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Reinhabiting Civil Disobedience

Bhrigupati Singh

To clarify it again, what, then, is the difference between religion and
philosophy? A core distinction would be that the latter can subsist with-
out a conception of the divine. In other words, philosophy does not
necessitate a conception of another, higher world, with which to slander
or to beautify, or to authorize its work in this world. It need not traffic
in super-earthly hopes. Of what consequence then, is this emergent con-
ception of a ‘‘post-secular’’ world where it is religion that is (so much
stronger? or only more distinctly?) an intervening force in the practical
affairs of this world, enmeshed in public-creating technologies of such
recent origin? Take another aspect of this question: What space do these
same technologies grant to philosophy? Contemporary communication
media such as newspapers or television are hardly a forum for philo-
sophical disputation. Indeed, an argument about the concept of being
as a current affairs TV program would be comical. The market would
hardly desire it. So then, philosophical problems are not current affairs.
And religious problems are? Or is it that these issues, reported as such,
actually have nothing to do with religion at all? As for philosophy, I can
neither doubt nor prove that there have been few points in human
history when philosophical speculation, variably defined to include both
mystics and scholastics, has been considered as unnecessary or out of
place an occupation as it is today in neo-liberal societies. Is this a secular
or a theological development?
As regards the contemporary world, we are urged to speak on sup-
posedly more important matters, such as globalization or terrorism. For
anyone wanting to approach these discussions with a philosophical step,
there is cause for much diffidence, both about the quality of the ensuing
conversation and about the question of what a specifically philosophical
contribution to it might look like (as distinct from say, the need for
historical analysis to diffuse some of the hyper-presentness surrounding

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