Abstract

The essay analyzes and compares the different conceptions of «secularization» proposed by Carl Schmitt and Karl Löwith. Even if Schmitt and Löwith use the same concept to thematize the development of the modern age, the essay argues there is a radical difference of intentions, points of view and presuppositions between Schmitt and Löwith, which refer to two radically divergent conceptions of the meaning of modernity, its genesis, and its destiny. The aim of the essay is to reconstruct the opposition between the positions of Schmitt and Löwith with reference to their different judgment about the effects of the modernization process and the meaning of Christianity