From tolerance to charity: on religion, secularity and pluralism today

Abstract

The questions of (in) tolerance between religions and of freedom of religion and thought are not new to history, or rather are not exclusive of this era. We need only to remind, for the purposes of this text, a work of the Enlightenment period, the Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire. On the other hand, even living in an age that some authors, like Gianni Vattimo, believe to be a time of consolidation of secularization phenomena - something that invloves freedom, celebration and respect for the difference -, it is still possible to see intolerance towards different religions, and no respect, especially from sectors of major religions such as Christianity, for the principle of a secular state. In dialogue with Vattimo's pensiero debole (weak thought), I examine in this paper the proposal made by this author of a migration from the idea of tolerance to that of charity, as a means to move from a metaphysical relationship with the truth in religions to the unusual notion in religious practices and discourses of a kenotic truth, that is, a truth free from assumptions of correspondence and from the intention of imposing it to other kinds of truth.