Conquest and defense of the principle of secularism in France (19th - early 21st century)

Abstract

This contribution questions the French notion of secularism from a historical perspective (involving debates and writings situated in their time, official texts, synthesis books). The author argues that - if there is a potential for universality in the French notion of laïcité - this can only be perceived from an analysis and a detailed understanding of the historical circumstances of its emergence in France, in the form of a conquest and a defense (against certain religious currents). The central questions are the following: how did the process of secularization take place in France after the Revolution, and what did it entail, from the point of view of ideas and law, as regards the conception of secularism? How did this political and legal principle of secularism become part of institutions? How does it function today and what problems does it face? The article distinguishes five moments in the history of secularism in France from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first: - the upstream of the great founding laws; - the great founding laws of secularism in schools (1881-82, 1886); - the separation of the Churches and the State (1905); - the struggles over secularism after 1945; - the challenges of secularism in contemporary French society. Finally, the reflection on the history of secularism in France leads to the proposal to privilege, in the hypothesis of its extension, a "reiterative universalism", concerned with tact and respectful of the particularities of each society, as opposed to an "overhanging universalism", untimely and imperious.