THE DEMONIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: RELIGION AND PUBLIC SPACE IN THE POST-SECULAR STATE

Abstract

The present work analyzes the way in which religion, when incorporated into the public space, can come to serve for the realization of human rights. To this end, it begins by addressing the hegemonic and non-hegemonic theories of human rights, in an attempt to verify that its nature is to modify the existing social realism to guarantee human dignity, in addition to its theoretical aspects. It proceeds to a historical survey on the role of religion in the public space, which was marked by persecution and intolerance, due to the fact that they aimed at manipulating the truth and establishing a religious and political order, followed by the secular state, in which the religion rested exclusively on the individual's private life. Habermas is used to understand the figure of the post-secular state and how a religion would influence the demonization of others; the article also uses Boaventura de Sousa Santos to support the consequences of religious expression in public life. It is a bibliographic research, based on works of human rights and religious thinkers, and documentary, as it addresses texts present in the archive of the Brazilian Thought Documentation Center (CDPB) about a national religious thinker: Jackson de Figueiredo. The role of religion in public life, depending on how it separates from the state, can guarantee plurality of thought and religious freedom, thus protecting human rights.