After having clarified the concept of secularization and outlined its problems, the author gives an overview of the different causes of secularization and points out that the forces driving the process of secularization have Christian origins. On this basis, in the third part of the article, the author describes and lays the foundation for a new attitude for the Church towards secularization, necessary both for being able to convert herself to the gospel and to evangelize people in the world today. One of the most important parts of this attitude is respect for the autonomy of every human person, intrinsically related to respect for the dignity of every person. The end of the article, looking to the future, points out the consequences of such an attitude towards the discussion of some burning questions in the Church.

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.

The presented paper describes the phenomenon of secularisation and secularism in the culture of Western Europe, and attempts to identify its sources. The first point of the paper, The meaning of secularization and secularism, explains secularisation as a social process in which religion or, more strictly, religious institutes, religious behaviour, and religiously inspired conscience, are gradually losing their control over many fields of social activity such like education, arts or politics. Secularisation can be labelled as a philosophy of life “as if there were no God”, or a kind of ideology that tries to justify not only the very fact of secularisation but declares it a source and norm for human progress and demands the proclamation of man’s absolute autonomy in shaping his own destination. Among many philosophers who have influenced development of secularisation and secularism two stand out: R. Descartes (second point) and F. Nietzsche (third point). In the philosophy of Descartes one can identify at least four sources of modern secularism. These are: his concept of philosophy, theory of cognition with the resulting departure from classical concepts of truth and rationality and development of alternative ones, Cartesian metaphysics and the arguments for the existence of God and his concept of the nature of God evolving from those arguments. The last part of the article presents Nietzsche’s move away from the faith in Christian God and his turn to atheism. At least three fundamental causes for Nietzsche’s radical autosecularisation can be discerned: the emotional religion of his home, his disbelief in the authenticity of the Bible and his growing familiarity with the philosophy of Schopenhauer.