Una nuova introduzione a «La città secolare»

This is the Italian translation of Harvey Cox’s new (2013) Introduction to The Secular City (1965). Herein Cox discusses his book’s strengths and weaknesses with the benefit of hindsight. In particular, he weighs its main claims against what he calls the «second coming» of the secularization debate. To begin with, he discusses the similarities and differences of his earlier take on the issue with the positions taken later by Charles Taylor in his influential A Secular Age (2007). While appreciating Taylor’s erudition and irenical style, Cox distances himself from his exclusive focus on Latin Christendom and western modernity and his neglecting the colonial history. He argues, then, for a plural understanding of both religion and secularity, given that there are now multiple ways of being secular, carrying with them different modes of incorporating the religions of the culture in which they emerge. It is now time to recognize the validity of other paths to God and secularism. In conclusion, Cox acknowledges that his original emphasis on urbanization as a motor of secularization was exaggerated. There is no direct link between the city and the secular. Still, urbanization remains an inescapable reality on our globe and cities will provide the context for an emerging multicultural world. But the right name for this place is not so much «technopolis» as «cosmopolis»: a place where strangers meet and that cannot be either entirely secular or completely sacred. On the contrary, it ought be a place where both the sacred and the profane jostle and interact.