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in toleration, the central question is how to develop a secular moral language in which those affected can present and discuss their claims – and in which there is a willingness also to treat minorities as equals. A secular state cannot do this without a corresponding conception of justice shared by its citizens. The form of reason that is called for here has learned to make some central distinctions, in particular those between ethical-religious life plans which are not generalisable and moral norms which are generally binding, and thus at the same time between
medieval Christian worldview, especially as part of the latter’s dualistic conception of humanity, which saw human actions as 46 Critical theory and feeling being influenced by good and bad angels or spirits. Acedia –a chronic listlessness and despondency –was seen as the most evil of demons or worldly temptations, for it threatened a commitment to religious life altogether. By adapting the core traits of earlier definitions of melancholy into the Christian notion of acedia, the Desert Fathers effectively transformed melancholia into a morally perilous condition
