Yet there are some more fundamental questions which seem worthy to be raised. Here are some of them, for all participants.

1. Secularism, theocracy, multiculturalism can be meant as policies but also as fundamental attitudes toward religion: namely, modes to conceive its place in society, public life or public ethics, education, the making of political wills. But even to evaluate whether one of these attitudes is right, and much more to discover whether there are any better ones, one should first ask whether there is or not a consistent set of common characteristics of religions – an essence of religions, so to speak. Only in the first case it makes sense to discuss the above mentioned fundamental attitudes in general; otherwise, one should specify which religion or competing religions one is speaking of, case by case.

Let me try to sketch an answer to this question, if only to make a possible sense of it clearer. I do think that there are some properties shared by most religions that have survived Modernity.

A) Transcendence. The first one qualifies religions’ main object, the divine – be it conceived as one or more personal being o not. With no exception, the divine is characterized as transcendent all categories of our language, and hence beyond all human reason and comprehension, even if not necessarily against them. This is of course true of most non-Christian surviving religions, included such as Buddhism, devoid of a personal God, or Induism, devoid of one personal God; but it is true even of Christianity, the religion of Incarnation, since we find in the Gospels a severe warning against attempts at possessing or detaining the divine spirit (noli me tangere), not to speak of attempts at exploiting its name for human, e.g. political, interests (this is the “sin against the spirit”, the only one which will not be forgiven). But absolute transcendence, affirmed by the greatest among ancient and modern philosophers (Augustin, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas of Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cues, Kant and many others) is in fact common to the three “religions of the Book”, also in virtue of their common neo-platonic background in their flourishing ages. This is why it was most surprising to hear the Pope in Regensburg contest a share in philosophy and rationality to Islamic religion.

As Kant made clear, as Shakespeare always knew, it’s not against rationality to think that conceptual and linguistic theoretic thinking has its limits, beyond which there is more than can be said.

B) The roots of evil. Even if particularly stressed within Christianity, no still living religion (in my knowledge) lacks a deep analysis of the proceedings by means of which a man or a community construct their (inauthentic) identity, by exporting aggressive drives and inculpating THE OTHER. In most religious traditions one finds deep analysis of self-justification and self assertion, be it individual or communitarian. In this respect, a religion is an invitation to “interiority”, in the precise sense of a deconstruction of the egoistic or self-interested will, for the sake of a reform and rebirth of a new individual identity, free (or less dependent) from self-asserting identity delusions, yet not indifferent to one’s full, flourishing, creative individual life – and capable of recognizing one’s own transcendence relatively to any social or psychological definition.

If these remarks are plausible, then the question which follows would be:

2. Are negative effects (on modern, secularized, civil and morally decent way of thinking, on education, on the freedom of scientific research), which are quite commonly attributed to religion(s), truly attributed to them, or should they rather be attributed to a political and institutional degeneration of religions (“sin against the Spirit”) ?

And if somebody objects that there is no such distinction: then why in most churches (included the Roman Catholic Church) there are very eminent men (Bishops for example) representing and defending the suggestion made in question 2, such as cardinal bishop C.M. Martini, who almost became the Pope, and who just prefaced a revolutionary book on the soul, by the young Italian theologian Vito Mancuso? More generally: why in the history of Christianity most refreshin , renovating movements have been anti-institutional, or have influenced deep reforms of the churches?

If you think that the distinction depends on the religion you consider, and that, for example, an institutional and earthly political role is essential to Catholic Roman Church, then a further question may be:

3. What is the point, for a religion, of organizing itself as an earthly institution? Are we able to find any aims or ends which would be specifically religious, namely bound with religious spirituality (as distinct from cognition, morality, law, art), and not with ideology, that is attempt at conferring political force to spiritual values? In fact I think that the answer is positive, and – as far as the Catholic Roman Church is concerned, I think that the point of an earthly institution is to make contemplation and spiritual life on earth possible, and not to influence public ethics, law and government. This is, historically and ideally, what distinguishes Catholicism from (some) protestant Christian denominations. Contemplation against Calvinistic ethics, sanctification of the visible against intramundane asceticism, and so on. But even if I were wrong, this question suggest another one, concerning a possible re-orientation of this debate:

4. O.K., the critical function of intellectuals and philosophers is a good, necessary, sacrosanct thing. Our heritage – the Enlightenment, moral autonomy, libertarianism, liberalism, democracy, caring about the full and free development of personalities, about freedom of science and research, about freedom of religion and atheism, all of that is indispensable. Specific criticisms made by Flores D’Arcais and Daniel Dennet are perfectly well founded. Yet considering questions 1-3, shouldn’t philosophers also bring reason, cultural and conceptual analysis in the space of the current public debate, and discuss with representatives of religions the proper place of religion in society, instead of accepting to reduce the debate to a clash between theocracy and secularism? Shouldn’t they help – as philosophers or intellectuals – an increasing number of people wanting a better spiritual life, to know the best ad the specific soul of religious traditions, and help them to distinguish spirit from ideology, that is idolatry?

Maybe this is part of Dennett’s proposal of a “curriculum” in religion(s), but I am not so sure of that….