Un umanesimo della crisi. Legge naturale e Cristianesimo in Ernst Troeltsch

The philosophical and theological research of Ernst Troeltsch largely contributed to focus on the cultural crisis that Europe suffered in the early decades of the twentieth century. On the basis of a large consciousness of the historical evolution of the key-concepts of the European culture, Troeltsch recognised the role of the Christian religious experience in their establishment as well as the consequences of the process of secularisation. Considering the rising and historical evolution of Natural Law, Troeltsch stressed how the progressive separation of this idea from its religious origin is part of the secularisation, that is a major feature of the European religious history in modern period. The consciousness of this situation was the basis for a search of a rethinking of the role of Christianity in the building of a European ethos always considered in terms of relation between the transcendental level of the faith and the contingent social forms that Christianity determines within the historical framework.