Abstract:
The hermeneutic use of ‘secularization’ for the interpretation of elements of secular modernity has sparked a debate on the meaning and validity of this category. This thesis contributes to this debate, first, by providing a genealogy of the concept of secularization; second, by reconstructing and evaluating the contributions of Hans Blumenberg and Giorgio Agamben; third, by offering a distinct account of the meaning of the interpretative category of secularization and of its valid hermeneutic use. It argues that secularization is not a concept that objectively signifies the religious features of a secular object; it is rather the strategic operation of an effective analogical relation between the secular and religious discursive domain, for the hermeneutic purpose of interpreting the meaning of an object.
