Che cos’è la religione? La polisemia di un concetto contestato

This is the edited transcript of a talk Charles Taylor gave at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna on May 17, 2018. In the lecture, entitled The Polysemy of «Religion», Taylor discusses the polysemy of the concept from two different viewpoints: a static and a dynamic one. From the static point of view, the term «religion» takes on different meanings depending on whether the focus is on pre-axial or post-axial religions and, within a post-axial context, depending on how the various religious traditions accommodate the distinctions and mutual relationships between «religion», «magic», and «secularity». From a dynamic point of view, religions often function as identity markers in the modern world. This fact accounts for the competition between more militant/primordialist or more spiritual/opener varieties of religion that we are witnessing at a global level these days.