Prisoners of a Metaphor: Secularization as a Deicidal Epidemic

The article discusses the first reactions of many distinguished commentators to the impact that the CoViD-19 pandemic had on people’s religious life globally. Such across-the-board response is investigated against the background of Peter Sloterdijk’s exemplary reinterpretation of the religious vertical impulse in terms of anthropotechnics and is found defective. A more nuanced and ambivalent account of secularization is offered in the end as a viable alternative to the standard thesis of the disenchantment of the world.