Genealogia da tese da secularização: da sua proveniência pré-sociológica à sua emergência na sociologia do século XIX

The main focus of our research is the analysis and interpretation of the conditions that supported the provenience and the eme rgence of the secularization thesis. For that purpose, we applied a genealogical methodology that allows us to observe its historical vicissitudes, as well as its contingencies, discontinuities, and contradictions in sociological and pre - sociological disco urse. Thus, we propose a diachronic and systematic review of secularization?s several meanings. We start by its Greco - Roman senses ? where we identify the five basic layers of meaning of the concept ? and then deepen what we call the fundamental moment for the establishment of a systematic study of the religious phenomenon in modern societies ? its appropriation by sociology in the mid - nineteenth century, but, especially, in the late nineteenth - century and early twentieth - century. The study of its provenien ce and emergence compels us to question secularization?s representation, and of its concomitant project of modernity, as the natural order of modern societies.