Secularism and Its Ambiguities: Four Case Studies - Paperback

by Carlo Ginzburg (Author)

In the best micro-historical tradition, Carlo Ginzburg, himself one of the founders and icons of this genre of historiography, dissects four moments of European intellectual history. This book relives the experience that participants in the Natalie Zemon Davis Lecture Series at the Budapest campus of Central European University had in 2019 listening to Ginzburg's eloquent and engaging discourses. For the purposes of this volume he has re-edited and completed the leporello of cases charged with the inherent ambiguity between secularism and religions.

Secularism is often identified with rejection or at least distancing from the sacred. However, if one assumes that secularism also appropriates and reworks the sacred, its ambiguities come to the fore. The dilemma accompanies the reception of La Bo騁ie's Servitude volontaire between 1574 and today. Before Walter Benjamin, the lesser-known 19th-century L駮n de Laborde defended the profanity of reproducing the arts. The tension around the secular pervades the case of the College de Sociologie (Paris, 1937-1939), an attempt to analyze the ideological components of fascism. The fourth lecture approaches a much-discussed contemporary phenomenon - fake news - from a long-term perspective. To what extent are some disturbing features of the world we live in the result of a long, tortuous, unpredictable trajectory?

Author Biography

Garlo Ginzburg is the professor emeritus in History of European Cultures in Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. He has also taught at the UCLA as the Franklin D. Murphy professor of Italian Renaissance Studies. His research interests include Italian renaissance and early modern European history.