According to Gianni Vattimo, the secularization process can be seen as analogous to the “death of God” in the Western world. The “weak theology” that results from that view will be used in the article as a starting point for the study of three 19th century authors, lay and religious at the same time, Pierre Leroux, Edgar Quinet and Ernest Renan, who reflect on the meaning of religion in the modern world, as well as on its relation with the democratic State.
This article analyses the first traces of postsecular turn in historical theory, arguing that they first emerged in Dominick LaCapra’s book History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (2009) and in Allan Megill’s subsequent polemic with that work. The author claims that what prevails in LaCapra’s narrative is the rhetoric of “resisting apocalypse”, thus demonstrating how he inscribes postsecular themes with the issue of trauma, together with its religious connotations. The discussion between LaCapra and Megill is treated here as a point of departure for considering the forms that the postsecular can take in historical theory.