Back to the Future. New Religious and Secular Paradigms Facing the Radical Crisis of Modern Civilization

The paper aims to explain the notion of perverse effects produced by a hyperbolic theoretical validation of evidenceless theories, elaborated in order to perform the modern civilization process in terms of its radicalization. As a result, arises in western societies a drift dynamic, going ahead along a slippery slope and consisting in an increasing violence due to a gradual weakening of axiological rationality, ethic of responsibility and representative democracy, until their substantial abolition. Otherwise the paper seeks to investigate the intellectual strategies rising up in response to this vicious cycle; they appear to share a substantial rejection of the notion of risk-society in itself. Indeed, on one side, focusing on the religious-traditional realm, the paper proposes a comprehension of the occurring transformation process inside the Roman Catholic Church, in light of Catholic interpretation of both present historical-natural contingencies, and religious-supernatural prophecies throughout the last two centuries (Marian apparitions mainly). Nevertheless, on the other side, through the investigation of the philosophical and social-historical realm, it considers and emphasizes the contribution offered by some of the major contemporary secular scholars from different theoretical traditions, in order to gain a new theoretical-ethical-political – as well as rational – synthesis, basically based on a fundamental paradigm-shift: from the radical-modern etsi Deus non daretur to the “after-modern” veluti si Deus daretur paradigm.