Abstract

In this contribution I ask what could be an “European way” of making use of religion within public debates. In the first part of the essay I tell the history of the realization of the European flag as an illustration of how religious motives and motives as normally used in public and secular debates interact. In the second part I formalize this interaction in terms of the relation between faith and belief on the one side and reason on the other side. In this part I’ll refer to Derrida and Austin, insist on the distinction between fides qua creditur and fides quae creditur , and criticize both an absolute concept of reason and a dogmatic conception of religion