Abstract

RIVERA CASTRO, Faviola. Laicidad y pluralismo. Isonomía [online]. 2010, n.33, pp.37-64. ISSN 1405-0218.

It is common today to identify the political value of laicism with freedom of conscience and with the State's neutrality regarding religious beliefs. In this article, I argue against this identification and maintain that we should understand laicism as the principle of separation between church and the state as well as the project of secularizing the institutions of the latter, which requires the exclusion of all religious content from them. I claim that this identification is part of a tendency, also common, to interpret laicism as a political value within the contemporary and dominant version of liberalism. Against this tendency to assimilate laicism to this kind of liberalism, I point out that, as regards religious matters, this liberalism developed in response to religious pluralism, while laicism developed in relation to the power of a single dominant church.

Keywords : Laicism; Liberalism; Pluralism; Freedom of conscience; Neutrality.

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