bu çalışmanın amacı Hobbes’un sekülarizm sorununa nasıl bir çözüm getirdiğini incelemek ve onun kendi düşünce sistematiği ile sekülarizm arasındaki ilişkiyi ortaya koymaktır.

Keywords

sekülarizm, din, yasa, iktidar, sözleşme, hak, özgürlük

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