You must give the devil his due. La lettura plessneriana delle secolarizzazione

Helmuth Plessner's text “Die verspätete Nation” has become a classic on the German Sonderweg that led to Nazism. More broadly, it is a reflection on the effects of secularization on the interweaving of politics, religion and philosophy in modern Germany. The article follows this intertwining and then offers an interpretation of Plessnerian 'nocturnal humanism': the vindication of a fundamental European tradition that treasures the philosophical radicalism of German philosophy from Kant to Marx. Humanism thus appears to be the attitude of one who embraces the values of democratic liberalism with a deep awareness of its nihilistic potential. A strategy to rule the devil that secular modernity spreads on earth.