Presentation of the book “Watersheds of secularization: Western civilization project and global alternatives”

Last week, on the 6th of Thursday, the presentation of the book “Watersheds of secularization: Western civilization project and global alternatives” took place and was accompanied by vivid discussion between the speakers and guests.

The monograph was prepared by philosophers and religious scholars working at the Ukrainian Institute of Global Development and Adaptation Strategies. One of the central ideas of the book is the situation of classical Western rationality crisis

caused by the destruction of the enlightenment narrative. Pursuing the goal of desired liberation, the Western world found itself in a situation of frustration and confusion, losing political initiative and civilizational leadership.

The authors of the report were:

Viktor Levitsky - the Director of Ukrainian Institute of Global Development and Adaptation Strategies, Candidate of Philosophy. Doctoral student at Moscow State University. His research interests are ontology of culture, social philosophy, problems of global development.

Belokobylsky Alexander - the Head of the Kiev branch of the Ukrainian Institute of Global Development and Adaptation Strategies, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor at the Donetsk National University. His research interests include philosophy of science, philosophy of myth, ontology, philosophy of culture.

According to the authors, the current crisis is associated with the systemic desacralization of culture in the process of secularization.

They also identified the “drivers” of the secularization process in the area of ​​Latin Christianity, outlining the boundaries of two fundamentally different worlds - the world of primary secularization (Western Europe) and the secondary secularization (the object of expansion of the West).

They also paid attention to the process of secondary secularization, namely the formation of alternative global development projects for the West, such as the Islamic (in the discourses of the Iranian, Arabic and Turkish projects), the Chinese global project, and the Russian World.

Collision of the latter with the Western project (and among themselves), as the authors say, destroys the hegemony of the universal mind, its values ​​and goals, and replaces the educational axiology with the imperatives of new, rationalized and politicized religiosity.