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One of the main characteristics of our societies is the existence of a plurality of believes, religious or not, which affect the way people live. The current essay is a defense of secularism as de the best way to achieve a peaceful & just coexistence among these different believes. Taking as the core of it the respect for human rights & the correlative "neutrality" of the State in relation to religious issues, the author thinks that secularism is the best way to defend the common good &, at the same time, the differences which are legitimate inside the community. These differences must rest on the proclamation of the equality among all human beings (human rights). For this reason secularism opposes to multiculturalism, which puts the emphasis in the differences even beyond this very basic idea of equality. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the currents of ideas opposed to the presence of religion in the public sphere. According to a French-styled ultra-fundamentalist model of laicism, which has been partially assumed in Quebec, religion, its institutions and manifestations should have no influence on public life. This article introduces the basic tenets of such position, particularly in what concerns the definition of modernity and the agency of women. Adapted from the source document.

This paper proposes that Secularity is not only a political model that prescribes a separa-tion between the State & the Churches, but a model that entails a complete scheme of thought, a very intellectual project, which must be considered in contrast & opposition with other doctrines. In this way, the author offers a definition of the minimal content of a Secular project. Adapted from the source document.

In this paper, the author vindicates the idea of a secular Ethics, proudly stressed as an independent domain facing the religious claims. This idea is shaped in a positive way & finds its foundation in the concept of human dignity. To achieve this goal, the paper analyses the idea of human dignity in its relationship with the concept of autonomy, following both of them since Picco della Mirandola's work to Immanuel Kant's philosophy. Adapted from the source document.

The issue of Secularism has reappeared as one of the central themes in the contemporary political debate in several European countries. In this context, the author argues that this debate is linked, in countries like Spain, to a confusing understanding of the political meaning of the essentials of Secularism. This paper explores the ambiguities of this debate of today, & says that the construction of an answer in defense of Secularismn is conditioned to a deep understanding of the hostile positions against it. Adapted from the source document.

This article reconstructs the change made by Habermas from exclusive secularism years before 1989 to his vision of a post-secular society, defended primarily in a series of works from the last ten years. The author argues that, despite this significant change, Habermas's conception remains, in the philosophical level, a questionable tax secularist vision imprinting Kantian reason. From the perspective of sociological theory, Habermas's vision is problematic because it projects a new type of society for something that is at best a minority phenomenon, specifically religious content translation to secular content through a rational dialogue between citizens. Unlike this Kantian and hyperbolic vision of a "post-secular society", the author suggests an idea less rationalistic and more nuanced interactions between discursive and non-discursive religious practice and democratic practice. Adapted from the source document.

Reasonable accommodations, which in the framework of multiculturalism allow differential anti-discriminatory treatment in favour of religious minorities, are an important instrument in the ethnocultural integration policy in Canada. However, the fear of excesses in the acceptance of the accommodations, in a context of fear of religious fundamentalism, has triggered an important crisis in Quebec, where the bases of multiculturalism and the protagonism of the law have been questioned. This crisis, which shows the importance that delimiting the meaning of secularism has in our societies, led the Government of Quebec to create the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d'accommodement reliees aux differences culturelles for the purpose of knowing the in-depth causes of this crisis and to propose solutions to overcome it. Adapted from the source document.

In relatively stable and homogeneous societies (mostly European) the principle of republican laicism was maintained without major problems as a solution to the issue of what role religion should play in the public sphere and its institutions. The phenomenon of immigration has sufficiently altered this social stability as to make us confront the new realities with a finer conceptual framework. The republican and plural-liberalism models offers different perspectives to address the problem, because a pure model of laicism is absent in complex societies. Adapted from the source document.

The paper analyzes the different groups that formed the National Action Party (PAN). Contrary to widespread idea by the PAN and its supporters that the party was born with a citizen profile and a democratic project, this article shows how the first program of the PAN was heir to two different conservative currents, but also anti-systemics: on the one hand, the heirs of the social-Catholic tradition, continuing the struggle against the Jacobin State emerged from revolution; on the other hand the secular right that sought the economic industrialization and the administrative modernization of the Mexican State, taking as a reference to the Hispanic tradition of the Spanish Falange. Adapted from the source document.