The Eclipse of Religion and Freud’s “future of an illusion”

Abstract

The main contention of this paper is that, no matter whether one is a true believer or a professed atheist, religion remains a relevant social phenomenon. Serious scholars have written about an eclipse of the sacred in industrial societies through a sad confusion between «sacred» and «religious». The «religious» as a commodity administered by an organized church might well be in a state of crisis. But the «sacred» is actually the meta-human element that makes mankind exist and develop beyond the so-called «laws» of the market.