A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath [1 ed.] 1527572323, 9781527572324

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A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath By

Alpo Penttinen

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath By Alpo Penttinen This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Alpo Penttinen All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-7232-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-7232-4

To Olli and Eero, in fraternal thankfulness

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. —Phil 3:13-14

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE .................................................................................................... xi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 1 PART I: AFTER SECULARIZATION: RADICAL SECULARIZATION CHAPTER I ................................................................................................. 11 READING THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES AFTER SECULARIZATION: INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION 1. Catholic Fundamental Theology: Accounting for the Christian Hope in the Contemporary World... 11 1.1 The “Radical Objectivity” of the Christian Faith as the Starting Point: A Balthasarian View of the Movement of Jesus Christ ... 13 1.2 The One Twofold Task of Fundamental Theology .................... 20 1.3 Reading the Signs of the Times from the Second Vatican Council Onwards ............................. 22 2. Contemporary Global Hyperpluralism: A Polyhedric Provincialization of European Secularization ......... 25 2.1 An Epochal Shift? ...................................................................... 26 2.2 European Secularization Provincialized .................................... 32 3. After Secularization: C. Taylor ....................................................... 37 3.1 Taylor’s Dualistic Master Narrative of North Atlantic Secularization........................................................................... 41 3.2 Questioning the “Tailor-Made” Dualism ................................... 47 3.3 Axial Revolutions: The Need to Go Forward–and Backward ... 55 4. Finding Our Place in History After Secularization: Radical Secularization as a Sign of Our Times ............................. 59 4.1 Not Atheism, Indifferentism or Naturalism… ........................... 62 4.2 …But Radical Secularization ..................................................... 67 5. Bracketing the Religious Presumption and the Twofold Theological Criticism: A Fundamental Theological Reduction of Radical Secularization ................................................................................ 72

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CHAPTER II ............................................................................................... 85 SECULARIZATION, POST-SECULARIZATION, RADICAL SECULARIZATION: IN SEARCH OF A SUBSTANTIAL CONCEPT OF NONRELIGION 1. After or Post-Secularization? .......................................................... 85 1.1 The Habermasian Post-Secular Consciousness.......................... 86 1.2 The Four Branches of the “Secularization” Tree and Its Root . 101 2. After Secularization: Learning to Recognize the Nonreligious .... 115 2.1 The Resurgence of the “Nones” ............................................... 116 2.2 The Deeper Terminological Question: Beyond Mere “Non-Religion” ............................................... 120 3. Modern Western Philosophy of Religion and Radical Secularization .......................................................... 126 3.1 The “Religion” of Modern Western Philosophy of Religion ... 127 3.2 Radical Secularization in Modern Western Philosophy of Religion? ......................... 133 3.3 M. Hägglund’s “Radical Atheism” and “Secular Faith” .......... 139 4. In Search of Radical Secularization: The Habermasian Example to be Followed................................. 151 5. Summary of Part I ......................................................................... 156 PART II: A FUNDAMENTAL GENEALOGY OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION CHAPTER III ............................................................................................ 161 HUMAN TRANSCENDENTALITY 1: EUROPEAN MODERNITY AND ITS WESTERN SECULARIZATION 1. Introduction ................................................................................... 161 2. Human Transcendentality: K. Rahner and the Metaphysical Assumption ............................. 162 2.1 Human Transcendentality according to Rahner ....................... 165 2.2 Transcendentality, God, and the Metaphysical Assumption .... 170 3. The Cartesian Challenging of the Metaphysical Assumption ....... 179 4. The Cartesian Movement in Modern Western Secularization: What Descartes Saw but Berkeley Missed .................................. 189 4.1 The Character of the Cartesian Movement: The Project of Pure Enquiry towards the Absolute Conception of Reality ............ 193 4.2 The Scientific View from Nowhere and Radical Secularization ..................................................... 202 5. Radical Secularization: Putting the Cartesian Movement within a Broader Framework..................................................................... 210

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CHAPTER IV ............................................................................................ 215 HUMAN TRANSCENDENTALITY 2: AXIAL AGES AND THEIR MULTIPLE SECULARIZATIONS 1. Introduction ................................................................................... 215 2. The Axial Age Hypothesis ............................................................ 219 2.1 K. Jaspers ................................................................................. 221 2.2 S.N. Eisenstadt ......................................................................... 225 2.3 M. Gauchet and C. Taylor........................................................ 229 3. Conceptualizing Human Transcendentality in a Radically Secular Way: A Possible Unfolding of the Axial Dynamics in the Western Tradition ........................................................................ 240 3.1 The Original “Ubiquity of Religion” and the Axial Spiritual Dynamics ............................................................................... 241 3.1.1 “God” in abstracto ........................................................... 242 3.1.2 Human religiosity in concreto .......................................... 246 3.2 Axial Ages, East and West....................................................... 253 3.3 The Axial Unfolding in the Western Tradition ........................ 256 3.3.1 The Israelite Background: Monotheism and the Necessity of Divine Revelation ... 257 3.3.2 The Turning Point of Jesus of Nazareth ........................... 263 3.3.3 Western Modernity as a Tertiary Axial Breakthrough: .... 275 A Radically New Way of Conceptualizing Human Transcendentality? ........................................................ 275 4. After Secularization: The Movement of Radical Secularization ... 285 4.1 The Radically Secular Temperament ....................................... 285 4.2 The Radically Secular Dilemma .............................................. 289 5. Summary of Parts I and II ............................................................. 296 PART III: A FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION CHAPTER V ............................................................................................. 303 OVERCOMING ONTOTHEOLOGY: TOWARDS A TRINITARIAN METAPHYSICS 1. Introduction: Catholic Magisterium on Faith and Reason ............ 303 2. The Ontotheological Temperament: Brains in a Vat..................... 307 2.1 A Speculative Destruction of the Ontotheological Temperament .................................... 307 2.2 The Terrifying Vision of the Brains in a Vat ........................... 315 3. The Challenge of Post-Metaphysical Philosophy of Religion: Getting out of the Vat Alive ........................................................ 319 3.1 The Death of the Metaphysical God ........................................ 321 3.2 The Kenosis of the Metaphysical God ..................................... 324

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3.3 Interrupting the Ontotheological Temperament: Avoiding the Impotency of Modern Western Philosophy of Religion ........ 329 4. Back to Balthasar, and Beyond: The Historical Kenosis of the Triune God .................................. 335 4.1 A Theology of the Holy Saturday: Kenosis before Kenosis .... 338 4.2 Encountering Theologically Radical Secularization: Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics........................................ 347 5. The Theological Meaning of Western Secularization ................... 353 5.1 The Question of a “Theology of History” ................................ 354 5.2 Western Secularization as a Path into Contemporary Global Hyperpluralism: The “Principle of Incarnation” Goes Forth . 360 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................... 367 APPENDIX A: ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................ 375 APPENDIX B: THE SECULARIZATION SCHEME ......................................... 377 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 379 INDEX OF NAMES .................................................................................... 411

PREFACE

This book belongs equally to the two main styles of Christian theologizing, namely monastic and academic theology. This has to do with the context of its genesis. The book was originally written as a doctoral thesis for the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. While writing the thesis, I lived at the Monastery of St. Gregory the Great on the Caelian Hill. Consequently, my heartfelt thanks to my academic supervisor, Fr. Ferenc Patsch SJ, for his patient and wise guidance during the work on the thesis. I also thank the second reader of the thesis, Fr. Gerard Whelan SJ, for insightful comments on the manuscript. Likewise, I want to remember the Prior of San Gregorio, Fr. George Nelliyanil OSBCam, with the rest of its monastic community, for providing such a spiritual environment where I could write the thesis that became this book. My period as a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, during the fall term of 2022 greatly broadened my theological horizons and made this book better. During my time in Berkeley, I was fortunate to live at Incarnation Monastery, from the spiritual atmosphere of which I also benefited enormously. Numerous persons have offered their help and friendship during my work on this book, both in Finland and Italy, as well as in the US. Unfortunately, I cannot name them all here. During the many years of my theological training, I always imagined myself as a small bee who goes from one teacher to another, collecting the precious nectar of the Word of God from those who have more insight into it than I do. This might sound like a rather egoistic procedure, but I hope that in some way or another it will also contribute something ad maiorem Dei gloriam, the only thing that really matters in the end. In a certain sense, this whole book is a single meditation on Karl Rahner’s famous prediction that “the Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced ‘something,’ or he will cease to be anything at all.”1 After the spiritual transformation process of secularization, “religion” is no a priori given necessity anymore, but postsecular individuals are free to explore and experience with a myriad of different existential alternatives. This is no relativism, however. Openness for the Other calls for 1

K. RAHNER, “Christian Living Formerly and Today”, p. 15.

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an equal responsibility for the Other. Authenticity is in high demand. Is the Church willing to enter into these radically new spiritual dynamics? It would require letting go of many past, even allegedly “immutable,” things, but only to become free for the new things to come (see Phil 3:13-14). Perhaps the present twilight is not so much the dusk of the old but the dawn of the new? Anyway, the direction of the Christian tradition is always “forward, forward, forward.”2 We are all equally called to participate in this synodal transformation of the Church and of our human way-of-being-inthe-world, for which the Earth cries ever-more strongly. A piece of Catholic theology, Biblical and Magisterial references are given in the main text of this book, while all other references are in the footnotes, in an English translation, as far as possible. The Biblical quotations follow the New Revised Standard Version, while the Magisterial references are all easily found at the Vatican website (vatican.va). The research from which this book flows was made financially possible by grants from the Church Research Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and from the Catholic Church in Finland. I considered them not only as necessary material preconditions for this piece of academic work, but also as signs of inner-Christian, ecumenical fraternity that flourishes in Finland. Kiitos paljon! Special thanks to Dr. Julie Le Blanc who helped me with the English language of this book (all remaining errors being mine, of course). In many ways, both spiritual and material, my long existential explorations, of which even this book forms a small part, were made possible by my parents Kari and Outi. They are the first to understand that all the years spent in search of God are years well spent. Many thanks to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for publishing this piece of theological work. I dedicate this book to my two Roman brothers Olli and Eero in fraternal thankfulness. Helsinki, January 8, 2024 Alpo Penttinen

2

As Pope Francis put it in the press conference on his return flight from Canada on July 29, 2022.

INTRODUCTION

Catholic fundamental theology aspires to find its way into the beating heart of the Christian Revelation, in order to express it in an intelligible fashion in its particular spatio-temporal context, especially in view of those who still find themselves outside the visible bonds of the Church (see 1 Pet 3:15; FR, n. 67). In this missionary light–a defining characteristic of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church–a crucial question confronting contemporary Western fundamental theology concerns the modus procedendi to adopt after the transformation process of secularization: does the “post-secular” in the first place signify a “Return of Religion,” or should it instead be characterized as the final acceptance of the “Death of God”?3 Or perhaps in this particular case tertium datur: secularization not as a unilinear development with any one clearly identifiable result, but rather as a becoming-visible of the spontaneous human multiformity when it comes to existential decisions? As in any case, however, to simply assert human freedom abstractly is an empty notion; what is needed, is a concrete acknowledgment of the way human freedom is, or can be, exercised. In this book, the post-secular condition–read as the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization–is approached through the speculative concept of Radical Secularization.4 It denotes a human way-of-being-in-theworld or form-of-life, which has become totally emancipated from the metaphysical truth-claims of traditional religion, to the point of not being able to take these seriously in the first place. Radical Secularization is not for or against religion, but finds itself so perfectly outside the traditional religious language-game that for it, religious belief does not appear as a real existential alternative to begin with. Theological discussions of secularization have of course been many in 3

See J. SVENUNGSSON, “The Return of Religion or the End of Religion?”; M. GAUCHET, “Sécularisation ou sortie de la religion?”. For illustrative recent theological and philosophical approaches to the topic, see, respectively, C. DOTOLO, Dio, sorpresa per la storia and P. SLOTERDIJK, Nach Gott. 4 For the sake of clarity, Radical Secularization as the central concept of the study will always be capitalized, as well as its hermeneutical context of After Secularization. On the meaning of speculation, in difference to mere argumentation, see G.W.F. HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit, pp. 39-40. In theology, the traditional word would be “contemplation.”

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Introduction

the post-WWII period in the West. They have all been fundamentally misguided, however, for the simple reason that only during the past decade or so have the actual consequences of the Western process of secularization become truly visible. Especially the striking resurgence of the “nones,” or of people who do not identify with any religious tradition, calls for a renewed theological discussion of secularization. How to enter into this existential predicament that is dawning on us After Secularization, not by condemning it but by sharing its joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties (see GS, n. 1)? This book hopes to give a theological contribution to this timely challenge by developing the concept of Radical Secularization. If we manage to imagine complete nonreligion, i.e. such a human way-of-beingin-the-world that does not have any intrinsic relations to what was called “religion” in our tradition, it would at the same time mean a speculative overcoming of that very tradition for something else. The heart of this book is this speculative dynamic between Radical Secularization and After Secularization: Radical Secularization leads us into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization which most profoundly is defined by the reality of Radical Secularization. At first glance, this might seem like a vicious circle where the point of departure for thinking is destined to produce its conclusion, too. Yet, is it not true of all authentic thinking that in its movement the origin and the end coincide in the one thing worthy of thinking? Whether this fundamental theological study includes any authentic thinking is for the reader to decide, of course. As much as our hyper-accelerated society would like to condense the hard work of thinking into easily and quickly digestible slogans, this simply cannot be done. What can be done here in this Introduction, however, is to sketch the general outlines of the intellectual movement of this book. This will be done in three stages, corresponding to the three parts of the book’s title. First, what will follow is a fundamental theological study. As the first chapter of the study will explain in detail, Catholic fundamental theology is the intellectual attempt at expressing the Christian Revelation as intelligibly as possible in its particular spatio-temporal context. There is a crucial paradox involved here. On one hand, the Christian Revelation, according to its own self-understanding, is not of this world but comes from elsewhere: the Word of God “came down from heaven,” as the Church professes in the Creed. As such we cannot really understand the Revelation because it infinitely surpasses the human mind. On the other hand, however, it is precisely “for us men and for our salvation” that the Word came into this world. The whole Christian faith centers on the conviction that the mediator

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and fullness of all Divine Revelation is a human being just like us, Jesus of Nazareth (see DV, n. 2). Hence, the acuteness of a fundamental theology, its spiritual potency, so to speak, is judged by how it succeeds in presenting both dimensions of the Christian Revelation: its utter Otherness with respect to all things human, as well as its radical humanity. This might appear as a paradoxical, even contradictory, attempt, and that is precisely the point. There is a further methodological point to make concerning Catholic fundamental theology. To be truly Catholic, fundamental theology must be universal in its scope. It cannot content itself with addressing only a certain group of human persons, with having only a “parochial” significance. No, the Christian Revelation demands a civilizational, global significance. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council already affirmed that contemporary humanity “is involved in a new stage of history,” because it is becoming “all of a piece, where once the various groups of men had a kind of private history of their own” (see GS, nn. 4, 5). Pope Francis further elaborates on this hermeneutical line from the Council with his evocative image of the “polyhedron” as a model for the emerging global Church. A polyhedron is intrinsically hyperpluralistic: while forming a single whole it can never be grasped and controlled with a single formula, as if a priori, without concrete experience of it, but it constantly reveals new dimensions of itself a posteriori. Now the contemporary fundamental theologian must ask how we could meaningfully approach the Christian Revelation in the context of the emerging global Church, in all its paradoxicality and even contradictoriness? Second, this book is a fundamental theological study of Radical Secularization. It might appear surprising or even blatantly belated that I have chosen the old category of secularization as the key concept in a fundamental theological attempt to enter the new, hyperpluralistic predicament where the Church now finds herself. Even more belated might seem my speculative radicalization of secularization by and in the concept of Radical Secularization to denote a human way-of-being-in-the-world or form-of-life that has become totally emancipated from the metaphysical truth-claims of traditional religion, to the point of not being able to take these seriously in the first place. The ideal concept5 of Radical Secularization signifies thus, as the first two chapters of the book will synchronically explain, a completely post- or nonreligious human form-oflife, so nonreligious in fact that it should not even be named non-religious (or non-religious), or in any other way as conceptually related to what was known as “religion” in our cultural sphere: a radically secular person is one 5

On concepts, and especially their creation, as the main task of speculative thinking, see G. DELEUZE–F. GUATTARI, What is Philosophy?, pp. 15-34.

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Introduction

who does not identify themselves with any religious tradition, be it negatively or positively.6 A speculative discussion of complete nonreligion might be quite interesting in itself, of course, as a radically new departure for human consciousness in (after?) the long history of human religious evolution. Yet, in concrete reality, is not religion very much thriving in the contemporary globalized world? Is not religion rather making a return after its short secularist oblivion, as the various “post-secular” theorists claimed just some years ago? Well, everybody tends to see in reality what they want to see there, especially if it concerns actual and personally relevant issues. In the big, civilizational and global perspective adopted in this book, however, secularization as a gradual distanciation from traditional religion appears as an undeniable fact. Secularization unfolds in practically all modernizing societies where it is allowed to unfold, according to the specific civilizational dynamics of each cultural sphere. Exceptions are perhaps only the authoritarian societies that violently force their citizens to profess and follow a certain way-of-being-in-the-world. Elsewhere, in the more or less liberal democratic societies of the world, people are freely experiencing and experimenting with a growing variety of different existential alternatives. “Non-religion” or the decision of not confessing any pre-given religious creed is becoming the norm in the younger Generations Y and Z. Only during the last fifteen years or so has academic research been emerging on these secular or non-religious populations which form the fastest-growing existential group in practically all Western societies, and in many nonWestern ones, too, as discussed in Chapter 2 of this book. What the interdisciplinary study of the “nones” more and more clearly shows is that the non-religious people form no uniform group, but they exemplify a staggering variety of different ways of understanding and living human existence. “Secularization” as the name for this epochal process does not, thus, mean any unilinear development towards the absolute disappearance of religion but a hyperpluralistic diversification of various human forms-oflife. Whereas earlier, Before Secularization, people sought meaning and direction to their existence almost exclusively in the official religion of their culture, now After Secularization they seek and find existential significance in all sorts of contexts and traditions. The Church has no existential monopoly anymore. The homogenous culture of Christendom no longer exists, as Pope Francis has often emphasized. 6

In his magisterial study of Western secularization–concerning the late “Latin Christendom”–Charles Taylor mentions the idea of a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world, but he does not develop it further (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 269, 591-592).

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This much should be beyond all doubt, but the question is whether we have acknowledged this fact profoundly enough in the Church, and in society at large. Or do we continue to think according to the old categories, in light of which “religion” forms an unquestioned and unquestionable entity, in relation to which one can be nearer or further away? Yet, if we still think in that way in the Church, there will be no chance of entering into the presently unfolding historical dynamics, the present book claims. The challenge of Catholicism in the ongoing epochal shift is rather to enter courageously into the birth pangs of the emerging global civilization in a prophetic dialogue with the rest of humanity, as envisioned by the latest Ecumenical Council of the Western Church. The concept of Radical Secularization, a genealogical phenomenology of which will be diachronically developed in the main part of the book (Chapters 3 and 4), is designed to give a speculative contribution to this timely challenge. If we manage to conceptualize absolute nonreligion, i.e. such a human way-of-being-in-the-world that does not have any intrinsic relations to what was defined as “religion” in our tradition, we would at the same time have overcome that very tradition and its “religion” for something else. Whether this “something else” is to be called “religion” is an open question. We are at a “loss of language” in describing a completely nonreligious human form-of-life, the book argues. And this is exactly the point: “religion” has become a question to itself, even concerning its own necessity or not. Nobody knows how its future will present itself. It is into this radically open spiritual horizon that the logic of Radical Secularization leads us, if we decide to follow it. Rather than dogmas and doctrines, it is about worldviews or temperaments here, about the largely implicit spiritual visions that ground and direct our explicit thinking and action. And there is arguably one influential temperament in the Church that would block the logic of Radical Secularization even before it begins to unfold. I call it the “ontotheological temperament” in the book. It presents a twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization: first, how could complete nonreligion even theoretically exist in a reality that comes from God and returns to him?; and second, how could one even begin to evangelize people who were absolutely nonreligious? Instead of confronting the twofold theological criticism head-on, I let it hover in the air as I work out the logic of Radical Secularization in the central part of the book. As a result, the presumptuous religious criticism and the ontotheological temperament it is based on gradually vanish into thin air and the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization becomes visible, and breathable.

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Introduction

Third, the title of this fundamental theological study of Radical Secularization promises to explore its “aftermath.” The central claim of this book is not that people in secularizing societies would be losing all belief in God or any kind of trans-human intentionality and meaningfulness in reality. On the contrary, completely nonreligious people appear to be relatively few. But they do exist. Even more importantly for the speculative approach in the book, the reality of complete nonreligion as Radical Secularization presents a timely challenge to the ontotheological temperament of our Western tradition. In fact, it deconstructs it from within and ushers us beyond it into contemporary global hyperpluralism now dawning on us After Secularization. The actual theological challenge is to go beyond the sociological surface of secularization into its spiritual depth, and to discern the traces of the Paschal Mystery of Christ even there. The core of my argument is to be found in Chapter 4 where the historical unfolding of human transcendentality is traced from the various Axial Ages onward, in view of describing how the definitive departure from religion became possible in the modern secular West. Beginning with the last millennium BCE, we can second-orderly follow how the human mind gradually becomes conscious of its infinitely open horizon and struggles forward to take possession of itself. Whereas all the different Axial revolutions, in the West as well as in the East, had postulated some kind of objective, trans-human goal to the movement of human transcendentality, the proprium of modern European modernity and its secularization is the self-conscious suspension of all such objective claimants of human transcendentality: in fact, these are all transcendentally refused. In light of secular Western modernity, human transcendentality is to proceed in a radically open horizon, without any pre-given, “metaphysical” limits to its onwards-movement. If secularization can be thus understood as human transcendentality’s coming into itself in and through history, Radical Secularization can be regarded as the essence of European secularization, because it makes fully explicit what lies implicit in this historical process. Yet, it is an “essence” that is no a priori necessity but an “essence” that can show its meaning only a posteriori: we can analyze the movement of human transcendentality only in and through concrete history, even though it is exactly about overcoming this very history for the semper maius of reality. In this manner, the logic of Radical Secularization frees us from the Procrustean bed of the Western metaphysical tradition and introduces us into the hyperpluralist opening of After Secularization where no cultural tradition can enjoy a prima facie superiority but which every tradition can enter without losing their own particularity and uniqueness–at least this is the pious “dream” that the

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concept of Radical Secularization enables us to speculatively entertain for future humanity and the emerging global Church. In this fashion, the ontotheological temperament and its twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization will be dissipated into nothingness, as the last chapter of the study concludes. First, the logic of Radical Secularization infolds into a kind of inverse ontological argument according to which the objective metaphysical fullness of being denoted by the traditional concept of God cannot truly exist given the subjective constitution of human transcendentality. Consequently, such a missionary method that would aspire to transmit the metaphysical God-concept to people from the outside, as it were, is to be absolutely refused as spiritual violence. Radical Secularization appears thus as the full acknowledgment of every human person’s inviolable personal freedom in existential decisions (see DH, nn. 2, 10). This can be considered the definitive Death of God, but only of the necessary, metaphysical one. The Christian God, the God with a human face, as the late Pope Benedict loved to call him, might nevertheless return even After Secularization. In a way, he must return, certainly not as any a priori necessity, but perhaps as an a posteriori or “aesthetic” necessity, as this book argues both at its beginning and at its end, in a quasi-Balthasarian fashion. At the same time as the movement of Radical Secularization frees us from the ontotheological mentality of the late Western tradition, it necessarily brings us into a speculative dead-end, a kind of reductio ad absurdum. The transcendental constitution of the human mind is infinitely open beyond itself, as the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization will bring to the fore. Yet, in itself, human transcendentality is unquestionably not infinite but finite: it has a clear beginning and end in time, and it is essentially limited by its spatial context. This is the paradox, even absurdity, of being human: we exist in a particular spatio-temporal context, but simultaneously aspire beyond it, always beyond it. Nothing less than infinity itself could truly suffice to us, but we cannot give that infinity to ourselves. For that, radical Otherness is needed with respect to the human. To conclude–which is to begin!–, human religiosity has always had the correct intuition about the a priori necessary existence of this radical, transhuman Otherness in reality. The crucial question, the following chapters will argue, is how we are to relate to it a posteriori. Earlier in human religious evolution, Before Secularization, it was typically done by sacrificing something of our humanity for a trans-human intentionality in reality (for “Gods,” “spirits” or whatever). Now, After Secularization, that is no alternative anymore. Having entered, by and through secularization, into our finite, fragile, and precisely for that reason so beautiful humanity,

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Introduction

we transcendentally refuse to sacrifice it anymore. This is the absolute break in human religious evolution that even allows us to speak of its “end,” in Western liberal democracies at least. In this new hermeneutical context, the main challenge for fundamental theology will be to express the Christian Revelation in a style that would not happen outside or at the expense of our humanity but exactly in and through it. This will require, as envisioned at the end of this book, developing a truly Christian, i.e. Trinitarian metaphysics in its essential connection with a genuinely Christian theology of history. This, of course, is the always recurring Christian theological challenge of talking about “God” in a way that would not move outside the human but in its very midst, expressing its infinite opening in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. To the anthropological paradox one can respond only with the theological one, in their continuously intensifying intertwining, without either separating or confusing the two.

PART I AFTER SECULARIZATION: RADICAL SECULARIZATION

CHAPTER I READING THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES AFTER SECULARIZATION: INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION

1. Catholic Fundamental Theology: Accounting for the Christian Hope in the Contemporary World Catholic fundamental theology has its beginnings in the nineteenth century as a separate academic discipline.7 Since then, it has striven to give a scientific “accounting” of the specifically Christian hope to anyone who demands it (see 1 Pet 3:15). In the Western world–or in the late Latin Christendom, including its Anglophone offshoots around the Globe–the number of the external inquirers about the Christian faith has been steadily increasing these last two hundred years or so, as the previous existential hegemony of the Church8 has gradually disappeared following the societal and existential transformation process of secularization. Consequently, supplementing its earlier, pre-Vatican II and heavily, even violently, apologetic posture, contemporary Catholic fundamental theology has felicitously been characterized as the “ministry of foreign

7 The first chair in fundamental theology was founded at the University of Prague in 1856. For concise overviews of the history of the discipline, see C. BÖTTIGHEIMER, Lehrbuch der Fundamentaltheologie, pp. 68-76; S. PIÉ-NINOT, Compendio di teologia fondamentale, pp. 9-89; F. SCHÜSSLER FIORENZA, Foundational Theology, pp. 251-264. 8 In this book, the term “Church” refers, unless otherwise mentioned, both sociologically to the Roman Catholic Church and theologically (and thus more to the point) to the one Church founded by Jesus Christ (“founded” in the sense of wanted by him and gradually instituted by him through certain words and deeds: see COMMISSIONE TEOLOGICA INTERNAZIONALE, Temi scelti di ecclesiologia, n. 1). Additionally, following a long-standing theological tradition, the feminine pronoun is used of the Church, the Bride of Christ.

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Chapter I

affairs”9 of the post-Vatican II Church that “goes forth,” driven by her “most profound identity.” That identity, as the postconciliar popes from Paul VI to Francis unanimously and constantly emphasize, is that of evangelization, or of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to all people all over the planet (EN, n. 14; EG, nn. 19-49; Matt 28:19-20).10 Yet, if this outer, “apologetic-contextual” dimension of the fundamental theological enterprise were to exhaust its true nature, we would be left wondering why the discipline of fundamental theology is equally concerned with its inner, “epistemological-gnoseological” dimension (i.e. studying and explicating the Christian Revelation as the fundament of the Christian faith to the believers themselves).11 Why do fundamental theologians not content themselves with trying to construct a dialogue with non-Christians, be they believers of other religious traditions or not religious believers at all? Why the constant fundamental theological repetition of, or turning back to, the fact of the Self-Revelation of the Triune God12 in Jesus of Nazareth and its consequent transmission in the Church? Furthermore, if the direction of the fundamental theological movement is characteristically outwards (Chiesa in uscita!), why does it equally continue to turn inwards to the heart of the Church (depositum fidei)? Could the reason for this paradoxical, not to say self-contradictory, doublemovement of fundamental theology be that in relation to the Divine Revelation we are all originally, even radically, outsiders? Perhaps, finally, 9

See C. THEOBALD, “Imaginer la théologie fondamentale”. Without resorting to any (often ideologically motivated) “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” the great reforming effect of the Second Vatican Council should not be understated either, as can be clearly seen in the paradigmatic change from the classical apologetics to the new (and still developing) fundamental theology (H. FRIES, “Dall’Apologetica alla Teologia Fondamentale”; G. O’COLLINS, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, pp. 7-15, 40-47; C. BÖTTIGHEIMER, Lehrbuch der Fundamentaltheologie, pp. 72-76; S. MORRA–F. PATSCH, “‘Rendere ragione della speranza’ in Gregorianum. Dall’Apologetica classica alla Teologia fondamentale”; and on the two hermeneutics of course the already classic discourse of Pope Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on 22.12.2005. 11 For a description of the two, inner and outer, as it were, dimensions of the fundamental theological discipline, see S. PIÉ-NINOT, Compendio di teologia fondamentale, pp. 73-84. 12 In this book, the call to radically ecumenical “fair play” of the Finnish scholar of early Christianity Heikki Räisänen is adopted in capitalizing the word “God” whenever it appears, irrespective of the religious context (H. RÄISÄNEN, The Rise of Christian Beliefs, p. 4). The masculine pronoun is furthermore used to refer to God, according to the age-old Christian tradition, attested by the New Testament Jesus himself. 10

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the missionary movement outwards can be what it should be, and bear good fruit, only when the theological movement inwards has been embraced radically enough, into the very roots (radices) of one’s personal being?

1.1 The “Radical Objectivity” of the Christian Faith as the Starting Point: A Balthasarian View of the Movement of Jesus Christ For philosophy, the question of a starting point might very well be the decisive one. The point of departure for thinking may determine its successive unfolding to such a degree that “a small mistake in the beginning is a big one in the end.”13 In any case, it may seem to be all over already “by the bottom of page one,”14 the crucial decisions being implicitly taken even before the explicit argumentation gets going. Philosophy would consequently appear as a continuing search for the right kind of starting point–the right kind of arché–for thinking. For Christian theology in its Catholic tradition, by contrast, selfconsciously proceeding as it does from the Divine Revelation (cf. 2 Cor 4:12; 1 Thess 2:13),15 the question of the starting point is crucially different, at the same time easier and more difficult. It is easier because the point of departure for theological thinking is already given in advance, as a gift is: Christian theology starts from the Self-Revelation of the Triune God given to us in Jesus of Nazareth and transmitted by the Church founded by him. The question of the starting point for theology is more difficult, however, because of the peculiar nature of the Christian Revelation. This Revelation concerns, not any earthly comprehensible and controllable facts, but the mystery of “[w]hat no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). Even when manifesting the whole divine Being in, through, and with the most holy humanity of the Son, the Father remains absolutely hidden, beyond all human attempts at comprehension.16 The theological difficulty, or challenge is, therefore, not primarily an intellectual one, but is directed to the whole spiritual being of the theologian-to-be. That is, are they able in their particular spatio-temporal context to find and express such an entry 13

T. AQUINAS, De ente et essentia, c. 1. As J.L. Austin supposedly used to say (B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, p. ix). 15 See ST, I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2; FR, nn. 7, 44. 16 ĭĮȚȞȩȝİȞȠȢ țȡȪʌIJİIJĮȚ, as the Eastern tradition of the Church reminds us (cf. the Third Letter of Pseudo-Dionysius), or as St. Augustine famously recorded it for the Western tradition of the Church: de deo loquimur, quid mirum se non comprehendis? si enim comprehendis, non est deus (Sermo 117, 3, 5). 14

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into the Christian Revelation that both faithfully conserves this in its utter Otherness, as well as creatively allows it be received by the people of their time and place? A traditional manner of putting the fundamental theological challenge into words has been in terms of the concept pair of “content and form.”17 While the internal content of the Christian Revelation–the religious truths or dogmas that it is believed to contain–remains always the same, the external way of expressing it can, and shall, change according to the changing cultural circumstances in which the Church finds herself. Here the background assumption seems to be that the Divine Revelation would primarily concern some propositional truths which in themselves are what they are, but which can be variously expressed in different languages (not only in Latin and Greek, but also in German, Hindi, and Swahili), without, however, the content of the Revelation being affected. This kind of “propositional” answer to the fundamental theological challenge has been very influential during the past two or so centuries of the Church.18 It succeeds well in capturing the definitive nature of the Christian Revelation, i.e. the theological factum that the Triune God really has spoken everything to us in Jesus Christ.19 Yet, the question is whether it can succeed equally well in expressing the soteriological fact that the Christian Revelation

17 In his celebrated opening speech of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII expressed the pressing challenge of the aggiornamento (“updating”) of the Christian message in the contemporary world in terms of–at least prima facie–content and form: Est enim aliud ipsum depositum Fidei, seu veritates, quae veneranda doctrina nostra continentur, aliud modus, quo eaedem enuntiantur, eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia (GME, n. 6). But does the traditional terminology of content and form exhaust the intentions of the saintly pope in convoking the latest Ecumenical Council? 18 For a sharp historical analysis and critique of the propositional (or epistemological) approach to the Christian Revelation, see J.-L. MARION, Givenness and Revelation, pp. 8-29; for a more dispassionate treatment, see A. DULLES, Models of Revelation, pp. 36-52. 19 St. John of the Cross put the definitive nature of the Christian Revelation memorably in a comment to Hebrews 1:1-2, referring to God’s self-revelatory act in Jesus Christ: “In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word [todo nos lo habló junto y de una vez en esta sola Palabra].” This is the reason why God has consequently become “mute,” as it were, having no more to say to us, because “he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is his Son [ya lo ha hablado en el todo, dándonos al Todo, que es su Hijo]” (JOHN OF THE CROSS, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, pp. 179180; cited in CCC, n. 65).

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was given “for us,”20 who as humans always live and speak in a concrete cultural context. The dualistic or binary concept of content and form can be useful in a certain cultural setting (as it was for many centuries for Latin Christendom, not least in the wake of its internal breakdown following the Protestant Reformation). However, it can hardly be regarded as the prescriptive model for all intellectually possible and theologically faithful expressions of the Christian message. In fact, no one cultural expression of Christianity can claim precedence over all the others tout court, as if it were liberated from all cultural conditionedness. The Christian Revelation did and does not happen in a cultural vacuum (as nothing truly human does). Rather, as Pope Francis has emphasized, “grace supposes culture” (see EG, n. 115). This can be interpreted as saying that the outer form of the Christian faith is no secondary issue with respect to its inner content, but that the latter and former are equally dependent on one another in a kind of symbiotic relationship.21 Perhaps, then, is the whole dualism of “content and form” in need of being overcome, at least in its naive priority over all other fashions of giving expression to the Christian Revelation? One alternative and increasingly influential (but still perhaps not yet influential enough22) way of approaching the fundamental theological challenge was proposed by Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (19051988) in his “theological aesthetics.”23 For present purposes, its most pertinent feature is its vehement emphasis on the “radically objective” point of departure for Christian theologizing. Through his aesthetic approach to the Christian faith, Balthasar wanted to give expression to his personal impression24 that the content and the form of the Christian Revelation–now perceived aesthetically as its species (“form”) and its lumen (“light”)– 20

As the Nicene Creed so beautifully expresses the anthropo-logical orientation of the Christian Revelation: “for us humans” (įȚ’ ‫ݘ‬ȝߢȢ IJȠީȢ ܻȞșȡȫʌȠȣȢ) Christ came down from heaven, and “for our sake” (‫ބ‬ʌ‫ޡ‬ȡ ‫ݘ‬ȝࠛȞ) he suffered the death on the cross. 21 See D. ALBARELLO, La grazia suppone la cultura. 22 See J. RATZINGER, Unterwegs zu Jesus Christus, p. 35. 23 Here the reference is principally to the first volume (H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord) of his enormous Herrlichkeit. For an excellent presentation of Balthasar’s particular theological style, see A. SCOLA, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and of his theological aesthetics, in particular, see A. NICHOLS, The Word Has Been Abroad. 24 “Strictly speaking, then, a style is only the expression (expressio) of the impression (impressio)–the terms to which Balthasar refers are Bonaventure’s– which a form makes with its splendor on the beholder, who, in turn, is always in some way enraptured by it” (A. SCOLA, Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 2).

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belong so intimately and so inseparably together that ignoring this unity in distinction would have only deadening effects on the understanding of the Christian Revelation as a whole.25 An intellectually stultifying objectivism and a spiritually unflattening subjectivism–the ever-present vicious circle of modern European theology–can in Balthasar’s eyes be overcome by acknowledging the radical objectivity of the Christian Revelation, that has both its beginning and its completion in the historically given figure of Jesus Christ. Not only does the Christian faith have its object in the species or form (Gestalt) of the Word made flesh, but this also becomes ever-more its subject as the lumen or light (Licht) of the faith is allowed to enlighten the believer. “The whole mystery of Christianity,” Balthasar writes, “is that the form does not stand in opposition to infinite light, for the reason that God has himself instituted and confirmed such form.”26 The structure of the Christian Revelation appears consequently as the form of Jesus Christ– objectively given in the living tradition of the Church–who through his Paschal Mystery of Death and Resurrection has shown himself to be coextensive with God’s own Light-Word. Balthasar proceeds: Such a structure calls, in the first place, for a radical objectivity: in the subject himself the light of faith is truly a light only if man looks away from himself and, renouncing his own evidence, entrusts himself to the Source that, as a result of grace, stands wide-open before him. But he is capable of achieving such interior self-transcendence perfectly and without a secret mystical identification, only if he recognises the Source of the Light in the form of Jesus Christ, as this form reveals itself to him within the sphere of the Church.27

This is certainly no subjectivism: for the theologically aesthetic perceiver, the objectively-given form of Christ contains in itself the conditions of possibility for seeing it as it really, in itself is–i.e. as the SelfRevelation of the Triune God in and through human history.28 But does not such an objective, even a radically objective, starting point for theology risk 25 In Balthasar’s analysis, an elimination of aesthetics has unfortunately been typical for most of the main-stream Western theology in modern times (cf. H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, pp. 45-78). 26 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 216. 27 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 216 (italics AP). 28 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 464: “The form that we encounter historically is convincing in itself because the light by which it illumines us radiates from the form itself and proves itself with compelling force to be just such a light that springs from the object itself.”

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letting the already-overcome ontotheological mentality, with its unavoidable spiritual violence, re-enter viciously into the theological discourse through a back-door, as it were?29 A genuinely Christian objectivity, as the one championed by Balthasar, is not, in the last analysis, the objectivity of a static thing (res), not even of an existing being (ousia). Rather, it is the dynamic movement of the person Jesus Christ, who through his Paschal Mystery has redeemed all of reality back to its original and final relationship with God the Father in the Holy Spirit. The spiritual movement of Christ reveals the movement of the Triune God who is in continual going out from himself in the ecstasy of love. “This objectivism,” Balthasar states, “is the result of taking seriously the ekstasis of love, its going out of itself: only in this way can man achieve an act of serious love which corresponds to God’s own act of taking love seriously– the act of divine Eros which goes out of itself in order to become man and die on the Cross for the world.”30 If there is any violence in this divinehuman movement of the Triune God, it is the only “violence” that genuine, ek-static love always carries in itself: the self-immolating violence of the movement towards the semper maius of unconditional self-giving for the Other. The radical objectivity of the Christian Revelation, as interpreted by Balthasarian aesthetics, is not, however, a mere inner-Christian idiosyncrasy, but discloses a genuinely Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, approach to reality as a whole.31 Trinitarian metaphysics approaches reality “in the light of the third transcendental,”32 as beautiful–that is, what precisely in its beauty gives itself in its true being (aletheia) and thus shows itself to be good (bonum diffusivum sui). In this perspective, everything that exists, every “being,” from the smallest atomic particle to the largest galaxy, even to the universe as a whole (including all the possible parallel universes), is perceived as something that conceals an inner depth or a “ground” (Grund) in itself, which it nevertheless is willing to reveal to anyone who approaches it with receptive senses and an open heart. Hence, the deepest meaning of the universe shows itself as Love, i.e. as radically opening up oneself for the Other.33 Trinitarian metaphysics recognizes appearance not as “mere” appearance anymore (as in the Greek metaphysical tradition), but as the essential 29

See C. DOTOLO, Dio, sorpresa per la storia, p. 89. H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, pp. 216-217. 31 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, pp. 605-618. 32 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 9. 33 Such aesthetic, relational metaphysics has backings from contemporary cosmology, too (see B.T. SWIMME–M.E. TUCKER, Journey of the Universe). 30

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movement of reality out of itself to encounter the Other. Reality in no way exhausts itself in this outer movement but precisely in and through it shows its true depth, becoming all the more itself as it reaches out of itself. Appearance is the enlightening clearing (the Heideggerian Lichtung) of reality which reveals itself in giving itself (as formosa, as beautiful). And what is the reason for the cosmic self-revealing movement, Balthasar asks: “Why does the Ground appear at all?”34 The answer remains: for no reason, if one with “reason” wants to have a functional explanation or an ethical motivation to reality’s self-giving nature. Rather, the beautiful reality rejoices in itself in giving freely and for free of itself, for no other reason than the joy of giving. Thus, there is no violent prescription of an idealistic standard, no bursting demand of “you must change your life,”35 but a silent and gentle affirmation of the Other, of you, as you are–and above all of you as you can become–, as if reality had opened its arms to embrace you lovingly. What a liberating experience, to come to yourself thanks to reality coming to itself by letting your journey happen through its! An essential perichoresis which comprises all of reality and defines reality in its very being, all the way to its deepest ontological roots. Along such lines would a truly Christian, i.e. Trinitarian conception of reality proceed, as envisioned by Balthasar in his theological aesthetics. Balthasar explicitly notes that this is no philosophical deduction of the central Christian mystery of the Most Holy Trinity–what a theological contradictio in terminis that would be! Yet, it must nevertheless be borne in mind when considering the specific modality of the Christian Revelation, namely the “how” of the Son’s revealing the Father.36 Certainly, no one has ever seen or can see him who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6:16). No one knows the Father of all being and reality. But the fact that we can name him as the “Father” already suggest that the Ground of all being and meaning did not want to remain in his unapproachable Otherness, but on the contrary desires to be known as the Father through the Son in the Spirit (see Matt 11:27). If the Father, then, is the hidden Ground of all reality, the Son is reality’s Self-Revelation: “all things have been created through him and for him” and “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16-17). The Father shows himself as he really is in himself, as the Father, in and through giving us his Son, who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). Here, in theology 34

See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 611. As in the last line of Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo (cf. R. SCRUTON, Beauty, p. 161), which as such, of course, is one of the most perspicuous literary descriptions of what it means to experience reality as beautiful. 36 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 611. 35

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proper, therefore the same principle holds as in philosophy (the genuine analogia entis): “no ground without appearance, no content without form,”37 no Father without the Son, no Son without the Father. Consequently, only they who have eyes for beauty can be enraptured by the mystery of reality’s selfrevealing movement to itself by giving itself to the Other, because only the beautiful can overcome the division of being into the objective and the subjective, content and form. It does so by enlightening the even deeper ontological unity in distinction: the beautiful form as the splendor veri.38 In sum, it does not appear idiotic anymore to believe that beauty–certainly no artificial, kitschy beauty but the true beauty of self-sacrificing Love–will save the world: for without this Beauty the world would not exist as the world to begin with. In line with his aesthetic starting point to Christian theologizing, Balthasar goes on to clarify that thanks to the radical objectivity of the Christian Revelation, even the act of Christian faith receives a radically objective character. The fides quae of the Christian believer, i.e. the content of the faith that they profess, is in reality the fides qua of Christ himself in his perfect, self-oblative obedience to the Father.39 In Christian theology, the dualism of form and content is thus overcome by the content of the faith itself, which is inseparably its form, too. Consequently, the radical objectivity Christianly understood is radical Christocentrism, where the objectively given figure of Jesus Christ becomes the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega (Rev 1:8), as well as the definitive criterion of all Christian believing and living. To summarize this Balthasarian starting point for theology, adopted and pursued in the present study of Radical Secularization, let us talk about the movement of Jesus Christ as the ultimate origin of Christian believing and thinking. It is the spiritual movement of him who did not “regard equality with God as something to be exploited” (Phil 2:6) but who willingly entered the ekstasis of love, giving his life for the eternal salvation of the world. In the movement of Jesus Christ, the so abused word “God”40 reveals its true Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, meaning as self-sacrificing, kenotic, Love, which lives forever.

37

See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 610. See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, pp. 17-23. 39 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 218; and more concentratedly, H.U. VON BALTHASAR, “Fides Christi”. 40 In the words of Martin Buber, “it [God] is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it” (Eclipse of God, p. 6). 38

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1.2 The One Twofold Task of Fundamental Theology Christian theologian is then one who has been impressed by the splendor of the movement of Jesus Christ and who consequently endeavors to express this in an intellectually convincing manner in their particular spatiptemporal context.41 To “express” is exactly the right word to describe the theological modus procedendi. According to an aesthetic approach to the Christian faith, its content and form–now speculatively deconstructed and overcome by the concepts of form (species) and splendor (lumen)–belong so intimately together that separating one from the other could only happen at the expense of the whole. The movement of Jesus Christ represents one single spiritual movement, in and through which the Triune God reveals himself as he really is in himself: as self-giving and self-sacrificing Love who as such is the true fulfillment of human existence. In Christ, God speaks to all human beings as a human being like them, not above or outside humanity–and thus somehow at the expense of it–, but exactly in and through the real humanity revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth.42 The theologian, for their part, is then called to express the Christian Revelation in a faithful and intellectually convincing way, to reflect, as it were, the movement of Christ in their verbal expression of it. But, as Balthasar emphasizes, the theologian “is capable of achieving such interior self-transcendence perfectly and without a secret mystical identification, only if he recognises the Source of the Light in the form of Jesus Christ, as this form reveals itself to him within the sphere of the Church.”43 The aesthetic approach to the Christian Revelation with the concept pair of form and light (splendour) can be a real and enduring overcoming of the metaphysical “content and form” binary, only if it does not simply ignore this, but instead succeeds in integrating this into its own self-understanding. The notion of the unity in distinction of the form and content of the thing to be expressed remains, therefore, as relevant as it ever was in the fundamental theological endeavor. 41

Although the unique testimony that Jesus himself gives of the Father cannot be compared to any human testimony of Jesus (see John 5:34)–a constant reminder to every theologian not to fall into spiritual self-indulgence: scientific theology is no burdening necessity to the Church (in the way that the missionary proclamation of the Gospel itself is), but rather an always available possibility. 42 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, “God Speaks as Man”, and, of course, the locus classicus of GS, n. 22: Christus, novissimus Adam, in ipsa revelatione mysterii Patris Eiusque amoris, hominem ipsi homini plene manifestat eique altissimam eius vocationem patefacit. 43 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 216.

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Following this, we must now turn to the theological intention guiding the great reform of the latest Ecumenical Council, whose influence is only gradually beginning to be felt in the life and thinking of the Church.44 The reason for the convocation of the latest Council was the same as with all the twenty Ecumenical Councils before it: “that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be more effectively defended and presented” (GME, n. 11). In fact, the aggiornamento of the Christian message is a never-ending task for the Church during her pilgrimage through the saecula of the present world order. As Pope John XXIII famously pointed out at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the content of the Christian Revelation–the certain and immutable depositum fidei divinely entrusted to the Church–is one thing, and the form or the fashion in which it becomes expressed to people is another thing (GME, n. 15). The two shall never be confused, as they never shall be separated from each other. There is no reason to become too fixed on the traditional language used by the saintly pope here, but one must rather inquire about his deeper intentions in calling the Council together in the particular contemporary situation. As further clarified by the pope himself in his Opening Speech of the Council Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, the original intention in convoking the Vaticanum II was that the one Christian Revelation would in its wholeness become expressed “in the way demanded by our times.” This, however, as the Papa Buono very well knew, “will require a great deal of work and, it may be, much patience,” because “types of presentation must be introduced which are more in accord with a teaching authority which is primarily pastoral in character” (GME, n. 15; italics AP). Hence, a more self-conscious pastorality seems to have been a main motivation behind the Second Vatican Council, a more realized recognition, that is, of the Church’s being in Christ like a “sacrament” or “a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (LG, n. 1). The Church is a basic sacrament which does not exist for herself but, rather, in order to mediate the redemption of Christ to all the people of the world.45 The pastoral transformation of the Ecclesial Magisterium calls for a corresponding theological approach whose guiding principle is the salus animarum (see CIC, can. 1752). In this light, the fundamental theological challenge becomes the task of finding such a manner of expressing the Christian Revelation that allows this, in all its 44

See C. THEOBALD, La réception du Concile Vatican II. On the Church as “basic sacrament” (Grundsakrament), in distinction to the “original sacrament” (Ursakrament) which is Christ himself, and to the seven particular sacraments (Sakramente) of the Pilgrim Church, see K. RAHNER, The Church and the Sacraments. 45

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luminous wholeness, to enter into the minds of contemporary people.46 The task of contemporary fundamental theology, precisely as the foreign ministry of the Chiesa in uscita, is thus one but twofold: to express the Christian Revelation in a fashion that both conserves it in its immutable wholeness and liberates it from any outer formulations which would prevent it from being received. Fundamental theology must strive to present the movement of Jesus Christ so that it can draw people into its life-giving, salvific ekstasis of divine-human Love, in which they can find the authentic fulfillment of their existence. The pastorally converted theologian does not accordingly mind which theological expression or “method” would personally best please themselves. Instead, in a kenotic manner, they desire solely “to please everyone in everything,” in order to be able to express the Christian Revelation in a fashion that could be received by its hearers to their salvation and to the glory of God (see 1 Cor 10:33). Both extremes are to be avoided: on one hand, an objectivistic formulation of the Revelation, which, perhaps, at least exteriorly, retains an orthodox conceptuality with respect to the deposit of faith, but which closes into itself as an antiquarian relic from real contact with the world. On the other hand, we must avoid a subjectivistic diminution of the Revelation, which relates it so hurriedly to the present prerogatives that it risks cutting itself off from the deeper historical dynamics of the Catholic Christian tradition. In sum, we have now arrived at a succinct formulation of the initial question of contemporary fundamental theology: how to express the Christian Revelation in a way intended by St. John XXIII and the Council convoked by him, i.e. at the same time faithfully to the tradition and pastorally with respect to the world of today?

1.3 Reading the Signs of the Times from the Second Vatican Council Onwards The latest Ecumenical Council offers a possible hermeneutic key to this fundamental theological question with its re-introduction of the Biblical notion of the “signs of the times” to the forefront of the ecclesial and theological discourse.47 Faithful to the exhortation of her Founder, the 46 On how the pastoral transformation at the same time entails a global, pluralistic opening of the Church, see R. GAILLARDETZ, Ecclesiology for a Global Church. 47 For a concise appraisal of the concept of the signs of the times by someone who propagated its conciliar use in a decisive manner, see M.-D. CHENU, “Les signes des temps”. G. O’COLLINS, The Second Vatican Council, p. 156 and Fundamental Theology, pp. 102-107 offer helpful clarification of the essential meaning of the idea, as do, in a more genealogical-systematic fashion, P. HÜNERMANN, ed., Das Zweite

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Church has of course always striven to “keep awake” while waiting for the return of the Lord (see Mark 13:32-37), investigating the possible signs of his coming back. Yet, this evangelical call to vigilance must be reawakened time after time in every new historical situation (especially as it, very human-like, tends to become forgotten). The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council chose to adopt the expression of the signs of the times for this goal in the new context in which the Council convened.48 As always when talking theologically about the signs of the times, it may be useful to remind oneself of what the notion does not mean. Most importantly, striving to read the signs of the times is not about submitting the content of the Christian Revelation to the supposed requirements of a given historical period, as if any worldly state of affairs could function as a genuine criterium for the life of the Church. The Gospel is always more than any given cultural context, even though it presupposes its reality (see EG, n. 115). Instead, reading the signs of the times in a Christian fashion means interpreting the contemporary historical situation in the light of the Gospel, not simply (or at all) in order to satisfy the natural human curiosity of knowing where we are going, but in order to be faithful to the primary (and only) mission of the Church: living and proclaiming the Good News (see Matt 28:16-20). To put it in more theological terms, it is the mission of expressing the Christian Revelation in such an intelligible way as possible that the world could believe (see John 20:31; GME, n. 15). As the Council Fathers themselves formulated the genuine meaning of the signs of the times: […] the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics (GS, n. 4; italics AP).

The “duty” of reading the signs of the times and of making the Christian Revelation intelligible is therefore not a requirement calling the Church to Vatikanische Konzil und die Zeichen der Zeit heute, G. ROUTHIER, “‘Les signes du temps’”, and G. RUGGIERI, “La teologia dei ‘segni dei tempi’”. 48 The expression “signs of the times” was already used in John XXIII’s bull Humanae salutis in which he announced the convocation of the Council on 25.12.1961.

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be “fashionable.” Rather, this duty belongs to the very heart of the Church’s mission, which is proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to all people of all ages. The movement of Christ is directed towards human beings, to all human beings, without which it would not be what it is (see 1 Tim 2:46). Consequently, human intelligibility shows itself as an inherent demand of the Christian Revelation itself. On the other hand, there would be nothing to receive on the part of humanity if the proclamation of the Gospel did not remain faithful to its essential content, revealed in its fullness by Jesus himself through his Paschal Mystery of Death and Resurrection. Thus, in all eagerness to read the signs of the times and to make the Gospel intelligible to the contemporary world, one should not forget that the Christian sign of the times for all times is the sign of Jonah, i.e. of the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, the sign of contradiction which is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (see 1 Cor 1:23).49 The aggiornamento of the Gospel according to the signs of the times can have its genuine criterium, now as always, only in itself, i.e. in the scandal of the Crucified Lord as the Revelation of the God of Love.50 How, then, can we even in principle hope to make intelligible something that by its very nature infinitely exceeds all human intellectual capacity, or even seems contrary to it as a “a sign that will be opposed” (Luke 2:34)? If a theological reading of the signs of the times is to be genuinely theological–instead of pretending to be a philosophical interpretation or (even worse) a sociological analysis–it must therefore be guided by the Spirit of the Crucified and Risen Lord himself who alone can make the Good News intelligible in every new historical context. Here again Christian belief shows its radically objective character. Not only is the objective content of the Christian faith revealed to us through the movement of Jesus, but also our subjective ability to assent to it becomes possible only in this spiritual movement (see DV, n. 5). The objective starting point of Christian believing thus makes itself felt all the way to the radices of this transformation of our being-in-the-world. The Christian believes in something, in Someone, who comes to them objectively from outside, “from above,”51 and also their capability to believe ultimately emerges from this 49 Pope John Paul II wisely reminded of the contra-dictory nature of all authentically Christian readings of the signs of the times in his Wednesday Audience on 23.09.1998. 50 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Only Love is Credible, p. 1, and especially his continually pertinent The Moment of Christian Witness. 51 As the Nicene Creed in fact affirms the radical Otherness of the Christian Revelation: the Son of God “came down,” țĮIJİȜșȩȞIJĮ, descendit, “from heaven.”

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objective reality.52 Nevertheless–and this is the central Christian mystery–the Christian objective reality does not alienate the believer from their true humanity but, on the contrary, leads them to enter into it ever more profoundly, and in and through it, into the infinite fullness of the Triune God (see Col 2:9). The movement of Jesus Christ, then, in becoming the Christian movement, the movement of Christian belief, can–with the assistance of the Spirit and with the special guidance of the Ecclesial Magisterium (see DV, n. 10)–render possible the finding of new ways of expressing the Revelation intelligibly in the changing circumstances of the world, in view of encouraging “greater openness to the Gospel on part of all” (EG, n. 132). In fact, that is what Catholic fundamental theology is all about.

2. Contemporary Global Hyperpluralism: A Polyhedric Provincialization of European Secularization Even if a theological reading of the signs of the times is to be clearly distinguished from the philosophical attempt of comprehending the present time in concepts,53 as well as from mere sociological survey, it cannot be content with a pure, uncritically naive proclamation of the Gospel, either. As an intellectual academic activity, a theological reading of the signs of our times shall certainly proceed in near vicinity to the general human enterprise of trying to understand where we are now and where we are going next, without, however, being overshadowed by worldly aspirations. The motivation and goal of a genuinely theological reading is now, as always, to find such intelligible ways of expressing the “sign of Jonah”–the sign of contradiction of Jesus Christ–that would let its contra-dicting force unfold for the salvation of humankind (see Matt 16:4). To become a prophetic reading of the signs of the times in the sense intended,54 then, Catholic fundamental theology does well in taking its departure also in this case from the Roman Magisterium, to which the Sign of Contradiction himself has promised the special guidance of his Spirit (see DVE, nn. 15-17).

52

The radical objectivity of Christian believing does not in any way violate the fundamental hermeneutical principle of quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, however, because the object to be received in this unique case contains the form of its receiving already in itself; cf. H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, 463-467. 53 Hegel famously described philosophy as ihre Zeit in Gedanken erfaßt, “its own time comprehended in thoughts” (Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 21). 54 See S.B. BEVANS–R.P. SCHROEDER, Prophetic Dialogue.

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2.1 An Epochal Shift? Pope Francis has on several occasions alluded that the contemporary world should be living a real change of epoch (see VG, n. 3; LS, n. 102).55 Here he unites himself with a hermeneutical line touched on by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council who already stated that “[t]oday, the human race is involved in a new stage of history” (GS, n. 4), without, however, specifying in more detail of what this newness should consist. Neither has Pope Francis wanted to delve more profoundly into how he understands the epochal change we should be living through at present. However, it is perhaps precisely in this indeterminacy that the clue to the supposedly unfurling epochal shift lies. As Pope Francis notes, it is not so much that many things continually change in our times–not least because of ever-accelerating technological development and its side-effects. Rather, it is that the whole epoch is changing, or perhaps that our way of experiencing it is undergoing a radical shift.56 The various individual changes of the last two centuries seem to force us to reconsider our way-of-being-in-the-world, as human beings and as Christians, somehow in contrast with all preceding periods of known history. Perhaps only now, after the modernization process itself, we who call ourselves “modern” can really understand the full portent of this modo, this “now,” in difference to the foregoing “not-now” (ancient, as it has already become to us).57 Already the fact that we can and must speak of “us” here, meaning the entire human family, is an indication of the epochal shift we are experiencing. It might even point to its very essence. The Second Vatican Council sensed this when it addressed its message to “the whole of humanity” (GS, n. 2). Vatican II did not offer any anathemas on the errors of the modern world but wanted to share “[t]he joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties” (GS, n. 1) of contemporary humanity, whose destiny, as the Council Fathers stated, “has become all of a piece, where once the various groups of men had a kind of private history of their own” (GS, n. 5).58 55

Further on this, see F. PATSCH, “Rivelazione, contesto, verità”, pp. 45-50. On the very notion of an “epoch,” intimately connected to the historical consciousness of a given human community, the critical reflections of Hans Blumenberg remain valid (see his The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 457-480). 57 On the etymology of the contrast pair of “ancient” versus “modern,” see J. PINBORG, “Antiqui-moderni”. 58 Even in this respect, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas about the planetization of human consciousness in a global noosphere are appearing more and more prophetic 56

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The profound recognition of the one global reality, the fact that everything is now connected to everything, might accordingly signify, generally speaking, the present epochal shift. It has as its counterpart an equal shift in human self-understanding: “Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one” (GS, n. 5). One humanity in an evolving reality, so could one summarize the contemporary epochal shift in human consciousness of its way-of-being-in-the-world. These sporadic suggestions of the Second Vatican Council about an epochal, global shift in humanity’s (and consequently the Church’s) selfunderstanding seem to have gained solidity in the person of Pope Francis, the first Bishop of Rome to be elected from the Southern Hemisphere. The promise of Vatican II, of a not only in potentia but even in actu world-wide Church, is slowly but surely bearing fruit.59 But if the Church is starting to concretely realize her universal mission of being a Church of, in, and for all the people of the world only with its twenty-first Ecumenical Council, one cannot but wonder at the reason for the delay. Why is the Catholic Church only now (modo again!) beginning to take her catholicity seriously, of comprising the whole (kath’olon) globe in her self-consciousness and missionary activity? The technological or logistic explanation cannot be the whole story, because the question goes deeper than the mere actual presence of the representatives of different local churches in an Ecumenical Council. The missionary delay concerns rather the acknowledgment that no one cultural tradition can impose itself on others by force, but the priority should always be given to the Spirit who guides all the different traditions equally in their multifarious variety (see Eph 3:10). Is the culturally conditioned shadow of the first convoker of an Ecumenical Council grown so long that only now is

(see P. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 190-211; The Future of Man, pp. 155-184). 59 In his 1979 attempt at a “fundamental theological interpretation” of the Second Vatican Council, Karl Rahner characterized the twenty-first Ecumenical Council as the first concrete realization of the Catholic Church’s universal mission to really be a “world Church” (Weltkirche) of, in, and for all people (see K. RAHNER, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”). Hence, according to Rahner, the Second Vatican Council signifies the most profound transformation in the Church’s self-understanding since her opening to the gentiles in the middle of the first century CE (see K. RAHNER, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”, pp. 723, 727). For a more recent perspective along these lines, see M. FAGGIOLI, A Council for the Global Church.

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the Church beginning to free herself from it?60 Coming from a quite different cultural context than the late European Christendom, Pope Francis can say more convincingly something, the happening of which European Christians have been observing the last two centuries but which they (we!) have perhaps not yet acknowledged deeply enough: Christendom no longer exists, as the Pope stated quite matter-offactly in his Christmas discourse to the Roman Curia on 21.12.2019.61 The Church might be “two hundred years behind the times” in failing to recognize her present Sitz im Leben in the Western world, as Pope Francis claimed in the same discourse, citing the late cardinal Martini. Be that as it may, one thing cannot be negated: the Christian faith does not anymore offer the self-evident cultural and semiotic background that it offered for hundreds of years of “Christendom” in times past. The self-consciousness and form-of-life of the Roman Church may have been formed on and around Latin Christendom, but it does not change the contemporary fact that uniform Christian culture is now definitively a thing of the past. The Dechristianization of the Western world has often been interpreted by the Church–in a rather Eurocentric manner, it must be said–as a profound process of self-forgetting of one’s own cultural roots and a consequent arrival of an age of rootless nihilism.62 “Secularization” as the common catchword for what has happened in the West during the last two or three centuries easily carries an ominous or even threatening aura in many ecclesial circles. If we, however, decide to follow the hermeneutical line opened by the Council Fathers in Gaudium et spes, reading the many changes of the present times as a sign of a profound shift of epoch, everything appears in another light. It remains true that Christianity has lost the cultural hegemony it once had in the West, but this should not be an occasion for lamentation, but a motivation for renewed missionary zeal, now from a global perspective. The losing of power in Europe might open the eyes of the Church for its global calling, of bringing the Good News to all people, now not so much in theory but really in practice. The New Evangelization would accordingly not be so much about winning back the spaces lost, but about entering joyously into the global spiritual dynamics of the presently unfolding epochal shift. 60

On the question of the “Constantinian era” and its definitive end even in ecclesial consciousness with the Second Vatican Council, see M.-D. CHENU–M. PESCE, La fine dell’era costantiniana. 61 In the original Italian: non siamo nella cristianità, non più! For a sociological and a philosophical, respectively, perspective on the same issue, see D. HERVIEU-LÉGER, Catholicisme, la fin d’un monde and C. DELSOL, La fin de la Chrétienté. 62 See J. RATZINGER–M. PERA, Without Roots.

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Such, in any case, seems to be Pope Francis’s way of responding to said shift, both in its negative recognition of the final disappearance of European Christendom and in its positive acknowledgement of the global reality of the Church and one human family. He joins Pope Paul VI in seeing the “deepest identity” of the Church and her “proper vocation” in the mission of evangelizing, or of proclaiming the Good News to all people (see EN, n. 14). A missionary-pastoral model of the Church sets all worldly considerations of her cultural power-position aside as irrelevant, or regards these as relevant only in the measure they help or hinder her to live and proclaim the joy of the Gospel.63 The Pauline-Franciscan “missionary transformation of the Church” (see EG, nn. 19-49) certainly requires concrete structural reforms of the Church,64 but what interests us here is the changes in the ecclesial and theological mentality needed in coming to terms with the unfolding epochal shift. Also here Pope Francis reflects quite directly certain intuitions of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council who had already, as noted above, recognized the change from a static to a dynamic conception of reality (see GS, n. 5). Three intellectual emphases, or three precedencies, in Pope Francis’s ecclesial way of thinking need special mention here (see EG, nn. 217-237). They pave the way for the continuing renewal of the Catholic Church, far extending the particular pontificate of Pope Francis. First, then, let us examine the precedence of time over space, emphasized by Francis (see EG, nn. 222-225). Instead of–in a rather “worldly” spirit– concentrating on how much or how little space the Church has control over in the contemporary world, she should concentrate on her primary mission. This is, of course, that of proclaiming the joy of the Gospel to all people, especially to those who suffer or are otherwise oppressed. The Church should not enclose herself in the present instant but see the open horizon in front of her that awaits her active participation in an evangelical spirit. In sum, “[g]iving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces” (EG, n. 223). Especially in this present time of epochal transition, the Church is called to accompany great cultural and social changes and, in and through them, strive to give rise to new processes of evangelization that can allow the “principle of Incarnation” to go forward (see VG, nn. 4-5).

63 A poor Church for the poor!, as Pope Francis repeatedly summarizes the heart of his ecclesial reform. 64 As symbolized by the ongoing reform of the Roman Curia, to be put into effect in light of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate evangelium (whose title summarizes it all).

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Second, Pope Francis talks about the precedence of reality over ideas (see EG, nn. 231-233). Ideas can be beautiful and logical in themselves, but if they do not spur real engagement with the world, then they are of no avail. The incarnatory movement of Jesus Christ, by contrast, challenges us to see reality as it really is, without restricting it to our conceptualizations and projections of it. The Word of God asks to be inculturated into the amazingly various, and ever-evolving, cultures of the world, in a creative continuity with the Church’s bimillennial tradition. This principle of Christian realism is essential to evangelization, or even more, it is evangelization itself, as Pope Francis puts it: “a word already made flesh and constantly striving to take flesh anew,” which helps us to see that “the Church’s history is a history of salvation” (EG, n. 233). These two defining precedencies of the Chiesa in uscita find their common root and culmination in the third Franciscan precedency, which is that of the whole over the part (see EG, nn. 234-235). Humanity, which today like never before has become conscious of its organic unity on an interconnected, global scale (see LS, nn. 16, 138, 240), finds itself in innate tension between the local and the global. Which is to be given priority? Pope Francis warns against presenting this as an issue of either-or. It is rather about both-and: both the local, where we find our identity and first responsibilities, and the global, which helps us see our embeddedness within the entire human family, challenging us to work for the common good of our brothers and sisters. Thus, Pope Francis affirms, “[t]he global need not stifle, nor the particular prove barren” (EG, n. 235).65 The spiritual and intellectual model, or background picture, which lies behind and gives form to the Franciscan vision of the Church in the present global reality, is that of a polyhedron (see EG, n. 236). The polyhedron is an essentially pluralistic or even hyperpluralistic entity, because it has an inherent alterity to itself. In difference to the sphere, which is uniformly homogeneous, always and everywhere the same, the different parts and dimensions of the polyhedron preserve their distinctiveness in respect to the whole. In the sphere, the part dominates the whole in the sense that once you have seen one part of the sphere, you have seen the whole of it (because all the parts are the same). In the polyhedron, by contrast, the whole is always greater than the part, because no part is necessarily ever the same: 65 Even here the specifically Christian inspiration is clear: Balthasar most prominently revived the Patristic conception of Christ as the universale concretum et personale for contemporary theology (see H.U. VON BALTHASAR, A Theology of History, p. 92). Ultimately only in Christ do the local and the global become fully redeemed–one more reminder of the Catholic Church’s particular mission amidst contemporary global hyperpluralization.

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every part of the polyhedron can be different from the other parts, and only taken all together do they form the polyhedron. You can comprehend the sphere with one unitary gaze–the sphere cannot surprise. The polyhedron, on the other hand, cannot be enclosed in any one conceptualization or idea, but it always has a genuinely new side to show for every new point of view–it is potentially full of surprises. You have to let it show it to you, in and through its radical Otherness. The polyhedron is not only intrinsically plural but hyperplural, because its multiformity can never be reduced to a comprehensible, uniform conceptualization: in its irreducible multiformity, the polyhedron is above (hyper) mere (numeric) plurality. The hyperpluralistic polyhedron challenges all attempts at comprehending reality with one unified vision.66 This is not simply rhetorical wordplay, but the polyhedric model of the Church discloses a profoundly renewed vision of the nature and mission of the Church in the ongoing epochal shift. The polyhedric vision presents the Church as going out of herself to encounter all the different peoples and cultures of the planet (see EG, n. 237). Great attention and patience is nevertheless needed here. For as Pope Benedict XVI wisely reminded in his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia (Expergiscere, homo, on December 22), true renewal of the ecclesial tradition always respects the integrity of “the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us,” letting this develop and evolve in time as the People of God journeying towards their divine-human fulfilment. Therefore, a contrary hermeneutic of “discontinuity and rupture” is to be rejected because it cannot see the fundamental continuity in all reforms of the Church, perhaps blinded by the

66 It can be enlightening to contrast here the Franciscan polyhedric model with the Platonic synoptic ideal. In the pedagogic guidelines of the Books V-VII of the Republic–immensely influential in the Western tradition–the essential prerequisite for the aspiring philosopher-kings is the capacity of bringing all the learnt individual sciences together into one unified vision (syn-opsis, or a “comprehensive vision” as Paul Shorey translated it) which lets one see how they all are essentially connected to each other and to the very nature of being in itself (see PLATO, Republic, Book VII, 537c). The Platonic dialectic, i.e. the highest form of intellectual activity, through which one can arrive at the contemplation of the ideal structure of reality, becomes possible only to the degree one is capable of synopsis: “‘And it is also,’ said I, ‘the chief test of the dialectical nature and its opposite. For he who can view things in their connection is a dialectician; he who cannot, is not’” (‫ ݸ‬ȝ‫ޡ‬Ȟ Ȗ‫ޟ‬ȡ ıȣȞȠʌIJȚțާȢ įȚĮȜİțIJȚțȩȢ, ‫ ݸ‬į‫ ޡ‬ȝ‫ ޣ‬Ƞ੡) (537c). Since then, the Western metaphysical tradition has striven to capture all of reality into a single ontotheological perspective. Is a similar aspiration to a total synoptic comprehension still to be recognized in OT, n. 16 (but see VG, Article 71. § 1)?

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quick changes of the present epoch.67 The issue, however, does not have to be looked at with a dualistic–either continuity or discontinuity of the ecclesial tradition–scheme to begin with. A Church that is faithful to her Founder is always on the move out of herself in a spirit of evangelization. Urged by the love of Christ (see 1 Cor 5:14), the Church is constantly looking forwards to the many people who still have not encountered the living Word of God. The fundamental question is accordingly not if the Church should change or remain the same, but how she can follow her missionary vocation most faithfully and fruitfully. And this she can do only if she both remains deeply anchored in the divine deposit of faith entrusted to her and transmits this in its entirety to the whole world in an intelligible way. Hence, we are back at the very raison d’être of the latest Council, which is the one and only fundamental raison d’être of Christian theology: the intelligible proclamation of the one eu-angelion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (see Mark 1:1; DF, Chap. IV; FR, n. 83).

2.2 European Secularization Provincialized One important consequence of the polyhedric, intrinsically hyperpluralistic, model for ecclesial and theological thinking is that it discourages reading the signs of our times in any uniform manner. There is the temptation still today, as there always was, of interpreting our present historical situation according to one master narrative. It gives a feeling of understanding the world but with the price of reducing its complexity to a stultifying straitjacket–to the sphere, as it happens.68 An influential hermeneutical device of the spherical kind has in the modern Western world been the concept of secularization. For generations of Europeans, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century, the idea of secularization has given an impression of somehow grasping what is happening to our religious past in the modern world, and what the place of the Church will be in it. In a rather unilinear fashion, secularization has often been considered the inevitable destiny of all modernizing societies, resulting in a steady decrease of religiosity in general and of the influence 67

Hans-Georg Gadamer warned against becoming overtly stimulated by the great historical changes of the present so as to forget the fundamental continuity of the one (Western) tradition in which we all stand and without which we could not even recognize the ongoing changes as changes (see H.-G. GADAMER, Truth and Method, pp. xxii-xxiii). Much spiritual discernment is needed in the presently unfurling epochal shift. 68 Immanuel Kant, the quintessentially modern European thinker, does indeed compare the human intellect to a sphere in Critique of Pure Reason, A761/B790.

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of the Church in particular. “The more modern, the less religious” has been the broadly unquestioned assumption in the Western spiritual master narrative of the last two centuries.69 The fact that we can already look back at the modern Western secularization narrative, indeed characterizing it as “modern Western,” suggests that even we contemporary, post-modern and post-secular Westerners are beginning to outgrow it. It has arguably become possible, now, to take the necessary hermeneutical distance from the concept of secularization and arrive at a more disillusioned and realistic appraisal of it than has been the case in the past, when secularization was still unfolding.70 How does, then, secularization appear in a contemporary global and hyperpluralistic perspective, in light of the polyhedron? First of all, the acknowledgment of the contemporary global hyperpluralism, reflected in the Franciscan model of the polyhedron, makes it very difficult to arrive at any unilinear diagnosis of the religious and spiritual evolution of humanity. In fact, it throws all such master narratives fundamentally into question. For if we really have entered the global predicament, we cannot possibly hold to any illusion of a necessarily and universally diminishing influence of religion anymore. On the contrary, the global landscape seems to be as religious as ever71 (even though to say that it is more religious than ever would appear to be beyond rational ratification72). It remains true that the religious “nones,” or people not identifying with any religion, are growing the fastest, relatively, in 69

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 423-437. In contemporary scholarship, Scottish sociologist Steve Bruce is perhaps the most prominent proponent of the classical secularization theory (see S. BRUCE, God is Dead; Secularization). 70 One does not have to go along with the idealistic connotations of the Hegelian worldview, even if one accepts the outlook that a historical process becomes intelligible only when it is already over (see G.W.F. HEGEL, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 23). By extension, the meaning of an epoch becomes available only when the epoch is already over, after the “epochal change,” indeed. The epochal changing itself, its “threshold,” remains hidden from the intellect, however (see H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 469). When the epoch itself is changing, spiritual discernment is called for, instead. 71 See PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “The Global Religious Landscape”. 72 Rodney Stark, for example, affirmed that the present global reality is more religious than ever before (see R. STARK, The Triumph of Faith), whereas Ronald Inglehart claimed to recognize a sudden decline in religiosity from a contemporary global perspective (see R. INGLEHART, Religion’s Sudden Decline). It should go without saying that such categorical judgements depend strongly on the researcher’s own personal view on the future predicament of religion (as Charles Taylor convincingly argues in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 431-432).

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contemporary Western societies. However, their absolute numbers pale in comparison to the rapid expansion of traditional religion, especially Islam and Christianity, in the parts of the world where the general population growth is highest, too (i.e., in Sub-Saharan Africa and in many parts of Asia).73 In sum, from a global perspective, secularization as a unilinear development offers even at best a very restricted view of the whole, if it should not already be seen as empirically falsified by the global explosion of traditional and neo-traditional religious faiths. Consequently, to cope with the present multireligious and multicultural realities, instead of a theory of secularization, we need a theory of “pluralism”, as the late AustroAmerican sociologist Peter L. Berger argued,74 or even of “hyperpluralism,” as the Italian social philosopher Alessandro Ferrara suggests.75 European secularization becomes provincialized,76 or liberated from its self-imposed unilinear necessity, not only from a global perspective but from an inner-Western perspective as well. One of the most striking recent developments in religiosity in Europe (including its Anglophone offshoots in North America, Australia, and New Zealand) is the already mentioned growth of the “nones.”77 Especially against the background of the long Constantine era in European history when Latin Christendom (either in its Catholic or Protestant forms) officially defined the spiritual options of practically all Westerners, the appearance and quick increase of the nones

73 See PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050”. No less remarkable is the global explosion–especially in Latin America–of charismatic Christianity, as noted by David Martin among others (see D. MARTIN, Tongues of Fire). 74 See P.L. BERGER, The Many Altars of Modernity, p. ix. 75 See A. FERRARA, The Democratic Horizon, pp. 88-108. 76 The concept of “provincializing” (some culturally-conditioned–typically European–perspectives by a broader global perspective) is borrowed from D. CHAKRABARTY, Provincializing Europe. Through the provincializing of the center by the periphery, the center comes (hopefully) to see that its centeredness was much more of an ideological illusion than an objective fact. 77 One of the earliest sociological studies of the nones was C. CAMPBELL, Toward a Sociology of Irreligion in 1971, but only during the last fifteen or so years has the social scientific study of secularity and non-religion begun establishing itself as an independent area of research (see L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-religious, J. QUACK– C. Schuh, ed., Religious Indifference, P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious, S. BULLIVANT, “Explaining the Rise of ‘Nonreligion Studies’”). Secularism and Nonreligion, founded in 2012, is the first academic journal devoted totally to the study of the “secular” in its diverse manifestations.

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signifies a radical break in tradition: Christendom no longer exists.78 At the same time it must be pointed out, however, that even though more and more Westerners are deciding to distance themselves from organized religion, it does not mean that they have done away with spiritual or supernatural beliefs and practices altogether. Quite the contrary, most of them continue to believe in trans-human intentionalities in various forms and also put these beliefs into practice in different ways.79 Nevertheless, from a diachronic perspective, the appearance and growing number of the nones in the Western world signifies nothing short of a cultural revolution and a radical break in the Western tradition (even its end, so deeply was it characterized by its particular mixture of Greek metaphysics and Christian faith). The transition from a religious Einheitskultur to a truly pluralistic society does not happen in a flash, however. During the process, “believing without belonging” has its equal corollary in “belonging without believing,”80 which makes it extremely difficult to give any uniform diagnoses of the general religious or spiritual dynamics (except noting the undeniable hyperpluralization). A multiform existential pluralism seems to reign in the wake of the secularization process, if we take this to mean the disappearance of a single dominant religious alternative. In sum, the emerging post-secular hyperpluralist situation seems rather alike in most contemporary Western societies, be they of Catholic or of Protestant origin, which is not surprising if we consider (Western) secularization precisely as the historical transformation process from religiously uniform societies to pluralist, even 78

Terminological care is needed here: “Christendom”, meaning the late Latin Christian Einheitskultur, does not exist anymore, but “Christianity” continues to be (with Islam) the fastest growing religion of the world. All talk about a present “postChristian” age (see C. DOTOLO, Teologia e postcristianesimo, M. MARTINSON, Postkristen teologi, É. POULAT, L’Ère postchrétienne, G.E. VEIGHT, Post-Christian) should therefore be clearly restricted to the Western context (where the situation may also differ even drastically from country to country). From a global perspective the situation again looks quite different–Philip Jenkins, e.g., speaks already of a “Next Christendom” in view of the rapid expansion of Christianity in the Global South (see P. JENKINS, The Next Christendom). Generally on the “end” of certain religious traditions, a commonplace in the religious evolution of humanity, now also concerning European Christendom, see A. MORELLI–J. TYSSENS, ed., Quand une religion se termine…. 79 Already in 2005 Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhouse spoke about an ongoing “spiritual revolution” of the Western religious landscape where “religion” was giving space to “spirituality” in people’s existential self-characterizations (see P. HEELAS–L. WOODHOUSE, ed., The Spiritual Revolution). 80 See G. DAVIE, Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing without Belonging.

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hyperpluralist, ones.81 In short, any unilinear or spheric reading of Western secularization becomes provincialized and thus overcome both from the perspective of global hyperpluralism and from the perspective of inner-Western multiplication of religious and existential alternatives. Has the traditional concept of “secularization,” then, lost all its intelligibility and explanatory force for helping us to understand theologically the presently unfolding epochal shift? Is not the present challenge rather to find ways of entering the global hyperpluralistic predicament and of learning to live in it, recognizing all the risks and dangers that it bears? This is certainly true, but nobody, be it as an individual or as a culture, can reach global hyperpluralism without one’s own presuppositions and prejudices, without one’s own tradition, in a word. The risk of an “abstract, globalized universe,” where one has lost all sense of a deeper identity and thus has become easy prey to various ideological powers, is very real, as Pope Francis points out (see EG, n. 234). More than a simple fact, the global hyperpluralist predicament represents a challenge to be faced as self-consciously and as deeply rooted in one’s own cultural tradition as possible (see EG, n. 235). In human biological-cultural evolution–as the late Robert N. Bellah put it–“nothing is ever lost.”82 Rather, we continue to carry–for better or for worse–the different phases of our past in us. This makes us who we are now and conditions the future possibilities of becoming who we shall be. The decisive point is not only to become conscious of this fact but to integrate it deeply, and ever-more deeply, into our consciousness as a fact that

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European secularization is certainly “exceptional” (see G. DAVIE, Europe–The Exceptional Case) with respect to the more global religious developments, first of all in the Global South, but its relation to the North American situation seems not be so contradictory as was long presupposed (see P.L. BERGER–G. DAVIE–E. FOKAS, ed., Religious America, Secular Europe?). Even the U.S. population is rapidly becoming less religious, as seen in particular in younger generations, where according to one recent study as many as four-in-ten millennials describe themselves as “nonreligious” (see PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace”). As a consequence, now for the first time in statistical research less than half of Americans belong to an official house of worship (see GALLUP, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time”). For a robust sociological consideration of contemporary post-secular Catholicism in the USA, see C. DILLON, Postsecular Catholicism. 82 See R. N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution, p. 267, a hermeneutical maxim tellingly adopted also by Taylor as a “structuring principle” in his A Secular Age (C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 772).

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conditions even our awareness of it.83 Of course, there is no absolute reason why the word “secularization” should be used to interpret our present spiritual situation in front of contemporary global hyperpluralism. Here, as always, we are free to decide which words to use and how to define them. Yet, for so long, the concept of secularization has been molding Western social imagination in relation to all things religious and spiritual, as well as the Church’s understanding of her predicament in the modern world. There does not seem to be alternatives good enough for it in the present context. Even the increasingly fashionable term “post-secular” becomes meaningful only against the background of the old “secular.” Secularization, consequently, as the imaginative road which Western societies and the Roman Church have travelled to the threshold of the global predicament, and as the speculative door through which they now have to try to enter its hyperpluralism, remains very much on the horizon of contemporary Western theorizing about the future of our religious past.84 “The origin always remains the future,”85 continues to ring true.

3. After Secularization: C. Taylor Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s (1931-) book A Secular Age remains both the indisputable starting point of and the constant reference point to any contemporary discussion of the presently unfolding epochal shift in our spiritual self-understanding. Yet, it cannot mark the endpoint of the discussion. The explicit intention of Taylor’s 2007 work is to offer a descriptive explanation for how the non-believing or secular option– “exclusive humanism,” as he calls it–has become widely available in the Western cultural tradition, previously dominated by the Roman form of Christian faith.86 As Taylor himself famously asks: “why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?”.87 Something highly significant has clearly happened in the Western tradition during the last few centuries which has not only rendered religious non-belief possible in all openness and transparency. Modern Western 83

See Gadamer’s influential analysis of the “historically effected consciousness” (Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein) in H.-G. GADAMER, Truth and Method, pp. 350-387. 84 On the question of “the future of the religious past,” see C. TAYLOR, “The Future of the Religious Past”. 85 Herkunft aber bleibt stets Zukunft (M. HEIDEGGER, Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 91). 86 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 18. 87 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 25.

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development has also made this secular option quite attractive to many, even the unquestioned (or unquestionable) default position in some parts of contemporary Western societies. In the course of his magisterial book, Taylor presents a sort of genealogical transcendental argument for this epochal change in Western spiritual consciousness.88 According to his general philosophical anthropology, Taylor considers humans as “selfinterpreting animals” who most fundamentally do not relate to the surrounding world as neutral observers but who take active part in molding the world according to their moral and spiritual aspirations. They constitute themselves as human beings exactly through such “strong evaluations,” which take societal forms in their shared “social imaginaries.”89 Humans never exist in a cultural or social vacuum. If language is the medium for human self-expression,90 history is the context where human self-interpretation happens. It is in and through spatiotemporal becoming that human beings aspire to realize their ethical convictions and aspirations, their visions of what makes existence worthwhile. Nothing genuinely human can be understood without taking this historical context into account.91 History provides the conditions of possibility for human thinking and speaking in the sense that what is intellectually available or even self-evident in one historical constellation, may be beyond imagination in another context.92 In sum, anyone who wants to understand the present does well in delving deeply into the past that has made their present possible in the first place. Arguably the greatest merit of A Secular Age is indeed its profound historicization of the concept of secularization and the consequent refutation of all unhistorical (and thus more or less secretly ideological) approaches to the phenomenon. In fact, Western secularization–as everything which has to do with humans as self-interpreting, historical beings–has a contingent development of its own. It has not been determined by any self-evident goal, 88

For Taylor’s (early) view on the nature and function of transcendental arguments, see C. TAYLOR, “The Validity of Transcendental Arguments”. 89 For a concise presentation of Taylor’s philosophical anthropology, see C. TAYLOR, “Self-Interpreting Animals” and Part I in C. TAYLOR, Sources of the Self; for a critical analysis, see A. LAITINEN, Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources. 90 For Taylor’s philosophy of language, see C. TAYLOR, The Language Animal. 91 Taylor is quite open with his strong Hegelian influence (see C. TAYLOR, Hegel). 92 This is no relativism, however. To be conscious of our historical conditionedness is already to have overcome it: certainly not by having risen to any purported “view from nowhere” (see T. NAGEL, The View from Nowhere), but by having liberated oneself from the illusion of the obviousness of any one historically conditioned human way-of-being-in-the-world. As historical language animals, humans are always related to their cultural surroundings but not enclosed by them.

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supposedly revealing how reality in itself is. Rather, Western secularization has unfurled through the contingent historical interplay between human self-interpretations and changing cultural surroundings. Hence, Taylor argues that secularization can in no way be appropriately understood as a “subtraction story” where something (the so-called “religion”) just gradually disappears, like snow in sunlight, while what remains is considered the normal or natural human way-of-being-in-the-world. As much as their respective secularization analyses differ in detail, Taylor and his great philosophical forerunner Hans Blumenberg agree that there is a proper creative character to European secularization. This epochal process cannot be intelligibly grasped as a mere chopping off something optional (like “religion” in Taylor’s secularization narrative), nor as a more or less direct transformation of an identical historical substance into a new form (see Blumenberg’s criticism of the various proposed “secularizations” in the first part of the Legitimacy).93 In human history there are no identical substances–substances which in their atemporal essence would forever remain the same, while only their outer form would change. The very least, they would lack all interest to an intellectual historian, because everything real becomes understood only in relation to the changing cultural conditions where humans aspire to imagine and conceptualize life.94 To understand the peculiar “character” of Western secularization–without taking recourse to any naturalist subtraction or substantialist transformation stories of it–is the great challenge that Taylor proposes in A Secular Age. Taylor’s secularization analysis, which he terms the “Reform Master Narrative,”95 concerns both spatially and temporally a very restricted contextual setting. It focuses on that of Western (Latin) Europe (and successively its offshoots in North America) from the Late Middle Ages to 93 Surprisingly, Taylor refers explicitly to Blumenberg’s classic account of European

secularization only three times in A Secular Age (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 114, 294, 775); see J.-C. MONOD, “Une si brève discussion: Blumenberg dans L’Âge séculier”. 94 Blumenberg would say that changing historical conditions put humans in front of different questions to which they have to find new answers, with respect to–but never in spite of–the old ones already given: an imaginative process of functional “reoccupations” (Umbesetzungen) of the structural places left by the more-or-less enduring questions in a given cultural tradition (see H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 48; J. GREISCH, “Umbesetzung versus Umsetzung”). 95 Taylor’s secularization analysis stresses the reforming effects of the Western modernization process, but it must nevertheless be clearly distinguished from the typically Protestant “Reformation,” as well as from the (mainly Radical Orthodox) “Intellectual Deviation” story (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 773-776).

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the closing of the second Christian millennium. In fact, as the title already shows, A Secular Age is not about “the” secular age–as if one even in principle could apply the singular definite article to any one historical process tout court–, but limits itself to a secular age, namely to the one secular age that developed from the late Latin Christendom during the second millennium CE in the so-called Western world.96 Taylor is of course perfectly conscious of the fact that his secularization study concerns primarily, or even exclusively, Western secularization, which remains rooted in and conditioned by the historical dynamics of the specific cultural tradition in question.97 Successively it will be possible and even necessary–as Taylor affirms98–to examine the originally-Western concept of secularization in relation to other cultural traditions of the world, where a similar liquidation of religious power-structures and a consequent transformation of the conditions of religious belief and non-belief will certainly unfold in various ways. First, however, we have to be as clear as possible on secularization as it has been formed in its original Western context. Overcoming Western secularization for global hyperpluralism does not mean denying our rootedness in the former, rather it presupposes our acknowledgment of this genealogical fact. In this sense, Taylor’s secularization analysis will remain fundamental for a long time to come, even though in our contemporary globalized world, the great challenge will rather consist of confronting its radical hyperpluralism or (in intellectual terms) the impossibility of reading its polyhedric multiformity according to any unilinear or spheric narration (see EG, nn. 234-237). There is already a strong and impressive current of recent philosophical and social scientific work to be noticed, where Taylor’s original study of Western secularization becomes applied to different cultural contexts in a more global perspective.99 96

See P. COSTA, Città postsecolare, p. 104. The French and Italian translations of A Secular Age give it a definitiveness it in no way demands–L’Âge séculier, L’Età secolare–, whereas the German one retains its intended historical relativity: Ein Säkulares Zeitalter. 97 On Taylor’s reception of Gadamerian hermeneutics, see C. TAYLOR, “Gadamer on the Human Sciences”. 98 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 21. 99 Of recent, characteristically highly cross-disciplinary works which enter into a dialogue with the Taylorian secularization analysis in order to confront it with a more differentiated global perspective, some of the most enlightening are A. BILGRAMI, ed., Beyond the Secular West; M. BURCHARDT–M. WOHLRAB-SAHR–M. MIDDELL, ed., Multiple Secularities Beyond the West; M. KÜNKLER–J. MADELEY–S. SHANKAR, ed., A Secular Age Beyond the West; M. RECTENWALD–R. ALMEIDA–G. LEVINE, ed., Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age.

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3.1 Taylor’s Dualistic Master Narrative of North Atlantic Secularization A certain kind of dualism or binary has been noted, and also criticized, in Taylor’s analysis of secularization. The reference is not so much to the distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” as such–literally constitutional for all modern liberal democracies–, but rather to the Taylorian concept of “religion” itself.100 In fact, his Master Narrative of North Atlantic secularization departs from a definition of religion that easily gives the impression of religion as belief or disbelief in a kind of a transhuman intentionality or “transcendence” in relation to which religious persons find their existential fullness. Non-religious people, on the contrary, should experience moral and spiritual flourishing in a purely human or “immanent” way-of-being-in-the-world.101 Admittedly, Taylor explicitly wants to move beyond mere intellectual “theories” to the lived experience of religious and non-religious people102– to their concrete form-of-life or way-of-being-in-the-world which (as the transcendental taken-for-granted) makes all theories possible in the first place.103 However, it can be asked whether he succeeds in this or remains conceptually trapped in a theoretically-postulated dualism between belief and disbelief, transcendence and immanence (which might be useful, or even necessary, in a Western Latin context but which loses much of its meaningfulness when considering other cultural traditions). This is not so much a criticism of Taylor’s point of departure but a methodological vindication of it, as Taylor himself notes: So defining religion in terms of the distinction immanent/transcendent is a move tailor-made for our culture. This may be seen as parochial, incestuous, navel-gazing, but I would argue that this is a wise move, since we are trying 100

See E. DI SOMMA, Fides and Secularity; P.E. GORDON, “The Place of the Sacred in the Absence of God”. 101 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 15. “Immanent” comes from the Latin words in and manet, “remaining in itself.” “Transcendence,” on the contrary, refers to “moving beyond itself” (trans+scandere). To anticipate, in the central part of this study of Radical Secularization (Chapters 3 and 4), Western secularization is analyzed as a radicalization of human transcendentality, which–contra Taylor– brings forth its true spiritual novelty. 102 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 11. 103 The influence on Taylor of the two great twentieth-century deconstructors of the modern Cartesian epistemology, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, appears quite fundamental here (see M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time; §43, L. WITTGENSTEIN, On Certainty, §248; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 558-560).

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Chapter I to understand changes in a culture for which this distinction has become foundational.104

In a sense, then, the whole Taylorian secularization narrative becomes a phenomenological genealogy of the rise and development of “religion,” understood as the distinction between either immanently or transcendently experienced human existential fullness. The distinction is “tailor-made” for Western modernity, because only in this cultural constellation has it been formulated with equal conceptual stringency and given such a fundamental role in societal life. Western modernity, however, is secular not so much because it has more or less clearly differentiated between religious and other societal spheres (Taylor’s “Secularity 1”), or because it has supposedly given rise to an increasing alienation from official religious traditions (Taylor’s “Secularity 2”). Rather, Western modernity is secular because it has profoundly changed the very conditions of what it means to believe or not to believe religiously in this cultural context (Taylor’s “Secularity 3”).105 In Taylor’s analysis, we have all become secular in the modern West in the sense that the common Weltanschauung that we all share, and on which our liberal democratic societies are constitutionally based, is an immanent one. It leaves the personal adherence to any kind of transcendence at the full liberty of every individual without forcing their hand. Consequently, the lived spiritual experience and search for fullness of all contemporary Westerners takes shape in the “Immanent Frame” as the unique creation of Western modernity–it is this particular transcendental conditioning of the spiritual life that, according to Taylor, justifies calling our age a “secular” one.106 Taylor’s description of the contemporary conditions of religious belief and non-belief in the West–of the Immanent Frame, in his conceptuality– appears quite ambivalent. On the one hand, contemporary Western societies should be secular in the sense that, while not being based on any sacral convictions about some transcendent order in reality anymore (including human beings themselves, the societies formed by them, and the universe as a whole), they nevertheless (and even explicitly) allow for free personal exploration of different spiritual alternatives. Indeed, what in Taylor’s analysis most profoundly characterizes contemporary secular Western societies is not so much a supposed decrease in religious belief and practice, 104

C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 16. See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 1-3. See also Karel Dobbelaere’s similar threefold distinction between societal, organizational, and individual secularization in K. DOBBELAERE, Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels. 106 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 19. 105

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but rather an enormous multiplication of different spiritual options available and in fact chosen in this cultural sphere. The epoch-making “nova effect” has fragilized all spiritual outlooks since the nineteenth century, so as to give rise to an unprecedented existential pluralism in contemporary secular societies.107 In Taylor’s Master Narrative, the “turning point” of the eighteenthcentury Providential Deism ended the era when Western moral and spiritual searching had practically no other sources from which to draw except the official–Catholic or Protestant–form of Christianity. This set free a huge amount of creative energy which has since then produced a staggering number of different human ways-of-being-in-the-world in the West, not least in the wake of the popular expressionist, “super-nova” revolution of the 1960s. All inner-Western hyperpluralization has been made possible by the commonly accepted Immanent Frame which by being neutrally immanent in itself lets its inhabitants freely discover various, either immanent or transcendent, sources to motivate their personal search for meaning. According to Taylor, in the Immanent Frame we all stand in the “Jamesian open space” where we can feel the pull of different existential alternatives, both of those oriented towards some kind of transcendence and of those which conceive of human flourishing in more or less immanent terms.108 Being thus “cross-pressured” between the different, either immanent or transcendent, options easily available to us all is what, according to Taylor, defines the contemporary Western spiritual existence in the Immanent Frame.109 But the situation is not so straightforward either, not so unproblematically “open,” in the contemporary West in light of Taylor’s analysis. Of course, the Immanent Frame is not just a neutral, objective fact that lets us freely explore different spiritual alternatives, but is a human creation. As all human creations, it is itself open to different interpretations, to different “spins,” as Taylor calls them.110 And the spin that the Immanent Frame most easily, most characteristically, tends to take in the contemporary West is a “closed” one, which not only encourages a strongly immanent reading of the human existence but which even makes this seem more or less selfevident, even a little short of obvious, in certain circles. For the person who has become trapped inside a “closed world structure” of a purely immanent interpretation of the Immanent Frame, transcendent 107

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 595. See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 549, 551; The Varieties of Religion Today, p. 59. 109 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 592. 110 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 557ff. 108

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sources for meaningful existence do not even appear as real alternatives. Rather, for the person in question, reality shows itself as more or less unquestionably immanent (at least as far as humans go). That is why, on the other hand, Taylor’s description of the contemporary Western conditions of religious belief gives the impression of them as favoring an immanent wayof-being-in-the-world rather than motivating one towards a personal opening to some kind of trans-human meaning in reality. To put it briefly, on one hand, the Immanent Frame should, in theory, be an ideologically neutral common platform for individual spiritual exploration in contemporary Western societies (besides offering the constitutional justification to their liberal democratic polities). On the other hand, in practice, it seems to favor a purely immanent, exclusively humanist formof-life instead of a personal opening to transcendent dimensions of reality. The Jamesian open space is a theoretical possibility, but in practice few people appear to have such broad intellectual sympathies and such an open heart for the Other. Instead, they resort to some kind of a closed interpretation of the Immanent Frame–or at least that seems to be the case in the contemporary Western academic world, for example.111 Far from weakening the overall Taylorian secularization analysis, one of Taylor’s main points in A Secular Age might just be the openly ambivalent character of the Immanent Frame. Taylor’s reading of our secular age brings home the fact that it is up to us how the contemporary conditions of belief will be experienced and lived in concrete. One possibility (perhaps the hegemonic one today) is to give a closed reading of the Immanent Frame which only allows immanent aspects of reality to come forth. Another possibility (maybe even more widely spread among the general population) is to leave the final verdict on the sources of meaningful human existence to the personal deliberation of every individual. This would create, and has already created, a wonderful variety of different human ways of existing in the world, both immanently and transcendently oriented (Taylor’s “super-nova”). Taylor is famous for having argued for the second option throughout his long career, concerning both social scientific methodology and philosophical

111

Taylor speaks of the “intellectual hegemony” of the closed, secularist reading of the Immanent Frame in the contemporary West, presumably reflecting his own long experience in the academic world, not least in the philosophical and social scientific ones (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 551). Not wanting to discredit in any way the Taylorian view, it should however be pointed out that even in the notoriously unbelieving academic world the spiritual situation is in reality quite complex (see E.H. ECKLUND, Science vs. Religion).

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anthropology, as well as moral and social philosophy.112 The whole of Taylor’s Master Narrative of North Atlantic secularization could accordingly be read as a philosophical plea for an open reading of the Immanent Frame. When one comes to see that the immanent societal and moral order constructed by modern Westerners is a human cultural construct and not any ultimate revelation of how the reality in itself is, one can become liberated from all closed visions of it which tend to present it as the only rationally available one. Such a patient and humble working through of the genealogical dynamics of Western secularization as a contingent historical transformation process would then serve as necessary preparation for acknowledging the global hyperpluralism of today, and for personally entering it in a morally responsible manner. An open, polyhedric reading of Taylor’s Master Narrative is unfortunately made rather difficult by the very conceptual decision on which Taylor builds his work. The reference is to the sharp distinction between either transcendent or immanent sources for human spiritual exploration, which serves for Taylor to mark the difference between religion and non-religion, the traditional crux of all discussions of Western secularization. If one starts from such a dualistic or binary definition of modern Western religion (and its counterpart, non-religion), and makes it the guiding principle for understanding the dynamics of Western secularization, it is no wonder that the same dualism or binary also remains in the imagined end result of this transformation process. At least so it is, arguably, for the Taylorian secularization narrative. What in fact, according to Taylor, most profoundly characterizes Western secularization, and what accordingly justifies calling our age a “secular” one, is not merely the construction of a common Immanent Frame, but rather the possibility of living this in a purely immanent manner, i.e. “exclusive humanism,” as Taylor calls it. In all known previous human societies, human existential flourishing has been conceptually and practically related to some kind of trans-human intentionality or meaning in reality. Only in the modern West has a purely immanent or exclusively human way-of-being-in-the-world become conceived of as a viable alternative to all transcendent or trans-humanly oriented forms-of-life.113 Exclusive humanism is now “viable” in the sense that it is openly and freely available to anyone who decides to adopt it. Furthermore, it is an alternative that many people also in fact do adopt, even to the point of making of exclusive humanism the uncontested default position in certain societal 112

In addition to the literature already mentioned, see especially C. TAYLOR ET AL., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. 113 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 18.

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spheres. In short, therefore, notwithstanding all pluralizing effects of Western secularization, it is still the development of exclusive humanism, which according to Taylor most radically defines this epochal transformation process. To cite Taylor himself: My claim will rather be something of this nature: secularity 3 came to be along with the possibility of exclusive humanism, which thus for the first time widened the range of possible options, ending the era of “naïve” religious faith. Exclusive humanism in a sense crept up on us through an intermediate form, Providential Deism; and both the Deism and the humanism were made possible by earlier developments within orthodox Christianity. Once this humanism is on the scene, the new plural, non-naïve predicament allows for multiplying the options beyond the original gamut. But the crucial transforming move in the process is the coming of exclusive humanism.114

The decisive question here is whether exclusive humanism is to play just a methodically guiding role in Taylor’s narrative of secularization or whether it becomes the characteristic principle of this process tout court. One must ask whether introducing the concept of exclusive humanism as the defining construction of Western secularity will help to enter the “Jamesian open space” reading of the Immanent Frame–arguably a necessary precondition for entering the contemporary global hyperpluralism. Or, will it, on the contrary (even against one’s explicit intentions), conspire to present a closed reading of the contemporary conditions of belief? Calling our age a “secular” one, and defining this secularity in terms of the wide availability of “exclusive humanism,” could already be taken as an indication that the issue has been more or less settled. The question goes much deeper than mere terminology. Widely available exclusive humanism indisputably remains historically one of the great constructs of Western modernity, but how could this be acknowledged without making it the sole (or even the most-characteristic) feature of this epoch? Speculatively put: how to take seriously the picture of the world inherent in exclusive humanism without, however, becoming captive to it?115 Answering this question is crucial for bringing the Taylorian secularization narrative into dialogue with a fundamental theological 114

C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 19. See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 549, in reference to Wittgenstein’s famous remark in Philosophical Investigations, §115: “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” 115

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reading of the signs of our times, which is our task here.

3.2 Questioning the “Tailor-Made” Dualism A first indication–at least to a Christian theological sensibility–that there might be some deeper problems in Taylor’s rather dualistic definition of religion, and consequently of secularization, too, is his recurrent description of both Christianity and Buddhism as typical transcendently-oriented human forms-of-life, in contrast to exclusively humanist or immanentlyoriented ways-of-being-in-the-world. To repeat, according to Taylor, the decisive issue about secularization concerns the attitude taken towards the “transformation perspective” for fulfilled and meaningful human existence: the question is whether something transcending normal human flourishing is acknowledged and striven for, or not. As examples for transcendently-recognized transformation perspectives, Taylor several times gives the figures of both Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha. Both of them should have dedicated their lives to something beyond mere ordinary human flourishing (agape in the case of Christ, anatta in that of the Buddha), revealing the real and deeper human existential fullness in the transcendent, and thus inspiring whole spiritual traditions.116 Of course, as Taylor himself notes, all words are doomed to be more or less inadequate in this context, the Buddhist tradition especially going ideally so far beyond ordinary human flourishing that it might be difficult to consider it aspiring to any kind of human flourishing at all. But still, in Taylor’s view, both Christianity and Buddhism can be used to exemplify such transcendently-open transformation perspectives that in his secularization narrative contrast the immanent closedness of the exclusively humanist alternatives developed in the West during the last two or three centuries. The theological relationship of Christianity to Buddhism is a very complicated one, indeed, and cannot be delved into here.117 But as always when considering religious pluralism from a Christian theological perspective, the decisive issue turns on the person of Jesus Christ, namely on his unicity and universality (as DI, nn. 5-8 clearly emphasize). From a purportedly neutral perspective, Jesus of Nazareth could be considered the founding figure of a specific religious tradition in a row of various others who have claimed to reveal something of humankind’s final destination, 116

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 8, 17-18, 67, 151-152, 576, 605, 731. The ground-breaking work of Henri de Lubac on the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism remains fundamental for any Catholic consideration of the subject (see H. DE LUBAC, Aspects of Buddhism).

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perhaps by functioning as a kind of mediator between the two realms of being: the immanent and the transcendent. What defines the Christian view of Jesus Christ precisely as Christian, however, is the belief in him not so much as a mere mediator of an otherworldly revelation, but as the Revelation itself (himself!). In the one human being Jesus of Nazareth, Christians encounter the Self-Revelation of the Triune God, in his whole fullness and completeness (see DV, n. 2).118 As “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) Jesus in his human immanence expresses perfectly and definitively the divine transcendence of God to Christian believers.119 In a sense, then, for Christians there is accordingly no alternative anymore to acceding to existential fullness outside of human flourishing. By contrast, God is to be encountered in the very midst of human existence, revealed and redeemed in its infinite worth by Christ (see GS, n. 22). That is how the fundamental Christian mystery of the Incarnation questions the very definition of religion with scheme of immanence vs. transcendence. At the very least, it asks us to put the issue in different terms: not simply as the question of the existence or nonexistence of the transcendent, but rather and more importantly as the how of our relationship to that transcendence. And the Christian modality of relating to the transcendent happens through, with, and in the most holy humanity of Jesus: “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). If “the glory of God is the living human being,”120 a flourishing human life cannot be set in any opposition with a religious dedication to the transcendent God. Rather they become inseparably united in the characteristically Christian unity in distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, the human and the divine.121 118

Confessing Jesus Christ as the mediator simul et plenitudo totius revelationis (DV, n. 2), how can one not agree with Rahner’s foundational proposition that “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa” (K. RAHNER, “Oneness and Threefoldness of God in Discussion with Islam”, p. 114)? For necessary reservations, however, see J.-L. MARION, Givenness and Revelation, pp. 98-99). 119 The Christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which the divine and human natures are hypostatically united in the one person of Christ “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably” (ܻıȣȖȤȪIJȦȢ, ܻIJȡȑʌIJȦȢ, ܻįȚĮȚȡȑIJȦȢ, ܻȤȦȡȓıIJȦȢ), “the properties of each Nature being preserved,” can be seen as the hermeneutical key to all things genuinely Christian. 120 In the late second century CE, Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons already put the characteristic Christian unity in distinction between the transcendent glory of God and the immanent human existence in these terms: Gloria Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei [est] (Adversus haereses, IV, 20, 7). 121 Eastern Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann, for example, criticized modern Western secularization, and its historical roots in Latin Scholasticism, precisely for setting the natural and the supernatural, the immanent and the

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Admittedly, it would be unfair to confront Taylor’s philosophical approach to secularization with that kind of theological criticism, especially as he explicitly recognizes that “religion,” in all its incredible multiformity throughout ages and different cultural contexts, “defies definition.”122 His definition of religion is, to emphasize this one last time, designed to suit the specific context of Western modernity between, roughly, 1500 and 2000. As the previously “porous” Western identity was “buffering” itself more and more towards the Immanent Frame, in this cultural constellation religion became, in fact, widely defined in terms of either personal openness or closedness towards transcendent sources to meaningful human existence. Hence, Taylor’s initial dualistic definition of religion is both the starting point of his secularization analysis and its constant reference point, as well as its endpoint in the concept of exclusive humanism–the quintessential innovation of the Western secularization process. Scholars of intellectual history may debate the (in)accuracy and (im)partiality of Taylor’s Reform Master Narrative,123 but for us for whom the main question is how to move beyond Western secularization towards the future global hyperpluralism, it is clear that the Taylorian endpoint cannot be the endpoint to rest at. The glory and misery of Western modernity might very well have been that it came to conceptualize religion through a binary relation between either transcendence or immanence, separating religion into a private sphere of its own and thus making possible the specifically Western secularization process. But how can we overcome that dualism for the pressing global reality of polyhedric hyperpluralism? Instead of theological doubt concerning Taylor’s argumentative starting point, a more pertinent criticism of it would consequently be questioning its argumentative endpoint in exclusive humanism. This, according to the Taylorian analysis, easily takes the form of “closed world structures” or of an obviously closed interpretation of the Immanent Frame.124 Even if we could accept, for modern Western purposes, the Taylorian take on religion transcendent, order against each other, even though they, in a Christian sacramental view of reality, on the contrary become unified and sanctified in the one Paschal Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (see A. SCHMEMANN, For the Life of the World, pp. 117-134). 122 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 15. 123 For a scholarly voice that hears a rather strong ideological, namely “Catholic,” partisanship in the Taylorian narrative, see P.E. GORDON, “The Place of the Sacred in the Absence of God”. 124 Taylor discusses the closed world structures in depth in Chapter 15 of A Secular Age (C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 539-593), as well as in C. TAYLOR, “Closed World Structures”.

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as an openness to something intentional beyond the human-constructed Immanent Frame, shall we welcome his understanding of non-religion as an immanent closure, too? Do contemporary non-religious people really understand themselves as immanently buffered against all transcendence and trans-human intentionality? Or is Taylor’s definition of non-religion as immanent closure again “tailor-made” for the context of modern Western secularization, as his definition of religion also was? That the answer to the last question should be in the affirmative, becomes most visible in Taylor’s attitude towards the possibility of a completely nonreligious human form-of-life125. Taylor refers to the personal view of sociologist of religion Steve Bruce concerning the present and future conditions of religious belief in the secular West. Bruce argues that a supposed endpoint to the secularization process would not be a confrontative non-religion but rather a widespread indifference towards religion. He writes: In so far as I can imagine an endpoint, it would not be self-conscious irreligion; you have to care too much about religion to be irreligious. It would be widespread indifference (what Weber called being religiously unmusical); no socially significant shared religion; and religious ideas being no more common than would be the case if all minds were wiped blank and people began from scratch to think about the world and their place in it.126

Taylor, of course, does not share Bruce’s view on the radical liquidation of religious belief. Taylor, on the contrary, sees the human predicament as perennially open to the two fundamental options of either an assent to a transcendent transformation perspective, or a closure from it in some form of immanentism–or at least, as he points out, in our Western civilization.127 In terms of the Taylorian secularization narrative, religious or transcendentally oriented belief was everywhere in the Western societies in 1500, while in 2000 all forms of transcendental belief are challenged by the secular option of living human existence in a purely immanent manner. Yet–and this is the main point of Taylor’s argument–the secular alternative did not appear out of nothing, but, as all different human waysof-being-in-the-world, it was constructed, both consciously and unconsciously, gradually through the centuries; and still today it continues to bear this evolutionary prehistory in its make-up (“nothing is ever lost”!). That is why all subtraction stories of the coming of the secular simply do 125

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 269, 591-591. S. BRUCE, God is Dead, p. 42 (cited in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 435). 127 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 435. 126

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not work, because they ignore this crucial historical and cultural conditionedness of Western secularity. Even to theoretically consider human beings as “minds” that could be “wiped blank” so as to begin “from scratch” to think about their place in the world appears a fundamentally misguided view to Taylor. Given that earlier, even in our Western civilization–as in every other known human culture–religion was “everywhere,”128 Taylor simply cannot accept the reality of a completely nonreligious human form-of-life. Even to claim something of the sort would probably have too strong a subtractionist flair in Taylor’s philosophical sensibility. Some hesitation remains nevertheless. For in the end, Taylor cannot help noting, “the interesting issue is whether there could be unbelief without any sense of some religious view which is being negated.”129 Said condition of unbelief would logically not even deserve the name of “un-belief,” or any other name conceptually related to (religious) belief. Taylor even admits that some people might be approaching this kind of unbelieving condition in the contemporary West. For these completely nonreligious people, religion would not be an identity-defining issue at all.130 They would not locate themselves existentially around the binary of religious belief and nonbelief, but they would find themselves completely outside the religious language-game as traditionally conceived. Ultimately, however, Taylor cannot fully acknowledge perfect nonbelief as a real existential possibility even in the contemporary West. In Taylor’s conceptuality, Western unbelief became possible through the historical dialectics between the earlier pre-modern (porous and enchanted) identity and the developing modern (buffered and disciplined) identity, and it cannot consequently be understood without this dualistic background. In the selfunderstanding of contemporary unbelief there is rather inbuilt a more or less clear awareness of having overcome, and somehow moved beyond, the previously hegemonic religion, Taylor claims.131 The whole Taylorian concept of secular unbelief receives its attractiveness from the experienced achievement of having constructed a purely human form-of-life, without the previously necessary religious or transcendent connotations. Yet, Taylor continues, precisely in this consciousness of having overcome all religious influence, modern unbelief remains deeply connected to religious belief. In brief, according to Taylor, to imagine a 128 On the pre-modern ubiquity of religion Taylor refers to D. HERVIEU-LÉGER, Le pèlerin et le converti, pp. 21-21 (C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 779 [note 2]). 129 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 269. 130 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 592. 131 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 268.

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completely nonreligious human form-of-life, i.e. a perfect and fully-fledged unbelief which should not even be named “un-belief,” would be to imagine something quite different from the forms of non-religion available in the modern secular West, all of these being both historically and conceptually related to religion.132 In sum, for Taylor, “[r]eligion remains ineradicably on the horizon of areligion; and vice versa.”133 It is arguably here that Taylor’s broad intellectual sympathies find their limit, namely in his refusal to recognize the very possibility of a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world. His phenomenological description of religion’s Other as “exclusive humanism” or as (from transcendence) “closed world structures” simply does not appear adequate as a characterization of genuine nonreligion. Or perhaps it is here as in his definition of religion: if the point of departure for the Western secularization process is the gradual construal of “religion” as an optional personal decision for transcendence, it will be almost inevitable that the endpoint for this process will show itself as the opposite of religion, as a “secular age” indeed, where the great, almost irresistible, temptation would be the immanent decision against transcendence. Thus, the whole Taylorian secularization narrative has its point of departure, its constant point of reference, and its endpoint in the metaphysical dualism between belief and unbelief, where tertium non datur reigns potently. In its light, there is no way around the “tailor-made” dualism. But does this really capture the essence of our contemporary spiritual condition? Moreover, with his adopted conceptuality, Taylor is in a sense thinking against himself. With his genealogical analysis of Western secularization, he clearly wants to overcome all subtractionist and unilinear readings of it for an open and pluralistic interpretation of the Immanent Frame–his ideal(istic?) “Jamesian open space”. But the methodological predecisions made by him at the beginning–most importantly his dualistic definition of religion–make it in the end impossible for him to arrive where he wanted to. The primary characterization of the contemporary West remains secular in the singular (“A Secular Age”). But then the inner contradiction of the Taylorian narrative might not be so much his but of Western secularization itself.134 As an approach to the 132

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 269. C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 592. 134 One of the first scholars to affirm an inner spiritual contradiction in the very nature of Western secular modernity–rising from its purported independence from the foregoing religious traditions and its inevitable historical indebtedness to these– was Karl Löwith with his 1949 work Meaning in History. A similar criticism against the self-understanding of the modern West–regarded as a Christian “heresy”–is, of 133

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modern Western secularization process, the Taylorian conceptuality might (or might not), therefore, be justifiable. However, if we are interested in going beyond a specifically Western context into global hyperpluralism, we certainly need a different, not so violently dualistic, kind of existential conceptuality. The Franciscan polyhedron affirms that the global spiritual reality is much more complex than any closed conceptuality would allow. The argument of the present study rises from the conviction that the concept of a perfectly nonreligious human form-of-life–briefly mentioned but in the end negated by Taylor–might offer a helpful speculative tool for freeing oneself from the narrowly Western conceptualizations of religion versus non-religion, in order to recognize more profoundly the contemporary global reality of existential hyperpluralism, and to enter it more selfconsciously. If the proprium of the modern Western conception of religion consists precisely in its dualistic nature as either an openness or a closedness towards a supposed transcendence or trans-human intentionality, learning to see and to acknowledge a human way-of-being-in-the-world that cannot adequately be comprehended in those dualistic terms would already mean to have moved beyond that dualism. It is this kind of a conceptual learning process, or a spiritual exercise, that will be developed in what follows, through studying the proposed concept of Radical Secularization as a completely nonreligious human form-of-life. The way backwards being out of the question in an investigation which wants to take the linguistic historicity of human existence seriously, the way forwards can only be by opening up our present conceptuality in view of contemporary global hyperpluralism. But why should this study approach the hyperpluralistic condition through the concept of nonreligion, as an indirect detour, as it were, instead of stepping directly into it with the already quite-established category of “religious pluralism”?135 Why (Western) religion’s absolute Other–not merely “non-religion” but “nonreligion”–rather than the hyperplurality of religions which other cultural traditions have already been living for centuries or even for millennia? Why not simply step forward from the “secular” to the “post-secular”?

course, John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory with the whole AngloAmerican theological movement of “Radical Orthodoxy” (see J. MILBANK–C. PICKSTOCK–G. WARD, Radical Orthodoxy), to which also Taylor positively refers (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 851 [note 2]). 135 From a Roman Catholic perspective fundamental for the theme of religious pluralism remains J. DUPUIS, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, in addition to the necessary Magisterial guidelines in DI.

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There are two parts to the answer of this important methodological question. The first regards cultural conditionedness. The abiding truth in Taylor’s analysis of Western modernity as a secular age is that, in this particular tradition, religion has become understood in contrast to the secular, with the tendency of the former having to justify itself in relation to the latter. And one cannot simply ignore this cultural setting and make oneself believe it does not matter anymore in contemporary discussions. “Nothing is ever lost,” and this applies also to the contemporary Western situation before global hyperpluralism. The second part of the answer to the question of “Why nonreligion instead of religious pluralism?” goes deeper than the fact of mere historical conditionedness. If we truly can form a meaningful concept of a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world, this would not only be a useful conceptual tool to enter global hyperpluralism from the Western perspective, but it would have a profound speculative significance in itself. In all known previous human cultural traditions, something which we would spontaneously call “religion” has been present, and not only present, but it has offered the fundamental imaginary and conceptuality with which humans have tried to understand and put into words their momentary existence in the universe. With good historical backing, the human being has been characterized as the homo religiosus.136 Only in the modern West has a human way-of-being-in-the-world evolved, which in its own selfunderstanding does not have any obvious connections to anything religious, or which in fact can make all religion appear as self-evidently false or at least as blatantly meaningless. Hence, the concept of complete nonreligion can help not only to go beyond the particularly Western cultural constellation towards the more general reality of global hyperpluralism, but also to understand the speculatively most innovative creation of this tradition: namely a perfectly nonreligious human form-of-life. In the concept of complete nonreligion we confront the speculative heart of the contemporary epochal shift and the most pertinent spiritual sign of our times. In fact, as the following pages will argue, these two dimensions are intimately connected, because the concept of complete nonreligion offers the contemporary Western consciousness a speculative door to enter global hyperpluralism. If we manage to form a meaningful concept of genuine nonreligiosity, this already in itself would signify a speculative overcoming 136

On the classical hermeneutical-phenomenological theme of the human being as a homo religiosus, see M. ELIADE, Patterns in Comparative Religion, especially Chapter X (pp. 367-387); for more recent overviews, see T.S. SHAH–J. FRIEDMAN, ed., Homo Religiosus? and P. STAGI, Homo Religiosus.

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of the metaphysical dualism of Western secularization. Perfect nonreligion could thus lead us into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, from which a proper acknowledgment of global hyperpluralism could become possible even for a Westernly-molded mentality. Last but not least, a fully developed concept of perfect nonreligion could offer an innovative perspective on the age-old question of what “religion,” in reality, is all about.137

3.3 Axial Revolutions: The Need to Go Forward–and Backward Even though Taylor’s conceptuality in A Secular Age remains trapped inside the particularly modern Western frames, his overall Reform Master Narrative itself gives an indication as to where to begin looking for its possible deconstruction in the face of global hyperpluralism. Taylor in fact builds his whole secularization narrative on the Jaspersian theory of the “Axial Age” which is receiving more and more attention in contemporary social scientific discussion, undoubtedly for its potential global applicability.138 In Taylor’s story, the Axial Age hypothesis offers the general thrust to the inner dynamic of Western secularization–its background motivation and guiding energy, so to speak. What is then this speculative thrust of European secularization according to Taylor? It is, in short, to finally resolve the age-old unstable “post-Axial equilibrium” by pushing all the way through the “Great Disembedding” inherent in the Axial Revolution itself.139 In human religious evolution prior to or outside of the Axial Revolution,140 humans were, and are, typically “embedded” in the surrounding world, in their society, and in their very own humanity. Pre-Axial humans live and understand their existential fullness 137

Perhaps, religion, if it is to be what it claims to be–relationship with the transhuman meaning of reality–, cannot be defined by us. Rather, we can only prepare us for the Divine Revelation by clarifying what it is not, i.e. by fashioning an evermore-radical “nonreligion.” 138 The fourth chapter of the present study will be dedicated to the Axial Age hypothesis; for Taylor’s take on it, see C. TAYLOR, “What Was the Axial Revolution?”, and the short but all the more crucial third chapter in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 146-158. Along the same lines as Taylor are two of his most important contemporary interlocutors, Robert Bellah (R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution) and Hans Joas (H. JOAS, The Power of the Sacred, especially Chapter 5, pp. 154-194). 139 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 146. 140 The Axial Revolution, let it be said now, must not be considered merely or even primarily as a clear temporal watershed, but rather as a speculative indicator of the character of human consciousness, or way-of-being-in-the-world in question.

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in a necessary relation to these three dimensions, as limited and defined by their particular tradition already in advance.141 The Axial Revolution of the last millennium BCE, by contrast, “disembeds” people from their received conceptions about the universe, society, and human existence, because it presents a spiritual vision of meaningful human existence that transcends all these traditional notions. An Axial transcendental vision is valuable in itself and worth pursuing for its own sake. Such transcendental visions become successively institutionalized in each of the ensuing post-Axial civilizations–of the monotheistic or JudeoChristian-Islamic civilization in the West, and of the Indian and Chinese civilizations in the East–as the characterizing feature of these cultural constellations.142 While pre- or non-Axial cultures seem to content themselves with striving to conserve the received order of the cosmos, society, and human life, post-Axial cultures, on the contrary, cannot but pursue transcending the traditional given. That is, the post-Axial consciousness is in a constant movement towards something greater, something beyond mere ordinary human existence as it has been conceptualized by one’s own cultural tradition. There is a reactionary or even revolutionary character to the Axial consciousness which is motivated by a utopistic vision of a transcendental goal to human existence, be it the Christian agape or the Buddhist anatta or the Chinese tao, etc. As Max Weber already remarked, not all people can commit themselves with equal dedication to the transcendental visions, even in Axial cultures. This is the reason why in these traditions there characteristically forms a certain class of especially transcendentally-dedicated persons–of religious virtuosi, as Weber called them,143 comprising, e.g., the Indian Sannyasi and Sannyasini and the Christian monks and nuns. Such individuals, in a way, with their radically different form-of-life, remind the rest of the population in these Axial cultures of the ultimate foundation and final orientation of these traditions: of some conception of existential fullness beyond or transcending mere ordinary human existence. Taylor lays a great weight on the complementary nature of the ensuing post-Axial cultures. These exist in a constant tension between the higher 141

Taylor speaks about “early religion,” i.e. pre-Axial religion, in this context (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 147), which stands in close proximity to Robert Bellah’s “tribal” and “archaic religion” (see R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution). 142 Especially Shmuel Eisenstadt has emphasized the importance of the Axial transcendental visions becoming institutionalized in the developing post-Axial civilizations (see S.N. EISENSTADT, “The Axial Age”). 143 See M. WEBER, The Sociology of Religion, pp. 162-163.

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transcendental and mere mundane visions of human existence. Axial civilizations are set apart by an unstable spiritual equilibrium, where the different vocations are understood to complement each other–the priests pray, while the laity works and goes to war, as in medieval Europe–and where the institutionalized transcendentalism gets regularly overturned–in the time of Carnival, for example, in Latin Christendom–, just to be taken up again with renewed force afterwards.144 The dynamics of Western secularization begin to move in Taylor’s narrative at the point when post-Axial equilibrium, with its inherent hierarchical complementarity, becomes called into question as such, i.e. when the received cultural and societal embeddedness begins losing its meaningfulness. It is not about any one revolution in time but a gradual historical transformation process. Certain particularly important historical events can nevertheless be identified in this process: the Gregorian Reforms of the late eleventh century, the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to require a yearly auricular confession and communion from all the faithful,145 and the preaching of the new itinerant mendicant orders from the thirteenth century on. All these reforms were directed towards making the nominally Christian peoples of medieval Europe also personally Christian.146 Taylor in fact identifies a growing insistence on a complete Christianization of Western European populations from the beginning of the second Christian millennium on. This epochal spiritual movement he calls simply “Reform” and which according to him lies behind the historical dynamics of Western secularization: Briefly summed up, Reform demanded that everyone be a real, 100 percent Christian. Reform not only disenchants, but disciplines and re-orders life and society. Along with civility, this makes for a notion of moral order which gives a new sense to Christianity, and the demands of faith. This collapses 144

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 44-54. Michel Foucault also notoriously placed great weight on the decisions of the Fourth Lateran Council for the development of the typically modern Western consciousness, very much centered on subjective interiority and guilt (see M. FOUCAULT, The History of Sexuality, pp. 58-61). 146 Jean Delumeau, e.g., spoke about the “legend of the Christian Middle Ages” (see J. DELUMEAU, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, pp. 154-174). John Bossy presented an opposing view of medieval Latin Christendom in J. BOSSY, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700. Taylor draws on them both in his own narrative. The respective models of medieval Latin and modern Western Christianities might be so different as to make any general comparisons between them difficult, even impossible. The intellectualization of religion by the latter would simply have made no sense to the former. 145

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Before the turning point of the eighteenth-century Providential Deism and its concomitant anthropocentrism and the ensuing existential nova effect, there is therefore the centuries-old thrust towards total Christianization in Western Europe, Taylor’s Reform Master Narrative assures us. But still more originally, as the spiritual motor behind the long-standing Western religious Reform, there is the Axial introduction of a transcendental finality to human existence. The Axial transcendental vision became institutionalized in its particular way in Latin Christendom. The movement of Reform aspired to resolve it by making all people transcendentally orientated according to the prevalent interpretation of the Christian faith. In the end it all turned out quite differently: rather as a “corruption” of Christianity, as Taylor remarks in a reference to an idea of Ivan Illich’s.148 The Reform was Christian both in its origin and in its goal, but what in fact came out of it was not the Kingdom of God realized on earth but “rather a disciplined society in which categorial relations have primacy, and therefore norms.”149 In sum, Taylor aligns himself with the line of thinkers who see Western modernity as nevertheless inherently related to Christianity, even if in a contradictory, “heretic” manner.150 This is not the place to criticize the, at the end of the day relatively transparent, Christian inspiration of Taylor’s secularization narrative (in his own liberal Catholic interpretation of it).151 The point has simply been to try to identify the deeper conceptual roots for his dualistic definition of religion. These have been found in the Axial background of Taylor’s Reform Master Narrative, or in other words, in his overall theory of Western secularization as a gradual resolution of the unstable post-Axial equilibrium. From a deeper perspective, it all therefore turns around the question of how the Axial Revolution should be understood. What is the spiritual movement all about which begins to become conceptualized during the Axial Age and which so decisively conditions our Western understanding of religion? The way forward beyond Western secularization and towards global 147

C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 774. See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 158. 149 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 158. 150 See J. MILBANK, “A Closer Walk on the Wild Side”. This might be the reason for the curious silence in A Secular Age about the almost diametrically opposite Blumenbergian reading of European secularization. 151 For a criticism of A Secular Age on being too strongly “faith-based,” see M. JAY, “Faith-Based History”. 148

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hyperpluralism must consequently receive its direction by going backwards to the Axial Revolution, in order to be on the right, profound and wide enough, track from the very beginning.

4. Finding Our Place in History After Secularization: Radical Secularization as a Sign of Our Times The timely challenge offered by Taylor’s epoch-making152 A Secular Age is approached in the present dissertation by trying to develop a phenomenological description for a genuinely nonreligious human form-of-life, so nonreligious in fact that it would burst open the conceptual dualism of the Western secularization process as analyzed by Taylor. Radical Secularization is the concept used for such a thoroughly nonreligious human way-of-being-inthe-world in the present study. It is projected as a speculative tool for going beyond Western secularization into the global hyperpluralistic predicament, where the Church is now called to carry on with her missionary task. For if we in fact manage to conceptualize a thorough nonreligion–a nonreligion which goes so deep to the roots (radices) of a person’s being-in-the-world that it should not even be called “non-religion” anymore–it would already signify a speculative overcoming of Western secularization, strained as this is between the polar opposites of religion and non-religion, transcendence and immanence.153 Radical Secularization would thus let us really talk about a genuinely postsecular condition, a condition truly After Secularization.

152

The sheer amount of secondary literature in a myriad of different academic disciplines that A Secular Age has given rise to is practically without equal in contemporary intellectual hyperpluralism, and it offers a unique occasion even for Catholic thinking to enter into a transdisciplinary dialogue with the extremely fragmented academic scene of today (for an illustrative attempt in this direction, see C. TAYLOR ET AL., ed., Renewing the Church in a Secular Age). 153 For the sake of clarity, it should immediately be pointed out that the concept of “overcoming” in this study is never used directly in the vulgar Hegelian (hence rather Fichtean) sense of lifting (aufheben) two conceptual opposites up into a broader third according to the scheme of thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Neither is the Heideggerian project of overcoming (verwinden) the Western metaphysical tradition in general, and its modern Cartesian formation in particular, intended here. Overcoming speculatively the dualism of modern Western secularization means, rather, the aspiration of learning to approach contemporary global hyperpluralism without any such explicitly developed conceptual frameworks, but with a discerning, “open mind,” as encouraged by Pope Francis (see VG, n. 3). Philosophically speaking, the Wittgensteinian auflösen would be the nearest equivalent (see L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §133).

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As it happens, the two central concepts of the study, After Secularization and Radical Secularization, are inherently and necessarily connected with each other. Only when we have managed to conceptualize and acknowledge a perfectly nonreligious human experience of reality, can we be sure to have moved beyond the dualistic metaphysics of modern Western secularization. With Radical Secularization, something truly new dawns in the spiritual evolution of humanity. It is, therefore, an important sign of our times to be honestly recognized and attentively delved into during the ongoing epochal change. The intellectual movement of the present book is consequently to go beyond Western secularization into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization by radicalizing the logic of Western secularization with the proposed concept of Radical Secularization. What does “radical” mean here then? The first meaning of “radical” in “Radical Secularization” points to its personally profound nature. A radically secularized person is one who has been, as it were, secularized or separated from religion for their whole existence, all the way to the roots (radices) of their way-of-being-in-the-world, to the point of not being able to understand at all how somebody could take religious belief seriously to begin with.154 For Radical Secularization as the specific human way-ofbeing-in-the-world, human existence in this infinite universe shows itself so blatantly without a God or Gods or anything that could be associated with traditional religion that religious belief does not appear a real existential alternative to this kind of human form-of-life at all. There is also a second meaning of “radical” in “Radical Secularization.” It has to do with its historical self-understanding. Radical Secularization is radical also in the sense that it questions the very definition of the human being as a homo religiosus. In all known previous human cultures there has been something which we would spontaneously call “religion,” i.e. (implicit or explicit) belief in trans-human intentionality in the world and practices which take this into account (in the form of Gods or spirits or of a transcendently given moral order, etc.). Only in the modern West has there 154

The “radicality” of Radical Secularization wants to respect the radically secular person’s inviolable freedom to regard themselves as perfectly nonreligious, something that a more “rhizomatic” conception would arguably be at pains to do (see G. DELEUZE–F. GUATTARI, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 3-25). Here it is not about essentializing a single, abstractly given, “root” to the human person, but on the contrary, giving every person the right to define one’s essential root. Overcoming (Western) metaphysics cannot be accomplished by totally abandoning it (which we as Westerners simply cannot do), but by engaging in it in a radically new way, as will be argued in Chapter 5 of this study.

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developed a human form-of-life which not only distances itself from religious belief and practice but for which this does not necessarily make any sense to begin with–Radical Secularization, that is. The distribution of this kind of way-of-being-in-the-world in the general population is totally secondary for the speculative argument of this study. The decisive point is that something like Radical Secularization exists and challenges us to reconsider the whole existence of humanity in the world from its very roots: do we belong here (in some meaningful sense of the question) or do we not? The first (or individual) radicality and the second (or general) radicality of Radical Secularization are intimately interconnected, of course, as it is the individual radically secularized person who poses the general question which threatens to put the very notion of our “common humanity”155 into question: how does Radical Secularization relate itself to humanity prior to and outside of Western secularization, which has been and still remains overwhelmingly religious? The prima facie utter generality of the question is therefore no optional, idiosyncratic extra, nor does it signify a lack of intellectual seriousness, but on the contrary flows from the very concept of Radical Secularization itself. The intention of this first chapter has simply been to introduce the concept of Radical Secularization as a potentially fruitful perspective on the hermeneutical situation of After Secularization. Radical Secularization is designed to function as a conceptual tool for going speculatively beyond Western secularization into global hyperpluralism. Overcoming Western secularization is a pressing task for anyone who desires to enter the global hyperpluralistic reality of today’s humanity. Even more, it presents a possible sign of our times to be recognized and contemplated by Christian theology and the Church that wants to be a part of the contemporary world (as envisioned by GS). Reality is what it is, of course, and in any case it will press itself on humans sooner or later, one way or another. The intellectual work, however, of trying to prepare oneself for the coming of reality–in a way, despite all the theological precaution, the Hegelian attempt of trying to “apprehend one’s own time in thoughts”156–should not be underestimated either. Some people cannot help aspiring intellectually to a kind of comprehension of their hermeneutical situation through a concept which, for them at least, constitutes a significant sign of their times. The present study can be 155

An especially enlightening philosophical discussion of our common humanity is R. GAITA, A Common Humanity. In Catholic theology the evangelical demand of considering all people as brothers and sisters of each other has been given new urgency by FT. 156 Again, see G.W.F. HEGEL, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, p. 21.

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characterized as a single continuous Anstrengung157 of the concept of Radical Secularization in a fundamental theological key–nothing more, nothing less. Its result cannot be known in advance, but one just has to let oneself be drawn into the inner dynamic of the concept and see where it leads. In the end it is not so much a call to the intellect but a call to the will: am I willing to embark on a journey? How far am I prepared to follow into the open horizon? In the second chapter of the study, a more detailed synchronic definition of Radical Secularization is attempted in discussion with contemporary social scientific and philosophical research on secularity and non-religion. As it will turn out, however, the inner logic of the concept of Radical Secularization will require a more historically oriented, diachronic approach, in order to arrive at a satisfactory phenomenological description of it. This will be pursued in the central part of the study, chapters three and four: the former dedicated to an analysis of Radical Secularization in the context of Western modernity, the latter focusing on placing the concept within the broader framework of the Axial Age hypothesis. With that kind of speculative genealogical consideration of Radical Secularization, this study can then proceed to a conceptual overcoming of Western secularization in view of contemporary global hyperpluralism. A third way, beyond traditional religion and present non-religion, is in target. Before entering a more in-depth conceptual study of Radical Secularization, the initial intuitive grasp of the concept should still be further strengthened. Let us accordingly clear the ground a bit more by considering first what the proposed concept of Radical Secularization does not mean. For there seem to be at least three particularly easy misunderstandings of the concept, which should be corrected before even trying to offer a positive definition of it.

4.1 Not Atheism, Indifferentism or Naturalism… To begin, Radical Secularization is not atheism. As can be gathered at once from the word itself, “a-theism”–with the a privativum at the beginning– signifies the negation of something, namely the existence of theos or theoi, of God or Gods. In this negative sense atheism is probably as old as religion, because the affirmation of something logically presupposes the possibility 157

In the Preface to his Phenomenology, Hegel famously demanded Anstrengung des Begriffs (translated recently into English as “rigorous exertion of the concept” by Terry Pinkard) of everyone who desires to embark on any serious study of Wissenschaft, an intellectually necessary provision for scientific theology, too (see K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. xi).

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of denying the same thing.158 There is, for example, no good exegetical reason not to consider atheists the “fools” denounced by the Psalmist for thinking that there is no God (see Ps 14:1; 53:2).159 Furthermore, the word is clearly semantically parasitical in that its meaning depends on the religion or the Gods negated; a religious believer in one context might be regarded as an atheist in another.160 An atheist tout court, by contrast, or an atheist who categorically denies the existence of all imagined or imaginable Gods, seems to be a self-contradictory notion to begin with, for two reasons. Firstly, to be able to deny something absolutely, with a 100% certitude, one should be in possession of the complete knowledge of the whole of reality, which we humans obviously are not.161 And secondly, at least from the perspective of the Greek metaphysical tradition where the One God is seen as the Good, the Truth, and the Beautiful itself, it would have no sense to deny this God, which signifies meaningfulness as such (ipsum esse subsistens).162 But, of course, atheists themselves do not consider their atheism in this kind of metaphysical sense, but rather as a personal stance towards a certain form of religion which they know, but from which they want to distance themselves by negating its central claims: in particular that of the existence of God(s). Atheism, therefore, with its semantic cognates such as agnosticism, is a product of a religious culture where the possibility of not adhering to a religious belief or practice still has to be fought for, for

158

Academic literature on atheism and its different meanings is of course enormous, but for general orientation, see S. BULLIVANT–M. RUSE, ed. The Cambridge History of Atheism; S. BULLIVANT–M. RUSE, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Atheism; G. HYMAN, A Short History of Atheism. 159 See J. BARR, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology, pp. 153-154: “In Israel, where the dominant current of tradition had insisted on the one God, and insisted that all other supposed deities were vain or non-existent, the elimination of gods was so obvious and dominant a principle and achievement that it could seem an obvious further step to eliminate them all, and to say that there was none. I do not see why persons could not have taken this step”. 160 For example, the early Christians obviously believed in a God, namely in God the Father of Jesus Christ, but they were nevertheless accused of “atheism” by the Roman authorities for not following the traditional religio of offering sacrifices to the Roman Gods (see A. HARNACK, Der Vorwurf des Atheismus in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, and for a second century Christian apology against the accusation of atheism, see ATHENAGORAS OF ATHENS, Embassy for the Christians). 161 See the scale of theistic (im)probability which today’s most celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins proposes in R. DAWKINS, The God Delusion, p. 50. 162 W.V.O. Quine makes a similar observation from a logical point of view in W.V.O. QUINE, Mathematical Logic, p. 150.

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political or for spiritual reasons, for example.163 A self-conscious distancing from, or even denying of, a religion is quite foreign, or at the most, perfectly secondary, to the concept of Radical Secularization. A radically secularized person does not need to distance themselves from a religious tradition, let alone to deny it, because religious belief is no real alternative to them at all. They stand completely outside the religious language-game so as to make any negation of religion exactly as meaningless as its affirmation. Perhaps, if pushed enough to define their position on the “God-question,” a radically secular person could use the word “atheist,” especially if no other, better suitable term were available in the shared vocabulary of their community. Yet, still, that would not make them atheist in the substantial sense of the term. Radically secular people just cannot take religious belief seriously as an open existential alternative, because they find themselves altogether outside the religious languagegame. That is why Radical Secularization is not atheism. Furthermore, Radical Secularization is not indifferentism. “Indifferentism” could be taken merely neutrally to mean a human attitude towards religion which is no attitude at all, because it simply does not care about religion to the slightest degree. A religiously indifferent person might never have gotten personally into contact with religion (like many of those who grew up in late East Germany, for instance), or if they had, it has not awoken any particular reactions or feelings in them. For a radically secular mentality, religion appears rather as one of those innumerous things in the world which you might or might not take an interest in. As such, the concept of religious indifference might then be considered as “indifferent” as the form of human existence it refers to (with respect to religion).164 In certain statements of the Catholic Magisterium, on the other hand, “indifferentism” has been used to denounce the opinion that all religions are equal and that every person should accordingly be free to choose which religion to adhere or not to adhere to. In fact, one of the reasons why the Catholic Church for so long (practically until the Second Vatican Council 163

Not surprisingly, then, Michael J. Buckley argues that the first real atheists in Western tradition are to be found only during the French Enlightenment, in the figures of Denis Diderot and Baron d’Holbach (see M.J. BUCKLEY, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, pp. 194-321). T. WHITMARSH, Battling the Gods, on the other hand, claims to find atheism already in Greco-Roman Antiquity, which may be true, but then it was an atheism of a very different kind than the modern Western, “enlightened” atheism. 164 The ideally neutral category of religious indifference is also sometimes used in contemporary social scientific study of non-religion (see J. QUACK–C. SCHUH, ed., Religious Indifference).

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of the 1960s) officially opposed the liberalization and secularization of Western societies was the assumption that this would lead to an increasing indifference towards the message of the Church.165 “Indifference” has been a key criticism also of Pope Francis towards the contemporary “society of waste,” but now, rather, in an ethical sense of the word as not opening oneself to the poor of our shared world (see EG, nn. 54, 61, 203). Both the neutral and the moral(istic) use of the term “religious indifference” or “indifferentism” do not, however, capture the meaning of genuine, all-the-way-through nonreligion as envisioned by the concept of Radical Secularization. A radically secular person might be as intellectually prepared and morally engaged as any religious person. They acknowledge the historical and contemporary relevance of religion in the global world, the welfare of which they are very much concerned about, as any other citizen of our common home. They simply cannot see how religion would, as such, enter into all this. Again, if pressed, a radically secular person might say that religious belief appears to them like the belief in Santa Claus (childish, that is) or in phlogiston (outdated) or in aliens (without any real evidence), but that would be completely beside the point. For a radically secular person, religious belief and practice seem so entirely out of their world that it is no real existential option for them. At the same time, they are equally conscious of the fact that, for many other people, religion has been, is today, and will be in the future a meaningful and meaning-giving way-of-being-in-the-world. The radical Otherness radically secular people experience with respect to religion is nothing to be “indifferent” to, as if it concerned some trivial issues about human life.166 Rather the mere existence of something like Radical Secularization threatens to put the very notion of our common humanity into question in an even more radical way than the plurality of different religious forms-of-life. A radically secular person can be as, or even more, conscious of this than their religious peers.167 That is why 165 On this see the, in a sense, prophetical encyclical of Pope Gregory XVI Mirari vos from 1832 where “indifferentism” for the first time became officially condemned by the Catholic Magisterium. Further on “religious indifference” from a Catholic perspective, see SEGRETERIATO PER I NON CREDENTI, ed., L’indifferenza religiosa. 166 Radical Secularization as total nonreligion is clearly not the same kind of issue as whether one likes or does not like Elvis Presley or turnips; even to suggest something of the kind (as Taylor does in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 592) shows that one has not understood the gravity of the question at all. 167 To cite only one illustrative example which, even though talking about “atheists,” very well understands the gravity of the issue: “The gulf in outlook between atheists

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Radical Secularization is not indifferentism. To continue, Radical Secularization is not naturalism. If Radical Secularization does not signify mere absence of interest in religion (as in indifferentism), then how should its own more positive, substantial nature be characterized? This is the question for the following chapters of the study, but already now a warning must be presented against identifying Radical Secularization too readily with naturalism. Naturalism can be understood as the philosophical view, according to which the natural world is all there is. And what is the “natural world”? It is the world as studied by the methods of the modern natural sciences. Naturalism becomes thus easily reduced to a certain kind of scientific research program intimately connected with a certain kind of view of the world (Weltanschauung): with “scientism,” in a word.168 The relationship between Radical Secularization and modern Western scientific naturalism is a highly complex one and not at all unilinear. A perfectly nonreligious person might or might not be scientistically or naturalistically minded, and a scientific naturalist might or might not have musings about religion (perhaps without the personally disturbing notion of a supernatural God169). The particular character of Radical Secularization lies somewhere else, somewhere deeper than a mere identification with scientific naturalism would suggest. On the other hand, the experience of reality made possible by modern science has supposedly had a decisive influence on the formation of Radical Secularization, especially if we consider this as a typical product of (only) the modern Western secularization process. Somehow the human experience of the universe changed radically during Western modernization, which allowed such a way-of-being-in-the-world as Radical Secularization to emerge. The role of the scientific revolution in this existential revolution is not at all selfevident, however, and needs a further clarification.170 Hence, it can be and adherents of the monotheistic religions is profound. We are fortunate to live under a constitutional system and a code of manners that by and large keep it from disturbing the social peace; usually the parties ignore each other. But sometimes the conflict surfaces and heats up into a public debate. The present is such a time” (T. NAGEL, “A Philosopher Defends Religion”). 168 See M. STENMARK, Scientism; W.V.O. QUINE, Theories and Things, p. 21: “…naturalism: the recognition that it is within science itself and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.” 169 For a naturalism with God, see M. JOHNSTON, Saving God, and for a (sort of) supernaturalism without God, see R. DWORKIN, Religion without God, just to illustrate the fluidity of the concepts used. 170 Taylor rightly points out that the view according to which “Darwin refuted the Bible” is way too simplified to explain in any depth the Western secularization

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concluded, neither is Radical Secularization the same as naturalism.

4.2 …But Radical Secularization Rather than any explicitly articulated (or even articulable) worldview or “ism,” the concept of Radical Secularization, as used in this book, points to a human experience of reality as intuitively or spontaneously nonreligious. For this kind of human consciousness, reality and human existence show themselves as so overtly nonreligious that it cannot even take religion seriously as a real existential alternative for itself. Radical Secularization is, therefore, not for or against religion as traditionally understood–it is simply outside it. Radical Secularization is not indifferent to religion–it just cannot recognize it as a tenable human form-of-life for itself. Radical Secularization does not necessarily propose any naturalistic view of the world instead of supernaturalistic religion–for it, reality simply appears immediately nonreligious. Precisely the radical nature of Radical Secularization–that it goes to the very roots of one’s existence–makes it so difficult to be described by a language that seems necessarily to presuppose a relatively high degree of conceptualized differentiation–as the modern Western concept of being religious or non-religious does. Already, now, there can consequently be affirmed the lack of an adequate language, Sprachnot as Gadamer called it, to describe the genuine nature of Radical Secularization. What this Sprachnot171 depends on and what it more deeply could mean are important process (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 4, 378-379). Nevertheless, the scientific revolution–or the new way of relating to reality provoked by it–may have played a bigger role in the process than Taylor admits (but see also C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 566). At any rate, with respect to the way-of-being-in-the-world that Radical Secularization signifies, the impact of the scientific revolution cannot be underestimated, as will be argued in the third chapter of this study. 171 Following his philosophical master Heidegger (see the end of Being and Time, §7), Gadamer even described the whole project of philosophy as rising from a personally experienced “lack of language” (Sprachnot): Und dies scheint mir nun wirklich das große atemberaubende Drama der Philosophie, dass sie die ständige Bemühung um Sprachfindung, um es pathetischer zu sagen: ein beständiges Erleiden von Sprachnot ist (H.-G. GADAMER, “Begriffsgeschichte als Philosophie”, p. 83). The German Not does not signify a mere neutral “lack” of something, but it denotes a “need” or an “emergency” to find words for something for which there are no(t yet) words. As will become clear in the present study, with Radical Secularization the Sprachnot is quite burning: “Concepts for thinking about postreligious man do not yet exist” (M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 172).

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questions for what follows. At this stage of the argument, it could, however, be helpful to offer just a few concrete examples of something like Radical Secularization, to get a firmer positive intuition of the concept. Perhaps most typically, a completely nonreligious or radically secular person could be characterized as “religiously tone-deaf” (religiös unmusikalisch) in the sense intended by Max Weber and successively adopted by Jürgen Habermas, among others. They are not at all necessarily for or against religion, they just cannot perceive any meaningfulness in it. Instead of being indifferent to this fact in their way-of-being-in-the-world, religiously tone-deaf people can even consider it as a lack of a sort, “an awareness of something missing,” as confessed by Habermas; or alternatively they can regard it as a necessary burden for an intellectually mature human being, as Weber did.172 In a similar vein, the contemporary American philosopher Thomas Nagel confesses of lacking “the sensus divinitatis that enables–indeed compels–so many people to see in the world the expression of divine purpose as naturally as they see in a smiling face the expression of human feeling.”173 Or consider another well-known American philosopher, the late Richard Rorty, who did not want to be described as an “atheist” but rather as an “anticlericalist,” because the question for him was not whether religious belief was true or not, but whether it posed a threat to democratic societies (yes, in his opinion). Having had no religious upbringing and not having developed any particular attachment to any religious tradition, the issue of the existence of God or Gods was simply meaningless to Rorty.174 The equally nonreligiously-educated French anthropologist Dan Sperber confesses in an interview that the reason which drew him to the scientific study of religion was the desire to understand how “intelligent decent people” could have such mistaken beliefs about the world as religious believers do.175 Or think of Philip Larkin’s poetic but clearly autobiographical “church goer” who amidst a bicycle tour–in the English 172

But the “heroic” dimension does not belong to the core meaning of the concept as used here, which refers only to the pure experience of reality in Radical Secularization. For a hermeneutical discussion of the self-characterization of being “religiously tone-deaf” by Weber and Habermas, see E. THAIDIGSMANN, “Religiös unmusikalisch‘: Aspekte einer hermeneutischen Problematik”. For two different ways of reacting to the fact of being religiously tone-deaf, see M. WEBER, “Science as a Vocation” and J. HABERMAS ET AL., An Awareness of What is Missing. 173 T. NAGEL, Mind and Cosmos, p. 12. 174 See R. RORTY, “Anticlericalism and Atheism”. 175 See the Edge interview with Sperber at www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sperber05/sperber05_index.html [accessed 29.09.2023].

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countryside, supposedly–stops at an empty church just to find himself wondering about “When churches fall completely out of use” and how it all will be after the last relics of religious belief have disappeared.176 “But superstition like belief must die / And what remains when disbelief has gone?”, Larkin’s church goer asks–a strong literary evocation of the radically secular experience of the impossibility of taking religion seriously.177 Furthermore, for a radically secular person, the question about religious truth might be of no interest at all, because “of course no religions are true in any God-given sense,” as Alain de Botton quite matter-of-factly states.178 Exactly the spontaneous exclamation of “of course not” in front of religious truth claims expresses something very essential about the radically secular experience of the world. That many people–even “intelligent decent people”–nevertheless continue to be religious and believe in a God or Gods can sincerely appear as nothing short of a “miracle” to radically secular people.179 One can wonder how many radically secular people there really are, perhaps especially in the Western academic world, who are simply silently grateful for living in a liberal society and a democratic culture that largely keeps the deep existential gulf between religious and nonreligious people from disturbing the social peace. These more or less random examples of various nonbelieving attitudes towards religion are not listed here for any exegetical reasons, but they are simply meant to illustrate something like the core-experience of Radical Secularization. The radically secular form of human consciousness is about the factually experienced impossibility to take religion seriously as a viable Weltanschauung for oneself. Different people can put their radical secularity into different words, of course. Some of them perhaps adhere to 176

Larkin’s poem “Church Going” was first published in his collection The Less Deceived in 1955. 177 Yet, even Larkin’s nonreligious church goer recognizes the seriousness of the place and finds a certain pleasure in standing in its silence. Something will remain of our religious past, “If only that so many dead lie round,” as Larkin’s poem ends. Radical Secularization shows itself to be as paradoxical as religion, as will emerge more clearly in the course of this study. “And what remains when disbelief has gone?” What, indeed… 178 See A. DE BOTTON, Religion for Atheists, p. 11. 179 See J.L. MACKIE, The Miracle of Theism, p. 12: “But my title also echoes Hume’s ironic remark that the Christian religion cannot be believed without a miracle by any reasonable person. Theistic belief in general is no miracle, if […] there can be an adequate natural history of religion. But I hope to show that its continuing hold on the minds of many reasonable people is surprising enough to count as a miracle in at least the original sense.”

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the traditional negative terminology of “a-theism” and its cognates, while others try to introduce a new term for their way-of-being-in-the-world, such as “anticlericalism.” Others still ignore the whole terminological issue and content themselves with contemplating the (for them) incomprehensible phenomenon of religion. What all radically secular people have in common, though, is precisely this total incapacity to acknowledge religion as a real existential alternative to themselves and the subsequent amazement at how any person in their right mind could be religious. The concept of Radical Secularization aspires to capture this kind of perfectly nonreligious human form-of-life which accordingly goes deep down to the very roots of one’s personal being. It is difficult to imagine a more profound Otherness than that between religious and truly nonreligious people. There are two apparent problems with the term “Radical Secularization” which must be mentioned right away at this initial stage of the argument. The first problem concerns the characterization of this kind of secularization as “radical.” For it belongs to the very heart of the concept of Radical Secularization that this way-of-being-in-the-world shows itself as selfevident or nothing short of obvious to radically secular people themselves– they do not consider their form-of-life in any way as “radical.” Radical Secularization, on the other hand, can appear to radically secular people themselves as an unashamedly religious description of their perfectly nonreligious Weltanschauung. Only from a religious perspective would complete nonreligion appear as radical, while for nonreligious people themselves it is the most ordinary thing in the world!180 This observation is worth noticing, but it nevertheless misses something essential in the concept of Radical Secularization. As used in this study, the concept aspires precisely not to enclose itself into the perfectly nonreligious way of experiencing reality–which would be shallow “indifferentism”–, but wants to set this in the broader framework of human cultural evolution. The radicality of Radical Secularization refers, therefore, principally to the fact that in all known previous human societies before Western modernity (and 180

For nonreligious people, it can indeed appear as if it were the religious people who were claiming something extremely radical about the world, which would need radical evidence, too (the English philosopher of religion Anthony Flew spoke accordingly of “the presumption of atheism” in relation to religious truth claims: A. FLEW, “The Presumption of Atheism”). As argued above, even though Radical Secularization should not be identified with the Taylorian, rather dualistically conceived, “closed world structures,” the enlightening philosophical analysis of the experienced “obviousness” of the latter, which Taylor gives in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 556-566, should be borne in mind.

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still today very widely outside of it) some kind of religious characterization of human existence has been taken for granted. Only in the wake of Western modernization-secularization has such a human existence become practically available and theoretically conceptualizable that does not include any inherent religious references. It is this broader, historical and global perspective, which justifies calling Radical Secularization “radical,” even though it does not have to appear as in any way existentially radical to radically secular people themselves. Although the subjective experience of being radically secular is fundamental, it receives its objective relevance by being put in the broader framework of human cultural evolution. Radical Secularization does not close the discussion, but opens it. The second terminological problem has to do with the decision of describing this kind of a perfectly nonreligious human form-of-life as a form of secularization. Is not the concept of secularization logically and hence necessarily related to religion, namely to the Western form of Christianity, with respect to which some kind of “secularization” should have been happening during the last few centuries? Why choose such a religiously loaded concept to characterize something which should by contrast be as nonreligious as possible? For a simple linguistic reason. The meaning of our words depends on how we decide to use them: they do not have any essential eternal meanings in themselves, but they get their meaning from the concrete context of their use.181 In the context of Western tradition, a distanciation from religious influence has generally come to be called a “secularization” of one kind or another. The conception (quite irrespective of its historical accuracy or not) sits so deep in our Western consciousness, according to which the world was earlier unproblematically religious, while now (modo–the “now” of us moderns!182) it is no longer. A study which aspires to take our global 181

Is this the conceptual link between voluntarism and nominalism, i.e. that because we are free to use words as we like, the words are “just words” and not expressions of any pre-given transcendent order of things? But surely we cannot use words “as we like”! Rather, their use has its transcendental condition of possibility in a shared form-of-life, which at the same time sets certain limits to the use of language. Certainly so, but the way-of-being-in-the-world from which the meaningfulness of our words flows is nevertheless no immutable entity that would always remain the same, but, on the contrary, is changing and evolving all the time as everything else in the world (see L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §§83-84). Between the two extremes of the schizophrenic’s neologisms and the traditionalist’s dogmas there is real, ever-evolving human life with language. 182 On the typically modern European meaning of the “modern” in contrast to the “pre-modern” or “ancient,” see J. PINBORG, “Antiqui-moderni” and G. HYMAN, A Short History of Atheism, pp. xv-xviii.

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hyperpluralistic condition After Secularization seriously simply cannot do without the concept of secularization. Consequently, Radical Secularization signifies a historical process (“ization”) which has rendered possible a totally nonreligious human formof-life or way of understanding and living human existence: Radical Secularity, if you will (“-ity”). Even though Radical Secularization therefore refers principally to various historical and cultural transformations which have given rise to Radical Secularity as a certain human way-ofbeing-in-the-world, these two grammatical forms should be kept intimately connected. In doing so, it is possible to, from the start, avoid any intellectually lazy subtraction stories of Radical Secularization. Radical Secularity may seem self-evident to a radically secular person– in fact, this subjective flair of self-evident obviousness seems to be a sine qua non for the phenomenology of Radical Secularization–but the objective reality is much more complicated and interesting than that. In historical evolution, be it biological or cultural, nothing is obvious or self-evident as such. The best we can do is to try to understand a thing in its particular network of relations in the flux of time. No Westerner can simply jump out of Western cultural dynamics into global hyperpluralism as if the roots of their tradition did not influence them at all. In sum, there is no Radical Secularity without Radical Secularization, as there is no real human formof-life which does not have its natural and cultural history. Consequently, patient and careful conceptual-genealogical work is needed to go beyond Western secularization into global hyperpluralization. For this goal, the present study still finds a privileged point of departure and point of reference in the traditional Western concept of secularization, now radicalized and thus provisionally overcome in the face of a completely nonreligious experience of reality. What the endpoint will be can only be found out after the conceptual work itself has been done. More than a concretely existing empirical reality, After Secularization presents a speculative task which the concept of Radical Secularization hopes to be able to live up to. Herein lies its theological potentiality for the missionary Chiesa in uscita.

5. Bracketing the Religious Presumption and the Twofold Theological Criticism: A Fundamental Theological Reduction of Radical Secularization Catholic fundamental theology is a self-consciously theological discipline which “should show how, in the light of the knowledge conferred by faith, there emerge certain truths which reason, from its own independent enquiry,

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already perceives” (FR, n. 67). In a way, then, fundamental theology should occupy the middle-ground between the Church and the surrounding world, or more theologically put, between nature and grace, faith and reason, in order to be able to mediate between the two. Instead of remaining inside any traditionally-given conceptuality, the main task of contemporary fundamental theology is to contribute to the urgent task of developing a “creative apologetics” which encourages “greater openness to the Gospel on the part of all” (VG, n. 5). In this light, fundamental theology appears indeed as the ministry of foreign affairs of the Church whose mission does not consist in selfishly protecting the supposed “purity” of the Christian Revelation, but which, on the contrary, is called to offer and spread this Revelation to the world.183 In fact, as analyzed at the start of this chapter, the very nature of the Revelation asks and demands it to be offered and spent for the salvation of the entire world. Christian Revelation, especially as expressed by an aesthetic approach, is not what it is, if it does not reach to its intended recipients (see 1. Tim 2:4; Mark 16:15). Fundamental theology should accordingly march as a prophetic witness across the very frontier between the Church and the surrounding world where the unique and universal Christ-event continues to take ever-new forms amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism: the “principle of the Incarnation” (VG, n. 5) goes forth into ever-new cultural contexts under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (see DV, n. 8). Here, however, namely in the face of the (i) self-consciously theological and (ii) unashamedly missionary character of Catholic fundamental theology, the introduction of the concept of Radical Secularization cannot but evoke corresponding twofold theological criticism. To begin with, would not the very idea of genuine nonreligion render the missionary raison d’être of the Church not only extremely difficult but altogether impossible? How can one even hope to communicate the message of the Church to people who, in their own self-understanding, cannot take religious belief 183

The Christian Revelation affirms the Aristotelian intuition that “the divine power cannot be jealous” (ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics, I, 2), because Christ Jesus, “the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” (DV, n. 2), “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied (‫݋‬țȑȞȦıİȞ) himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:6-7). In general, however, the difference between the Greek and the Christian conception of divinity cannot be but emphasized: for the former, this consists essentially in immortality and self-sufficiency (see H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 167, 568), whereas for the latter, the divine is that which gives itself, even to the point of dying for the Other (see John 3:13; DCE, n. 9; J.-L. MARION, Givenness and Revelation).

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seriously in the first place? Would not the introduction of the concept of Radical Secularization, therefore, bring with it a profound, even infinite, divide between Christians and other religious people on one hand, and people who are genuinely nonreligious on the other–quite the contrary intention of all of us who confess to dream about a “single human family” (see FT, n. 8)? The second dimension of spontaneous theological criticism against the concept of Radical Secularization concerns itself with how we could even begin to imagine a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-theworld at all, if the Christian conception of reality is true? That is, if everything in reality truly comes from a transcendent Source, i.e. God, and has its present being and future fulfilment only in it (him),184 how can one even theoretically speculate about a human form-of-life without any inherent relations to the transcendent Source and Fulfillment of all being? Would not the introduction of the concept of Radical Secularization consequently mean a regression to a conception of a natura pura, of a purely natural or nonreligious definition of human nature, the overcoming of which has been one of the central achievements of twentieth-century Catholic theology?185 Alternatively, would it not lead to a Manichaeistic postulation of two radically different ontological principles to reality, clearly contradicting the Biblical faith in the one God who created everything “very good” (Gen 1:31)? This metaphysical-religious criticism of the concept of Radical Secularization goes even deeper. According to a fundamental Biblical conviction, the whole natural world is “telling the glory of God” (Ps 19:1), and God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are to be plainly understood and seen “through the things he has made” (Rom 1:20). As a venerable fundamental theological tradition, magisterially formulated by the First 184

The conviction is about an infinite trans-human consciousness which Christianity shares with all monotheistic religions at least, if this conviction should not be considered fundamental for religion as such. See K. RAHNER, “Christianity’s Absolute Claim”, pp. 174-175: “First of all, Christianity says the following. The finite world, this world which–despite the earlier way of conceiving it as almost boundless–has been recognized as finite (in space and time: the world of the hundred billion suns that stem from the big bang) has an absolute, infinite primordial ground which is different from it, and we call this primordial ground God.” 185 Pivotal in overcoming the older, mainly Suárezian, conception of the possibility of a purely natural aim for the human person, instead promoting an ultimately supernatural vision of all human existence–created as this is for the visio Dei beatifica–was of course Henri de Lubac with his Surnaturel (see J. MILBANK, The Suspended Middle; H. BOERSMA, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology, pp. 86-98).

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Vatican Council and explicitly reaffirmed by Vatican II (see DV, n. 6), puts it: “God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason.”186 As things stand, then, how could a fundamental theological study, which seeks to remain perfectly faithful to the Roman Magisterium–sentire cum Ecclesia! (see DVE, n. 37)–, even consider the possibility of absolute nonreligion, let alone make it the starting point and center of its whole argumentation? The twofold theological criticism seems to have a single source in something that could be called the “religious presumption” (to be later paralleled with the “metaphysical assumption,” arising from the ontotheological temperament). It is the presumption that the human being is essentially and necessarily a homo religiosus (see CCC, n. 28). According to this view, humans should always be relating to the divine in one way or another, if not directly through a substantial practice of religion, then at least indirectly by participating in religious functions of some sort.187 In nonreligious ears, however, this presumption can sound rather extraordinary, if not straightforwardly presumptuous, because there self-evidently are nonreligious people. If we acknowledge the reality of genuine nonreligion as speculatively projected by the concept of Radical Secularization, the religious presumption appears exactly as a religious presumption, i.e. not only as a presumption about the universality and necessity of being religious, but rather as a presumption which is religious in itself, claiming as it does against all facts that all people are religious, irrespective of their own selfunderstanding. Only someone under the spell of a religious creed could presume something of the kind, a nonreligious person could very well respond. If one, on the contrary, has the courage to look at reality as it really 186

The affirmation of the possibility of proving the existence of God with pure reason can be regarded as an essential characteristic of pre-Vatican II, apologeticmanualistic formulation of the discipline of fundamental theology. The issue–and the consequent interpretation of DV, n. 6–, as secondary as it first may seem, proves to be crucial for the task of entering into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization through the concept of Radical Secularization, as will emerge towards the end of this study. 187 The functionalist interpretations of religion are many in modern Western social sciences, beginning from Durkheim and Weber (see H. JOAS, The Power of the Sacred). Even some Christian theologians resort to religious functionalism in explaining modern Western secularization as not really a disappearance of religion but as taking new, possibly ambivalent (because masked) forms (see W.T. CAVANAUGH, Migrations of the Holy). It should become clear from the following argument why all functionalist (re)interpretations of religion are to be carefully avoided in the present dissertation.

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is, without any such strongly a priori presumptions about how it should be, one can clearly see that postulating a single religious instinct to the whole of humanity has little sense, because (i) “religion” as such is a highly culturally conditioned concept,188 and because (ii) the concrete reality of contemporary global hyperpluralism is much more complex and fluid than any one concept could hope to capture (without resorting to ontotheological violence).189 Be that as it may, it seems that the very concept of Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion nevertheless presupposes at least some kind of understanding of what religion is. Is not Radical Secularization exactly defined as a perfectly nonreligious form-of-life, and are not radically secular people themselves characterized precisely as not being able to take religious belief seriously in the first place? This is a real problem which any purported study of Radical Secularization must confront and take seriously. Only that this conceptual problem is no mere conceptual problem to be solved first–rather the conceptual problem is the very problem which Radical Secularization proposes. Our cultural tradition and its understanding of human existence seem to be so imbued with religious notions, that we lack the appropriate language to describe a human way-of-being-in-theworld which is not religious. We appear indeed to be trapped inside the religious language-game to such a degree that everything outside it presents itself as “non-religious,” i.e. in some way negatively or at least “differingly” related to religion. Religion keeps cropping up everywhere, even though the issue is exactly to avoid it (like all totalizing metaphysical concepts)!

188

For the necessary cultural relativization of the modern Western concept of religion, W.C. SMITH, The Meaning and End of Religion remains fundamental. G.G. STROUMSA, A New Science argues that the modern Western concept of religion became decisively formulated in the context of the “new science” of comparative religion in early modern Europe. A similar contextualization can and must be made for all “world religions” for the word “religion” to have a meaningful (and as nonideological as possible a) use (see T. MASUZAWA, The Invention of World Religions). 189 This is not to deny that in a certain clearly defined context a theoretical postulation of a universal human tendency to religious belief might not be completely meaningless (see N. WADE, The Faith Instinct; J. BERING, The Belief Instinct). Theologically it should additionally be pointed out that the Augustinian conception of the human being as capax Dei (which CCC, nn. 27-30 build on) does not mean that every human being always and necessarily relates to God by religious belief and practice (clearly they do not), but that they without exception have the capacity to do that (corresponding to what the Scholastics called the essentially human potentia oboedientialis: see ST, I, q. 115, a. 2, ad 4; K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word).

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Yet, this is no excuse for smuggling some sort of religious imagination into the concept of Radical Secularization according to the religious presumption. For we surely can think a perfectly nonreligious human experience of the world, although we are at a loss to say it properly.190 Instead of considering this lack of language as a problem in the negative sense of the term, we should take it as the positive motivation that in the first place gives rise to the intellectual–philosophical as well as theological– challenge of Radical Secularization. The challenge is to understand the radical break in Western tradition which the concept of absolute nonreligion speculatively signifies by trying to find an appropriate phenomenological description for a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-theworld. Modern Western secularization offers the historical-linguistic context where a phenomenological description of a genuine nonreligion can be attempted at, but it should not be allowed to determine the outcome of the attempt beforehand. Radical Secularization as nonreligion, which as genuine postreligion goes beyond mere non-religion, should accordingly not be taken as an already developed concept but rather as a concept yet to be developed: it does not signify any endpoint to inquiry, but its starting point. The concept of Radical Secularization asks for an attentive phenomenological or even contemplative consideration, not an immediate argumentative judgement.191 For the consideration of Radical Secularization to unwind in the present dissertation, it must be admitted–despite all the aforementioned precautions against conceptual prejudices–that some kind of a pre-understanding of religion seems to be necessary for the argumentation to begin in the first place. For even regardless of the terminological problem that perfect nonreligion poses (our incapacity of saying it properly), there is already the prior problem of thinking complete nonreligion. Admitting the lack of appropriate language for complete nonreligion–for which the terminus 190 Semper mens est potentior quam sint verba, according to the hermeneutical maxim of the fifteenth-century Bolognese jurist Matteo Mattesilano (as quoted in H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 17). 191 Even though the idea of being able to step at once outside our currently existing practice of language–thus adopting a “sideways-on” (see J. MCDOWELL, Mind and World, p. 34) perspective on it–is surely a philosophical illusion, this does not mean that we could not try to transcend a certain part of our present language-use. It can indeed be done, and it is characteristically in that manner that thinking proceeds (as symbolized by Neurath’s boat). Consequently, if we really experience a profound lack of appropriate language approaching Radical Secularization, there is no reason why we should not try to move beyond the current dualistic religious vs. nonreligious language to try to find a more appropriate one for genuine nonreligion.

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technicus “Radical Secularization” is needed, not as a finished definition, but as an open task–, the deeper problem of even imagining absolute nonreligion remains. For the pressing reality of Radical Secularization rises precisely from the experience of not being able to take religion seriously at all, or in other words, from the acknowledgment of not being like many or even most human beings have been during their history and still are: religious, that is. Some kind of an implicit or indirect intuition of “religion” or of “being religious” seems therefore to be nevertheless embedded in the very concept of Radical Secularization. Thus, even without the religious presumption one has to ask, in order to be completely truthful to Radical Secularization itself: What is, then, this “religion” or “being religious” which radically secular people cannot take seriously or which for them is completely out of consideration? What kind of “nonreligious presumption” does Radical Secularization on its part have in experiencing a radical separation from the “religious” dimension of humanity? What is it, in fact, that appears beyond all possible personal acceptance to radically secular people and for which they, with the rest of the Western cultural sphere, seem to lack any other designation except “religion”? This deeper substantial question is intimately connected with the initial terminological one,192 and both can be adequately dealt with only during the course of the present study. Here, as anywhere, a hermeneutical benevolence–and patience!–is asked for, for the particular kind of phenomenological-grammatical method used to be able to gradually shed light on, and fill in, the proposed concept of Radical Secularization. But even to get the argument of the dissertation going, some kind of an understanding of “religion” must be taken for granted, namely the kind of religion which radically secular people cannot in any way take seriously or which, for them, appears completely out of this world. Even though Radical Secularization in itself would be absolutely nonreligious, there must exist some external amazement at “religion,” which originally gives rise to the question of a completely nonreligious way-of-being-in-the-world. For religious people this kind of a radically secular understanding of religion 192

As already pointed out, Gadamer emphasized explicitly that the hermeneutical “language loss” (Sprachnot) is no merely negative privation of appropriate words, but it gives rise to the whole positive project of trying to find a word (the German Wort as Ant-Wort) which would reach the Other–a project where we never seem quite to succeed, and which leads to the typically Gadamerian universalization of hermeneutics (see H.-G. GADAMER, “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem”). Humanity is an endless discussion, and so must even the theology be that wants to take humanity seriously.

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may appear as more or less misguided or even childish, but that is totally beside the point here. The point is that for radically secular people religion typically appears this way. How does religion, then, appear to a radically secular consciousness, as ideally considered in this book? To put it briefly, for a radically secular way-of-being-in-the-world, religion appears as based on belief in trans-human intentionality of some sort, in a transcendence, in a word.193 Religious people seem to believe in some sort of intentionality or meaningfulness in the world transcending or “going beyond” humanity itself. The religious idea appears to be that meaningfulness in reality–as far as we know–would not flow from human intentionality only, but it would also exist outside it, as if reality in itself were meaningful in some way.194 Of course, even other animal consciousness and intentionality besides the human one has developed on Earth, but religious people seem to believe in an intentionality or intentionalities even beyond the animal realm, somehow locating it or them in reality itself as God or Gods (the “sacred” or the “numinous”195). It goes without saying that religion includes much more besides, namely all the amazingly various practices connected with the believed-in transhuman intentionalities, but for Radical Secularization the grounding belief in trans-human intentionality appears as the characteristic feature of all “religion.”196 From a radically secular perspective, religious people seem to 193

“Trans-human,” as used in this book, should be understood in the purely descriptive sense of having its origin beyond (trans) or outside the biological species of homo sapiens. As interesting and as relevant for the present theme as the issues raised by the contemporary “transhumanist movement” might be (see C. MERCER– T.J. TROTHEN, ed., Religion and Transhumanism), they unfortunately cannot be discussed here. To indicate the neutral descriptive character of the term “transhuman,” it will always be spelled with the hyphen in this study. 194 Consequently, even the Greek metaphysical tradition of thinking which finds objective meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself (IJާ ‫ݹ‬Ȟ ߄ ‫ݹ‬Ȟ, ens qua ens, as in ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics, IV, 1; Physics, I, 1; Nicomachean Ethics, I, 4), gives a strongly religious impression to a radically secular mentality. No wonder Aristotle himself saw the culmination of the entire philosophical enterprise–his “first philosophy”–in theological contemplation (see Metaphysics, I, 2; XII, 7). The religious presumption and the metaphysical assumption are very intimately related in the Western tradition, as will emerge during the argument of this study. 195 R. OTTO, The Idea of the Holy remains fundamental in this regard. 196 Hence from the point of view of Radical Secularization, functionalist definitions of religion are not interesting, or they can even be misleading, if they ignore the crucial–substantial!–difference between a radically secular and a religious Weltanschauung: the latter counts with a trans-human intentionality which the former finds totally beyond belief.

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believe in “weird things”197 which are not there in reality (like Gods, spirits, souls, and other “supernatural agents”198). Radically secular people can even feel embarrassed in the presence of religious belief and might resort to not so civilized rhetoric about religious people, all of which only testifies to their sincere incapacity to understand how anybody in their right mind could be a religious believer199. As multifarious and diversified as the radically secular experience of the world might in itself be, relevant for the present purposes is only the pure core-experience of Radical Secularization, which finds religious belief in trans-human intentionalities as literally unbelievable.200 To concretize and provisionally sum up the core-experience of Radical Secularization, as it will be approached and studied in this book, consider the following thought-experiment of American anthropologist and public intellectual Jared Diamond. Diamond wants to justify his choice of considering religion as a purely natural phenomenon whose practically universal distribution, in spite of its striking biological and psychological expensiveness, is in need of explanation. Diamond invites us to imagine an “advanced living creature from the Andromedan galaxy”, who (which?) travels around the universe at a speed we humans still regard as impossible, and studies the incredible variety of different life forms to be found on our universe‫ތ‬s trillions of planets: Periodically, our Andromedan visits Planet Earth, where life evolved to utilize energy only from light and from inorganic and organic chemical reactions. For a brief period between about 11,000 BC and September 11, AD 2051, Earth was dominated by a life form that called itself humans and that clung to some curious ideas. Among those ideas: that there is an allpowerful being, called God, which has a special interest in the human species rather than in the millions of trillions of other species in the universe, and which created the universe, and which humans often picture as similar

197

See M. SHERMER, Why People Believe Weird Things. In the cognitive science of religion, which has gained quite a lot of attention in recent years, religion or “religious stuff” (see P. BOYER, Religion Explained, p. 37) is approached as the human organism’s (mind-brain’s) near universal tendency to conjure up and become captured by counterintuitive notions about supernatural agents of various kinds (see I. PYYSIÄINEN, Supernatural Agents). 199 The renowned British chemist Peter Atkins, e.g., cannot but regard religious belief as based on fear and self-delusion, so utterly unbelievable it appears to him (see P. ATKINS, “The Limitless Power of Science”, pp. 124, 132). 200 The sincere inability to really recognize religious belief as a viable existential alternative goes a long way to explain why nonreligious people so easily resort to intellectually so superficial subtraction stories about the coming of a secular age. 198

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to a human except of being omnipotent. Of course the Andromedan recognized those beliefs to be delusions worthy of study rather than of credence, because the Andromedan and many other living creatures had already figured out how the universe really had been created, and it was absurd to imagine that any all-powerful being would be especially interested in or similar to the human species, which was much less interesting and advanced than billions of other life forms existing elsewhere in the universe. The Andromedan also observed that there were thousands of different human religions, most of whose adherents believed their own religion to be true and all the other religions to be false, and that suggested to the Andromedan that all were false.201

Quite irrespective of Diamond’s own personal Weltanschauung–which is not at all under consideration here–, his Andromedan thought-experiment offers an excellent concrete illustration of a radically secular mentality, in particular of its sincere bewilderment in the face of religious belief. As the thought-experiment recounts, among the “curious” religious ideas on Earth there is the idea of a trans-human intentionality, called “God,” who somehow seems to be especially interested in the cosmically-quiteinsignificant human species. The imagined Andromedan ethnologist considers this idea as “of course” (the radically secular of course!) false or “absurd,” beyond any rational belief, both in light of the (practically) infinite scale of the universe and of the contradictory pluralism of different human religions themselves. Consequently, Diamond’s Andromedan cannot but look at human religion externally, from the outside; they have no real chance of entering into it personally. The Andromedan is clearly not for or against religion as such. Religion simply appears as totally impossible to accept in its belief in this particular kind of trans-human intentionality in the universe. In short, Diamond’s imagined Andromedan is radically secular in the terminology of the present study: they find themselves totally outside any religious way-ofbeing-in-the-world, based as these are on the “absurd” belief of a transhuman intentionality “called God.”202 201

J. DIAMOND, The World Until Yesterday, pp. 325-326. It might be interesting to note that even, for instance, evolutionary psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams (The Ape that Understood the Universe, pp. 1ff.) uses the possibility of an Alien perspective on humanity as a justification for considering religion (among other phenomena of human culture) as a purely natural phenomenon. More interesting, still, is the unstated assumption that these Aliens would be “areligious.” Indeed, there seems to be a huge unthought here: what reason do we have to presume that intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms would “of course” be nonreligious? They could also have a different kind of religion, perhaps one more 202

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As already noted, to religious believers themselves the radically secular understanding of religion as (an unbelievable) belief in trans-human intentionality may (or may not203) appear as more or less misguided, or even childish. Yet, the phenomenological fact stands that that is how religion initially seems to a radically secular consciousness. This is the starting point for the following phenomenological analysis of Radical Secularization which wants simply to describe as appropriately as possible a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world, or such a human form-oflife for which religion as belief in trans-human intentionality appears totally unbelievable. The radically secular understanding of religion should not have too much weight put on it, however–at least not yet. The primary goal of this fundamental theological study, to repeat, is to come to understand Radical Secularization as a sign of our times, not religion as such. But for this goal, the rudimentary understanding of religion as belief in (a certain kind of) trans-human intentionality in the world seems to be necessary, as explained. Let us therefore take this conception of religion merely as a methodological instrument–as a speculative walking stick, as it were–which is perhaps unavoidable at this initial stage of the argument but which we might learn to do without as the argument unfurls. Perhaps a renewed understanding of religion in general and of the Christian Revelation in particular will successively emerge in the course of the study (but it can only happen as a lucky–gracious!–spin-off, as it were)? In sum, the above-mentioned religious presumption and the ensuing twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization must be bracketed at this initial stage of the argument. The objective is such a fundamental theological reduction of Radical Secularization that would allow this to be “seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.”204 The methodological bracketing of evolutionary and cosmologically (and ecologically!) conscious than the ones developed on planet Earth. 203 The renowned British philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne, e.g., would be happy to regard religion quintessentially as “theism,” defined as belief in a God who is “a person without a body (i.e. a spirit), present everywhere, the creator and sustainer of the universe, a free agent, able to do everything (i.e. omnipotent), knowing all things, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, immutable, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship” (R. SWINBURNE, The Coherence of Theism, p. 2). Swinburne’s definition of God combines quite well with the one in Diamond’s thought-experiment. 204 Das was sich zeigt, so wie es sich von ihm selbst her zeigt, von ihm selbst her sehen lassen (see M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, §7C). The concepts of “bracketing” and of “reduction” (epoché) go back to the phenomenological method

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the theological criticism and the ensuing reduction of Radical Secularization aspire simply to acknowledge this as it really is, i.e. to take it seriously as the human form-of-life that it denotes. The challenge is hence not to “think” so much about Radical Secularization but just to “look” at it as it shows itself from itself, according to its own self-understanding and conceptual grammar.205 The whole study, therefore, presents itself as a spiritual exercise in learning to contemplate theologically something that by definition does not seem to have any intrinsic relation to God: Radical Secularization as a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world. Perhaps by bracketing something which we in theology easily think must be the case, reality as it really, independently of our presumptions, is could more clearly come to the fore. The guiding intuition of the study is that a patient delving into this apparent paradox, or even clear contradiction, will offer a relevant contribution to the task of the Church of coming into terms with the signs of our times After Secularization. Perhaps more than a curious or even absurd belief in a trans-human intentionality, religious faith in general and the Christian faith in particular will show itself as a gratuitously given acknowledgement of human existence in all its unbelievable variety, including that of Radical Secularization? With such a fundamental theological reassurance we would be much more prepared to enter into the contemporary global hyperpluralism as the Church and as human beings.

of Edmund Husserl with which he wanted to give a “rigorously scientific” foundation to philosophy (see E. HUSSERL, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science”; J. COGAN, “Phenomenological Reduction”). Here, however, the concepts are used in a much more ordinary sense of the words, as explained below (see L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §116). 205 See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §66.

CHAPTER II SECULARIZATION, POST-SECULARIZATION, RADICAL SECULARIZATION: IN SEARCH OF A SUBSTANTIAL CONCEPT OF NONRELIGION

1. After or Post-Secularization? After Secularization–Radical Secularization: this speculative dialectic was proposed in the first chapter of this book as a pertinent sign of our times in the face of contemporary global hyperpluralism, where the Church is now called to live her single identity-giving mission of evangelization. By thinking through the concept of complete nonreligion–Radical Secularization– it could become possible to free oneself from the culturally conditioned, and conditioning, conceptuality of Western secularization to face the global hyperpluralism of today. The hermeneutical opening of After Secularization expresses the speculative dream of a spiritual situation where people’s existential decisions could be genuinely free, and where natural human diversity could unfold unhindered. It is this dream to which the concept of Radical Secularization aspires to give an intellectually robust testimony. Should we manage to imagine and phenomenologically describe a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world, this would simultaneously mean a speculative overcoming of the dualistic metaphysics of Western secularization. In light of the latter, all people become defined as either religious or non-religious, as either believing in a trans-human intentionality or as not believing in any meaning transcending humanity itself. The idea of genuine nonreligion, so nonreligion that it should not even be related to religion, radically questions the Western secular binary of religious–non-religious. It does this so radically, in fact, that it speculatively pushes us beyond it to After Secularization. The concept of Radical Secularization presents, thus, a kenotic challenge to secular Western modernity: Are you prepared to empty yourself of your received conceptuality concerning religion, at least its hegemonic flair, and tread into

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the global hyperpluralism of today’s world, where no one cultural tradition can enjoy uncontested primacy? Are you ready to confess that, in polyhedric terms, “realities are greater than ideas” (see EG, n. 233), including the idea of a unilinear secularization which has been so fundamental to your “modern” self-identity? The question of provincializing Europe is very much in the air nowadays, but is not the increasingly popular notion of the “post-secular” already doing the job of guiding the spiritually egoistic Western consciousness towards the broader global reality in the question of religion? Is the proprium of the “post-secular turn” not precisely the acknowledgment of the very–both culturally and ideologically–conditioned nature of Western secularization? Are we not presently witnessing a strong resurgence of religion both globally and in the midst of Western societies themselves? These questions–summarized as the “post-secular objection”–serve to clarify the meaning of After Secularization and to pave the way for a deepening phenomenological analysis of Radical Secularization in the present chapter and in the two chapters to follow.

1.1 The Habermasian Post-Secular Consciousness German philosopher and social analyst Jürgen Habermas (1929-)–with Charles Taylor one of the most universally respected contemporary philosophers–introduced the term “post-secular”206 and popularized its societal problematic in a series of public lectures and discussions during the first decade of the third millennium.207 Since then, “post-secular” and “post206

Habermas seems to have appropriated the term “post-secular” (postsekulär), as well as its near semantic cognate “post-metaphysical” (nachmetaphysisch), from his German colleague Karl Eder (see G. CALHOUN–E. MENDIETA–J. VANANTWERPEN, ed., Habermas and Religion, p. 404). In the “Radical Orthodox” current of contemporary Anglophone theology, the term “post-secular”–in their sense of literally “bringing an end to the secular”–has been used even before the Habermasian turn (see P. BLOND, Post-Secular Philosophy, pp. 54-58). As will become clear from the following, the “Radical Orthodox” use of the “post-secular” is practically opposite to the way Habermas intends the term. 207 Habermas’s productivity, even exclusively that devoted to the “post-secular,” is almost beyond rational control, but the following five occasions deserve special mention: (i) the famous speech that Habermas delivered in the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt in October 2001, i.e. right after the 9/11, upon receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (in English in J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”); (ii) the dialogue between Habermas and the then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in Munich in January 2004 (in English in J. HABERMAS–J. RATZINGER, The Dialectics of Secularization); (iii) Habermas’s

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secularism” have become common catchwords for a variety of different approaches concerning the place of religion in the modern world.208 Often, however, it is rather difficult to see what the various uses of the word “postsecular”209 would have in common across all the myriad of different academic disciplines, in which it has received a growing currency (if not simply a renewed courage to talk openly about religion as an undeniable reality in our midst). This, in fact, seems to be the common denominator to the almost inflating use of the concept: “‘Post-secular’ […] doesn’t express a sudden increase in religiosity, after its epochal decrease, but rather a change in mindset of those who, previously, felt justified in considering religions to be moribund.”210 The “post-” seems thus to refer to a subjective-temporal transformation in how the “secular” is perceived, rather than a change in objective-spatial reality.211 The post-secular appears to rely on a narrative discussion with the representatives of the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich in February 2007 (in English in J. HABERMAS ET AL., An Awareness of What is Missing); (iv) Habermas’s lecture at the Nexus Institute of the University of Tilburg in March 2007 (in English in J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘PostSecular’ Society”; (v) Habermas’s contribution to the public discussion event in the Great Hall of New York City’s Cooper Union in October 2009 (published in J. BUTLER ET AL., The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, as well as in J. HABERMAS, “‘The Political’”). In hindsight and in a summary form, see Habermas’s “Reply to My Critics”, a product of an academic symposium on Habermas’s views on religion organized in New York in 2013, in C. CALHOUN–E. MENDIETA–J. VANANTWERPEN, Habermas and Religion, pp. 347-390. 208 The academic literature on the “post-secular” is already enormous, and constantly growing, but for illustrative collections on the topic from a philosophical, social scientific, and religious studies perspective, respectively, see H. DE VRIES–L.E. SULLIVAN, ed., Political Theologies; P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question; P. NYNÄS–M. LASSANDER–T. UTRIAINEN, ed., Post-Secular Society. P. COSTA, La città postsecolare and V. ROSITO, Postsecolarismo offer excellent booklength summaries of the international breakthrough and the current use of the “postsecular.” J.A. BECKFORD, “Public Religions and the Postsecular” wisely advises scientific caution with the exceedingly popular and liquid concept of the “postsecular.” 209 The word is variously spelled with or without the hyphen in English (in the original German use of Habermas, however, it is spelled without the hyphen: postsekulär). In the present study, the word is normally spelled with the hyphen, for reasons that will emerge through this chapter. 210 H. JOAS, Braucht der Mensch Religion?, p. 124 (as cited in H. DE VRIES–L.E. SULLIVAN, Political Theologies, pp. 2-3; italics AP). 211 See P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question, pp. 1-3; P. NYNÄS–M. LASSANDER–T. UTRIAINEN, ed., Post-Secular Society, pp. 3-5.

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according to which earlier religion and modernity were considered as antagonistic–the more modern, the less religious–, whereas now, after the post-secular turn, we have come to see that this might not be so at all.212 On the contrary, religion seems to conserve its vitality even in the most modern Western societies. And who are the “we” here, in whose subjective consciousness the postsecular turn should have taken place? The answer is clear: main reference must be to modern Western academia, where religious issues were regarded as nothing less than taboo for the better part of the twentieth century.213 More generally, however, the subject of the post-secular transformation is claimed to be Western, especially Western European, public consciousness. For decades the general opinion was of the irrelevance of religion for the modernizing world. Yet, by and through the post-secular turn, even the fiercest secularists have been forced to admit the continuing political relevance of our religious past also for the coming, and ever more uncertain, future.214 This seems to be the general flair around the concept of the postsecular. As with all academic notions alla moda, though, not least those with such a wide inter- or even transdisciplinary character as the post-secular, one should be careful not to hold good intentions as an excuse for a lack of intellectual rigour.215 A change in Western academic consciousness in particular, and in Western public consciousness in general, is only to be welcomed, long overdue as it is, if it concerns the acknowledgement of the growing relevance of humanity’s religious traditions amidst contemporary global hyperpluralization. But the more precise meaning of the post-secular 212

See G. CALHOUN–E. MENDIETA–J. VANANTWERPEN, ed., Habermas and Religion, p. 31. 213 On the post-secular transformation especially in the social sciences, see “Chapter One: The Post-Secular in Question” in P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question, pp. 1-22. 214 On the political post-secular, see the “Introduction: Before, Around, and Beyond the Theologico-Political” in H. DE VRIES–L.E. SULLIVAN, Political Theologies, pp. 1-90. In this sense, the post-secular turn was already anticipated by P.L. BERGER, ed., The Desecularization of the World. 215 See P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question, pp. 13-14. Gorski et al. rightly point out that the proliferating “post-” terms tend to have a highly unpredictable career in academic discourse. For instance, the term “postnationalism” enjoyed a remarkable resurgence for just a couple of decades ago, whereas today its earlier usage seems almost ironically premature (P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question, pp. 1-2). Only time will tell if the post-secular has managed to capture something deeper in the present Zeitgeist than a mere trend (as, for example, the already largely established “post-modern” seems to have done).

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is still in need of closer scrutiny. Western intellectuals must pose themselves the question how they could ignore the vitality of religion on a global scale for so long and why such dramatic events as the Iranian revolution, 9/11, and the Arab Spring were needed to usher the post-secular shift in the public Western consciousness.216 On the other hand, the subjective-temporal dimension of the post-secular turn should not claim absolute precedence on the issue. The more objective question remains: with respect to the objective, scientifically controllable situation in the Western world, is there anything which justifies the talk about the post-secular? Have we in the West already moved beyond secularization, so as to be able to define our age as truly postsecular (without the hyphen)? To answer this question, we must revisit Habermas’s original and clearly defined use of the post-secular. To begin with, the Habermasian notion of the post-secular is perhaps not most felicitously characterized as “an increasing blurring of previously more clearly marked and differentiated ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ spheres.”217 Even after the post-secular turn, Habermas remains a faithful adherent to the “modern project” of European Enlightenment, even in its “contrite” form.218 To the modern project in its societal dimension, in the selfreflection of which Habermas himself has been pivotal,219 there essentially belongs a clear distinction between the religious and the secular. This is explained and necessitated by the historical genealogy of the modern project itself. Spurred by the Religious Wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between different Christian denominations, developing European nation-states adopted the policy of differentiating between secular and religious power by uniting them with the Augsburgian-Westphalian principle

216

See P.S. GORSKI ET AL., ed., The Post-Secular in Question, pp. 3-6. The importance of Charles Taylor’s genealogical unmasking of the subtraction stories of Western secularization in A Secular Age cannot be overestimated for the post-secular consciousness, although Taylor himself, corresponding to his methodological predecisions, continues to speak of a secular age. 217 P. NYNÄS–M. LASSANDER–T. UTRIAINEN, ed., Post-Secular Society, p. 5. 218 See J. HABERMAS, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project”, and more in-depth J. HABERMAS, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. On the notion of “contrite modernity”, see M. DILLON, Postsecular Catholicism, pp. 1-13. 219 See first of all Habermas’s classic Habilitationsschrift from 1962 Die Strukturwandel der Öffentlichket (J. HABERMAS, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere).

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of cuius regio, eius religio.220 The constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century first introduced an essential–constitutional, indeed– separation between “the state and the church,” i.e. between those governmental organisms which regulate the common life of all citizens of the society, on one hand, and those subcultures which are an issue for the personal liberty of every individual citizen, on the other hand. When the liberal democratic ethos really spread to ever-broader strata of Western societies in the nineteenth century, one can begin to talk of a genuine public sphere where the common issues are discussed and where the general opinion of the society is formed. The public sphere should offer an ideological filter, as it were, through which only those individual opinions can pass which are able to claim universal legitimacy for a whole society. Consequently, it is impossible to imagine a legitimate liberal democracy without a functioning public sphere.221 In the Habermasian analysis, then, the public sphere is by definition secular not so much because it is clearly separated from explicit religious influence, but because it is public, i.e. open to all.222 Consequently, the language to be used in a genuinely democratic public sphere must be at least potentially intelligible to all. Otherwise, the common opinion-building would become impossible in the society and the constitutional state would lose its legitimacy. Religion, by contrast, and by definition, involves such language and semantic contents which are not even potentially universally available, because they come from a trans-human (“divine”) revelation and are open only to the adherents of the given religious community of faith. This is the reason why religious notions and imagery cannot be allowed in the liberally democratic public sphere in light of the modern secular project. To repeat, this is not because they are religious but because they cannot be available to all citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation or the lack 220 See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 215-216; J. CASANOVA, “Is Secularization Global?”, p. 75; L. BÉLY, “Le ‘paradigme westphalien’ au miroir de l’histoire”. 221 See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 216-218. In the present book, liberal democracy is considered the societal context in which Radical Secularization becomes possible. The perspective is thus diachronic, not synchronic. In other words, the meaning is not to contrast liberal democracy with other currently possible ways of organizing communal human existence, but to emphasize its unique character with respect to all preceding societal forms-of-life (see M. GAUCHET, La religion dans la démocratie; “What We Have Lost with Religion”; and for a more general discussion on liberalism, see F. FUKUYAMA, Liberalism and Its Discontents). 222 See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 222-224.

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thereof.223 In the liberal democratic perspective, the secular is therefore not to be considered so much as contrary to or even as necessarily related224 to the religious, but as a positive and universally available sphere of its own, which guarantees the functioning of the existentially neutral constitutional state.225 With the general social scientific and philosophical Zeitgeist in Western academia during the late twentieth century, Habermas seems to have reckoned with a decreasing public relevance of religion, as the modernizing ethos of constitutional liberal democracy proceeded.226 The religiously propagated trans-human salvation would become less and less credible, or (perhaps more pertinently) less and less practically relevant, as the modern bureaucratic welfare state increasingly succeeds in reducing contingent existential risks, by rationalizing the societal life ever more effectively. This, in a nutshell, was the secularization thesis broadly accepted by late twentieth-century Western intelligentsia.227 At the very least, the Habermasian post-secular turn defines itself against this historical narrative. The secularist mindset, which sees the relationship between the modernizing public sphere and the religiousness of its 223

This does not concern only religion but all comprehensive doctrines which must be bracketed in our common liberal search for an overlapping consensus (see J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism). 224 Contra the anthropological perspective of T. ASAD, Formations of the Secular, pp. 181-202, which argues for an essential genealogical interdependency between the religious and the secular. The Latin words sacer and profanus are semantically interrelated, of course, but the genealogy of the (modern Western) “secular” is different, as will be argued below. 225 Habermas and Taylor would undoubtedly agree on affirming the Immanent Frame as the great creation of Western modernity, perhaps especially in its societal dimension (i.e. as the constitutional liberal democracy). To affirm that the Immanent Frame as the existentially neutral constitutional state has been deliberatively created by Western modernity–that its “neutrality” is of no subtractionist kind but a product of a contingent historical development–in no way diminishes its legitimacy, however (as the “Radical Orthodox” and like-minded seem to claim: see J. MILBANK, Theology and Social Theory; W.T. CAVANAUGH, The Myth of Religious Violence), but on the contrary grounds it. To anticipate, the whole point of the modern Western “secular” is that it has been created by us. Phenomenologically observed, secularity and human autonomy merge into each other. 226 See the references to the Habermasian corpus in P. COSTA, La città postsecolare, p. 158 (note 12). 227 As it tends to happen with all not-anymore-so-fashionable scientific theories, even the old secularization paradigm tends to become unduly simplified by more recent sociological approaches to secularization (see W.S. GOLDSTEIN, “Secularization Patterns in the Old Paradigm”).

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participants as a zero-sum game–the more modern, the less religious–, must according to Habermas undergo a post-secular transformation which “adapts to the fact that religious communities continue to exist in a context of ongoing secularization.”228 Two aspects, apparently in tension with each other, need special mention in the Habermasian definition of the “postsecular”. First, there is the fact that religion continues to exist despite the increasing political, economic, and scientific modernizing of the world. Habermas speaks about three perspectives though which religion has again become visible also to Western public consciousness: (i) through the global conflicts in which religious language and convictions have played no small a role; (ii) through the re-activation of religious communities as opinioninfluencers in the increasingly pluralist Western public spheres; (iii) through the challenging integration of growing immigrant populations in Western societies.229 Consequently, there is no imminent disappearance of the influence of religion to be expected in any foreseeable future. On the contrary, since the early 2000s, religion has re-entered the public arena with a surprising force. The Habermasian post-secular consciousness wants to take this fact seriously. Second, the secularization ushered by Western modernization, especially by the constitutionally liberal state, shows no signs of diminishing. It is an empirical fact that in societies where the modernizing processes are allowed to unfold, traditional religion tends to lose both public and private relevance.230 At least this has been the case in European societies, whereas already in the United States–not to speak of the rest of the world–the situation seems quite different. And even in the European heartland of secularization, despite their diminished numeric power, “religious communities can still claim a ‘setting’ even in the life of societies that are largely secularized.”231 Hence the need for a post-secular conversion of the liberal Western public consciousness, as called for by Habermas: not because secularization would already be over or would have shown itself to 228

J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, p. 104. J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 214215. 230 Habermas refers here approvingly to the sociological work of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, according to which human religiousness tends to decrease as their existential security increases (see J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 213). The issue is approached, and confirmed, from an innovative point of view (namely that of decreasing human fertility around the globe) in P. JENKINS, Fertility and Faith. 231 J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 213. 229

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be false, but because of the newly perceived “fact that religious communities continue to exist in a context of ongoing secularization.”232 The Habermasian understanding of the post-secular is thus radically different both from a fashionable (but perhaps not so deeply argued) talk about the “Return of Religion” and from a post-modern questioning of the very distinction between the religious and the secular, so constitutive for modern Western liberalism. In contemporary theology, the AngloAmerican movement (or perhaps better: “sensibility”233) of “Radical Orthodoxy”, in particular, has become (in)famous for denying the legitimacy of any clear-cut distinction between the religious and the secular. “Once, there was no secular,”234 the adherents of Radical Orthodoxy claim, and on the basis of this rather banal observation (of course the secular was not always there but it, like all human ideas, was only gradually and intentionally developed) they question the very legitimacy of the concept of the secular. Instead, the Radical Orthodox narrative claims, the secular should only have been ideologically constructed by Western modernity in contrast to and at the expense of the religious (meaning a certain interpretation of the Christian religion). Consequently, far from being existentially neutral, the secular conceals a powerful Weltanschauung in itself, which with its positivist liberalism is anything but impartial and nonviolent, Radical Orthodoxy states. Rather, the modern Western secular narrative requires all other discourses–not least that of Christian theology–to be measured against its own standards. To end the modern era by questioning its constituent secular dualisms between God and the world, faith and reason, the self-professed “Radical Orthodox”235 strive to revive the pre-modern metaphysical tradition of Western (especially Augustinian) theology and to ally it with post-modern European thinking.236 The main target for Radical Orthodox critique seems thus to be a supposed “single system of truth based on universal reason, which tells us what reality is like,”237 i.e. the very idea of what they understand as the 232

J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, p. 104. J.K.A. SMITH, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, p. 70, referring to Graham Ward, with Milbank and Catherine Pickstock one of the founding figures of Radical Orthodoxy. 234 J. MILBANK, Theology and Social Theory, 1. 235 From whom do the Radical Orthodox receive the right to call themselves “orthodox” if not from themselves, belonging as they mostly do to various Protestant denominations? For a Catholic appraisal of Radical Orthodoxy, see L.P. HEMMING, ed., Radical Orthodoxy? 236 In a summary form, see J. MILBANK, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’”. 237 J. MILBANK, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’”, p. 49. 233

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“secular” reason.238 The Radical Orthodox concept of the “post-secular” would therefore mean nothing less than putting an end to the whole project of secular Western modernity by resurrecting the ancient metaphysical tradition as an equally legitimate public voice in our post-modern, and truly pluralistic, society. Only in that way could the fateful modern denial of God, rooted as it is in late medieval nominalism, be redeemed and human existence accordingly opened to its transcendent fullness, Radical Orthodoxy believes. As Phillip Blond puts it: “To say we should now bring an end to the secular is to say that we should reverse the dreadful consequences of the liberal erasure of God and take myth back from out of the hands of the fascists where it has all too often fallen.”239 To be certain, whether the modern Western concept of the “secular” has a metaphysical program of its own, or what kind of a program it does have, is a question that can and should be discussed. That the adherents of Radical Orthodoxy have a strong ideological program of their own is beyond question, however. So strong is their program, in fact, that it can be asked if it helps them to enter into dialogue with the contemporary secular establishment or if it on the contrary effectively blocks all tentative reciprocal understanding.240 Furthermore, the Radical Orthodox critique of Western modernity, especially of its constituent separation between the secular and the religious, seems to be based on a profound misunderstanding of the meaning of the secular in this context, as it has been analyzed by the leading theoreticians of modern liberal democracy, not least by John Rawls and by Habermas himself.241 To reiterate the central point one last time, the secular in the modern liberal democratic sense of the term is in no way against the religious as such, but it is against all sectarian uses of language on issues which are of common concern for the society. The modern Western “secular” does not express any predetermined metaphysics, as the proponents of Radical Orthodoxy wrongly claim, but an open-ended project of developing such a public language for our societies which would at least 238

See J.K.A. SMITH, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, pp. 54-55, 73-74. P. BLOND, ed., Post-Secular Philosophy, p. 54. 240 See Habermas’s quite telling perplexity in front of Milbank’s thinking in C. CALHOUN–E. MENDIETA–J. VANANTWERPEN, ed., Habermas and Religion, pp. 386387. 241 J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism is the classic formulation and theoretical justification of liberal democratic self-consciousness. Habermas conducted a profound philosophical dialogue with Rawls in The Journal of Philosophy in 1995 (see J.G. FINLAYSON, The Habermas-Rawls Debate). 239

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potentially be intelligible to all. The secular in this sense has consequently to do with the public use of reason in the civil society where all citizens are required to put those parts of their (religious or non-religious) comprehensive doctrines in parentheses, which would render impossible the attainment of a broad-enough consensus on how to organize the common politique. Of course, once there was no liberal democratic secular, but it has been deliberately conceived and developed by Western modernity to ensure a maximum personal freedom and a maximum existential possibility to realize oneself in a human society. Equally, the secular–as all human constructions–is in need of constant protection, criticism, and developing to be able to ensure the legitimacy of our common political enterprise. In sum, the secular thus positively defined can even be said to capture the very core of the modern project as the societal acknowledgement of the inviolable existential freedom of every human person. Even though the theoretical formulation of the secular in the modern liberal democratic sense of the term is thus de iure quite clear as the publicly available use of language, its practical application–as much today as during the previous two hundred years of the modern political project–is anything but clear. The question where exactly de facto to draw the line between the private (“religious”, for our purposes) and the public (“secular”) sphere is under constant debate. This, however, is as it should be in a liberal democracy. In liberal constitutional democracies la politique, or “politics” in the ordinary sense of the term, is by definition thoroughly secular, i.e. independent of all references to trans-human intentionalities. Yet, le politique, or the political thought and imagination, which animates the societal atmosphere, can include, and, in fact, normally does include, various religious and metaphysical claims, as it has done since its beginnings several millennia ago.242 The crucial question is then how one should react to arguments involving various trans-human references in the public sphere. How should the public use of reason be regulated in order to ensure both the constitutional neutrality of the state and the existential liberty of each of its citizens? In the wake of the renewed global visibility of religion, and of the increasing immigration of strongly religious persons into Western secular societies, the question posed itself with an unprecedented force in the early 2000s. Despite its prima facie obviousness, a rigid laïcité of the French sort cannot be the solution, so violently does it limit the individual’s right to live 242

See C. LEFORT, Democracy and Political Theory, pp. 213-255 (cited in J. HABERMAS, “The ‘Political’”, pp. 164-165).

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according to their religion, not only in the private but also in the societal public sphere. Neither can too allowing a laissez-faire attitude towards the citizens’ religious life secure the functioning of a liberal democratic policy, as the increasing ghettoizing of certain immigrant, mainly Muslim, populations show in many Western societies (for instance, in Southern Sweden). Habermas introduced his concept of the post-secular in this context. The Habermasian post-secular is a proposed answer to the question of where, or rather how, the line between the secular and the religious/metaphysical should be drawn. The concept in its original Habermasian use is thus not so much a descriptive but a normative one.243 Given the descriptive fact that in an increasingly interconnected and multicultural global village, religion is far from disappearing, the modality of relating to religious language and convictions becomes a crucial normative issue for liberal democratic policies. “Because a democratic order cannot simply be imposed on its authors,” Habermas writes, “the constitutional state expects that its citizens should adhere to an ethics of citizenship that goes beyond mere obedience to the law.”244 The liberal democratic ethics of citizenship, and the ensuing use of public reason, are spiritually demanding, because they include not only a nominal acceptance of the constitutional order, but also, and even more importantly, its secular legitimation as an existentially neutral, human-made reality. In other words, the practical functioning of a liberal democratic order demands of its citizens a second-orderly reflexive mindset according to which they not only de facto affirm the constitutional order as binding to all, but also recognize it as de iure self-imposed by themselves through the democratic procedures of the state. Without the second-order reflexiveness, the liberal democratic order would lose its democratic legitimacy. As a human cultural construction, liberal democracy demands constant selfconscious upholding and participation by its creators (i.e. all of us), to be what it is. It is a constant learning process without any outer criteria or guarantees to itself. As Habermas notes, in more detail, the liberal democratic ethics of citizenship puts a threefold demand on its religious citizens.245 First, they must in a reasonable way cope with the cognitive dissonance rising from the contradictory claims of other religious communities. Second, religious 243 See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 215. 244 J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 222 (second italics AP). 245 See J. HABERMAS, “‘The Political’”, pp. 26-27.

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citizens must recognize the institutionalized sciences as our best sources of empirical knowledge of the world. Third, religious citizens must accommodate their own religious dogmas to the common egalitarian ethos of the democratic society.246 Such a threefold learning process is necessary if the religious citizens are to be really integrated into a liberal democratic state that as such does not acknowledge any trans-human authorities. A corresponding learning process also awaits non-religious citizens. The Habermasian post-secular turn concerns exactly that: the recognition that the liberal democratic mindset expects an equally demanding second-order reflexivity from the citizens who do not identify with any religious institution or belief.247 First and foremost, non-religious citizens cannot naively regard the constitutional secularity of the state as an objective reality which somehow simply stands there when all religious and other ideological convictions are taken distance from. Such a naturalist (or “subtractionist”, to use the Taylorian term248) conception of the secular ethics of citizenship would be every bit as metaphysical as a religious postulation of a transhumanely given order, to which humans simply have to adapt themselves. Both would necessarily lead to existential violence, which the liberal democratic state is designed to combat. For the state’s constitution to be really secular, it has to be arrived at by a second-orderly reflexive communicative process, by and through which all citizens equally legitimize it for themselves, precisely in and through this process. To a genuinely self-reflexive non-religious consciousness must belong the twofold acknowledgment of (i) the diachronic fact that the formation of the (Western) secular constitutional state has been continuously directed and even guided by the Biblical tradition, not least concerning the recognition of the inviolable personhood of every human being as created in image of God, and (ii) the synchronic fact that adherents to the Biblical and other religious traditions continue to exist in contemporary Western liberal democracies and can exactly as religious 246

In this context Habermas points out, “[a]s is well known, it was only with the Second Vatican Council in 1965 that the Catholic Church embraced liberalism and democracy” (J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 222). The situation varies in different Protestant churches, and it can be asked if any acceptance of the liberal ethics of citizenship is to be seen in Eastern Orthodoxy. In any case, “[m]any Muslim communities still have this painful learning process ahead of them” (J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, p. 222). 247 A point for which Habermas argues in depth in J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere”. 248 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 245.

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believers have an important or even indispensable contribution to offer to the ongoing legitimation process of the democratic policy.249 The Habermasian post-secular turn involves thus a consciousness of the complementary (komplementär) nature of the learning process which is needed to the continuous legitimating of the liberal democratic state.250 Both the religious and the non-religious citizens are equally needed for drawing the line between the religious and the secular, i.e. between the language which is intelligible only to certain subcultures in the society, on one hand, and the language which is potentially understandable to the whole society, on the other. Of course, the state organs of a liberal democracy (la politique) are by definition secular to protect them from conflicts between different religious and ideological subcultures, but the public sphere which legitimizes and breathes life into the constitutional system (le politique) cannot, in like manner, be secularized in advance. Rather, the public discussion of a civil society is precisely directed towards providing a filter through which only those contributions pass that are potentially universally intelligible. A well-functioning public sphere translates religious, metaphysical, and other ideological251 language present in the society into secular language, which can enter into the constitutional procedures of the

249 See J. HABERMAS, “‘The Political’”, p. 27. In this context, it is also worth referring to the Address, which Emmanuel Macron gave before the Bishops of France on 09.04.2018. There, the President of the French Republic, the prime example of a secular liberal polity in Europe, explicitly emphasized that the society in question needs the spiritual ethos of the Catholic Church to cope with the challenges of the future. One can speak of a genuine change in the societal atmosphere here, which the term “post-secular” rightly tries to capture. 250 See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 222-224. 251 “Ideological” in the sense that they involve conceptions of trans-human meaningfulness that is somehow given from the outside of humanity itself. Modern Western secularity demands, by contrast, that the ideas on which we build our common existence are given to us by ourselves, by and through the democratic process in politics, and the empirical process in science. As Kant formulated the key conviction of the European Enlightenment in his 1784 essay Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! Secularization in its deepest speculative meaning is all about this courage to develop a self-critical second-order consciousness, as will be argued in length in Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. This, however, can only be done by and through a tradition, not by distancing oneself from all historical mediations of reason, as Kant argued.

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liberal democratic state.252 Consequently, according to the Habermasian vision, a post-secular society is one that is conscious of the complementary character of the religious–non-religious learning process, which is needed for the secular translation of the public sphere, literally constitutional to any functioning liberal democracy, to occur. Habermas’s theoretical proposal of the post-secular learning process between non-religious and religious citizens in translating religious and other ideological language into secular, i.e. potentially universally available, language, has obviously incited a lively academic debate.253 “Obviously,” because the Habermasian post-secular is precisely formulated to incite debate, that is, a renewed public discussion about the continuing relevance (if any) of our religious past in contemporary Western liberal democracies. This is not simply a descriptive observation (concerning the fact that certain religious transmissions continue to be present in our public spheres, perhaps even increasingly so), but first and foremost a normative claim. The modern Western states can remain secular only if this secularity, or independence of all more or less disputed faith convictions, becomes negotiated all over again in and through the public discourse between religious and nonreligious citizens. The secular appears thus not as any separate, self-standing entity of its own, but as the continuing search for a genuinely liberal democratic politique which really could include all of its citizens by becoming legitimized by each and every one of them. Here the distinction is not so much between religious and non-religious/secular citizens but between religious and secular language, which the concept of the postsecular aspires to mediate between. This is the necessarily unfinished because continuously evolving modern project.254 In sum, the Habermasian post-secular consciousness seems to demand an openness in the secular public consciousness towards the religious semantic contents still present in the society, and a readiness to translate these into universally available language. Such a dialectic of secularization– a complementary learning process between the religious and non-religious citizens for the common good of the whole society–is needed for the constitutional democracy to preserve its legitimacy amidst a growing global 252

The ongoing digital revolution is now again transforming profoundly the public sphere, with great risks for liberal democracy, as Habermas has recently argued (see his Ein neuer Strukturwander der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik). 253 For a systematic overview, see D.H. REES, The Postsecular Political Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas, and the articles collected in G. CALHOUN–E. MENDIETA–J. VANANTWERPEN, Habermas and Religion. 254 See J. HABERMAS, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project”, the talk Habermas gave on receiving the Adorno Award in 1980.

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hyperpluralism of different human ways-of-being-in-the-world.255 Perhaps it can be said that a secularist consciousness would consider this dialectic of secularization as already finished, whereas a post-secular consciousness regards it as still very much going on. An ideological secularism is to be refused, while an open secularization is still very much needed in contemporary, post-secular societies. Therein lies the crucial difference and motivation for the term “post-secular.” For a contemporary social theory, as the one developed by Habermas, the more speculative question of a possible endpoint to the dialectics of secularization might not be so relevant. Certainly, as things presently stand, and as the new post-secular consciousness tries to make perfectly clear, religious semantic contents continue to be present even in the most secularized Western societies, and responsible politics (in both senses of the term) cannot be done without taking this into consideration. Yet, one cannot help asking if the question of an endpoint to the dialectic of religious-secular translation can simply be put into parentheses as an empirically not (yet) pertinent one. For even if we should abstain from speculating on whether all religious and other ideological language could be successfully translated into a secular one, the fact remains that even now there exist people who find themselves completely outside any religious language-game. For them, traditional religious language lacks any intrinsic meaningfulness. The reference is to so radically secularized people who cannot even understand how any reasonable person in the first place would be religious. In light of Radical Secularization, the Habermasian proposal for a complementary learning process could perhaps appear as a great idea but impossible to put in practice: how could one even in principle participate in translating something whose original meaning one cannot understand at all? If one really is “tone-deaf” to a melody, how could one even begin to explain its structure and contents to others? Furthermore, if one has not even any “awareness of something missing,”256 how could one hope to secularize it? Rather, the question of a secular translation would then not emerge at all. Or is it even meaningful to entertain and affirm the possibility of such a radical, all-the-way-through, secularization? Is the polarity between the religious and the secular so deep in our Western tradition that a complete secularization cannot even be speculatively imagined? What would the secular then even mean, or the religious? To summarize this bewilderment in one question: what is secularization all about? 255

Habermas’s dialogue with the then-cardinal Ratzinger remains a paradigm of civilized post-secular discussion (see J. HABERMAS–J. RATZINGER, The Dialectics of Secularization). 256 See J. HABERMAS ET AL., An Awareness of What is Missing.

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1.2 The Four Branches of the “Secularization” Tree and Its Root Confronted with an initial speculative bewilderment (aporia) with the concept of secularization, this must be the place to start to struggle towards as perspicuous as possible a representation of the concept.257 The aim is to arrive at such a synthetic vision of “secularization” that would allow us to continue with the argument of the study. Thus, in the following, four different dimensions of secularization are identified–secularization as canonical saecularisatio, as juridical Säkularisation, as hermeneutical Verweltlichung, and as sociological secularization–each with its own historical-genealogical Sitz im Leben.258 Behind or under these four branches of the secularization tree one unifying background-picture or rootmetaphor becomes finally visible. It is no static metaphysical entity, but the dynamic movement of human freedom and transcendentality that will guide us through the rest of this book. To add to the initial bewilderment with “secularization,” it must be recognized that it clearly is a family resemblance concept: it becomes used in a myriad of different ways without there seemingly being any one thing in common to them all.259 At least this is how it can appear at first blush, when one considers even the most common uses of the term “secularization” to denote–following Taylor’s widely established threefold distinction260–(i) the quintessentially “modern” functional separation between the different societal spheres from the influence of organized religion (which in turn takes very different forms in different societies from the French laïcité261 to the American “civil religion”262), (ii) the supposed decline or at least privatization of religious activity (which is a statistical fact in most Western societies but again varies greatly from country to country263), and (iii) the hermeneutical relationship between (Western) modernization process and the (Latin) Christian tradition, be it in respect to

257

See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §122 See Appendix B for a summary presentation of this crucial grammatical part of the study. 259 See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §67. 260 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 1-4. 261 See G. HAARSCHER, La Laïcité. 262 See R.N. BELLAH, “Civil Religion in America”. 263 For a general survey of the European religious situation from the first decade of this millennium, see H. KNIPPENBERG, ed., The Changing Religious Landscape of Europe. J. CASANOVA, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994) famously questioned the privatization assumption of modern religion from a more global perspective already before the general post-secular turn. 258

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the “conditions of belief”264 in general or “political theology”265 in particular, or perhaps concerning the rise of capitalism266 or the birth of modern, “secular” literature,267 or the very nature of the Christian faith itself,268 and so on, almost ad infinitum.269 In addition, there comes the more recent proliferation of the term “postsecular” which again becomes used in very different ways without there being any one clearly identifiable aspect to them all, if not a general renewed courage to speak openly about “religion,” also in the academia.270 Furthermore, a highly relevant question–perhaps even the question in the context of contemporary global hyperpluralism–is whether the category of secularization can at all be meaningfully used to denote societal and cultural transformation processes outside its original Western context.271 The issue is further complicated by the fact that the word “secularization” and its cognates awaken various, and often quite strong, normative evaluations in its users. For some, secularization signifies corruption, fall from something considered as valuable in itself (“tradition,” “religion,” the “sacred,” “our cultural roots” etc.). For others, by contrast, the word invokes feelings of liberation and emancipation from previous oppression (“thank God I’m an atheist”272). The meaning of “secularization” seems to depend essentially on the cultural setting and existential convictions of the person who uses it. Everybody appears to have a “secularization” of their own (a bit like with “religion”). If one, however, aspires to abstain, as far as possible, from all normative, either positive or negative, interpretations of the concept of secularization, 264

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 4-14. See C. SCHMITT, Political Theology. 266 See M. WEBER, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 267 See A. SCHÖNE, Säkularisation als Sprachbildende Kraft; M. MUTTER, Restless Secularism. 268 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time and G. VATTIMO, Belief, not to speak of the whole “secularization theology” of the 1960s (see R.L. Richard, Secularization Theology). 269 Generally on how originally religious contents have supposedly taken on secular form during Western modernization, see W.T. CAVANAUGH, Migrations of the Holy. 270 For a critical overview of the “post-secular,” see J.A. BECKFORD, “Public Religions and the Postsecular”. 271 From a global perspective–which he certainly knew well as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith–, Joseph Ratzinger, for example, asked “whether a comparative study of cultures and the sociology of religion suggest that European secularization is an exceptional development and one that needs to be corrected” (J. HABERMAS–J. RATZINGER, The Dialectics of Secularization, p. 75). 272 See J.D. CAPUTO–G. VATTIMO, After the Death of God, p. 92. 265

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and instead simply looks at how the word “secularization” (including its etymological root, the “secular”) has been used during its two-thousandyear history in our Western tradition, the general contours of its grammatical family-tree can be identified.273 Essential here, as always in human thinking, is not even to try to find any eternal or unchanging “essence” of the “secularsecularization” (human words do not have such eternal essences), but just to try to concentrate on its changing use in the Western tradition.274 Then, perhaps, something true, because living, can emerge. To begin to develop a clear grammatical view of “secularization,” it is instructive to refer to Hans Blumenberg’s classic interpretation of it. Blumenberg saw the guiding root-metaphor or -picture of the concept of secularization in the juridical act of expropriating ecclesial goods by civil authorities.275 Even though he did not want to assign any originalfoundational significance to this background-picture of his concept of secularization,276 it still affected his whole view of the modern Western secularization process. This is no wonder for a German scholar, of course, so influential have the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803 been in German legal and societal history. They continue to influence the German understanding of secularization as juridical Säkularisation. 273

As will become evident further on, the intended identification of a root- or background-picture behind the concept of secularization is not projected to unveil its “true” meaning, but on the contrary to free one of any supposedly true meanings of secularization by showing its ambiguous and plural nature. 274 Ein Ausdruck hat nur im Strome des Lebens Bedeutung, as Wittgenstein put it (see N. MALCOLM, Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. 75), serves here as the methodological motto. Among the older conceptual-historical (begriffsgeschichtlich) investigations of “secularization”, H. LÜBBE, Säkularisierung, A.J. NIJK, Secularisatie, H. ZABEL– W. CONZE–H.-W. STRÄTZ, ed., “Säkularisierung, Säkularisation”, and G. MARRAMAO, Cielo e terra remain unsurpassed in their learning. U. BARTH, “Säkularisierung”, T. BEDOUELLE, “Sécularisation”, M. BERGUNDER ET AL., “Secularization”, J.N. BREMMER, “Secularization”, and G. FILORAMO, “Secolarizzazione” provide excellent summaries, as do, in a more self-consciously hermeneutical manner, J. CASANOVA, “Exploring the Postsecular” and C. TAYLOR, “The Polysemy of the Secular”. On the classical Latin usage of the saeculum, see S.B. DUNNING, “Saeculum”, D. FEENEY, Caesar’s Calendar, pp. 145-148, and J. RÜPKE, “Saeculum”. On the late antique Christian use of the “secular,” quite decisive for its subsequent use in modern European “secularization,” see R.A. MARKUS, Christianity and the Secular. 275 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 23-24. 276 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 21, where he speaks rather of its “methodical-heuristic” significance.

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To put it briefly, in the secularization as Säkularisation three things can be clearly identified: first, the object “x” to be expropriated or secularized; second, the two parties “a” and “b” between whom the secularization procedure occurs; and third, the unilateral movement of secularization by which the object in question passes from the possession of the one (“ecclesial” or “religious”) party into the possession of the second (“civil” or “secular”) party. In this perspective, secularization would thus mean the transfer of x from the possession of a into the possession of b. Such a secularizing transfer could concern concrete objects as in the Napoleonic Säkularisation or, as derivatively used since the (principally German) birth of the historical consciousness277 in the nineteenth century, about abstract ideas as the modern West successively became supposedly more and more “worldly” with respect to its “religious” predecessor, the Christian Middle Ages (the hermeneutical meaning of secularization as Verweltlichung). In a Blumenbergian view, the conception of secularization as juridical Säkularisation is historically unacceptable for two reasons, however. First and foremost, that kind of a definition of secularization cannot really get a grip on the creative character of European modernity, i.e. the fact that this historical constellation has brought with itself something radically new in human history. The historian should be interested in the unique character of a cultural formation, not in interpreting this too strongly in the shadow of the preceding epoch, Blumenberg believed.278 In other words, considering European secularization as expropriating Säkularisation, so fixed as it is on the thing x to be secularized, would make us blind to the “founding rupture”–to borrow Michel de Certeau’s evocative term, rupture instauratrice279–that it means in human cultural evolution and that constitutes its historical significance. Secularization goes deeper than juridical Säkularisation or even hermeneutical Verweltlichung would allow. Of course, it can and shall be discussed how deep in fact the modern European rupture goes, and how precisely it should be related to the foregoing history. Yet, merely interpreting, in a substantialist manner, the modern break as a secular expropriation of preceding religious goods and ideas would not even initiate the necessary discussion about the particular nature of this radically creative transformation process, Blumenberg argued.280 Furthermore, the background-picture of juridical expropriation 277

The most profound systematic analysis of the form of human consciousness which knows itself to be able to come to itself only through its own past is H.-G. GADAMER, Truth and Method (especially pp. 350-387). 278 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 74. 279 See M. DE CERTEAU, La faiblesse de croire, pp. 183-226. 280 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 47.

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would easily give a questionable flair to the whole phenomenon of secularization, as if this were not only de facto dependent on the previous epoch of Christendom, but also de iure under its (il)legitimating authority. This is the second dimension of Blumenberg’s criticism of the very concept of secularization as a “category of historical wrong.”281 Because of its roots in the juridical act of expropriating ecclesial property, Blumenberg argued, the concept of secularization cannot but give an illegitimate impression to the process of European modernization-secularization, as if this were parasitically built on a substance that did not originally belong to it.282 Writing in the 1960s, Blumenberg still moved tightly inside a European conceptuality, but his critique of secularization only gains more force from a more global, hyperpluralistic perspective. Interpreting the modernization of the West simply as a secularization of its Christian heritage easily gives a parochial and navel-gazing impression. Is not Western modernizationsecularization about something much more than simply emancipating oneself from one’s cultural tradition? Instead, a more open- and broadminded–polyhedric, as Pope Francis would say–approach is needed to understand and responsibly relate to our contemporary hyperpluralistic predicament where the (Latin) Christian tradition represents only one alternative among innumerable others. Some concrete examples can shed light on the issue. European modernity has, for example, sometimes been interpreted as a secularization of Christian eschatology.283 Whereas Christians, and the whole epoch of the Christian Middle Ages, should have put their hope in a coming eschaton, or the heavenly consummation of the Kingdom of God, the unfolding European modernity would, on the contrary, have transferred this belief from its otherworldly orientation to its concrete realization here and now. European modernity would thus have received the necessary spiritual energy for its unprecedented belief in worldly progress from the Christian dogma of an eschatological reserve by expropriating this to its own, “secular,” use. To summarize, according to this scheme, there is one thing x–in this case the Christian hope of a heavenly redemption–which would pass from the possession of a (the Church) into the possession of b (the secular state), changing its outer name in the process, while remaining practically the same as to its inner substance.

281 See the whole first part of his Legitimacy (H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 3-121). 282 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 8-9. 283 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 37-52; and further R. KOSELLECK, “Historia Magistra Vitae”, K. LÖWITH, Meaning in History.

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As a historical explanation such a scheme can easily be put into question by asking whether such an essential object as the “Christian belief in the eschaton” can be identified in the first place, and whether its purported transition from religious to secular possession can be used to explain the typically modern European belief in worldly progress. Such an interpretative model would present European modernity as dependent on its medieval predecessor, even as its illegitimate bastard (the Christian belief in the eschaton remains originally Christian). Yet, it must be asked, why one, to begin with, should regard the proprium of European modernity merely or even mainly in light of the Christian tradition. Perhaps its particular character has rather to do with human self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung) instead of theological absolutism, as Blumenberg famously argued?284 Would it, consequently, not be more to the point to consider European modernity on its own terms rather than interpreting it according to a conceptuality that is fundamentally foreign to its self-understanding? Historical substantialism, by contrast, can make us captive to a pre-given ideological scheme of things, which does not let us see the creative and radically new that human history, especially in its great epochal shifts, produces. Consider the reintroduction of the concept of “political theology” into modern philosophical discussion by Carl Schmitt. Writing during the Weimar Republic, Schmitt famously claimed that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”285 Here again there are some things x, namely the Christian theological dogmas having to do with the absolute sovereignty of God, in particular, which become transferred from the possession of a (the Church) into the possession of b (the modern European nation-states). The historical accuracy of such a scheme must be investigated case by case, of course, but from a more speculative point of view it goes without saying that such a way of approaching the issue already carries in itself a whole ideology of its own (in this case a clearly conservative one).286 Reading European secularization as either juridical Säkularisation or, more abstractly, as hermeneutical Verweltlichung is not the only possibility, however. Blumenberg, of course, knew the other traditional meaning of secularization as saecularisatio to denote the transfer, not of Churchly 284

See the whole second part of Blumenberg’s Legitimacy (H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 125-226). 285 See C. SCHMITT, Political Theology, p. 36. 286 The Schmittian approach to secularization was interestingly developed by E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, State, Society, and Liberty, to be further discussed at the end of Chapter 4 of this book.

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goods, but of Churchly persons from the religious sphere of a monastery into the secular sphere of a diocese, but he assigns no particular relevance to it with respect to the general secularization debate of his times. This might also be, because he wrongly claims that the word would have been thus defined only since the end of the eighteenth century.287 In reality, secularization as saecularisatio can be found in its canonical meaning already in the sixteenth century at the latest.288 With canonical saecularisatio we thus have to work with the original, and possibly even originating, use of the word “secularization.” It remains true that the word “secularization”–via the French verb-form séculariser–entered the German language principally in the juridical sense of expropriating Churchly properties by civil authorities in the tumultuous context of the seventeenth-century Wars of Religion.289 The subsequent secularization debate in German-speaking countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries unfolded largely with that sense in the background.290 It can be asked, however, if that should remain so. Certainly, if we want to continue to use the concept of secularization to interpret the future of our religious past in the contemporary hyperpluralistic world, a more dispassionate and unbiased approach is needed. Perhaps the process of European secularization could even more suitably be understood by taking as our guide, not the expropriating Säkularisation, but the canonical saecularisatio? Superficially, the juridical expropriation of Church properties (Säkularisation) and the canonical secularization of religious persons (saecularisatio), can seem to have the same kind of character: x moves from a to b. Yet, the canonical process of saecularisatio lacks all impression of illegitimacy that might taint the concept of secularization, if we have only Säkularisation in the background. The canonical act of secularizing a religious person has nothing illegitimate about it: by it, the named person simply passes from a certain religious jurisdiction (that of the specific regula of their religious order) to that of a diocesan bishop. If the person in question is an ordained one, he passes from being a religious priest to being a secular priest. The tense is rightly in the present here, because this use of 287

See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 20. See H. ZABEL–W. CONZE–H.-W. STRÄTZ, ed., “Säkularisierung, Säkularisation”. 289 See J.N. BREMMER, “Secularization”. 290 For instance, the paradigmatic Löwith-Blumenberg debate concerned precisely the question whether European modernity should be understood as a secular expropriation of originally Christian ideas or not (for a recent discussion of the debate, see P.E. GORDON, “Secularization, Genealogy, and the Legitimacy of the Modern Age”). 288

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secularization survives into the present Code of Canon Law of the Roman Church (see CIC, can. 684, §2). The canonical act itself is of a very ancient nature, though, even if the word saecularisatio appears to become used for it only in the sixteenth century, slightly before the great societal upheavals in Europe that lie behind the juridical use of secularization as Säkularisation.291 Nevertheless, the ambivalent flair of the concept of secularization has not only to do with the oftentimes violent struggles of power between the Church and the developing nation-states in early modern Europe. Even though the canonical saecularisatio as such simply designates a valueneutral legal procedure of releasing a person from the jurisdiction of their religious community, it retains the ambivalent nature of its root-word saeculum as this has been received in the Latin Christian tradition. In the classical Latin idiom, the term saeculum could be used to simply describe the longest possible length of a human life, i.e. an “age” of approximately 100 years. As few things were simply descriptive for the ancient Romans and their predecessor Etruscans, though, also the saeculum in their usage often got various religious and superstitious connotations to it. Thus, the third-century CE Roman grammarian Censorinus, mediating Varro, recounts that the Etruscans tended to associate eschatological signs with the end of every saeculum which they counted ten in total from the beginning of their nation until its end.292 In the Roman Empire, furthermore, the word saeculum acquired a more triumphalist significance rather as the beginning of a new (“golden”) age, as exemplified by the Augustan Ludi saeculares of 17 BCE. In sum, in addition to its neutral designation of the ideal “age” a mortal human being can experience, a “century” (secolo, siècle…) that is, the word saeculum in its imperial Latin usage easily bore an imprint of Roman political power which supposedly had introduced a new “age” into world history.293 Early Christians were understandably quite suspicious of the saeculum as the space conquered and dominated by the Roman Empire, not least because they occasionally suffered persecution in its hands. There was also another, more properly theological reason, for why the word “secular” received a rather ambivalent impression in the subsequent Latin Christian 291 See H. ZABEL–W. CONZE–H.-W. STRÄTZ, ed., “Säkularisierung, Säkularisation” for all the concrete references. 292 See D. FEENEY, Caesar’s Calendar, pp. 145-146 (the reference is to Censorinus’s De Die Natali, XVII). 293 One wonders how much the recent speculations about an “epochal change” by Pope Francis owe to the ancient Roman fascination with supposed endings and beginnings of different epochs.

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tradition. This has to do with the fundamental ambivalence in the Christian Revelation itself, as it became codified in the New Testament scriptures. On the one hand, there is announced the unconditional salvatory love of the Triune God towards the world created by him (see John 3:13). On the other hand–as later defined in the typically Latin Christian dogma of the original sin–, this world has gone badly off the rails, as it were, and is not anymore as unproblematically “very good” (Gen 1:31) as it was created to be, but it has been subjected to futility, decay and death against the original divine plan (see Rom 8:20). Against this background, one can understand the Pauline exhortation not to conform to this world: nolite conformari huic saeculo (as the Vulgate translates Rom 12:2a). On the contrary, the Apostle of the Gentiles preached a radical conversion to the new life donated in Jesus Christ. The heart of the Christian Good News is, in Paul’s preaching, God’s giving of his only Son to free all people from the evil world and to introduce them to the good, redeemed reality (see the Vulgate translation of Gal 1:4a: qui dedit semetipsum pro peccatis nostris, ut eriperet nos de praesenti saeculo). To put it briefly, then, fundamental Christian ambivalence is concerned with the “world” or “time”–the spatio-temporal unity of the created reality or “age” (the Greek aiǀn)–as either still in the grips of sin and corruption or as already redeemed by the saving act of the Triune God. On the one hand, there is the world (saeculum) as separated by sin from God; on the other hand, there is the new reality reconciled in the human-divine communion, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity in saecula saeculorum. In this theological light, the fundamental Christian ambivalence makes itself seen also in the conception of secularization as canonical saecularisatio. Consider, for instance, monastic life which has been called the life of Christian perfection. Monasticism has traditionally been considered fuga mundi294: the monk or nun flees from the world, which still is so profoundly shadowed by sin, in order to live more transparently in the divine light inside the protective walls of their monastery or in the serene peace of their cell.295 Consequently, having left the world, it no more exists

294

Suffice it here to refer to the archetype of a Christian monk, St. Anthony the Great, who left everything he owned and fled to the desert to pursue a life of evangelical perfection (as recounted in St. Athanasius’ Vita Antonii). 295 Latin monks have played with the similarity between the words caelum (“heaven”) and cella (“cell”). The twelfth-century Benedictine monk William of St. Thierry, for example, related both words to the verb celare (“to hide”): “For both caelum and cella appear to be derived from celare, to hide, and the same thing is hidden in cells as in heaven, the same occupation characterizes both the one and the

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for the monk or nun, although they continue to exist for the world, offering as they do their life as an intercession for the evangelical transformation of the old world in the new light of Christ. The monastery is successively conceived of as a place where the redemption of Christ can ideally become an experienced reality already here and now thanks to the regula obediently followed by the monastic community. In other words, therefore, the monastic life shows itself equally as a fuga in mundum as a fuga mundi.296 The monk or nun does not flee so much from the world but into the world which, in reality, has already been redeemed and sanctified by the Triune God through Christ Jesus (see the famous “in the world but not of the world” in John 17:14-15). For this reason, the canonical act, by which the consecrated individual passes from the jurisdiction of their religious order into that of a secular diocese, can have a negative or at least ambivalent flair to it, even though it, in itself, concerns a neutral legal procedure. From a theological perspective, the fact stands, all the same, that the world is still gravely under the shadow of sin, to the point of suffocating the experienced presence of the Spirit in the world (see 2 Pet 1:19). Of course, no concretely existing monastery as such is absolutely protected from the power of sin (consisting, as they do, of sinful monks and nuns), but their spiritual attraction springs from the primordial experience that exactly there, the divine light shines brighter than elsewhere. A monastery can give such a foretaste of the new world of perfect Love and Justice which the old world cannot give. Secularization as saecularisatio, in addition to being historically more original than the conception of secularization as Säkularisation, can help one appreciate better the highly ambiguous and plural character of the modern transformation process which despite all its problems still deserves the name “secularization.” The central problem of the classical secularization paradigm, as it was developed in Western social sciences from the 1960s onwards, until the more recent post-secular turn, was its all too unilinear character, as if the relationship between religion and modernity were an unproblematic zero-sum-game: the more modern a society becomes, the less religious will it be. With post-secular hindsight, this unilinear secularization thesis appears as little less metaphysical than other. What is this? Leisure devoted to God, the enjoyment of God” (Golden Epistle, p. 20). 296 The consecrated individual does not despise the present life but renounces it to enter into the “true and everlasting life” (see L. D’AYALA VALVA, Il cammino del monaco, p. 126, referring to the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict). Thus, a monk is “a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all” (EVAGRIOS PONTICOS, Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, p. 76).

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traditional religions themselves, the gradual disappearance of which it aspired to prognose and explain. Admittedly, here as elsewhere, everything depends on how you decide to use the word “religion.” From one perspective, there is no doubt that the influence of religion has diminished in the wake of various modernizing processes, both in the Western world and around the globe. Yet, from another perspective, religion continues to be as alive as ever, taking evernew exterior forms as human existential expressiveness becomes increasingly independent from outer authorities in modernizing and liberalizing societies. The problem with any unidirectional sociological approach to secularization presents itself consequently not so much as an empirical problem but as a grammatical one, concerned with the very concept of “religion.” The problem concerns positing a single substantial entity called “religion,” about the increase or decrease of which one, even in principle, could make some general affirmations. This, however, flies in the face of contemporary global hyperpluralism. By contrast, the existential predicament which becomes visible After Secularization is much more plural and ambiguous than any substantialist and unidimensional “secularization thesis” could even hope to capture. This is the polyhedric provincialization of European secularization that was discussed in above Chapter 1. The unfathomable hyperpluralism of our contemporary globalized world should be no insurmountable problem for Catholic theology, if it approaches it with the hermeneutical key of secularization as saecularisatio. In light of the Christian Revelation, the world is the stage where the drama of human freedom gradually unfurls in relation to Divine Providence.297 As we become more and more conscious of human freedom as the driving force of history, the apparent plurality of the world also grows. There was no pregiven necessity to why history had to go the way it has done, and there is no pre-given necessity to how history will continue tomorrow. Rather, it all depends, humanly speaking, on how we see the things and on what decisions we make. The world, where human freedom and transcendentality is increasingly allowed to come into itself and choose its way of being present, is a world full of complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions, not of any metaphysical necessity but as a matter of simple empirical fact (which, again, is nothing but simple in itself).298 When we learn to stop thinking according to our preferred (ideological) schemes, be it a sociological secularization paradigm, a philosophical 297

This is the great theme of the second part of Balthasar’s trilogy, his Theo-Drama. The contribution of David Tracy to the recognition of the radically pluralist, and thus deeply ambiguous, nature of today’s cultural situation in Catholic theology, cannot be overestimated (see D. TRACY, Plurality and Ambiguity).

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narrative of Entzauberung, or a theologically absolutist general view of some sort, the world which begins to show itself is one where human beings decide to believe in or not, personally relate to or not, a staggering variety of different things about their life and place in the universe. One cannot, in fact, intellectually argue for the fact of contemporary global hyperpluralism as it becomes imagined in this book. Even to try to offer rational proofs for it would be to enter a game one cannot enter. The existential hyperpluralism of today defies all attempts at rational comprehension–that is the very point of its being hyperplural. Yet, it can be seen and personally acknowledged if one just wants and decides to do so: the reality, which is not of our (ideological) making but where human subjectivity nevertheless (or precisely because of that) can ever more freely express itself, is there for everybody to look at and enter into. For a Christian, who is open to the semper maius of the Triune God, contemporary global hyperpluralism presents, first of all, an invitation to a renewed missionary spirit of bringing the Good News to the whole world (see EG, nn. 262-283), the “wholeness” of which we are only now After Secularization beginning to perceive. The here proposed reading of secularization, which as saecularisatio is open to the unbelievable variety of the different existential decisions that people of our globalized world make in their inviolable personal freedom, is no mere theological reinterpretation. It can also be rationally supported by a grammatical analysis of the concept of secularization itself, as has, by now, hopefully become clear. Essential is to see that the “secular” is not necessarily a dualistic concept in the manner that, for example, the “profane” is.299 The profanus is always related to the sacred or religious (fanum) as existing “before” (pro-) it.300 The “profane” typically has a rather degenerative flair to it (as in “profane language”), and to “profane” something is always to commit a crime of some sort. By contrast, it is not so with the “secular” and “secularization.” The world in which human beings find themselves is what it is: a (from our perspective) radical Otherness, an unending flux of different things, phenomena and events. How can the world, then, become more worldly, if it already in itself is what it is? Blumenberg was right to pose this question but wrong in answering it with a supposedly pre-modern Christian postulating of an ideal unworldliness which would contrast with the modern worldliness of this 299 Contra T. ASAD, Formations of the Secular, p. 200: “The concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of religion.” But see Asad’s own enlightening deconstruction of the sacred/profane binary in IBID., pp. 30-37. 300 See R.A. MARKUS, Christianity and the Secular, pp. 5-6; H.-G. GADAMER, Truth and Method, p. 150.

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world.301 At the very least, the claimed unworldliness of the Christian Revelation is something which calls for a theological investigation, not a historical condemnation (as often as it has been misrepresented by a, to it essentially foreign, Gnostic mentality during the bimillennial history of the Church). The Christian Revelation relates itself certainly quite ambivalently to the present saeculum–to every saeculum, in fact, prone as these are to absolutize themselves in one way or another–, but to accuse Christianity of a constitutive unworldliness is surely false (for God so loved the world, as John 3:16 proclaims). How could a faith which flows from the Triune God’s eternal willingness to enter personally into his own creation even in principle be suspected of deprecating the real worldliness of the world? Here the onus probandi is certainly on the one who claims something else. In sum, the grammatical contours of the concept of secularization, interpreted in a fundamental theological key, have become visible as the four branches of the secularization-tree with its root-metaphor in the ambivalent Christian relation to the world. First, the canonical meaning of “secularization” as saecularisatio serves here literally as the kanǀn, or standard, of a theological reading of the transformation process of secularization. By and through this historical process, the Christian Revelation enters the world which is as ambiguous as it is plural, and as plural as it is ambiguous: not because of any pre-given, metaphysical necessity, but because of consisting of free, and increasingly free, human persons who in their freedom decide to choose or not a staggering variety of different existential, both religious and non-religious, options. Second, there is the theologically secondary juridical meaning of secularization as Säkularisation by which a religious property becomes expropriated by a civil authority. Unfortunately, the juridical view of secularization as Säkularisation has deeply influenced both the third hermeneutical meaning as Verweltlichung and the fourth sociological meaning, giving them both such a unilinear and even self-evident impression that they in no way deserve. Confronted with contemporary global hyperpluralism, Western modernity cannot appropriately be considered a simple secularization of Christian semantic contents to worldly use. Neither can the changing religious landscape in the West after the Second World War be described as a direct decrease in religious belief and activity. Reality is much more complex and interesting than that. In short, if we let the canonical meaning of secularization as saecularisatio guide our view of the position of the Christian tradition amidst the ongoing epochal shift, we have better chances to both remain 301

See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 47.

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faithful to the unchanging deposit of faith of the Christian Revelation and relate it responsibly to the extremely ambiguous and plural context of today. The “post-secular” turn should not be presented as a blurring of the religious-secular distinction, literally constitutive to our liberal democracies, but rather as a recognition of the continuing relevance of our religious traditions in constructing a societal order which would be equally open and just to all. The world which is dawning After Secularization challenges us to think in the radically plural or hyperplural, leaving all substantialist and unidimensional fantasies behind us, as well as resisting postulating them in front of us. To claim that, after the Western secularization process, “[i]n any case, we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious searching, whose outcome no one can foresee,”302 appears in this light as a contradictio in terminis. If it is–rightly–admitted that the spiritual future of humankind is quite beyond rational control, then we surely cannot denote it as unproblematically “religious” either, so strongly is this word defined by Latin Christianity. The increasingly worldly world where people’s existential decisions are decreasingly determined by pre-given rules, does not denote any particular idea about how the world should be, but simply points at how it, in its unbelievable variety, really is. It is all about reality’s semper maius with respect to all human attempts at comprehending it. Yet, merely to affirm the reality of free human transcendentality, rendered at least potentially visible After Secularization, is a completely empty (and potentially destructive) notion, here as elsewhere.303 What is needed is a concrete actualization of how freedom, not only potentially can be, but in fact actually is realized. Freedom that is only entertained as a possibility is no freedom at all. By contrast, freedom becomes what it is only when put into practice. Likewise, the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, as such, is admittedly mere speculation (in the pejorative meaning of the term). Rather, it calls for a concretization of its abstract purpose. Hence, the empirical fact of contemporary global hyperpluralism calls for the concept of After Secularization. Yet, we as Westerners can meaningfully speak about After Secularization only when the dualistic dialectic of the Western secularization process has at least speculatively (now in the positive, quasi-Hegelian meaning of the term304) been

302

C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 535. See the Hegelian criticism of purely abstract or negative freedom for its ultimately destructive character in G.W.F. HEGEL, The Phenomenology of Spirit, VI., B., III. 304 See C. TAYLOR, Hegel and Modern Society, p. 53. 303

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overcome.305 Overcoming Western secularization could be attempted in various ways, but the phenomenological-grammatical way adopted in the present book aspires to do that by dissolving the tailor-maid dualism in the modern Western conception of religion–arguably the driving force of the whole process of Western secularization. Dissolving the modern religious binary could not be done by defining “religion” once again in a new way. The task is, rather, to imagine such a human form-of-life or way-of-being-in-theworld which would not fit the modern Western framework at all, a complete post- or nonreligion as Radical Secularization, that is. By thus radicalizing the binary dialectic of Western secularization, it will hopefully become possible to go beyond it into contemporary global hyperpluralism. But now the initial question returns: how to concretize these abstract speculations? How not only to claim the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization in light of Radical Secularization, but also to really enter into it? How not only can but in fact does genuine human freedom become exercised in the wake of the Western secularization process?

2. After Secularization: Learning to Recognize the Nonreligious Reference has already been made to the rather paradoxical nature of the contemporary global religious landscape. In its broad outlines, it shows a clear decline in official religiosity in the highly modernized Western societies of the Northern Hemisphere, whereas a neo-traditional religiosity continues to expand in many other parts of the world, especially in SubSaharan Africa.306 Depending on one’s prior existential commitments and personal views about the future of human religiosity, this general state of affairs can be interpreted in different, even opposite, ways. There is not, and cannot be, any one objectively “scientific” (supposedly “neutral”), stand on the issue. Nothing else is to be expected during the ongoing epochal shift. One fact stands, though, which is the disappearance of the previously hegemonic Christian culture in the Western world–of so-called “Christendom”. Even the “next Christendom”307 currently taking form amidst contemporary 305

These in itself quite abstract speculations will become concretized in the central part of this study–Chapters 3 and 4–where an analysis of human transcendentality is developed as a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization. 306 PEW RESEARCH CENTER, “Global Religious Landscape” remains a helpful overview. On the new Southern faces of Christianity, in particular, see P. JENKINS, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. 307 See P. JENKINS, The Next Christendom.

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global hyperpluralism, especially in the Global South, will be of a very different character than the late, overwhelmingly Roman or Latin Christendom. This fact–let us call it the “negative” dimension of Western secularization process, because it principally signifies a disappearance or loss of something–is worth repeating over and over again in a theological context, because to a large extent, it defines the cultural ramifications for an intelligible proclamation of and reflection on the Word of God amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism.

2.1 The Resurgence of the “Nones” Yet, it is not enough to state and repeat the negative fact of the disappearance of late Latin Christendom. To enter more self-consciously and convincingly into the contemporary spiritual dynamics of global hyperpluralization, something more is required of Western consciousness. The hermeneutical opening of After Secularization is not only, or even mainly, about losing something, but gaining something: namely a completely new space for existential and spiritual seeking. Only during the past decade or so, have social scientists begun to study more closely the growing Western population which distances itself from what has been called “religion” in our tradition, by identifying themselves as “non-religious.”308 What is gradually showing itself is no uniformly “religionless” group of people who simply lack everything reminiscent of religious beliefs and practices. Instead, a great variety of different human forms-of-life are becoming visible After Secularization, which for one reason or another decide to “other”309 themselves with respect to what is considered “religion” in their society. British researcher Lois Lee argues that learning to recognize, in social sciences, the non-religious populations in their unbelievable variety of personal beliefs and practices will help to reimagine the whole of Western secularization. According to Lee, European secularization has not been any undeviating process leading towards ever less religiosity, but it rather tends to pluralize and diversify human existential ways-of-being-in-the-world.310 308

For an excellent overview of the first findings of the new academic field of the social scientific study of non-religion and secularity, see P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious, as well as the larger P. ZUCKERMAN– J.R. SHOOK, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. 309 See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, p. 87. 310 L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious. Lee’s sociological argument can be profitably set alongside Taylor’s genealogical criticism of all forms of “subtraction stories” of Western secularization.

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The positive recognition of the amazingly various non-religious forms of human existence, increasingly visible in secularized Western societies, is an important social scientific task. The recent resurgence of the “nones,” meaning people who do not affiliate with any organization traditionally regarded as “religious,” is undoubtably one of the most significant developments in the contemporary existential scene.311 The world’s “fourth largest religion,”312 i.e. “no religion”, demands much more attention than it has received in the past, in social sciences, as well as in Christian theology. Most importantly, people who define themselves as not having or practicing any religion should be considered in their own right, not only as negatively related to religion (“non-religious”), as if they were lacking in something, but as positively living a human existence where traditional religion does not play any significant role. How will such a positive recognition of the non-religious be accomplished? As the empirical study of non-religious people develops, the plurality of being without religion comes increasingly to the fore. Clearly, there is no one way of being secular, as there is no one way of being religious, but one’s non-religiosity becomes conceived of and put into practice in a great variety of ways.313 These include various non-religious organizations, too, although non-religious people are generally less likely to group together than religious people are.314 Multidimensional and transdisciplinary approaches are needed to recognize the non-religious in their radical plurality. Groundbreaking steps towards recognizing the concrete reality of nonreligious human ways-of-being-in-the-world were taken by the first academic conference on the subject, The Culture of Unbelief, which gathered practically all of the then-leading researchers on the subject to

311

American sociologist Barry Kosmin supposedly coined the term “nones” to signify the growing non-religious populations in modern, principally Western, societies. Kosmin was also a founding editor of the first academic journal devoted exclusively to the study of secularity and non-religion, Secularism and Nonreligion, in existence since 2012. Phil Zuckerman holds the founding chair of the first Secular Studies Program in the United States at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. 312 See P. ZUCKERMAN, “Introduction”, as cited in L. LEE, Recognizing the NonReligious, p. 2. 313 In her seminal study (Recognizing the Non-Religious), Lee, for example, examines contemporary English non-religion from the perspective of (i) how it shows itself in everyday-life, (ii) how it regards human corporality, (iii) how relationships and solidarities are lived by the non-religious, (iv) how non-religion appears in public life, and (v) how it creates new existential cultures. 314 See P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious, pp. 197-222.

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Rome in 1969.315 The conference, sponsored by the Vatican Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers, was seminal in paving the way for an empirical study of the culture of non-religion. Consequently, the “Vatican conference” did not offer only philosophical insights on the concept of unbelief, but also social scientific considerations on how not being religious is practically lived in the increasingly complex modern world. At this initial stage of the study of non-religion, the emphasis was nevertheless still quite strongly on the cognitive aspect of non-religion, as if not being religious mainly concerned actively un-believing the factual claims of (Christian) religion.316 This in its turn unavoidably had a rather flattening effect on the taken view on non-religion, as if this could be principally regarded as negatively related to religion and thus in the singular “the culture of unbelief.” In sum, just half a century ago, a positive recognition of the plurality of non-religious cultures (in the plural) had only taken its first steps in social scientific and theological reflection. Things had changed quite a lot by the time the world’s leading researchers on secularity and non-religion gathered again in Rome in May 2019, at the Pontifical Gregorian University, for the conference this time tellingly named Cultures of Unbelief.317 The conference brought to the fore that non-religious human forms-of-life are not anymore studied in the negative singular in contrast to a specific form of religious belief, but increasingly as positive human ways-of-being-in-the-world which differ as much amongst themselves as they do with respect to religion. Indeed, when human beings become more and more free to choose their own existential stance–made possible by diverse secularization processes–, they seem to choose incredibly diverse understandings about the meaning of their existence in the universe. Furthermore, secular people also put their non-religious worldviews into practice–express them–in a staggering variety of ways. The named 2019 conference also featured a striking exhibition by British photographer Aubrey Wade in the Gregorian atrium in which different ways of being 315

See R. CORPORALE–A. GRUMELLI, The Culture of Unbelief. See the Address of Pope Paul VI to the conference participants on 27.03.1969, where the notion of religious unbelief is regarded in a strongly contrastive manner as “non-believing” the religious claims, even as “protesting” against these. Quite in the spirit of the Vatican II (see GS, n. 36), however, Paul VI readily acknowledged the autonomizing effect of secularization in the modern world but criticized the supposed marginalization of God in modern culture. 317 The conference proceedings have not yet (November 2023) been published. But see S. BULLIVANT–M. FARIAS–J. LANMAN–L. LEE, “Understanding Unbelief. Atheists and Agnostics Around the World”. 316

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“non-religious” around the world were portrayed.318 The scientific study of non-religious cultures is undoubtedly still in its infancy, but the decisive steps have now been taken towards considering them in their own right: not so much as negatively related to religion but as positively creative human ways-of-being-in-the-world. The way forward proceeds, as typically in all new areas of scientific study, through patient empirical observations of the object under scrutiny. Yet, it must also include–perhaps especially in this case–more philosophical investigations of the issue, in particular concerning the terminology used in it. First and foremost, the term “non-religious” has clearly been a religiously determined denomination to signify those “dissenters” who choose not to identify with any religion. Hence, the term has its original home in an overwhelmingly religious culture, where belonging to an organized religion has been the general premise (which has been the case in practically all human cultures until quite recent times). The resurgence of the “nones” in secularized Western societies (with a few non-Western exceptions, most importantly Japan and Uruguay319) therefore calls for a revision of the received sociological, as well as theological, terminology. Only by developing a more accurate conceptuality can the multifarious non-religious reality become more visible to the social scientific and theological study. Again, as in all scientific research, the challenge is to adopt such a conceptuality which would let one get an intellectual grasp on the studied reality, without, however, molding it too strongly to the methodological tools. How could the diverse voices of the non-religious or secular people really become heard, then? In one recent study,320 for example, the existential self-identifications of non-religious people from the three European countries of Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands were empirically studied, and their respective correlations with varying attitudes towards religious belief were further delved into. First of all, the proposed terminology of the Oxford Dictionary of Atheism321 was adopted in the study to give more space to the respondents’ different “non-religious” identities: besides “nonbeliever,” the 318

See www.aubreywade.com/unbelief [accessed 03.10.2023]. The exhibition was based on the sociological findings of S. BULLIVANT–M. FARIAS–J. LANMAN–L. LEE, “Understanding Unbelief”. 319 For a global perspective on secularity and non-religion, see P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious, pp. 30-52. State-promoted secularity, like in Communist China, presents a case of its own, of course. 320 M. LINDEMAN ET AL., “Nonreligious Identity in Three Western European Countries”. 321 S. BULLIVANT–L. LEE, A Dictionary of Atheism.

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identity categories included “atheist,” “anti-religious,” “agnostic,” “secular,” “spiritual but not religious” (“SBNR”), “spiritual seeker,” and “other,” where the participants of the study could themselves briefly describe their own existential/spiritual stance (ranging widely from “Christian humanist” and “Buddhism oriented seeker” to “yogist” and “Wicca”).322 As was to be expected, the connotations of the proposed identity terms varied greatly even amongst the named three, culturally fairly similar, European societies, but their correlations with differing attitudes towards religion showed consistent tendencies.323 A further interesting point to note is that in particular the connotations of the term “secular”–the smallest “non-religious” group in each of the countries according to the study–varied considerably amongst the three societies. Self-avowedly “secular” people presented a relatively high belief in God in the Netherlands but low belief in God in Denmark, for example–the “secular”, as well as the “secularization” it supposedly issues from, is clearly more of a terminus technicus of the academic community than a readily understandable concept of the general population.324 It can be hoped that as the social scientific study of the growing non-religious populations continues to develop, an even more accurate and detailed terminology will continue to form itself in tandem. That will be needed for contemporary global hyperpluralism to become taken more into consideration also from a “non-religious perspective.”325 As the world changes, our language changes with it.

2.2 The Deeper Terminological Question: Beyond Mere “Non-Religion” Moving from a mere negative assertion of the increasing “non-religiosity” 322

See M. LINDEMAN ET AL., “Nonreligious Identity in Three Western European Countries”, p. 293. 323 See M. LINDEMAN ET AL., “Nonreligious Identity in Three Western European Countries”, pp. 300-301. 324 See M. LINDEMAN ET AL., “Nonreligious Identity in Three Western European Countries”, pp. 298-299. 325 The scientific study of non-religion has until recently largely concentrated on Western European populations where the generally used terminology also has its original home. The quickly growing non-religious populations of the North American societies will also require more study in the future (see J.P. BAGGETT, The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience for the U.S. and J. THIESSEN–S. WILKINSLAFLAMME, None of the Above for Canada). On Indian non-religion, see J. QUACK, Disenchanting India.

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of Western societies to a more positive recognition of the growing existential plurality After Secularization is about developing a sense for the substantial nature of being non-religious in contrast to conceiving of it as merely, insubstantially, “without” religion.326 It is understandable that while a secularization process is still going on, the ensuing minority of religious dissidents first becomes regarded as lacking something: namely the religion of the majority population. “Non-religion” is a linguistic sign of a secularization still in the process of unfolding its inner potential. By contrast, when a secularization process is nearing its end, or even already has reached it, making the amazing variety of human ways-ofbeing-in-the-world practically visible to the general consciousness, the insubstantial concept of “non-religion” loses much of its meaningfulness to describe those people who choose not to affiliate with any official religious tradition. Their “choice” of non-religion might not be so much a conscious decision but a personally experienced simple fact. Consequently, if the social scientific, as well as theological, study of non-religion wants to keep pace with the changing of the (existential-spiritual) times, they have the urgent task of developing such an approach to the increasing non-religiosity which will let it show itself as it really is, without considering it as principally lacking something (religion). To recognize more positively and substantially non-religious people (or, to be more precise, the non-religious population in South-East England studied in her research), Lee suggests a relational approach to nonreligion.327 This approach treats non-religious people as intentionally setting themselves apart from, or “othering” themselves, from what is regarded as “religion” in their cultural context.328 It is only laudable to want to treat the secular as substantially doing something and not merely as the natural and supposedly objective human state of affairs when the illusions of religion finally have been shaken off (which has been the great temptation– unfortunately all too often fallen to–of modern Western accounts of secularization). In reality, the different seculars have a complex genealogy and a positive character of their own, as all human cultural constructs do.329 326

See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, pp. 49-69. For a similar approach to non-religiosity in the California Bay Area (and more broadly in the USA), see J.P. BAGGETT, The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience. 328 See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, p. 58: “Following Campbell (2013) [Towards a Sociology of Irreligion], this project is based on the relational premise that people interact with religion qua ‘religion’s other’, and that an account of dispositions of ‘otherness’ is therefore necessary”. 329 What is specific to the modern Western secular is that it has striven to, and also often succeeded in, masking its own substantive agenda as “objectivity” or 327

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Consequently, to in fact acknowledge the non-religious human realities (instead of presenting any one of them as the neutral starting point to all the others), the first step is to recognize their culturally and existentially creative nature. In light of the relational approach, then, Lee aspires to recognize the substantiality of non-religion by regarding secular human forms-of-life as religion’s “others,” i.e. exactly as “non-religion.” It must be asked, however, if this is the most fruitful way of rendering visible the non-religious human ways-of-being-in-the-world. Does not the notion of “non-religion” still belong to a cultural context, where the presumption of religion (or even the religious presumption) still reigns, as if religion nevertheless constituted the undeniable point of reference to all human existential stances? Was not “religion-centric thinking” precisely the thing that “recognizing the nonreligious” wanted to avoid in Lee’s project?330 To give more substantiality to her concept of non-religion, Lee compares it to the notion of non-violence where the negative prefix does not indicate a mere lack of something but even more importantly a substantial purport of something intrinsically positive.331 In addition, Lee illustrates in various ways how her non-religious study groups positively exhibit their nonreligiosity.332 Nevertheless, if the starting point for the study of secularity and non-religion remains the concept of religion, can one even hope of arriving at a positive recognition of such a non-religiosity that should not even be termed “non-religion” anymore, because it according to its own self-understanding already finds itself altogether outside the religious language-game? To be certain, that is a question more for theology and the philosophy of religion than for the social scientific study of it, which according to its intrinsic methodology must remain as intimately related as possible to the empirical reality under scrutiny. And in empirical reality, it must be said, even in the most secularized Western countries, non-religion cannot but “neutrality.” For the unmasking of modern secular ideology, especially the postcolonial critics have been pivotal (see T. ASAD, Formations of the Secular, pp. 1-17, 181-201). 330 See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, p. 54. 331 See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, p. 203. Even the Sanskrit term for non-violence, ahimsa, retains the privative a-prefix, even though its elaboration already has a long history in Indian culture. Could it be that violence denotes such a profound trait in human evolution that one either participates in it or others oneself from it, without there being the third possibility of separating oneself completely from the dynamics of violence? Would the same be true about religion? 332 See L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, pp. 65-69.

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present itself as either negatively or at least privatively related to religion. This is not because there would not exist any perfectly nonreligious individuals, but because the world remains as religious as it ever was, and anybody who desires to understand it cannot help relating, in some way or another, to religion. Even though we After Secularization have come to understand that one can be as truthful and moral a person as any even without affiliating with an institutional religion, the same must be said about religious individuals, if one does not want to enclose oneself into an illusionary, anti-religious conundrum.333 In sum, approaching the growing non-religious populations of our societies precisely as non-religious, namely as developing human forms-of-life in contrast to religious ones, is a well-justified enterprise in contemporary social science that strives to be genuinely impartial and objective. Yet, a more speculatively-minded observer cannot help asking whether this will be a permanent state of affairs in the social scientific study of secularity and non-religion, especially when “[t]he systematic study of secularity is, in a very real sense, a new adventure in human understanding.”334 It might be true that in the concrete reality, secularization still proceeds in relation to religion by creating religion-free or nonreligious societal zones.335 Philosophy and theology, for their part, cannot but pose the more abstract (but no less real for that!) question about a possible endpoint to the transformation process of (European) secularization. Would one already now be able to imagine a perfect nonreligion After Secularization? The idea is not that secularization would proceed unidirectionally towards an ever-greater decrease of religion (that would presuppose just as metaphysical and substantialist account of religion as the contrary religious presumption does). The idea is, rather, that secularization creates an everlarger space for human transcendentality to personally explore and decide what to believe and what not to believe. And human transcendentality and freedom, if it really is to be acknowledged as freedom, fundamentally 333

The latter arguably happened with the short-lived “New Atheist” movement of the early 2000s, which precisely explains its “short-livedness” and incapacity to enter into the deeper historical dynamics of our time (for a general interdisciplinary overview, see C.R. COTTER–P.A. QUADRIO–J. TUCKETT, ed., New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates). 334 P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious, p. 10. Speculative thinking, even in its post-metaphysical posture, cannot help anticipating the results of empirical scientific research. 335 On the paradoxical, surprisingly “religious”, character of “non-religious” Americans, see J. BLANKHOLM, The Secular Paradox.

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cannot be judged in advance as leading to this or that decision–only the concrete, and factually open, future will tell a posteriori. After Secularization the future lies radically open before us. The historical transformation process which we in the West are accustomed to call “secularization” may or may not then lead to decreasing religiosity, but that is not the (philosophically, and thus theologically) interesting point. By contrast, what is becoming more and more visible now after the resurgence of the nones and what empirically lets us speak about the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, is that people are freely choosing their own existential-spiritual stance and are thus not to be controlled by any one social scientific theory. To get at least some grasp of the non-religious populations, the social scientific study of them may choose to explore the ways, in which they “other” themselves from religious beliefs and practices, but this should not be considered as emptying the very nature of being without religion as traditionally understood–the speculative heart of the matter lies elsewhere.336 The concept of Radical Secularization is designed to lead to a recognition of this fundamental aspect of the Western secularization process. The main issue concerns rendering practically possible (or perhaps better put, practically visible) human existential freedom. If we manage to imagine a completely nonreligious human form-of-life, so nonreligious in fact that its real character could not even be conceptualized in contrast to religion, that would already in itself signify a speculative acknowledgement of the inviolable human freedom to decide one’s own spiritual way-of-being-inthe-world, without succumbing to any existentially pre-given categories. Such a truly postreligious or radically secular terminology is still very much missing in social science, as well as in philosophy and theology.337 336

Even if one would agree with Nietzsche that the modern liberal conception of personal freedom is an illusion, or rather a weakness (see Beyond Good and Evil, §21), it can be acknowledged in a phenomenological approach as the way in which human existence characteristically is regarded in a contemporary Western context After Secularization. The mere fact that we have formed for ourselves the idea of thoroughgoing individual freedom tells a great deal about ourselves, regardless of how illusionary, or fragile, that idea would in reality be. 337 See again the evocative words of M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 172: “Concepts for thinking about post-religious man do not yet exist.” Lee rightly points out that while there is a growing interest in “inter-faith” and “multi-faith” discourse in social science, as well as in politics in general, the “non-faith” dimension often becomes neglected: “Recent attempts have been made to welcome ‘people of all faiths and none’, but this clumsy and inflexible phrase demonstrates the problem” (L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious, p. 59). From a theological perspective, one must observe that whereas the “theology of religions” or of

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The first step towards developing one, would, arguably, be to unhyphenate the word “non-religious” to simply “nonreligious”, to accentuate its own substantial and positive import.338 A thoroughly nonreligious human wayof-being-in-the-world is not adequately described in any essential reference (especially not in contrast) to religion, but it stands existentially on its own feet, so to speak. On one hand, the terminological choice of nonreligion acknowledges the de facto religious starting point to all human existential and spiritual searching (it remains nonreligion).339 On the other hand, it points towards such a human form-of-life that would be genuinely without religion (so nonreligious indeed that it should not even be called “nonreligious” anymore). As it turns out, “Radical Secularization” is a more adequate name for genuine nonreligion. It can be imagined only historically, taking into account the overwhelmingly religious history of the human species, and contemporarily, considering the Western resurgence of the nones amidst a globally growing religious human population–both aspects must be captured in the same movement of the intellect, as it were. But is it even in theory possible to conceptualize a complete nonreligion as Radical Secularization, or is the lack of adequate language (Sprachnot) too overwhelming? For that matter, would it not be a rather Munchausenian attempt to lift oneself out of the swamp of actual human existence by one’s own hair, actual human existence being so imbued with religiosity as it is?340 That is a philosophical question to the highest degree, but is it one that modern Western philosophy of religion is able to grapple with? Is there place for Radical Secularization in the typically modern Western formation of the philosophical enterprise? With these questions our attention is turned from the social scientific approach to nonreligion to the more philosophical one, in which theology should find its nearest dialogue partner.

“religious pluralism” is already an established academic field of study, a “theology of nonreligion” is sorely missing. 338 This is in fact what, for example, P. ZUCKERMAN–L.W. GALEN–F.L. PASQUALE, ed., The Nonreligious does, in contrast to L. LEE, Recognizing the Non-Religious. 339 The original “ubiquity of religion” in human spiritual evolution will be discussed in Chapter 4 of this study. 340 It is not in the least beside the point to refer here to the dream recorded by Wittgenstein in which he felt a deep relief after realizing that the Munchausean illusion really is just an illusion (but perhaps a very revealing one): “But let us talk in our mother tongue, and not believe that we must pull ourselves out of the swamp by our own hair; that was–thank God–only a dream, after all. To God alone be praise!” (L. WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, the diary entry of 11.04.1937).

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3. Modern Western Philosophy of Religion and Radical Secularization Modern Western philosophy of religion–like every other human discourse about things religious–has a “religion” of its own. This “religion” may share more or less with other “religions,” without there necessarily being any one thing in common to them all. Anyway, religion, in reality, is always given in concretely existing cultural traditions that we call “religious.” Ignoring this point would lead to much conceptual confusion, as well as spiritual violence when one discusses “religion” (in the abstract singular) without perhaps realizing that it concerns only one among many possible religions (in the concrete plural). A fundamental problem with the typically modern European attitude towards religion–seen clearly in the classical secularization paradigm, too–might not be so much its prediction of a unilinear decrease of religiosity in modernizing societies. The problem is, rather, the underlining assumption that there is one such thing as “religion” tout court, about the destiny of which one could even in principle make any general predictions. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith was among the first to argue in the 1960s,341 and as more recent social scientific work confirms,342 what in fact can be identified and studied in human reality is highly multifarious and diversified “religious stuff,”343 which by no means forms any one, clearly definable entity. What do the early apocalyptic Jesus movement and modern institutional Christianity have in common? Or what does either of them have in common with Zen Buddhism or with the “religion” of the Maya or of the Australian Aboriginals? Something, to be sure, but this “something” can in no way be a priori assumed. Indeed, the “religion” one is talking about may tell a great deal more about the one talking than the thing supposedly talked about, as many postcolonial scholars have demonstrated.344 Consequently, instead of taking the meaning of “religion” for granted, one should always first ask how the word becomes used in the hermeneutical context at hand, which is the same as to ask what is being attempted at with the named “religion.” Quite concretely in the present context, then: what is the “religion” of modern Western philosophy of religion, and does it have place for religion’s radical Otherness which the concept of Radical Secularization points at? 341

See W.C. SMITH, The Meaning and End of Religion. See P. BOYER, The Fracture of an Illusion. 343 As P. BOYER, Religion Explained, p. 37 puts it. 344 See T. ASAD, Genealogies of Religion; T. MASUZAWA, The Invention of World Religions. 342

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3.1 The “Religion” of Modern Western Philosophy of Religion Following the typically modern Western division of history into the three epochs of the Old (ancient), Middle, and New (modern) Ages, German Catholic philosopher Robert Spaemann distinguished three different ways of relating philosophy and the Christian religion.345 In the ancient world, Christianity presented but one competing worldview among numerous others. In Greco-Roman civilization there was no established distinction between philosophy and religion, Spaemann reminds us, as there was no established distinction between religious and other societal life. Furthermore, philosophy was regarded not merely as a theoretical investigation of the nature of reality but also, and even more importantly, as offering a way of living in practice, a bios.346 As the Christian vita nova differed to a varying degree from other ways-of-being-in-the-world on offer at that time, Spaemann describes the relationship between Christianity and philosophy during the first centuries after Christ as rather “ambivalent.”347 The decisive question was to which degree, then, a certain philosophy differed from the received fullness of the Christian Revelation. Early Christian thinkers could find much of value in certain, especially Platonistic, philosophies, whereas other Greco-Roman forms-of-life were to be clearly denounced.348 In short, in ancient times, the Christian way of life competed with other existential visions on how the good, meaningful, and spiritually fulfilling human life should be seen and lived. The situation changed profoundly when Christianity gained a dominating position around the Mediterranean world during the centuries following the Constantinian turn (symbolized by the closing of the Athenian Academy and the founding of the Monastery of Montecassino in AD 529). As Spaemann points out, only during the Christian Middle Ages did philosophy become what it is today in modern Western academia, i.e. a theoreticalfundamental university discipline. As the Christian Revelation became 345

Here I am following Spaemann’s essay “Christentum und Philosophie der Neuzeit” in R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, pp. 65-91. 346 Although Spaemann does not refer to him, French philosopher Pierre Hadot did more than anyone to revive the ancient view of philosophy as a way of life (see P. HADOT, Philosophy as a Way of Life). 347 R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 66. 348 Spaemann reminds us of the classical division of Greco-Roman religion into mythical-poetical, political, and natural or philosophical religion (see R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 66). Early Christians typically rejected the first two but could enter into a critical dialogue with the third (see AUGUSTINE, City of God, IV, 27; VI, 12). On the early Christian “Enlightenment” and criticism of traditional religiosity, see J. RATZINGER, Truth and Tolerance, pp. 172-179.

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practically accepted across Europe as the one true vision of reality and humanity’s place in it, philosophy was lowered to an ancillary position with respect to theology. During medieval Christendom, philosophy was allowed to only talk about the possible, impossible, and necessary, because theology already possessed a near-complete knowledge of the contingent reality, at least when it came to the good life and the destiny of humankind, Spaemann states.349 In sum, during the Latin Middle Ages the relationship between philosophy and Christian religion was one of subordination. Philosophy was considered a “handmaid of theology”, philosophia ancilla theologiae.350 Finally, in Spaemann’s analysis, European modernity is characterized by philosophy’s aspiring to emancipate itself from Christian religion and theology.351 To begin with, the emancipatory movement of modern Western philosophy proceeded by trying to integrate the contents of the Christian Revelation into itself, or by trying to understand Christianity better than it understands itself. The modern break was prepared by late medieval nominalism which enlarged the contingent exponentially: a neat division between the two realms of philosophy and theology loses its meaningfulness when reality, even its fundamental structures, becomes increasingly considered as a radically contingent creation. Now–the modern Western now–, philosophers have gained more courage to think independently about religion, too. “Religion” begins to take form as an intellectual and societal sphere of its own, about which it is possible to “philosophize.” It is as if after centuries of Christian monopoly on existential issues, educated people would have started to think more broadly on reality and humanity’s place in it. It is only understandable that during this initial stage of modern Western philosophy’s emancipating itself from theology, it strived to do this by integrating into itself Christian semantic contents–this was the only language then available. Especially in the great rationalist, and successively idealist, philosophical current of the European continent, modern Western thinking aspired to liberate itself from its Christian past through a kind of philosophical

349 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 68. Even though experience was also given a certain authority on new, contingent knowledge in the Middle Ages, its moving space was undoubtedly rather sparse. The early fourteenth-century Aristotelian John of Jandun, for instance, claimed that Aristotle had fulfilled human intellectual capacities to such a degree that the relation of later generations to him was like that of monkeys to human beings (see S. KNUUTTILA, Järjen ja tunteen kerrostumat, p. 17). 350 See ST, I, q. 1, a. 5, sed contra. 351 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 72.

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apriorism, as Spaemann puts it.352 The fundamental conviction was that aposterioristic, contingent facts cannot offer any road to the necessary truths of religion which accordingly only can be aprioristic.353 The task which modern Western philosophizing about religion consequently set for itself was to deduce religious contents aprioristically from the necessary structures of human consciousness (Kant) or of reality in itself (Hegel). One theological subject after another, from God and Creation to Fall and Redemption, was, with varying success, shown to coincide with fundamental aprioristic truths revealed by philosophical research. The modern philosophical concept of “religion” as an entity of its own has its genealogical roots in this context, we can state with reference to Spaemann’s summary.354 What is most crucial here for our purposes is not so much the modern Western attempt as such to emancipate from religion by integrating its central contents, but the manner in which it was attempted. Modern Western philosophy posited itself as the absolute arbiter on what can be accepted from traditional religion. Instead of religion itself, it was the necessary, aprioristic structures of human consciousness and/or of reality that should offer the criteria on true religion. Whereas in all previous (“pre-modern”) thinking about the religious, religious statements were regarded as having the ultimate authority in themselves (this was, indeed, what made them “religious,” or pertaining to a higher, trans-human nature), in modern Western philosophy of religion, on the contrary, it became the philosopher themselves who were to utter the last word on religious truth. This had to 352

See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, pp. 75-83. In the empiricist tradition, by contrast, Christianity was characteristically approached through the concept of “natural religion” to be either affirmed (by Locke, for instance) or denounced (by Hume). As will shortly be argued, however, empiricism shares with rationalism the typically modern Western attitude to religion as something to be humanly scrutinized before it can be personally accepted. 353 Lessing’s well-known dictum belongs to this context: Zufällige Geschichtswahrheiten können der Beweis von notwendigen Vernunftswahrheiten nie werden (from his 1777 work Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft). 354 To claim that the modern Western conception of “religion” was thoroughly innovative, without any precedents in foregoing use of language (as William Cavanaugh, for instance, seem to do in The Myth of Religious Violence, pp. 57-122), is, nevertheless, unwarranted, as even a brief look at ST, II-II, q. 81, a. 1 will suffice to demonstrate. Religion, this much is obvious for the classical Christian tradition, is about relating to “a superior nature that men call divine” (as Thomas states in reference to Cicero’s De inventione). Not what religion is, but how it becomes practiced, is the issue. In that respect, there certainly has been a great change in and by the coming of Western modernity.

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do with the general nature of the modern break, by and through which the Western mind gradually moved from existing in the accusative, or as an object for reality’s action, to existing as active subjects in reality.355 This is one of the most revolutionary transformations of the form of human transcendentality, and its decisive significance for Radical Secularization will be clarified in Chapter 3 of this book. The modern Western attempt at an emancipation by an integration of the Christian Revelation into a philosophical apriorism must be considered as having failed, Spaemann states.356 Contemporary, largely post-metaphysical philosophy, does not even pretend anymore to be able to unveil the aprioristic, necessary structures of reality and human consciousness.357 Rather, the modern philosophical project of integrating religion into itself has lost its meaningfulness, to the point that we now have to wonder how it in the first place could appear so tempting.358 A short answer to this question is that it appeared tempting in an age where Christianity was practically the only available spiritual option and the Churches the only producers of deeper cultural contents. Of course, in such a context of Christendom, philosophy aspired to cover Christian theology by its own intellectual apparatus, considering itself potent enough to uncover the necessary, aprioristic nature of reality. As one starts to develop one’s own language, there is no other alternative than to take the already-available languages (in this case, the only available language of the late Christendom) as one’s point of reference. Otherwise, one would remain mute forever. Nevertheless, the typically modern Western attempt at an integrating translation of religious contents into a philosophical apriorism has not disappeared altogether from the intellectual scene, not even from Christian theology itself. Spaemann describes Karl Rahner’s transcendental method, for instance, as still standing in the modern tradition of philosophical apriorism.359 Arguably the most influential Catholic theologian of the 355

See G. HYMAN, A Short History of Atheism, p. xvii. See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 87. 357 According to Habermas, since Hegel there has been no alternative to postmetaphysical thinking, i.e. a thinking which self-consciously abandons (i) identity thinking, (ii) the doctrine of Ideas, and (iii) the redemptive view of theory (see J. HABERMAS, Postmetaphysical Thinking, p. 29). Post-metaphysical philosophy no longer competes with religion concerning the right way to salvation, but neither can it be reduced to empirical science. Rather, even in its post-secular habit, philosophy “should continue to pursue its task of articulating a justified understanding of ourselves and the world in the light of the best available scientific evidence” (J. HABERMAS, Postmetaphysical Thinking II, p. xiii). 358 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 87. 359 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 89. 356

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twentieth century, Rahner first developed a philosophy of religion which “in a certain sense”360 offered an aprioristic scheme for what God would have to say were he to speak to us in the first place.361 The factual, historical and aposterioristic Christian Revelation would consequently only fill in the necessary, aprioristic scheme unveiled by philosophical investigation. Here one can identify the same fundamental-phenomenological structure that has determined much of modern Western thinking about religion: a certain human way of thinking is presented as the absolute criterium for the reality or not of religious truth-claims (“were God to speak, he would have to say this, or at least in this manner”). It makes little difference whether the human criterium claims an aprioristic necessity or not. The sheer attempt at dominating theology by philosophical means (theologia ancilla philosophiae!) is what matters and what makes it characteristic of modern Western philosophy of religion, in Spaemann’s analysis. In a post-metaphysical perspective, though, the modern philosophical search for necessary, aprioristic structures has lost its meaningfulness. A way of philosophizing which has renounced all metaphysical exaltation of itself over contingent reality, only to be known aposterioristically, has difficulties even to make sense of philosophical apriorism. Amidst the hyperpluralizing world, we are increasingly learning to confront radically different ways of conceptualizing human existence in reality. Any claim to existential superiority simply flies in the face of all the different forms-oflife now readily available for anyone in today’s world. After the ancient competitive, the medieval subordinative, and the modern emancipatory relationship between philosophy and theology, the contemporary post-modern predicament seems to be open for unprogrammed coexistence between theology and philosophy, Spaemann’s analysis suggests. In a post-modern light, both theology and philosophy understand themselves as the contingent, historically shaped human enterprises that 360

Gewissermaßen, Spaemann writes (R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 89). A central question in Rahnerian studies is, of course, precisely in which sense his transcendental philosophy determines his approach to Christian theology, or whether it, on the contrary, only leads to a deeper understanding of the latter. In any case, in his mature thinking, Rahner is quite clear about the necessary historical, and thus a posteriori mediation of human transcendentality and, consequently, of the Christian Revelation (see K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 140-142). Whether this still amounts to philosophical apriorism with respect to the Revelation is an issue to be argued about and not to be presumed, as Spaemann unfortunately does. 361 Here the reference (which Spaemann does not mention) is unquestionably to Rahner’s early work Hearer of the Word.

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they really are, each with their own aims and methods, without any need to compete or subordinate each other.362 Spaemann highlights Schelling and Solovyov as early forerunners to the post-modern turn in philosophizing about religion.363 Is Schelling’s “positive philosophy” or Solovyov’s “sophiology” to be classified as philosophy or theology? As it happens, any clear distinction between theology and philosophy seems to be impossible if taking human historicity, including the historicity of the Christian Revelation, seriously, and aspiring to reflect profoundly on that. Even human thinking on the supposedly absolute claims of religion will be contingent on itself and cannot claim any necessary, aprioristic status. Instead of destroying all thinking about religion, a post-modern razing of the modern bastions between philosophy and theology can open new ways of conceptualizing the Christian Revelation intellectually.364 Spaemann points especially to Balthasar’s theological aesthetics as an example of how to approach Christianity without philosophical apriorisms.365 According to theological aesthetics, as envisioned by Balthasar, understanding the Christian Revelation is not like understanding a mathematical or logical formula, supposedly necessary in itself. Christian theology is more like understanding a work of art. To take Spaemann’s example, whoever really understands Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (the socalled Jupiter Symphony), at the same time grasps its inner necessity. In Mozart’s final masterpiece everything is as it should be, and nothing could be otherwise. Nothing in it is arbitrary, but every bar is exactly as it must be to make the perhaps greatest symphony of all time. Yet, even though one should understand the inner necessity of the Jupiter, one cannot say that one could have written it as well, because one grasps how necessarily it must be to be what it is. Neither was there any necessity that Mozart should have composed the piece. Rather, it was a product of his unique musical genius. In sum, we have to make do with an aposterioristic necessity here, which in no way repeals the contingency in question. Instead, both the inner necessity and the outer contingency seem to ascend to a higher third which is the reality of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. Thus, an aesthetic approach to reality overcomes the metaphysical binary between contingency and necessity for

362

See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 91. See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, pp. 85-86. 364 From a Catholic ecclesiological perspective, see H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Razing the Bastions: On the Church in this Age. 365 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, pp. 89-90, referring to H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord. 363

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a higher third (tertium quid).366 A similar approach can be adopted with respect to the Christian Revelation, as Balthasar demonstrated with his Herrlichkeit. An aesthetic modus procedendi should even be adopted if we are striving to express the Christian message intelligibly in a post-modern, post-metaphysical context, which at the same time is the context of contemporary global hyperpluralism, as was argued above in Chapter 1. The demand of letting go of the aprioristic, metaphysical necessities may awaken criticisms of a certain sort, but the fundamental theological challenge of expressing the Christian Revelation as an aposterioristic necessity should not sound so strange in a Christian context. As Spaemann reminds, the entire idea of contingency (that something could also be otherwise than it is) is of Biblical origin and was really developed only in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Middle Ages.367 It can even be questioned whether the idea of contingency could make sense without the idea of a transcendent Creator who freely decides to make a world with an inner necessity of its own (the world as a work of art). Be that as it may, future thinking about religion seems to belong to such a cooperative relationship between philosophy and theology, where they tackle common issues in their own ways without any pre-given methodological decisions, Spaemann concludes.368

3.2 Radical Secularization in Modern Western Philosophy of Religion? The post-modern challenge of overcoming the metaphysical dualism between theology and philosophy does not concern only those who decide to engage themselves in a concrete religious tradition (“theologians,” that is) but in equal measure those who situate themselves outside them (“philosophers,” according to the modern use of the word). If post-modern theology is searching for aposterioristic ways for expressing the inner necessity of the Christian Revelation, post-modern philosophy is called to offer such a presentation of itself which would show itself as it is in itself, i.e. without any aprioristic, necessary ties to its religious past. Even here, then, Radical Secularization as thorough nonreligion appears as a central 366

Such an aesthetic approach can be adopted for the entire universe, too (see J.F. HAUGHT, The New Cosmic Story, pp. 139-141), opening up for truly Christian metaphysics, to be briefly sketched in the final chapter of this book. 367 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 90. On how Latin medieval philosophy, under theological influence, developed surprisingly modern notions on modalities, see S. KNUUTTILA, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy. 368 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, p. 91.

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sign of our times. Moving beyond the conceptuality of modern Western philosophy of religion into real post-modernity is much more difficult than it seems at first sight. It is not enough simply to state one’s nonreligiosity or personal autonomy from the religious past. Rather, Radical Secularization must be profoundly expressed to its very roots for it to be what it claims to be. But can Radical Secularization find a place in modern Western philosophy of religion? English Reformed theologian and philosopher of religion Christopher Watkin speaks of the “old game” of modern Western philosophy of religion which has moved between the two coordinates of “imitative” and “residual” atheism.369 Post-Enlightenment philosophical emancipation from the religious tradition took the form of more or less explicitly displacing God and other religious contents with purely human creations. Religion–more concretely Latin Christendom–had left deep marks both in the material and the spiritual landscape in the West during its millennial hegemony. Modern European atheism started, according to Watkin’s analysis, by imitating religion by human means. Feuerbach and Comte, for instance, denied God by putting Human Being in his place. This kind of imitative atheism is clearly parasitical on the religious tradition it tries to free itself from. The language-game is still very much like the religious one. Only the outer names have been changed, whereas the inner contents (Reason, Freedom, Justice, etc.) retain their metaphysical character, now revealed as human conceptions. Again, it is quite understandable that philosophical emancipation from religion takes an imitative form in its early phase. It is only by imitating others that one can begin to develop a language of one’s own.370 Residual atheism, on the other hand, aspires to take a step further and express a kind of non-religion which would not remain as parasitically dependent on its religious past as imitative atheism does. Camus envisioned an atheism which would boldly embrace the empty, absurd world left by the Death of God without clinging to any secular substitutes. Nietzsche had already sensed the definitive disappearance of the metaphysical foundation to religious belief in Truth, Justice, and Meaning.371 Now the challenge of mature people is to learn to live without the consolations of religion, as well as its secular imitations, residual atheism proclaimed. Yet, even this type of modern Western atheism retains a relationship with its religious past, namely an ascetical one. Religion is regarded as something one has to learn to do without; it is still present there as the object for an ascetical 369

See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 1-11. See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §5ff. 371 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 5. 370

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renunciation. God might be dead, but his death is still being mourned, with an understandable nostalgia for him hovering around. To imagine and conceptualize a genuine atheism, which would be a complete nonreligion all the way through, has shown itself to be a really difficult task for modern Western philosophizing about religion, as Watkin clearly brings to the fore. The imitative and residual atheisms of modern Western philosophy of religion have offered ample occasions for theology to step in and mark their dependence on the religion they so strongly desire to distance themselves from. The popular(ized) phenomena of a supposed “religious turn” in contemporary French phenomenology, in particular, and an arguable “postsecular” movement more generally, testify to the failure of modern Western philosophy of religion to produce such an atheism true to its name.372 A profound enough acknowledgment of the Death of God is still very much on its way, as Nietzsche knew it would be even after the fact itself had happened.373 Nevertheless, there can already be found several interesting attempts in contemporary philosophy of religion at envisaging such a non-religiosity that would show itself as truly without or beyond religion. Accordingly, Watkin speaks of the “new game” of the “post-theological integration” which aspires to overcome the dualisms of the old game between atheism and theism by assimilating religious contents into itself.374 The posttheological integration, which Watkin studies in its contemporary French context, does not even begin to deny religious truth-claims (as imitative atheism does), nor does it content itself with recognizing something as irremediably lost (as residual atheism does with respect to religion). Rather, it accepts the challenge of developing a thinking definitively after theology: The prefix ‘post-’ is merely an indication of chronology: to think in the West today is to think after God, with concepts and a tradition bequeathed by theology and theologically informed thinking, and even if the aim of such thinking is to be atheological it cannot avoid the task of disengaging itself from the theological legacy.375

The central aim of this current of contemporary thought is, in Watkin’s words, to “move beyond both parasitism and asceticism to a posttheological integration that cuts the theological root of parasitism without

372

See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 10, 239. See F. NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, §125. 374 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 11-16. 375 C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 12-13. 373

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renouncing its fruit.”376 Both the imitative and residual atheisms of modern Western philosophy of religion still shared the dualistic worldview of the religious tradition. Imitative atheism had tried to repopulate the higher or transcendent religious realm with secular or immanent notions. Residual atheism had seen the futility of any such attempt, but could not help feeling the loss of the earlier metaphysical principles. Post-theological thinking, by contrast, claims to have emancipated itself from religion already to such a degree that it is prepared to try to integrate originally religious contents into its own nonreligious way-of-being-in-the-world.377 The supra-sensory metaphysical world is no longer an option, but this does not mean that all religious concepts previously connected with it should be forgotten. On the contrary, a post-theological integration of Truth, Meaning, Justice, perhaps even of God himself, is called for after the fully accepted Death of God. There is no place here to enter more in detail into the enlightening analysis that Watkin makes of the post-theological philosophy of Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Quentin Meillassoux, arguably the three contemporary French thinkers who have carried the post-theological enterprise the furthest. For our purposes it is enough to note Watkin’s conclusion that the parasitism and asceticism of modern Western atheism still haunt Nancy, Badiou, and Meillassoux.378 Despite their speculatively impressing attempts at developing a truly post-theological thinking–a thinking completely emancipated from religion, not by denying it but by integrating its persisting contents into itself–they do not succeed in escaping all reference to God, or to a trans-human intentionality of some sort, Watkin claims. In particular, Watkin emphasizes the question of “fundamental philosophical orientation” which in all three thinkers ultimately appears to include its atheistic conclusion already in its starting point.379 Alternatively, the “inaugural moment of thought” may contain a surprising reference to something beyond it, leaving the door open to some kind of trans-human intentionality and meaningfulness, nevertheless.380 It would be absurd to expect that a genuinely post-theological thinking would pop up fully formed. When we accept the radically historical and contingent character of being human, it is clear that the development of truly nonreligious thinking will demand some time. Human cultural history, in general, and Western tradition, in particular, is too imbued with religious notions. As religiosity continues to be very much alive even After 376

C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 239. See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 240. 378 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 243. 379 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 241. 380 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 242-243. 377

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Secularization, the post-theological integration appears rather as a continuing task for the post-secular thinking as this aspires to translate the enduring religious contents into a secular, democratically available language.381 To consider this task as even in principle finished would be to fall to the same kind of metaphysical assumption which one wanted to free oneself from in the first place. Instead, post-theological thinking after the Death of God can be understood only as a constitutionally open task. The question of fundamental philosophical orientation or the starting point for thinking remains crucial for the success of the post-theological project, as Watkin emphasizes. How can one start in such a way and at such a place that (i) one’s nonreligiosity would not appear as a self-fulfilling prophesy (i.e. a presumed atheism of one kind or another), and (ii) one would not, despite all appearances, leave any possible point of contact to a trans-human intentionality (theism)? The two dimensions coincide in the task of finding a truly nonreligious, i.e. radically secular, starting point for thinking. After Secularization it has become relatively easy to describe oneself as non-religious, but it remains as difficult as ever to become truly nonreligious, all the way through to one’s existential roots. As argued above, modern Western philosophy of religion came to produce a religion of its own as it wanted to establish itself as the sole arbiter of truth even in the religious sphere. In Western modernization, religion became something optional, the relevance and truth of which one could debate just like one debated all the other controversial issues of human existence. This contrasts strongly with the pre-modern attitude towards the transcendent which instead commanded awe and submission from human beings. In modern Western philosophy of religion, the “domestication of transcendence”382 manifested itself as the attempt to evaluate religious belief on the basis of human intellect alone. The modern Western philosopher (obviously a huge abstraction, but suitable for the present purposes) first presented a philosophical (aprioristic or not) worldview and then studied whether or to what degree religion fitted into it. This kind of intellectual procedure is, however, completely impotent in approaching traditional religion, as well as evolving nonreligion. As will be argued more in-depth further on, such an anthropocentric approach simply lacks the spiritual energy to confront either religion or nonreligion. Instead, the modern Western philosopher typically ended up creating religion anew according to their own philosophical presuppositions. In this perspective, the history of modern Western philosophy of religion is largely 381 382

This is the core of Habermas’s post-secular project, as argued above. See W.C. PLACHER, The Domestication of Transcendence.

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a history of ever-new but more or less short-lived creations of religions (the Cartesian one, the Spinozist, the Kantian, the Hegelian, the Feuerbachian, the Marxist, the Existentialist, the Analytic one etc.). Watkin claims to find a similar structure in the post-theological thinking of Nancy, Badiou, and Meillassoux. There is a fundamental philosophical pre-decision–be it Nancy’s “dis-enclosure,” Meillassoux’s “demonstration” or Badiou’s “decision”–which risks at supposing what was to be proved, or, alternatively, leaving the door anyway open to the religious temptation.383 Certainly, “atheism is the only possible contemporary ethos, or way of holding oneself in the world,” as Watkin describes Nancy’s position.384 The situation is made difficult, however, by the continuing presence of highly intelligent and morally exemplary religious persons in all parts of contemporary secular societies, including the academic world. Thorough nonreligion or Radical Secularization may seem self-evident to radically secular persons themselves, but, in reality, it is far from being self-evident. In such a situation, philosophical non-religion must still argue for its own existence against religion. It is no wonder, then, if even supposedly posttheological thinking continues to carry vestiges of modern circular atheism in its fundamental philosophical orientation. The atheistic circularity is quite nuanced in all three thinkers studied by Watkin. Indeed, he is at great pains to demonstrate its existence in the first place. In certain contemporary philosophers, therefore, post-theological thinking has already moved a good way towards a genuinely nonreligious way of understanding one’s form-of-life. In other philosophers, by contrast, the modern Western (ultimately impotent) attitude towards religion is still to be rather clearly seen. Watkin refers to Martin Hägglund’s interpretation of Derrida’s thinking as “radical atheism” as an example of the sort.385 It claims to find a radical atheism in human existence which it, alone, has brought into it. Philosophy declares to overcome theology only by molding theology into its own image. Such an impotent approach to religion has characterized modern Western philosophy of religion and made it difficult for it to develop thoroughly nonreligious thinking. There has not yet been enough intellectual potency to totally overcome the traditional metaphysical dualism between theism and atheism, religion and non-religion. Now, let us consider briefly the typically modern Western difficulty concerning religion as it presents itself in Hägglund’s elaboration of “radical atheism,” and, subsequently, “secular faith.”

383

See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 241. See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 13. 385 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 243 (note 3). 384

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3.3 M. Hägglund’s “Radical Atheism” and “Secular Faith” Swedish-American philosopher Martin Hägglund presents his concept of radical atheism as a profound reassessment of the entire trajectory of Jacques Derrida’s influential work. Against the popular notion of a “religious turn” in Derrida’s thinking, Hägglund claims to “demonstrate that a radical atheism informs his writing from beginning to end.”386 From an exegetical point of view Hägglund’s reading of Derrida is not without problems, of course.387 We, however, want to concentrate exclusively on Hägglund’s notion of a radical atheism as such, regardless of its (in)adequacy with respect to Derrida. Spurred by the inner logic of Radical Secularization we ask whether Hägglund’s radical atheism succeeds in overcoming the vicious dualisms of modern Western philosophy of religion. Does it really succeed in denoting a non-religiosity that is truly nonreligious (not contrasting with religion but being in perfect Otherness to it)? These two questions, in reality, coincide with each other, as has been shown above. Only by developing a concept of thorough nonreligion can we speculatively overcome Western metaphysics for contemporary global hyperpluralism. According to Hägglund, his radical atheism differs from traditional atheism in that it not merely denies the existence of God–understood as the fullness of being, in itself infinite and immortal–but our very desire of God.388 For as long as we can follow written history, humans have imagined a trans-human, i.e. divine realm which would be exempt from worldly finitude and temporality, as well as all the vicissitudes which come with it (vulnerability, suffering, and most importantly, death). This higher realm beyond time and becoming has been regarded as the true goal of human existence. It has given meaning to humans’ daily toil and constant caretaking in this “valley of the tears.” Confronted with the unavoidable insecurity of all things human, religion has offered the promise of a transcendent redemption in the beyond: even though everything would be shattered–as it sooner or later will be in every human life destined to die–, there is another place where every tear will be wiped away and mourning and crying and pain will be no more (as Rev 21:4 puts it). Traditional atheism has simply strived to unveil the religious postulation of a transcendent realm as an illusion: as a matter of fact there is no place 386

M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 1. John D. Caputo, for instance, defends a religious (or better, radical theological) reading of Derrida against Hägglund’s radical atheism in J.D. CAPUTO, “The Return of Anti-Religion”. And for a further perspective, see S. SHAKESPEARE, Derrida and Theology, pp. 204-208. 388 See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 1. 387

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beyond time and becoming but this material world is all there is. In difference to traditional atheism’s blunt denial of religious longings, Hägglund’s radical atheism claims to read, à la deconstruction, the religious desire of God, immortality, and eternity against itself, from within it, as Hägglund explains: A traditional atheism construes finitude as a lack of being that we desire to transcend, whereas radical atheism argues that finitude is the condition for everything that can be desired. For the same reason, radical atheism is not a critique that simply denounces the religious tradition. Rather, the logic of radical atheism allows one to read the religious tradition against itself from within.389

This kind of atheism is “radical,” not in the sense of being directed towards a unitary root or ground, but in the sense of seeking to show that the supposed root of religion uproots itself and the supposed ground of religion undermines itself, as Hägglund notes with reference to Derrida.390 Radical atheism does not claim simply that human existence is essentially finite and temporal, and that is why religion is not true (or that it, in any case, does not concern us). It claims that what we all, religious and nonreligious persons alike, really desire, is to survive the present moment and to live on. Hägglund’s basic idea is as simple as it is profound. In their constitutive temporal finitude, human beings constantly struggle to survive in the face of numerous outer threats to their existence. Only that these threats are not “outer” to human existence, but they define its inner essence, which is one of finite life. Instead of undercutting the meaningfulness of human existence, its temporal finitude is the very condition of possibility for its meaningfulness (a condition always under threat), Hägglund claims. To desire immortality is consequently an internally contradictory desire, because it would impair the very possibility of desire which is that of surviving a given moment and living on. The deconstructive logic of radical atheism, as developed by Hägglund, aspires to expose this true character of human desire. It moves beyond the atheist claim that God is dead to the

389

M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 208 (note 12). See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 207 (note 1). Nevertheless, Hägglund appears to think that there is a single root or ground to religion, namely the desire of immortality (subsequently unmasked as the desire to live on). Such an essentialistic reading of religion can be challenged, however, as will be shown in the last chapter of this study in light of the Christian Revelation. 390

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radically atheist claim that God is death.391 But is this the same as Radical Secularization? In the radically atheist logic, what makes us struggle to live on despite all the atrocities and misfortunes that haunt human life is not the promise of a fullness of being in a transcendent beyond, but the radical finitude of human existence itself. To exist as a human being is to enter the effort to survive in a world which is not of our making but which precisely for that reason requires a constant care and contribution. Finite human life does not exist in itself, but needs a continuing personal investment by those who live it. Human existence cannot be externalized to any trans-human intentionality for it to have meaning. Rather, human existence can only have meaning in and through itself. Consequently, in radical atheism, human existence has arguably come into itself completely by acknowledging its essentially temporal and finite nature and by recognizing its raison d’être in that very temporal finitude. It is crucial to note here, however, that Hägglund’s radical atheism does not mean a definitive acceptance of human finitude, as if one could content oneself with the fact of relationships ending, interests vanishing, and, ultimately, people dying. On the contrary, radical atheism designates a constant struggle against the finitude of everything human by desiring to prolonging it a bit further, always a bit further. I will die if I do not eat, so I desire to eat. Our relationship will wither if we do not take care of it, so we desire to take care of it. This is no desire to overcome the constitutive finitude of human life, but a desire to survive, to live on. We can come to accept our human finitude only at the moment of our death. Until then we desire to overcome it by and through living on (and how tragic is it if this vital desire dies before the physical death!). Hägglund’s concept of radical atheism wants to expose this finite (better, infinite finite392) desire to live on as the fundamental human desire tout court, even of the religious desire of a supposed eternity. A religious person can be genuinely perplexed about how non-religious people can confront the reality of death without any solace of immortality. This, however, is a profound illusion, as radical atheism tries to demonstrate. According to Hägglund, “[i]mmortality is not the end that one desires and hopes for but the end that one fears and struggles against, since it would put an end to mortal life.”393 This one mortal life that we human beings have (that we in a certain very real sense are) is the condition of possibility for everything

391

See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 8. See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 3. 393 M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 147. 392

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meaningful in human existence.394 An eternal life would be literally nothing. In spite of its conspicuous Heideggerian influence,395 Hägglund’s elaboration of radical atheism offers a highly creative conception of human existence, a kind of sign of our times in the contemporary secularized West. For instance, it is much more than a contemporary reenactment of twentiethcentury French existentialism’s clearly residual atheism. However happy he would be in his absurd enterprise, the hilltop remains a possible goal for Sisyphus, even though he does not succeed in conquering it permanently.396 But to conquer something permanently is a self-contradictory and lifedefeating goal to begin with, Hägglund points out. Rather, as the logic of radical atheism claims to show, human life receives its meaningfulness from the constant struggle to roll on, so to speak. The hilltop is not only a practically unattainable goal but already theoretically destructive illusion. Human existence is not to be considered ultimately absurd (with respect to what?) but constitutionally finite and temporal. The core-idea of radical atheism is deceivingly simple in itself, but it offers a hermeneutic key to deconstruct the whole of our religious past from within itself, Hägglund asserts with reference to Derrida.397 To be really radical, radical atheism even must be able to unmask the religious desire of immortality as the constitutive human desire for (more) mortal life. Only in that way could it overcome the imitative and residual dualisms of traditional atheism for a genuine a-theism, i.e. a human existence without God (or any other supposed “fullness of being” outside humanity). Whether Hägglund’s concept succeeds in that is quite another issue, however. To begin with, his readings of the Christian tradition in light of radical atheism are sparse and quite restricted, mainly concentrating on St. Augustine and a couple of medieval mystics (who obviously have a strongly otherworldly orientation in their spirituality). A serious attempt at struggling 394

Does not the radical atheist desire to survive this moment–every “this moment”– nevertheless contain in itself a point of contact with the religious desire of eternity? In a certain religious perspective, at least, eternity could also be understood, not as something outside time altogether, but as the eternal relevance of a given temporality, the infinite worth of a given finitude (along these lines, see H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Eschatologie in unserer Zeit, pp. 74-85). 395 See Heidegger’s analysis of “Dasein’s Being as care” in Being and Time, §41, as well as his “Existential projection of an authentic Being-towards-death” in Being and Time, §53. In a later work of his, Hägglund names precisely Heidegger’s Being and Time with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as the most important sources for his thinking concerning human freedom, finitude, and temporality (see M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 394 [note 19]). 396 See A. CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. 397 See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 208 (note 12).

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with the theological giants of our religious tradition is conspicuously absent in Hägglund’s argumentation. Instead, one gets the impression that Hägglund is so fascinated by his own idea of radical atheism that he desires to find it everywhere (the capital vice of all metaphysicians).398 That is, of course, no wonder if radical atheism reveals the very condition of possibility for finding meaning in human existence. In the end, then, Hägglund’s concept of radical atheism appears more as a metaphysical axiom than a potent way of conceptualizing human existence after the Death of God. It still appears to move in contrast to traditional religion, not in perfect Otherness with respect to it. Behind the concept of radical atheism there indeed lurks the general metaphysical worldview of Derrida, as interpreted by Hägglund. To enter more deeply into Derridean metaphysics, main attention should be paid to his concept of “spacing” (espacement), “the first word of any deconstruction, valid for space as well as time.”399 For our purposes, however, a more suitable approach to understanding reality in general according to Derrida is his concept of “trace.”400 In Derrida’s metaphysical vision, reality is never given in its fullness, as it is “in itself,” but only as a trace (the French trace). Against the classical metaphysics of presence, Derrida maintains that every present passes as soon as it comes to be, or rather it is never present in reality as such but only as written down as a trace (hence the typically Derridean priority of writing over speaking). A trace has no being in itself but has its meaningfulness only in being remembered or otherwise taken care of. Any presence, then, is the essentially mortal presence of a trace which retains a presence of a past only in so far as it becomes actively remembered.401 How does (Hägglund’s) Derrida know that reality only appears as a trace and never as it is in itself? Because there is change and movement, in a word, happening, in the world. And there could be no happening, if being were given in itself. To be in itself, in full presence, is to claim an eternal presence, because were it possible for one to lose being or die, one would not have been in itself in the first place. But as we all too well know, everything in the world is submitted to decay and death. Human existence requires continuous effort and care-taking to exist. We all move in the middle-ground between being and non-being, and it depends on us how far 398

See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, p. 243 [note 3]). See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 2, referring to J. DERRIDA, On Touching, p. 181. 400 Derrida developed the logic of the trace (or of différance) throughout his oeuvre. From the perspective of religion, see E. BARING–P.E. GORDON, ed., The Trace of God: Derrida and Religion, with the essays of Hägglund and Caputo, in particular. 401 See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, pp. 1-2. 399

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we will proceed on that ontological no man’s land. Nevertheless, Hägglund adds with his radical atheist twist, the tracestructure of reality is nothing to be grieved over, because it is what makes happening possible to begin with. Or better put, of course it is to be grieved over as we grieve over all occasions lost and relationships destroyed and lives wasted, but it is not to be overcome. Overcoming the trace-structure of reality and the related essential finiteness of human existence would mean stepping beyond reality and life altogether. Beyond the trace-structure of reality there is only nothingness, whereas all happening is by and through the trace (and its trace, and its trace, and so on ad infinitum). As Hägglund summarizes the issue: This impossibility of being in itself is not a privation, since nothing could happen if being were given in itself. Rather the impossibility of being in itself opens the possibility of everything we desire and the peril of everything we fear.402

To be certain, there is a strong metaphysics at work here (with obvious Parmenidean roots). Building on Derrida, Hägglund claims to demonstrate not only how reality de facto is but how it must be what it is. The trace-structure of reality is presented as the aprioristically revealed (ultra-)transcendental structure of all possible reality. Radical atheism flows then quite naturally, even necessarily, from this fundamental metaphysics. This is the same story which has been told innumerable times by modern Western philosophers, as explained above with the help of Spaemann and Watkin. First, the modern Western philosopher of religion presents an aprioristic philosophy about the necessary features of reality. Second, they demonstrate how a certain understanding of religion fits in or does not fit in in the proposed metaphysical scheme. From a post-metaphysical perspective, however, this whole intellectual procedure appears as incredibly naive, as if we human beings could have access to the necessary structure of reality. We can certainly analyze how reality appears to us, but to claim that all reality coincides with that is no intellectually serious thought After Secularization. It certainly does not seem the right manner of overcoming the dualism between theism and atheism for a genuine nonreligion. With Hägglund’s Derrida-inspired radical atheism, we are not yet at Radical Secularization. Perhaps Derrida-Hägglund does not even want to step outside the inherently violent struggle between atheism and theism? Perhaps one sees the possibility of violence as a necessary precondition for opening to the

402

M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 122.

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Other in its complete alterity?403 Hägglund’s radical atheism remains an atheism in its more or less explicit denial of God and other religious claims pertaining to a trans-human meaningfulness in reality. Moreover, in its claim to understand religious people better than they understand themselves, it reveals very clearly the inherently violent nature of modern Western philosophy of religion. A religion predetermined by a metaphysics is a human creation. Whether it then becomes affirmed or negated is a completely secondary (and ultimately uninteresting) issue. With his radical atheism Hägglund aligns himself with the long array of modern Western philosophers who have founded a religion in the image of their own metaphysics. Despite its fascinating and almost suggestive character as a form of atheism, Hägglund’s atheism does not reach the stadium of genuine nonreligion After Secularization. It is still in the violent process of emancipating itself from traditional religion. Hägglund tries to give a more positive and constructive formulation of his fundamental idea in his more recent book This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free.404 Instead of radical atheism, Hägglund now speaks of a “secular faith” as a “condition of intelligibility for any form of care.”405 Hägglund’s secular faith is faith in human life having meaning and significance in spite of its internal finitude and fragility; or again, not in spite of but because of its internal finitude and fragility. Exactly because human existence is constitutionally temporal and finite and thus always in risk of being annihilated, it needs our continuous care and engagement. Thus, like its negative relative radical atheism, secular faith is the positive personal determination to survive this moment and live on towards the uncertain future. Moreover, to have secular faith “is to acknowledge that the object of our faith is dependent on the practice of faith.”406 Meaningful human existence is not there in the trans-human reality simply to be passively received, but it rests on us actively upholding and cherishing it by and through our human form-of-life. In sum, in secular faith the object of devotion (a friendship, a love-relationship, our community-life, our relationship with nature) is inseparable from the practice of devotion itself. In religious faith, by contrast, the object of devotion is understood to 403

See M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 43. For an adequate theological criticism from a post-secular perspective, see D. BIERNOT–C. LOMBAARD, “Finitude, Temporality and the Criticism of Religion in Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free (2019)”. For Hägglund’s response to the many criticisms of his immanent critique of religion, see M. HÄGGLUND, “Marx, Hegel, and the Critique of Religion: A Response”. 405 M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 49. 406 M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 7. 404

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exist independently of the practice of devotion itself, Hägglund claims.407 The God or the immortality (or any other form of infinite presence), which religious faith directs itself to, is supposed to be there anyway, even if nobody would believe in him/it. Religious faith is about whether we happen to believe in God or not, whereas God exists, nevertheless. Unlike secular faith, in religious faith, therefore, the object of faith is separable from the practice of faith itself. Theologically put, then, Hägglund’s secular faith is a straightforward fides qua by which we struggle to sustain our essentially fragile human form-of-life, whereas religious faith claims an extra fides quae as an object for our faith which only makes human existence meaningful in the final analysis. According to Hägglund, it is the other way round. The factual (non-)existence of God is not the issue, but how a supposedly religious faith would affect our life and relationships. In Hägglund’s view, to put it bluntly, a genuinely religious faith would be disastrous for human existence, because it would not allow us to pursue human life as an end in itself.408 Religion tries to assure us that even if everything fails (as it inevitably will in our death), there will still be something to hope for, namely our true goal in the trans-human plenitude (God, nirvana, tao etc.). Secular faith recognizes, on the contrary, that this life is all we have and thus requires all our concern and care-taking. Ultimately, secular, not religious, faith is the source of our responsibility for our existence and its fragile future on the planet, Hägglund affirms. Again, however, Hägglund does not simply denounce religion in a vulgar Marxist manner as diverting our attention to an illusionary beyond. Rather, through readings of such “religious” figures as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund aspires to show how even they (when concerned with the affairs of this world) were essentially animated by secular faith. A shrewd deconstructionist, Hägglund chooses a religious text–be it Lewis’s A Grief Observed, Luther’s personal letters concerning the death of his beloved daughter, or King’s final speech before he was assassinated–and reads them against themselves from the inside, not anymore as revealing a religious faith in a fullness beyond time but a secular faith in the infinite but inherently vulnerable worth of human existence here and now. Particularly illustrative of Hägglund’s concept of secular faith is the striking (mis)reading he makes of Taylor’s A Secular Age. Hägglund lauds Taylor’s shifting of the discussion on secularization onto the conditions of 407 408

See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 7. See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 9.

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belief today, understood rather as existential practices than intellectual theories (Taylor’s “secularity 3”).409 Yet, he criticizes Taylor for what Daniel Dennett has called “believing in belief in God,” i.e. acknowledging the indispensable value of religious belief even though one would not personally share it.410 Completely ignoring Taylor’s phenomenological method in A Secular Age–his attempt at describing the spiritual landscape in a (Western) secular age, with all its innumerable dilemmas and cross pressures–Hägglund claims Taylor to be explicitly “defending” religion in existential terms.411 For instance, Hägglund accuses Taylor of asserting that “secular notions of fullness ultimately cannot lead to a fulfilling life,” because human beings according to Taylor should have “an ineradicable bent to respond to something beyond life.”412 In reality, in the context of the quoted passage, Taylor is exploring the various and inherently contradicting takes on existential fullness in our secular age, where none of them enjoys a selfevident stature. Indeed, the whole quote from Taylor would be: “If the transcendental view is right, then human beings have an ineradicable bent to respond to something beyond life.”413 Taylor’s phenomenological construction of spiritual fullness and religious/secular attitudes to it can and should be discussed and even criticized, but Hägglund’s reading of it reveals much more about his own thinking than Taylor’s. Hägglund is especially discontent with Taylor’s discussion of our attitudes towards death in a secular age. In Taylor’s analysis, death continues to offer a privileged place to explore different dimensions of time beyond the secular, empty time as a mere succession of events. In particular, the death of our loved ones still ushers many secular people to consider if there would be “something more,” however difficult this “something more” would be to conceptualize. And this has not only to do with the psychological pain of losing a loved one. Somehow love itself, according to its inner unconditional character, calls for eternity, alle Lust will Ewigkeit, as Taylor quotes Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.414 This might be the ultimate reason, Taylor 409

See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, pp. 53-54. See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 54; the reference is to D. DENNETT, Breaking the Spell, p. 221. 411 See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 54. 412 M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 55. 413 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 638 (italics AP). Such misquotations and misreadings unfortunately undermine Hägglund’s whole argumentation concerning his secular faith, giving it a metaphysically violent flair. 414 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 720 (the reference is to Zarathustra’s Rundgesang in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, LIX, III). The conviction of love’s 410

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suspects, for why many non-religious people continue to have recourse to religious funerals, even though they otherwise do not officially practice any religion. In a secular age, Taylor states, “we have the greatest difficulty finding a way of marking this, a ceremony for death which will speak to our strongest feelings.”415 Hägglund does not even want to examine the highly complex cross pressures of our secular age concerning death, because he already knows for certain how time is metaphysically constituted and how our attitude towards death consequently must be even in practice. Dismissing right away Taylor’s attempt at trying to make some sense of different ways of experiencing time, Hägglund univocally states that there is “no analogy between the eternal presence of God and our attempts to hold on to the time of our lives.”416 As the concept of secular faith makes clear, human beings are not craving eternity but are striving to live on, to survive this moment and to retain its relationship with a future that has not happened yet. Everything meaningful in human existence depends on the commitment to cherish and sustain the inherently fragile. A supposed eternal gathering of time would not be time at all, but a complete void and nothingness (death, in a word).417 Such is Hägglund’s secular faith. But does it succeed in becoming radically secular? The inevitable annihilation, sooner or later, of all human practices, especially the death of our loved ones, obviously strikes at the very meaningfulness of human existence. At the same time, however, it is precisely what makes our life potentially meaningful, secular faith beautifully confesses. The fundamental fact of human existence is that our life must be taken care of and cultivated to be able to exist in the first place. Nothing is self-evident in human existence, nothing can be taken for granted. That is the reason for why Hägglund does not share Taylor’s suggestion that many secular, non-religious people continue to desire religious funerals because some “need for eternity” might still exist in them. Rather, Hägglund believes, it is because radically secular or genuinely nonreligious practices of communal mourning are still quite underdeveloped. As Hägglund rightly notes, the situation is changing quickly in contemporary Western societies as different forms of secular funerals are being developed and an increasing number of people are choosing them. Still, a richer and more nuanced language is needed to “express our faith in the value of finite lives and our unending reality goes back to Plato in the Western tradition, and is affirmed by St. Paul in 1 Cor 13:1-13. 415 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 723. 416 M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, pp. 57-58. 417 See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 57.

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commitment to keeping the memory of the dead.”418 Radically secular human ways-of-being-in-the-world are only gradually emerging (and their emergence might be as fragile as themselves). In a sense, Hägglund goes on to develop a genuinely nonreligious or radically secular language in the second part of This Life.419 There he offers general outlines of a societal human form-of-life built on secular faith, i.e. on the acknowledgment that this life is the only life we have and that it precisely for that reason is unconditionally valuable. In such a society it would become possible for every citizen to own their secular faith in complete spiritual freedom, or in other words, to decide freely how to use their finite time. A finite life is too finite to be wasted in a heterogenous existence. Only a full personal autonomy could hope to live up to the demands of secular faith, and only a secular faith can hope to express a full personal autonomy, one could paraphrase Hägglund’s argumentation. “Democratic socialism” is Hägglund’s name for his secular utopia. There, in contrast to all forms of alienating capitalism, we would fully understand the double-truth that the life of the society depends solely on our engagement and that the life in society makes our meaningful lives possible. Without entering into Hägglund’s societal vision in more detail, it is worth quoting in full how religious rituals would become substituted420 by secular ones in his democratic socialism, to illustrate the possibility of Radical Secularization in his case: Under democratic socialism, we will not be baptized in the name of God, but it will make sense to have ceremonies that acknowledge and celebrate the newborn as unique, fragile individuals to whose well-being we are committed: from each according to her ability, to each according to her need. Likewise, the institution of marriage will no longer be mediated by religious faith or capitalist property rights, and there will be multiple forms of institutionalizing partnerships. For these very reasons, however, the partnerships in question will be explicitly recognized as ends in themselves. Thus, it will make all the more sense to have ceremonies that acknowledge and celebrate those who are willing to take the risk of making a life-defining 418

M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 66. See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, pp. 173-389. 420 Or to be more precise, Hägglund’s secular ceremonies are no “substitutes” for religious ones, because they on the contrary reveal the true meaning of baptism, marriage, and funeral as secular avowals of ourselves as finite, interdependent beings (see M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 388). In democratic socialism, religion, as it were, fades away without any remains, like fog at daybreak. Similar was Marx’s view about the factual disappearance of religion with the realization of communism (see A. MACINTYRE, Marxism and Christianity, pp. 103-116). 419

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It is part of the secular logic that there is no guarantee that we will ever reach democratic socialism. And even if we did, it would not amount to an eschatological consummation beyond time. Rather, a practical realization of democratic socialism would be as fragile and vulnerable as the march towards it. In Hägglund’s vision, it all depends on that “we grasp that everything is at stake in what we do with our finite time together,”422 on our owning the fundamental secular faith, that is. Only then can we continue to fight against the alienating structures of our capitalist societies and move forward–“not toward the new Jerusalem but toward the new Memphis, the new Los Angeles, the new Chicago, the new New Haven, and the new New York,” as Hägglund memorably ends his book.423 Both of Hägglund’s two fundamental concepts briefly studied here, “radical atheism” as well as “secular faith,” offer an alluringly beautiful analysis of human existence as constitutionally finite and temporal, fragile and vulnerable–and exactly for that reason so infinitely precious and worth taking care of. But are they examples of Radical Secularization as this concept is conceived of in the present study? Indeed, they already go a long way towards conceptualizing such a human way-of-being-in-the-world which would be nonreligious all the way through. For radical atheism and secular faith, the (non)existence of the old metaphysical, ontotheological God is really no issue at all. Instead, they aim at illuminating the radically finite way of being human, which would unmask any desire of God and immortality as a desire of, not eternity, but of more life. But can religion tout court be unmasked in that way? Has Hägglund really succeeded in understanding the one true nature of religion? For a postmetaphysical temperament the whole project of revealing the true nature of religion as such (as secular faith, indeed) would seem hopelessly naive, as well as spiritually extremely violent. And a religious person perhaps cannot 421

M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, pp. 387-388. M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 389. 423 M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 389. 422

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see any point in erecting an essential barrier between secular and religious understandings of time, as the Swedish Lutheran Archbishop Antje Jackelén notes in her review of Hägglund’s This Life.424 Hägglund’s concepts still move in contrast to religion, not in an absolute Otherness to it. A true overcoming of traditional religion would need much more spiritual potency. The practical reality of Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion might still be a more or less distant dream, as Hägglund also acknowledges with respect to his democratic socialism. But the mere fact that we already can dream of Radical Secularization and grope at formulating a concept of it, tells much about our present Sitz im Leben, at least in the post-secular Western societies. The intuition of Radical Secularization presents a sign of our times which one even in Christian theology and in the Church should take into account in the post-Vatican II aggiornamento of the Gospel.

4. In Search of Radical Secularization: The Habermasian Example to be Followed As emerges from the foregoing analysis, Hägglund’s “radical atheism” and “secular faith” do not present instances of the kind of thorough nonreligion that Radical Secularization points to. They arise from Hägglund’s own metaphysics by which he tries to uproot religion from within or to unmask its faith as, in fact, secular. Instead of disposing of religion, Hägglund ends up founding a (secular) religion of his own which does not even lack rituals of its own, including eschatological imaginary (as democratic socialism). In this Hägglund is anything but unique in modern Western thinking about religion. On the contrary, modern Western philosophy of religion is but a row of new religious reformers who claim to emancipate themselves from the religious tradition. Overcoming the Western metaphysical tradition and its ontotheological religion has turned out to be very difficult, indeed. Admittedly, a dualistic, inherently violent manner of relating to religion may be understandable or even necessary during the process of secularization, but it does not yet reach the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. From the perspective of the latter, the whole procedure seems rather meaningless (why nolens volens create new religions when one can live perfectly well without any, if one so decides in our liberal democracies?). Nevertheless, the ongoing project of modern Western philosophy of religion testifies, in intellectual terms, to how difficult it really is to free oneself completely from traditional religion and to become secularized to the very roots of one’s personal being. Radical Secularization 424

See A. JACKELÉN, “Hägglunds brist på teologiskt djup är häpnadsväckande”.

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still remains very much an abstract idea, rather than a concrete reality. We need a more potent manner of approaching the religious tradition, if we ever are to succeed in conceptualizing a completely nonreligious form-of-life, not in contrast to religion but in perfect Otherness to it. Yet, how could one even in principle acknowledge the existence of a religion and declare oneself as nonreligious, both at the same time, as it were? But this can be meaningfully done, whereas atheism and all other negative ways of relating to religion are at heart senseless. Traditional religion in its absoluteness–which in the monotheistic tradition springs from the absoluteness of God as the transcendent Truth, Goodness, and Beauty itself–cannot be meaningfully denied (if not as an intellectual suicide),425 but it can be proclaimed as a total Other, not concerning an individual as the inviolably free human person that they are.426 At least many people believe this to be possible After Secularization in the post-secular West. To put it briefly, then, Radical Secularization or perfect nonreligion might be the only meaningful way of relating to religion outside the religious form-of-life itself, amidst the ongoing epochal shift. A radically secular person would thus recognize the existence of a religious way-ofbeing-in-the-world, without, however, participating personally in it in any way. They would be an interested outer observer of religion, so to speak. In this way, Radical Secularization would really succeed in going beyond the violent binary of religion versus non-religion for the concrete reality that is much more complex and hyperplural than that. Furthermore, Radical Secularization might be our only way of truly reconsidering our religious past. But first, Radical Secularization must itself be thought in its radical Otherness with respect to traditional religion. Consider the example of Jürgen Habermas, apparently totally “tonedeaf” to religious truth-claims.427 His incapacity to hear any intrinsic meaningfulness in religious utterances does not make him indifferent to religious traditions, though. On the contrary, he openly acknowledges that Western cultural genealogy is fundamentally religious (Christian) and that the future of our liberal democracies–the influence of which is spreading all over the globe–crucially depends on how we manage to put our religious heritage to a secular, publicly available use.428 This was the central point 425

See W.V.O. QUINE, Mathematical Logic, p. 150. Altrove, c’è altrove. Io non mi occupo dell’altrove, as the protagonist Jep Gambardella states in the final scene of Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning movie La grande bellezza. 427 See J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, p. 114. 428 It is right to speak with emphasis of “us” here, because the future of secular liberal democracies essentially depends on all of their citizens, i.e. on all of us. 426

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with his “post-secular” turn, as analyzed earlier in this chapter. Recognizing the fact that “religious communities continue to exist in a context of ongoing secularization,”429 Habermas now calls for a “complementary learning process”430 between religious and secular citizens to safeguard the functioning of our constitutional democracies. In a key-position in this process there is the task of constructive translation of religious semantic contents into more universally available secular language. Habermas gave a concrete example of that kind of (post-)secular translation in the same context in which he popularized the very concept of the post-secular.431 With respect to the burning question of genetic engineering, Habermas considers the theological locus classicus of Gen 1:27, often invoked by religious believers to defend the infinite worth of all human persons, including human embryos. His interesting post-secular reading of the Biblical passage proceeds in two stages. First, he notes that human Gottesebenbildlichkeit, being created in the image and likeness of God, means that human beings are free persons like God. For this reason, human persons can return God’s love, i.e. enter into a relationship of mutual recognition with God, and, consequently, with other human beings. Comme il faut in a contemporary Western intellectual context, Habermas adds that it is not necessary to really believe in this God of love to understand what is fundamentally at stake with being created in his image. Second, Habermas points out that human Geschöpflichkeit or creatureliness is a necessary condition for understanding adequately their Gottesebenbildlichkeit. Creation in Biblical sense is no mere emanation from divine nature but a free, personal decision of God himself. Consequently, there remains an absolute difference between the transcendent Creator and the immanent creature. Because the Biblical God is both God the Creator and God the Redeemer, as Habermas emphasizes, he is not bounded by the physical universe but can call into life something radically Other which exactly in its utter Otherness from God can relate to him as personal, free, and thus responsible, beings. Again, Habermas regards it as necessary to mention that one does not have to believe in the theological premises to see that the kind of dependency involved in human Geschöpflichkeit is of a completely different nature than a causal one. The former renders human freedom and mutual 429

J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, p. 104. See J. HABERMAS, “Religion in the Public Sphere of ‘Post-Secular’ Society”, pp. 222-224. 431 See J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, pp. 114-115. Habermas gives a global genealogical account of the unfolding of the secular reason in his recent Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. 430

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responsibility possible in the first place, whereas the latter would annihilate the very reality of being a person, i.e. an individual who can take their position freely and responsibly among other individuals with equal fundamental rights and obligations. In genetic engineering, however, there would admittedly be creation, too, but without the unconditional difference necessary for true personal freedom. On the contrary, genetic engineers (or the hopeful parents who resort to their services) would only causally give birth to new human beings in their own image, now in the totalitarian meaning of the term. Habermas closes his reading with the unnerving question: “Would not the first human being to determine, at his own discretion [nach eigenem Belieben], the natural essence of another human being at the same time destroy the equal freedoms that exist among persons of equal birth in order to ensure their difference?”432 Habermas’s post-secular exegesis of Gen 1:27 can of course be discussed. Does he manage to both retain the authentic meaning of the religious statement of “being in the image of God” and express it in a secular, universally available language? Can the crucial difference between divine creation and human creation be meaningfully captured without at least presupposing the real existence of the transcendent God? Similar questions can and must be posed at the Habermasian project of post-secular translation as a whole, as has also been voluminously done in recent scholarship.433 A priori it can never be certain that any secular translation of religious contents will succeed in reaching a large audience (potentially all reasonable persons of the language-community in question). A post-secular translation can only be done and evaluated a posteriori, in the constitutionally temporal and contingent reality in which we humans live and aspire to mutual understanding. This is no criticism of the Habermasian post-secular project, but arguably its very heart. Consequently, the key to understanding the Habermasian post-secular is the other Habermasian concept of the postmetaphysical.434 A post-metaphysical consciousness recognizes that there is no necessary, a priori reason for how human history will proceed. On the contrary, it acknowledges that the future is radically open and that its outcome depends on us. In post-metaphysical thinking, human consciousness aspires to come into itself without any outer, metaphysical guarantees, be they named “religious” or “secular.” Likewise, in a post-secular society the legitimacy and cohesion of our life together is understood to be in the hands 432

J. HABERMAS, “Faith and Knowledge”, p. 115. For a synthetic analysis, see D.H. REES, The Postsecular Political Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. 434 See J. HABERMAS, Postmetaphysical Thinking I-II. 433

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of us all: we the people are to legitimize the institutions and structures of our society and to keep them going in the direction we want to. And the only way to proceed in this democratic project is public discussion, i.e. our common enterprise to develop a language which would be open and understandable to all. This language is nowhere to be found in the external world, but it can only be gradually and continuously developed by us, by and through our own way-of-being-in-the-world, in the very same public discussion which a functioning democracy consists of. This may be a utopia, but it is the utopia which animates our liberal democracies and without which these would quickly run out of air. As we now proceed to the central part of this book, consisting of Chapters 3 and 4, it would be wise to take our lead from the Habermasian example. In contrast to Hägglund’s deconstructionist approach, which purported to unmask religion as something other than it according to its own self-understanding is, Habermas’s post-secular and post-metaphysical project aims at translating still-relevant contents of our religious past into the hyperpluralist future that is only now beginning to take form. Analogously, to conceptualize complete post- or nonreligion as Radical Secularization, one should not start from any pre-given metaphysical worldview, but rather simply follow the genealogical steps by and through which a radical departure from religion has become possible After Secularization. At the present historical moment, we may still be lacking adequate language to express genuine nonreligion, but it does not mean that any description of it would be impossible. Confronted with an experience for which one does not (yet) have the right words (Sprachnot!), the only way to proceed is to try to analyze the historical conditions of possibility for the named question, to enter into its own historical becoming, as it were. This is especially true if we believe that in human evolution, both biological and cultural, “nothing (truly important) is ever lost,” but we continue to carry our past in us, whether we are explicitly conscious of it or not. The only way forward is the way backward–to dig deeper in our conceptual history. Also here the terminological choice of “Radical Secularization” for the experience of total incomprehension in front of traditional religion shows its correctness. Despite being used and overused in so many different ways as to be habitually misused (but by what criteria?), the popular concept of secularization in any case rightly puts the focus on our historical rootedness. Secularization, at the very least, brings home the fact that we are no atemporal monads but deeply embedded in our past. And this past for all of us, whether we now happen to consider ourselves religious or non-religious or nonreligious, is imbued with religious notions, ideas, and dreams. That is

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why imagining and trying to conceptualize radical Otherness with respect to traditional religion necessarily involves delving deeply into our religious past. It is such a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization that the second and main part of this book is devoted to.

5. Summary of Part I The first part of this book has revolved around the two crucial concepts of After Secularization and Radical Secularization. In the first chapter the identity-giving task of Catholic fundamental theology was described as the task of expressing the Christian Revelation in a fashion that would be intelligible in the spatio-temporal context at hand. For this missionary task, an adequate reading of the signs of the times was argued, following the Second Vatican Council, to be decisive. The empirical fact of contemporary global hyperpluralism presents unprecedented challenges to Christian theology, but every cultural tradition has its own manner of entering the spiritual dynamics of contemporary hyperpluralization. The much (over-)used concept of secularization arguably still offers a useful conceptual tool to approach intellectually contemporary global hyperpluralism from a Western perspective, if only the concept becomes clearly articulated and speculatively overcome. Western secularization has unfolded by and through an inherent dualism between the secular and the religious, nature and supernature (grace), immanence and transcendence, as Charles Taylor has potently argued recently. This “tailor-made” binary of Western secularization has deep roots in the Western metaphysical tradition, but it must be overcome to enter into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. The idea of Radical Secularization as a completely nonreligious human way-of-being-in-theworld (rather than Taylor’s “exclusive humanism”) was proposed as the real novelty of Western secularization. At the same time, Radical Secularization, by radicalizing the inner logic of Western secularization and bringing it to its speculative end, can offer the conceptual means for imagining our future situation After Secularization. In sum, the first chapter set up a dialectic between the two concepts of After Secularization and Radical Secularization, where the latter helps us imagine the import of the former, and the former points at what is at stake with the latter. Confronted with the burning Sprachnot of finding the right words for true postreligion, the second chapter moved to a synchronic consideration of the concept of Radical Secularization with respect to contemporary social scientific and philosophical research on secularity and non-religion. First, it was argued that the popular term of the “post-secular” does not yet involve

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a definitive overcoming of the metaphysical binary of Western secularization (a true “postsecularity,” without the hyphen). For that goal a deeper reconsideration of the logic inherent in the very concept of “secularization” is needed. Taking the lead from the original “canonical” meaning of secularization, it was understood as principally meaning human emancipation or putting into practice the inviolably free movement of human transcendentality. By and through the historical process of secularization human beings gradually de facto learn to decide for themselves how to live and what to believe, without any necessary outer authorities. The quick resurgence of the “nones” or of people not identifying with any official religion in practically all contemporary Western societies can be regarded as an empirical confirmation of the emancipatory conception of secularization: After Secularization, “religion” in its traditional, institutional meaning is decreasingly relevant, because individual Westerners can and want now to decide for themselves how to be “religious” or whether to be it in the first place. Yet, it still remains a difficult task to adequately conceptualize a truly nonreligious or radically secular form of human existence. This was illustrated by some recent philosophical attempts at developing a genuinely post-theological thinking, especially by Martin Hägglund. Finally, a genealogical way of proceeding was suggested to present a phenomenological description of Radical Secularization, not in contrast to religion but in its utter Otherness to the same. It is such a speculative analysis of the historical conditions of possibility for a completely nonreligious human form-of-life that we now turn to. As noted already at the end of Chapter 1, a theological epoché is called for at this stage of the argument for the conceptual description of Radical Secularization to be able to unfold. The theologically spontaneous twofold criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization will then be taken up in the third and concluding part of the study.

PART II A FUNDAMENTAL GENEALOGY OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION

CHAPTER III HUMAN TRANSCENDENTALITY 1: EUROPEAN MODERNITY AND ITS WESTERN SECULARIZATION

1. Introduction In this central part of the book a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization is developed. It aspires to go to the conceptual roots of the historical process of Western secularization in order to overcome this culturally-conditioned (and -conditioning) process for the actual reality of contemporary global hyperpluralization. It is about finding the Archimedean point which would allow one to overturn the received, essentially unidimensional and binary, picture of European secularization. An apparently essentialist way of thinking, perhaps, but it is done only to identify the proposed essence more clearly and to overcome it more effectively, like a hindering neurosis becomes overcome only when adequately diagnosed. At its end, Western secularization is suffocating itself in its all too narrow conceptuality that does not let Western consciousness acknowledge, let alone enter into, the epoch-making spiritual dynamics of global hyperpluralization. The concept of Radical Secularization would thus release the huge speculative potential inherent in, but also concealed by, the very concept of secularization. After Secularization something radically new is struggling to be born. But is not the concept of nonreligion as such self-contradictory, expressing both the nonreligious and nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world? This initial contradiction does not block, but on the contrary, sets in motion the genealogical phenomenology of Radical Secularization, to be approached through the concept of human transcendentality.

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2. Human Transcendentality: K. Rahner and the Metaphysical Assumption In this book, the concept of “human transcendentality” is meant as the spiritual capacity of the human mind435 to transcend or go beyond its own current epistemological limits towards the ever-broadening horizon of reality. The basic phenomenological structure of human transcendentality is as simple as it is profound (or profound, and easy to ignore, because it is so simple). To begin with, the fundamental fact that inspires all movement of human transcendentality is the acknowledgment of been born in a world which humans themselves have not made but which has existed for eons before them and will continue to be there for eons after. Humans are obviously contingent beings, i.e. they either could or could not exist in the universe. But in fact they–we!–do exist there–here!–and we also can selfconsciously recognize this fact and strive to include it into our general worldview. This is what makes the human transcendental capacity so amazing: no other known lifeform is able to acknowledge their–at the same time possible (contingent) and necessary (because actual)–existence.436 The onwards movement of human transcendentality and the self-critical, second-order consciousness of it go hand in hand; they are two sides of the same coin. By and through questioning our received form-of-life, we proceed deeper into the open horizon of reality. In that way, human beings are continuously striving to relate their personal existence to that of the surrounding universe. We are not absolute prisoners to our received language and cultural conditioning, but we can question it in the face of the surrounding reality which is always bigger than any particular human construction can claim to comprehend. To be human is to move in this spiritual dynamism, where our previous knowledge of the world is not negated but overcome and thus included in the ever-broadening horizon of

435

The word “mind” is used here as a general denomination for the specific intellectual capacities of human beings in contrast to their simple physical constitution. In theology, for example in the language used by Karl Rahner, the word employed for that would rather be “spirit” (Geist), but because of its unfortunately obscure connotations the English word “mind” is preferred here. 436 However interesting similarities there can be found between human and nonhuman intelligences (see J. BRIDLE, Ways of Being), human transcendental capacity sets humans qualitatively apart from all other beings (on the myth of “animal minds,” for example, see S. CONWAY MORRIS, From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds, pp. 153-206).

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reality.437 Consider human linguistic capacity, for example. As children, humans become exposed to a very limited amount of linguistic material (20-30 different phonemes, normally, and a few thousand different words). From this limited empirical material humans, however, learn to construe an unlimited number of different linguistic expressions. American linguist Noam Chomsky has famously argued that human language’s capacity to unlimited recursion is its defining and unique trait. A single grammatical feature can recur, in principle, an unlimited number of times in a sentence without becoming meaningless (as for the dependent clause in “I know that you know that I know that you know that I…,” or for the prenominal adjectives in “Italy is a beautiful, fascinating, irritating, tasty… country”). Nothing similar can be identified in the communication systems of nonhuman animals. Other hominids can learn several hundred different expressions in sign language, for instance, but they are not able to improvise infinitely with their language, as linguistic recursion allows human beings to do. Neither do we at the moment have any clue to how such an intellectual capacity can have evolved through the piecemeal proceeding of natural selection. Chomsky, on his part, speculates about a yet-unknown natural law which would explain the quite sudden appearance of an essentially unlimited linguistic capacity in human evolution for roughly 100,000 years ago.438 437

See B. LONERGAN, “Cognitional Structure”, and more in-depth his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, for an illustrative analysis of the human transcendental activity that, however, has received too little attention in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. 438 Chomsky’s views on human language are of course strongly criticized, too, but they form the common point of reference for practically all contemporary linguistic research. Generally on recursion as the defining characteristic of human language (and thus of other human intellectual activity), see M.D. HAUSER–N. CHOMSKY– W.T. FITCH, “The Faculty of Language”. More particularly on how the uniquely human linguistic capacity might have evolved, see R.C. BERWICK–N. CHOMSKY, Why Only Us. One interesting criticism of the Chomskyan view on the uniqueness of human language are the empirical claims of linguist Daniel Everett concerning the Pirahã language in the Brazilian Amazonas. According to Everett, Pirahã would lack all recursive features. Furthermore, the Pirahã culture would equally lack all transcendental structures, the Pirahãs being interested only in what they themselves can see and experience at the present moment (see D.L. EVERETT, “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã”, and in a more popular fashion his book Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes). As Chomsky has noted at several occasions, however, even if the empirical observations of Everett were correct concerning the Pirahãs and their language (which can and has been questioned), that

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Or consider human capacity to second-order, self-critical thinking which can be characterized as “thinking about thinking.”439 Human beings not only passively perceive the surrounding world and learn to react to it, but they can also actively focus their attention on their own way of relating to the world and revise it at will (which must not be easy or fast, but still always at least theoretically possible). Analogues of second-order thinking can be found in certain non-human animals, too. Only in humans, however, has full second-order self-consciousness emerged by and through the recognition that the universe always surpasses their grasp but that they nevertheless can learn to know it better and better.440 Instead of merely revising their speciesspecific way-of-being-in-the-world, human beings can put their whole existence into question and inquire about their relationship with the universe as a whole. The second-order, self-critical character of human transcendentality cannot thus be naturalistically explained away as an inner-worldly byproduct of Darwinian evolution.441 In a mysterious way, the human mind’s capacity to pose ever-new questions, both about the external world and about itself, moves it beyond the immanent workings of nature. German theologian and philosopher of religion Karl Rahner (19041984) was thus right to analyze human transcendentality as a necessary (because constitutive) feature of human personhood as such.442 This is not the place to delve in any depth into the extremely complicated and immensely influential (in contemporary Catholic thought, at least) philosophical and theological investigation of human transcendentality by would mean absolutely nothing for the more general issue about the specific character of human language and cognition: the Pirahãs can and have learned Brazilian Portuguese as well as any human being. The recursiveness of human language, as well as the more general transcendentality of human mind, is a potentiality which can be actualized but of course must not. This is a point we will have to return to when considering the original ubiquity of human religiosity in Chapter 4. 439 From a historical perspective, in light of the Axial Age hypothesis, see Y. ELKANA, “The Emergence of Second-Order Thinking in Classical Greece”. 440 See P. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, The Future of Man, p. 133: “The basic characteristic of Man, the root of all his perfections, is his gift of awareness in the second degree. Man not only knows; he knows that he knows. He reflects.” 441 Purported naturalizations of human reason of course abound in the contemporary, strongly naturalistic academia. Typically, they, however, depart from a very restricted, almost banal, definition of human reason and rationality (see H. MERCIER–D. SPERBER, The Enigma of Reason). For Thomas Nagel’s argument for why reason in its unique essence never can be naturalized, see T. NAGEL, The Last Word. 442 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 34-35.

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the German Jesuit. Instead, the question which guides the present inquiry is whether the Rahnerian analysis of human transcendentality can incorporate a completely nonreligious, as well as a religious, way-of-being-in-the-world into it, and if it does not, at what point its conceptuality should then be accordingly opened up. Thus could we hope to proceed towards an adequate conceptualization of Radical Secularization, which is needed for secondorderly overcoming Western metaphysics and entering self-consciously into contemporary global hyperpluralization, as was argued in Chapter 1. The references in the following will be mainly to Rahner’s mature synthesis in his renowned Grundkurs, with a few allusions to his early but indispensable Hörer des Wortes.443

2.1 Human Transcendentality according to Rahner The one concept which presents the key to the Rahnerian analysis of human transcendentality is undoubtably Vorgriff, rendered variously, and not always so felicitously, in English, as “pre-apprehension” or “anticipation.”444 With this, originally Thomistic,445 concept Rahner wanted to highlight the 443

K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith and Hearer of the Word, respectively, in English translation. A more in-depth study of Rahner’s take on human transcendentality could not ignore his original interpretation of Thomistic epistemology in Spirit in the World, especially concerning the key-concept of reductio completa. For present purposes, however, a look at Rahner’s central concept of Vorgriff should be enough. Amongst the libraries of Rahner scholarship, especially K. KILBY, Karl Rahner, pp. 19-31, A. RAFFELT–H. VERWEYEN, Karl Rahner, pp. 38-40, and G. SALATIELLO, “Metodo trascendentale e svolta antropologica” have been helpful in this regard. 444 See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, pp. 45-54; Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 33-35. In the English translation of the Grundkurs, Vorgriff has been interpreted as “pre-apprehension.” As Andrew Tallon notes, however, that might not be the best choice, because the Rahnerian Vorgriff is not about apprehending, not even “preapprehending”, anything, but it signifies the transcendental condition of possibility for all intellectual, as well as volitional, spiritual activity (see K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. xiv). Given the decisive importance of the concept, the surest option is to retain its German form even in an English context. 445 See K. RAHNER, Spirit in the World, p. 142: “This transcending apprehension of further possibilities, through which the form possessed in a concretion in sensibility is apprehended as limited and so is abstracted, we call ‘pre-apprehension’ (‘Vorgriff’). Although this term is not to be found literally in Thomas, yet its content is contained in what Thomas calls “excessus” (excess), using a similar image.” On the equally important Kantian influence on Rahner’s “transcendental” thinking, see N. KNOEPFFLER, Der Begriff „transzendental” bei Karl Rahner. Zur Frage seiner Kantischen Herkunft.

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remarkable phenomenological fact that human mind is no static substance (“thing”), closed in itself, but a dynamic movement beyond itself and towards the maius (and semper maius) of the surrounding reality.446 The concept of Vorgriff points thus to the dynamic heart of human transcendentality itself, in its two equally essential dimensions. On one hand, Vorgriff denotes the a priori condition of possibility for humans to be able to know (or want) anything. On the other hand, the reality of Vorgriff can only be identified a posteriori, i.e. in actually knowing (or willing) something.447 The transcendental character of Vorgriff constitutes human beings as beings who are not anymore naively enclosed by their particular group or cultural tradition, but instead who can critically go beyond to contemplate how they relate to the broader evolution of the universe. As Rahner puts it: “Man [meaning the human being precisely as human being] is a being of transcendence insofar as all of his knowledge and all of his conscious activity is grounded in a pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of ‘being’ as such, in an unthematic but ever-present knowing of the infinity of reality.”448 Let us make a simple thought-experiment to put some (aposterioristic) flesh on these (quite aprioristic, as so often in Rahner) phrases. I have this green and white pen in my hand. I received it as a gift from a friend of mine in my home-country last summer. I know this pen perfectly in all its particularity, using it often to write down short notes. Despite being known by me perfectly as this particular pen, the pen, nevertheless, has its material existence independently of me, of my senses and of my mind. The pen existed already before it was given to me, and it will most probably continue to exist after having been possessed by me (perhaps I will give it further to someone else or somebody else will just take it after I am no longer there). Anyway, I know that this pen consists of infinitely small particles which on their part already have a long history behind them: till the formation of our planet some five billion years ago and even further back, to the original singularity of our universe fifteen or so billion years ago, from which all energy and matter (including that of my pen) in the universe flows. In itself 446

See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 45: “It [Vorgriff] is the dynamic movement [dynamischen Hinbewegung] of the spirit toward the absolute range of all possible object.” In Scholastic thinking, the same amazing characteristic of human mind was expressed by saying that anima quodammodo omnia (see ST, I, q. 14, a. 1, referring to Aristotle’s De Anima). 447 See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 51. 448 K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 33 (citation slightly modified by AP).

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there is therefore nothing particular about this pen; it consists of the same elementary particles, of which innumerable other pens could and in fact do consist. In other words, as the material object that it is, this pen is in no way necessary, but it could equally not exist. And nevertheless, in the concrete reality of here and now, this pen exists for me (better: for us449) in a way which is perfectly real, particular, and–as it were–necessary (once come into existence, it can no longer be annulled). One can call my (our) knowledge of this particular pen transcendental, because it does not remain enclosed in the pen in its particularity but relates it to the ever-growing infinity of the surrounding universe. Somehow, the pen is connected with everything else in the universe, even though we can grasp only a tiny inkling of that universal network of ontological relations. Furthermore, my knowledge of the concrete pen is transcendental, because the normally unthematized consciousness of the ever-broader reality which accompanies this knowledge is its necessary condition of possibility.450 To be able to know this pen precisely as this particular pen (to grasp it in its quidditas to use the Scholastic concept), I have at the same time to know or “pre-apprehend” (however unconsciously) that it only is one pen among innumerable possible ones and that it would not have to exist to begin with, but that it now in fact does exist. In sum, then, the Rahnerian concept of Vorgriff is meant to open up the eyes of our mind for the infinite horizon of possible objects of knowledge, in light of which only actually existing objects can be grasped in their contingently necessary reality here and now.451 Other (non-rational) animals observe and react to the objects around them only (or almost only) according to their pre-established biological constitution. Human beings as rational animals, by contrast, can take distance from their spontaneous reactions and aspire to critically contemplate the surrounding reality as it is independently of their species-specific reactions. In like manner, neither do I have to consider my pen only as an

449

See Wittgenstein’s criticism of the idea of a private language in Philosophical Investigations, §§243-271. 450 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 20-21, 34-35. 451 See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 48. As a more spiritual side note, it can be said that Vorgriff includes in itself a certain reverence (Andacht), or even piety (Frömmigkeit), in front of the infinite reality which did not have to give us anything but which nevertheless does so in every concrete event of knowledge or willing. Vorgriff, theologically speaking, signifies an experience of grace (see K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 34).

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instrument with which I can do something,452 but I can also transcend every pragmatic use of the pen to contemplate it in a broader, and ever-broader, context, as my knowledge of reality grows. If I want to, I can always pose new questions concerning the relationship between the pen and the surrounding universe. Even though human knowledge always has its initial impetus from outer stimuli received by their senses, they, unlike other animals, do not remain entrapped by their species-specific constitution. Instead, they can (at least potentially) always transcend it by investigating how it relates to the independent reality as it is in itself. Once we have become aware of our transcendental capacity, we also recognize that it founds all our intellectual (as well as volitional) activity, including the most particular and ordinary ones (as that of the present example with the pen). As human persons we are essentially “beings of transcendence,”453 constitutionally directed towards the more general context of our more particular thoughts and deeds. In all our intellectual activities, even in the most ordinary and insignificant ones, there can be heard the still small voice of the infinity of the surrounding reality which calls us to realize our transcendental nature in a self-conscious, second-order fashion, thus really coming into ourselves. The specifically (at least on Earth) human capacity of transcending one’s inherited cognitive presuppositions and of every particular piece of knowledge for the growing infinity of reality is undoubtedly impressive, even awe-inspiring. It must be asked, however, what the relationship is between this human subjective capacity and objective reality as it is in itself. Why should we consider this human characteristic as a feature (even the defining feature) of reality as such? What justifies the argumentative leap from the phenomenological acknowledgement of this subjectively experienced quality to the objective reality of the universe?

452

Genetically, the instrumental use of our objects as “equipments” (Zeuge) may be as fundamental as Heidegger argues (see Being and Time, §15), but the interesting fact here is that we can transcend the merely pragmatic use of our objects and strive to intellectually relate them to the surrounding reality. Nothing of the sort can be said about other tool-using animals. 453 The English translator of the Grundkurs occasionally makes the error of translating Rahner’s description of human being as a Wesen der Transzendenz as a “transcendent being” (see the crucial chapter 3 of part I, “Man as Transcendent Being”, in K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 31-35). In reality, Rahner’s idea is not that a human being as such would be a transcendent being (which would lead to absolute idealism), but that the term (Woraufhin) of all human intellectual and spiritual activity is the ever-broadening horizon of transcendence (see K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 44).

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The functioning of the human mind is verifiably based on the functioning of the human brain–to the degree that one should, in fact, speak of the human “mind/brain” in the singular–which as a material object has its own nature, and also its own limits. The concept of a potentially unlimited pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of all reality, a central feature of human transcendentality as analyzed by Rahner, can thus seem hard to take seriously or at least as not strongly enough argued. In such a naturalistic vein, Chomsky has introduced a distinction between “problems” which humans with their species-specific neural constitution can solve and “mysteries” which they cannot even understand, because they totally surpass their intellectual capacity.454 Against such a conceptual background one could easily amaze at the intellectual arrogance of even entertaining the idea that the human mind potentially could confront all the possible questions of the universe. Should we not rather acknowledge that we are no angels but biological organisms which, like all biological organisms, have a certain kind of cognitional structure, in our case restricted and determined by the specifically human genotype? But, as Rahner rightly emphasizes, at the very moment we manage critically to acknowledge the finiteness of our mind/brain (i.e. to speculate about its inherent, perhaps insurmountable limits), we have already transcended it and stand in front of the infinity of reality: In the fact that he affirms the possibility of a merely finite horizon of questioning, this possibility is already surpassed, and man shows himself to be a being with an infinite horizon. In the fact that he experiences his finiteness radically, he reaches beyond this finiteness and experiences himself as a being of transcendence, as spirit.455

I know myself, and learn to know myself ever-better, as a very particular being, with a particular identity and a particular history, in an immensely complex network of events and relations. This history and this network, in fact, do not extend only to my family and my people, but they include the entire cultural and biological evolution of humanity, which itself belongs to the primordial river of life on planet Earth, rotating around the Sun in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. That kind of an ever-growing spiritual horizon, in which I localize my own existence, in no way disputes the latter, but on the contrary puts it in its true light. Increasing consciousness does not nullify the previous 454

See N. CHOMSKY, “Problems and Mysteries in the Study of Human Language”. K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 32 (translation slightly modified by AP). 455

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formations of consciousness but includes them in its own broader perspective of reality. And it is quite crucial to note that it is not (merely) about quantitative dimensions here (even though they also play a role). I in all my particularity, I, exactly like this pen here (to keep our concrete example with us), would not have to exist, but, nevertheless, do. This does not have to be, but nevertheless it is. Why is it, then, rather than not? The explanation, were it to be truly exhaustive, would have to relate this fact to that of the surrounding reality, all the way to the initial singularity from which all existence in our universe traces its origin. In other words, the full explanation of the pen would have to be a theory of everything, i.e. to answer the fundamental (and perhaps only) metaphysical question there is: Why is there something in the first place and not nothing? An answer to that question would in a way lead us beyond all reality to contemplate it in all its existence; it would make us the creators of reality instead of being its creations. This is the ultimate dream of human knowing. But is it the true goal of the movement of human transcendentality? As we all very well know, the concrete universe in which we exist is not of our making, but we, on the contrary, are of its making, and apparently in a perfectly contingent manner at that: there is no necessity to why we (as the particular species of homo sapiens that we are) should exist. But the amazing fact stands that we do exist, here and now, reflecting on our relation to the surrounding universe and posing the cosmic question.456 Human transcendentality, as conceptualized by the Rahnerian Vorgriff, designates thus both the potential opening of our mind to the infinity of reality and the transcendental condition of possibility for our knowing anything in the first place.

2.2 Transcendentality, God, and the Metaphysical Assumption Despite the influential modern Western narrative of disenchantment as a necessarily concomitant feature of the modernization of human societies, it should go without saying that nonreligious as well as religious people can equally marvel at human transcendentality and the infinite horizon of reality continually set before our eyes.457 Many natural scientists, for example, who perhaps do not practice any religion or who are not even personally interested in the question of God(s), may nevertheless be profoundly 456

See T. NAGEL, “Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament”, p. 5. Lori G. Beaman, for instance, argues for reclaiming an immanent enchantment, both for nonreligious and religious people, as a necessary condition for effectively confronting the ongoing environmental crisis (see L.G. BEAMAN, “Reclaiming Enchantment”).

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amazed at the universe. Human ignorance about the true nature of reality has been and still is incredibly deep, but that we have become conscious of our ignorance, especially since the beginning of the scientific revolution a few centuries ago, is to our everlasting merit. Yet, human transcendentality is not principally about knowing quantitatively more about reality but about proceeding towards a more truth-like knowledge of it. It is dynamic movement, not static possession. Albert Einstein was one of those modern scientists who was personally seized by humanity’s being able to understand the universe in the first place. Like for most leading modern scientists,458 the idea of a personal God was completely foreign for Einstein, but he certainly had a religious temperament in his “unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”459 Even the renowned British biologist, and perhaps the best-known living atheist, Richard Dawkins speaks with “deserved respect” about “Einsteinian” religion, while fiercely opposing the “undeserved respect” often reserved for supernatural religion with Gods and other transhuman intentionalities.460 The quasi-mystical awe many scientists feel towards the, at least partially intelligible, universe easily leads them to use religious language, even the word “God.”461 Normally they do that in a purely metaphorical sense, of course (perhaps because they still lack other language to express their cosmical awe), but that all the same easily causes much unneeded confusion amongst the general public, Dawkins claims.462 And this is precisely the question we now have to confront, i.e. why should the fact of human transcendentality have anything to do with religious belief in God(s)? According to Karl Rahner, human transcendentality has very much to do with God. In fact, according to his analysis, “in this Vorgriff as the necessary and always already fulfilled condition of every human knowledge 458

Even though some kind of religiosity is not at all uncommon among scientists in general, in high-prestige scientific societies religious belief in a personal God seems to be extremely rare (on the National Academy of Sciences, for example, see E.J. LARSON–L. WHITHAM, “Leading Scientists Still Reject God”, and on the Royal Society, see M. STIRRAT–R.E. CORNWELL, “Eminent Scientists Reject the Supernatural”). 459 H. DUKAS–B. HOFFMANN, ed., Albert Einstein, the Human Side, p. 43. 460 See R. DAWKINS, The God Delusion, pp. 11-27. 461 See Hawking’s “mind of God” in S. HAWKING, A Brief History of Time, p. 191, or even Darwin’s “works of God” at the end of Chapter 5 in C. DARWIN, On the Origin of Species. 462 See R. DAWKINS, The God Delusion, p. 13.

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and action, the existence of an absolute being, hence of God, is always already co-affirmed, even though not represented.”463 The concept of Vorgriff puts to the fore the experimental fact that in every act of knowledge (and will), however small, there is a necessary transcendental opening towards the infinity of reality. Yet, this infinity can never in itself become an object for our knowledge. It is rather the ever-broadening horizon against the background of which all our spiritual activity takes place. We can only proceed towards this horizon without ever reaching its ultimate term, Rahner argues. To use a metaphor of the early Wittgenstein, the infinite horizon of reality is like a cosmic eye which makes everything potentially visible but which itself never can be included in its visual field, because it is the very condition of possibility for seeing anything at all.464 The infinite goal (Woraufhin) of Vorgriff is thus a mystery which calls human beings without ever becoming graspable by them. It is a question rather than an answer. What human beings are only potentially, this mystery is in actuality, i.e. the transcendent fullness of Being (and of Freedom). In the Western tradition the word for the infinite mystery of transcendent Being and Freedom has without further discussion been “God.”465 As Rahner rightly emphasizes, despite the appearances, this is no a priori proof for the existence of God. The infinite horizon of being only lightens up in an actual execution of the Vorgriff of human transcendentality. Only by knowing (and willing) this particular thing, can I become conscious, albeit indirectly or unthematically, of the infinity of reality in which it shows itself and to which it relates. In like manner, the existence of the transcendent Being of God can only be ascertained indirectly as the direction and condition of possibility of this particular spiritual act. Yet, because all human spiritual activity is oriented towards the mystery of transcendent Being, according to Rahner, “the knowledge of God is always present unthematically and without name, and not just when we begin to speak of it.”466 God is the radically Other, present in everything as the 463 K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 51; and further, see K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 21. 464 See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus, §5.6. 465 See how Thomas Aquinas ends each of his quinque viae in ST, I, q. 2, a. 3: after highlighting a certain interesting feature in reality, according to the classical metaphysical view of things, he promptly proceeds to the affirmation that this feature is to be identified with what “everybody understands to be God” (hoc omnes intelligunt Deum, or quam omnes Deum nominant, or quod omnes dicunt Deum, or simply hoc dicimus Deum). This is the religious presumption of our Western tradition. 466 K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 21.

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necessarily absent One, and he is absent precisely because he is present. God is interior intimo meo et superior supremo meo, as St. Augustine so very well knew.467 For a nonreligious person, by contrast, the introduction of God as a necessary term and condition of possibility for the movement of human transcendentality can appear nothing less of a completely unfounded deus ex machina. What, really, has God to do with all that? Far from understanding God as the perhaps obvious name for the infinity of reality towards which the human mind proceeds, nonreligious people can consider the word (or better: the idea expressed by it, and the practices associated with it) as a barrier to the dynamic movement of human transcendentality. How many times in history has not God been used to halt the advancement of science and the progress of human freedom? Instead of the infinite opening of the human mind and of reality, in actual human history, God has rather been understood as something possessed by human beings, as something which, being possessed by someone, can be violently used against others. This is the initial cri de coeur of the spiritual movement of Radical Secularization that we desire to follow here in a purely descriptive fashion (aspiring to learn its deep theological truth). Despite all religious limitations, Radical Secularization claims, the march of human knowledge has been so strong during the last few centuries that religion has had to hand over ever-new territories to science and reserve an ever-more abstract sphere to itself. What else is Rahner’s necessarily unthematized and unobjectified God than a logical end-product of this process of secularization? A radically secular observer of this development cannot but see here “the familiar pattern of all self-preservations,” namely “the pattern of the reduction of the endangered substance to an intangible core content, of accepting the supposedly or actually relevant role of rendering theoretical service for this or that practice, in the end of making oneself at home in the role of assistant to the most up-to-date human interest,” as Blumenberg sarcastically put it.468 Rahner’s philosophico-theological project of deducing, rationibus necessariis, a concretely existing religion, namely the Christian one (but this point can be extended to any historical religion), from a rather abstract analysis of human transcendentality may find its limit before this radically secular objection.469 Rahner lived and wrote (or thought he lived and wrote) 467

See AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Confessions, III, 6, 11. H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 6-7. 469 Concerning the suspicion that Rahner’s transcendental approach, despite all its unequalled conceptual depth, or precisely because of it, may not reach to the particular essence of the Christian faith, see J. RATZINGER, “Vom Verstehen des 468

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still in a cultural situation where he could say that “what is most simple and most inescapable for man with regard to the question of God is the fact that the word ‘God’ exists in his intellectual and spiritual existence.”470 For Rahner, and presumably for the people he addressed in his Grundkurs, the word “God” is the one obvious designation (quod omnes dicunt Deum!) for the infinity of reality with which all human beings are confronted in their transcendentality. In reality, however, it is by no means obvious to use the word “God” in this, or any, context, as can be especially clearly seen now After Secularization. This is not intended as the rather banal observation that European secularization has developed quite a lot after the publication of the Grundkurs. The point is rather that the word “God,” like all human words, is never obvious, but becomes learned in a certain cultural tradition from which it also receives its (possible) meaningfulness. It is simply not true that “[w]hether we say Gott or ‘God’ or the Latin deus or the Semitic El or the old Mexican teotl, that makes no difference here,”471 as if we could use this human word in a historical void, in a state of “pure transcendentality.” In fact, the very moment we open our mouth to say something we express our belonging to a certain human tradition and a certain human language. A pure, culturally unmediated transcendentality does not and cannot exist for us human beings.472 Rahner is, of course, perfectly aware that human transcendentality (as well as human knowing of God) can be realized only in a concrete historical situation a posteriori.473 And he is, of course, equally aware that the adequate concept of God (necessarily connected with the adequate, metaphysical understanding of its content) comes last in explicit human knowing, even though it is implicitly present in all human spiritual activity

Glaubens”. Deciding between Rahner’s transcendental approach and Balthasarian radical objectivity (also followed by Ratzinger) might be the most fundamental methodological question for contemporary Catholic theology. 470 K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 45. 471 K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 45. 472 It can, furthermore, be asked if the Christian Revelation can, in the first place, be approached without paying very close attention to its foundational literary documents, i.e. the Christian Bible of the Old and New Testaments (contra Rahner’s “caution against a mere biblicism” in K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 14). Of course, even here it all depends on whom one is writing to: a Christian public (which already has, as it were, the Bible in their head) or a secular public (which may relate to the Bible like to any other ancient literary document), to take the two extremes. 473 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 51-52.

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from the very beginning.474 Nevertheless, in fact, Rahner does not give too much attention to the actual human religious evolution through which his metaphysical understanding of God, or any other understanding of God for that matter, has become possible. In passing he mentions the idea of an “existentiell mystagogy” (Existentielle Mystagogie) which might be necessary when explaining the Christian religion to people who do not have the necessary cultural pre-understanding of it, but he does not develop the concept further.475 Rahner’s own modus procedendi is completely different. For him, the word “God” (or more precisely, the German word “Gott”) presents itself as “inevitable,” to the point that it “comes from those origins from which man himself comes,” and even more, “it creates us because it makes us men [meaning “human beings” in general].”476 A nonreligious, and even more so a radically secular, person must remain speechless here. For them, the word “God” does not have any inevitable significance. On the contrary, in a radically secular perspective, one cannot even understand why one would take “God” seriously in the first place (or how one could do it, given its burdensome history in the Western tradition). Does this mean that one has forfeited one’s humanity if one has become totally alienated from the Godword, as it was used in the preceding cultural tradition from which one has emancipated oneself? The concept of Radical Secularization does not challenge the Rahnerian (or any other fundamental theological) approach to the Christian Revelation only aposterioristically, but also aprioristically. Let us go back to the initial question of why human transcendentality should have anything to do with God. Rahner’s answer was that God as the transcendent Being is the necessary goal and condition of possibility for human transcendental activity. As for the ultimate direction of Vorgriff, there have been three different candidates in the Western philosophical tradition, according to Rahner. First, there is the conviction of the philosophia perennis from Plato to Hegel that human transcendentality is oriented towards the absolute fullness of Being, i.e. God as metaphysically understood. Second, there is the Kantian limitation of human knowledge within the range of anthropologically meaningful criteria. Third, there is the answer of Heidegger according to which human transcendentality is directed towards and upheld by nothingness.477 474

See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 52. See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 59. 476 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 50-51. 477 See K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 49. 475

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From a Rahnerian perspective, the Kantian or humanistic alternative shows itself quite readily as insufficient. If human transcendentality is exactly about going beyond the actual limits of human knowledge and experience, how could one even in principle pre-determine any limits to this dynamic movement? By positing certain de facto limits to the human mind, they have already been overcome, whereas merely speculative de iure limits to human transcendentality are no limits at all (but spiritual violence). The Heideggerian or existentialist view, on the other hand, presents a real challenge to the perennial metaphysical philosophy. If human transcendentality really proceeds towards the very fullness of Being, how is one to understand the undeniable subjective experience of nothingness, which seems quite characteristic of secular Western modernity (as well as of many Eastern spiritual traditions478)? In reality, we do not encounter only positive being and meaningfulness in the world, but equally negativity and meaninglessness. And eventually, we, like everything living, will die and disappear. There is no more objective fact than that. How is this fact to be incorporated into a metaphysical view of things where being supposedly always has the first and last word? Rahner’s answer to the Heideggerian challenge follows similar transcendental lines as his answer to the Kantian one. The experience of death and nothingness is real, but it can only be real, because there is life and fullness of being. It is only against the background of meaningfulness, or at least the presupposition of meaningfulness, that we can experience something as meaningless. If we want to preserve the unity of our experience of reality (instead of falling into some kind of Gnosticism), we must therefore assume a most fundamental fullness of Being and meaningfulness at the very heart of reality.479 Furthermore, the finite is judged as finite in the very act of surpassing it in the pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of the infinity of reality. “Hence it is not ‘nought that noughtens,’ but it is the infinity of being, at which the Vorgriff aims, that unveils the finiteness of all that is immediately given,” Rahner concludes.480 This response is formally (metaphysically) correct, but still somehow inadequate, if we want to proceed towards the concept of Radical Secularization. Something seems to be assumed by Rahner which by no means has to be. The reference is not to the naturalist-scientistic objection that all metaphysical reasoning is as such meaningless, because it is

478

See K. NISHITANI, Religion and Nothingness. See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 33-34. 480 K. RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, p. 50; the allusion is to the (in)famous “Das nichts selber nichtet” in Heidegger’s inaugural lecture in Freiburg from 1929. 479

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arguably based on an unscientific use of human language.481 The reason for the perceived inadequacy is rather the very attempt at encountering the radical experience of nothingness and meaninglessness by metaphysical means. On one hand, there are experiences of a partial void, which result from (and can consequently be answered by) a perceived absence of fullness. On the other hand, there is such a radical experience of nothingness that it questions the very attempt at answering it in a metaphysical manner. Or better, it does not only question it, but it renders such an attempt meaningless to begin with. If the radical experience of nothingness even in principle could be resolved by recourse to a supposedly even more radical experience of being, the former would not be what it is. Rather, the radical experience of nothingness and meaninglessness is what it is precisely because it undercuts all metaphysical attempts at answering it. It plays a completely different language-game than that of the Greek metaphysics of being. This, however, still sounds far too dualistic (fullness–nothingness, meaningfulness–meaninglessness), as if one were still playing the old ontotheological language-game and battling with the metaphysics of presence. To shake off all metaphysical appearances around this point, let us return to the most ordinary example with the pen.482 Earlier, the simple affirmation of this pen as precisely this pen, this concrete thing (res), was shown to carry in itself a transcendental opening towards the infinity of reality, and, consequently, towards the transcendent fullness of God.483 The infinity of the universe seems to reveal itself even in its smallest particles, including this pen. This pen, however, does not have to be experienced in such a metaphysical way at all. What, in fact, is this pen anyway? It is a material object which human beings have invented for a certain purpose. There is no inherent “pen-ness” in this pen (or in any other pen), but in itself, independently of the human thoughts and practices associated with it, it is 481

Rudolf Carnap’s logical positivist joking with Heidegger’s “nothing which nothings” (in R. CARNAP, “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”) has become a locus classicus concerning the incomprehensive attitude of analytic philosophers towards the continental tradition of European thought. 482 On how attention to ordinary language can help to overcome metaphysical speculations, see L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §116. 483 According to Aquinas, God is implicitly present in all, however small and insignificant, acts of right judgment, i.e. knowledge (see THOMAS AQUINAS, De Veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1).

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just a collection of certain elementary particles (as all material objects are). The pen receives its “pen-ness” only in the cultural tradition in which it is used and understood as a pen. In other cultural traditions, by contrast, which perhaps do not have pens at all, it would not even be recognized as a pen.484 This is even less so, if the pen-using human community were visited by an extra-terrestrial observer with a radically different biological constitution from humans. The extra-terrestrials would probably register the use of a certain object for a certain purpose, but they would obviously not recognize any exact thing as precisely a pen. Most probably, they, given their advanced knowledge about the nature of the universe (they can travel huge distances throughout space!), would be perfectly aware that there are no such “inherent essences” in the independent reality which would justify a metaphysical judgment of something precisely as this thing (for example, precisely as this pen).485 The metaphysical assumption presumes, by contrast, that there are such inherent essences in the things around us which we humans, like other intelligent beings (God, angels, the possible intelligent habitants of other planets…), can grasp by our mind. This, in fact, is what defines human beings as rational animals in the Western metaphysical tradition: namely, the spiritual capacity to perceive the intelligibility of reality as it is in itself. For centuries in the Western tradition, the greatness of human beings was understood to be their divine ability to recognize the intrinsic meaningfulness (Beauty, Truth, and Goodness) of all being and to reflect this in their own life and thinking (adaequatio rei ad intellectum!). The metaphysical assumption about the intimate connection between the human mind and surrounding reality offered the spiritual stimulus to such cultural highpoints in the Western tradition as those experienced in fourth-century BCE Athens and in Renaissance Italy. Why speak about an “assumption” here? For the simple reason that the belief in the inherent meaningfulness of reality as it is in itself has shown itself to be precisely that, namely a belief, an assumption, a theory, during the last few centuries of the Western tradition. One can relate to this fact in 484

See W.V.O. QUINE, Ontological Relativity, pp. 26-68. In a sense, this could be considered Wittgenstein’s response to the metaphysical question concerning the ultimate term of human transcendentality. In a radical difference to Plato, Kant, and Heidegger (Rahner’s three metaphysical archetypes), Wittgenstein can lead one completely beyond ontotheological metaphysics to approaching reality in a genuinely human way (because “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” [L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §19], and because human language hat nur im Strome des Lebens Bedeutung [N. MALCOLM, Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. 75]). 485

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various ways, either lamenting its reality or rejoicing in it, but it cannot be denied as a fact, as something which really has happened. Furthermore, precisely this fact lies behind the cultural constellation which we now call “Western modernity” and its “secularization.” The dismantling of the metaphysical assumption arguably captures the speculative essence of Western modernization-secularization. In any case, modern Western challenging of the metaphysical assumption will offer the Archimedean point for a genealogical description of Radical Secularization in this book. This is, from a fundamental theological perspective, arguably the most interesting and inspiring creation of Western modernity. With the modern Western questioning of the metaphysical assumption we encounter the typically “modern break” in human spiritual evolution. It must be restated that the sole purpose of the following is to present a phenomenological genealogy of Radical Secularization as a perfectly nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world. No historical or philosophical argumentation is pursued here as an end in itself; no final metaphysical judgements are to be ascertained at this stage. Rather, the aim is to find and highlight such literary occasions and personal experiences which would let a genuinely nonreligious human form-of-life shine through, even though we still would lack adequate words to define one in more conceptual depth. The guiding question is whether the Rahnerian analysis of human transcendentality could be opened up in a way which would make room for a nonreligious as well as religious experience of reality, thus introducing us into the unfolding dynamics of global hyperpluralization. We begin with the foundational occasion of modern Western philosophy, namely, the Cartesian challenging of the metaphysical assumption.

3. The Cartesian Challenging of the Metaphysical Assumption Human transcendentality begins its movement when it confronts something unexpected in reality, something that does not fit into one’s received intellectual framework. The “unfit” (atopos, as Aristotle called it486) breaks one’s originally egoistic consciousness and pushes one forward to find a new, more fitting place for that feature in one’s worldview. Depending on the character of the unexpected, the transcendental movement can be described as either one of amazement (thauma) or one of terror (deimos). 486

For the different meanings of the concept ܿIJȠʌȠȢ in the Aristotelian corpus, see V. FERRY–E. DANBLON, “The Places of Inventio: Towards a Rhetorical Approach to the Topics”.

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Or perhaps they always go hand in hand as human transcendentality proceeds further into the radical Otherness of reality. Becoming born in a world which is not of their making, it is, of course, no wonder that human beings continually find features there which surpass their ingrained conceptuality. But can the strangeness of reality become so overwhelming that it altogether crushes all human sense of being able to rationally relate to the surrounding world? Such a deep-going trauma would need an equally deep-going therapy, eventually of quite a long period. Such a radical “trauma” lies at the beginning of modern Western philosophy, or of Western modernity as speculatively considered.487 The reference is not only to the unprecedented success of the New Science which since Copernicus, Newton, and Galileo (and even more so since Darwin, Einstein, and Bohr) revolutionized humanity’s view of itself and its place in the (by all human measures) infinite universe.488 The new quantities of the surrounding reality, as gradually revealed by modern natural science, were certainly nothing less than mind-blowing for early modern Europeans whose intellectual roots lay in the quite limited and neatly ordered cosmos of the classical-medieval worldview.489 The modern trauma, however, has another and qualitatively much more profound dimension. It concerns the human capacity to understand reality to begin with. If the scientific pursuit of going beyond merely subjective appearances to objective reality as it is in itself shows a reality which is utterly different from the spontaneous human view of it, does this not question the very human ability to meaningfully relate to the world around them? What reason do we have to believe that the world has a face that we humans can read in the first place?490 The modern European trauma would consequently be the difficult recognition that the world around us might, 487

See S. CAVELL, Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow, p. 1. Alexandre Koyré memorably characterized the modern break as a shift from regarding the world as a closed, and thus metaphysically intelligible, cosmos to considering it an infinite universe which always surpasses humanity’s attempts at comprehending it (see A. KOYRÉ, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, pp. 3-4). 489 See the classic verses from John Donne’s 1611 poem Anatomy of the World: “And New Philosophy calls all in doubt, / The Element of fire is quite put out; / The Sun is lost, and th’Earth, and no man’s wit / Can well direct him where to look for it. / And freely men confess that this world’s spent, / When in the Planets, and the Firmament / They seek so many new; they see that this / Is crumbled out again to his Atomies. / ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone” (cited in P. ROSSI, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 63). 490 See R. SPAEMANN, “Rationality and Faith in God”, p. 632, in reference to Michel Foucault. 488

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after all, not be an inherently meaningful and intelligible reality–at least not for the neurological constitution of the homo sapiens–but ultimately a very strange and, for us humans, quite foreign universe.491 René Descartes (1596-1650) has become the icon for the modern traumatic break in general Western consciousness.492 The scholarly question whether, or to which degree, the historical Descartes deserves to be named the “father of modern philosophy,” as if he did not have any predecessors in European intellectual history, need not concern us here.493 Instead, we are solely interested in the peculiarly Cartesian fashion of confronting the modern trauma, which at the same time highlights the peculiarly Cartesian manner of challenging the metaphysical assumption. Descartes’s programmatic Discours de la méthode (1637) has rightly become a classic in this regard. There he delineates in a summary form his new revolutionary method for “rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking truth in the sciences.”494 The point of departure for Descartes’s methodological revolution was the insight that he, throughout his childhood and youth, had learned many things which on closer inspection showed themselves to be feebly founded at best, or even totally false at worst. Descartes had, in fact, received his basic education at the Jesuits of La Flèche which counted among the “most famous schools in Europe,” and there, if anywhere in early modern Europe, should one have found truly learned men, as Descartes dryly points out in 491

Or to put the point in other words, the more we get to understand the world, the more we become forced to confess that we do not understand the world. As Steven Weinberg put it: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless” (S. WEINBERG, The First Three Minutes, p. 155). The quintessentially human longing for meaning seems to go down the drain in the modern infinite universe. Is there any remedy to this spiritual trauma? 492 Hegel was among the first to describe Descartes as the “father of modern philosophy”: “In Philosophy Descartes struck out quite original lines; with him the new epoch in Philosophy begins, whereby it was permitted to culture to grasp in the form of universality the principle of its higher spirit in thought” (G.W.F. HEGEL, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume Three, pp. 223-224). Furthermore, Hegel identified Descartes’s radical originality in the affirmation that “thought must necessarily commence from itself,” without accepting any outer authorities (G.W.F. HEGEL, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume Three, p. 224). With Descartes, human transcendentality really begins to come into itself and secularization, speculatively considered, truly begins. 493 On Descartes’ indebtedness to the preceding Latin Scholastic tradition, see R. ARIEW, Descartes Among the Scholastics; and to the broader Western theological tradition, see J.-L. MARION, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. 494 R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 111.

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his programmatic discourse.495 In the standard scholasticism of that time it was customary to teach the Aristotelian system as the near-complete collection of our knowledge of the world. In the classical-medieval worldview every thing had its right (and rightful) place in reality, and all was justly and beautifully ordered according to the divine plan. This was a system, a summa, to be humbly received and then obediently contemplated. Yet, at the end of his studies Descartes found himself “beset by so many doubts and errors that I came to think I had gained nothing from my attempts to become educated but increasing recognition of my ignorance,” as he confesses in the Discourse.496 Ultimately, there seemed to be no decisive reasons for preferring the Latin Scholastic synthesis to the philosophical pluralism of Greco-Roman antiquity.497 The general atmosphere in those times of early European modernity was already one of impatient curiosity: the old world was drawing to its end, the new one was about to be born. As soon as he finished his basic education, Descartes decided to take distance from the traditional form of (supposed) knowing, based as it was on external authority, now desperately faltering. Instead, he resolved to, as he himself put it, “seek no knowledge other than that which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world.”498 Accordingly, he set himself to travelling around Europe to get to know the world as it is really was, and not only as it becomes conceptualized in a given cultural tradition (in his case, in that of Latin-French Scholasticism). Yet, during his travels, Descartes’ experience of pluralism anything but deepened: there did not appear to be any rational grounds for accepting one way of being-in-the-world rather than another. Quite the contrary, Descartes came to the conclusion that “the same man, with the same mind, if brought up from infancy among the French or Germans, develops otherwise than he would if he had always lived among the Chinese and cannibals”499–what one believed about the world and how one related to reality appeared to depend decisively on one’s cultural context. The new pluralism of early 495

See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 113. For an ingenious reading of Descartes’s philosophical conversion as a kind of secularization of Ignatian spiritual techniques, see A. GRAFTON, “Traditions of Conversion: Descartes and his Demon”. 496 R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 113. 497 On the influence of the newly rediscovered Greek scepticism on Descartes, see R.H. POPKIN, A History of Scepticism, pp. 143-173. 498 R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 115. 499 R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 119. Descartes’s characterization, to be certain, has not aged well. It is quoted here as a historical testimony to the arrogant Eurocentrism of that time (and of many later times…).

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modernity seemed to go hand in hand with equally radical scepticism. Was there any way of saving the concept of one intelligible reality in the great spiritual confusion caused by the New Science and early modern opening to other cultures? This was the question the young Descartes decided to devote his life to. Taking the clue from his early love for mathematics,500 Descartes formulated four fundamental rules which would guide his search for true and certain knowledge beyond the trauma of radical Otherness and pluralism. Of these the first is most important and most characteristic of the Cartesian method: […] never to accept anything as true if I did not have evident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.501

The revolutionary move here is not the absolute decision to content oneself only with certain and indubitable knowledge.502 Rather, the Cartesian revolution concerns the methodological predecision to aspire to truth only via one’s own subjectivity. If in the outer reality there reigns such a radical pluralism of different opinions that it questions the very concept of one intelligible reality, the surest or even only way to proceed must be to draw oneself back and to reconsider everything anew from one’s own inner perspective. At least that is how it seemed to Descartes as he launched the original, and originating, Cartesian movement of modern European philosophy. So radical a subjectification of human transcendentality had no precedents in human spiritual evolution. It is essential to note that the subjective turn, which is literally fundamental503 to the Cartesian method, was a purely theoretical issue for the historical Descartes. Even while intellectually retreating from the outer world ever-more deeply into his own subjectivity, Descartes continued to 500

See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 114. R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 120 (italics AP). 502 As M.F. Burnyeat (“Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 39 [note 53]) points out against the influential characterization of Cartesianism in R. RORTY, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 17-127. 503 Building-related metaphors are crucial for the Cartesian project, not just nominally but even substantially. In fact, one way to summarize Cartesianism would be to say that it aspires to tear down the intellectual building in which one has happened to be born (and which consequently might be full of errors) and to build it anew on the completely firm fundament of one’s own second-order, self-reflective subjectivity (see R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, pp. 116-117, 122). 501

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live in practice as the general population around him did, obeying the same laws and customs as everybody else and following the religion in which he had been brought up.504 And this was no intellectual laziness. Precisely the methodological decision of separating his theoretical and practical activities absolutely from each other allowed Descartes to reach such a profound subjective turn that it does not have any equals in previous European thinking.505 In ancient philosophy, where a certain way of thinking always went together with a certain way of living (bios), Cartesianism would have been impossible even to imagine. For it the Cartesian imaginary of a “stoveheated room” (poêle), where one could shut oneself totally from the outer world to delve into the depths of one’s own subjectivity only, was needed.506 Furthermore, Descartes does not present his method as readily available to everybody everywhere. On the contrary, the whole point of the Cartesian method is that it must be individually found within oneself.507 Descartes is careful to emphasize the individualistic character of his method for two reasons. The first is the obvious one that the method is about learning to use one’s own reason rightly, without any helping hands, so to speak. The second reason concerns the particular manner by which the method proceeds. The Cartesian project of finding a secure fundament for all world knowledge in one’s own subjectivity advances by way of doubting all previous knowledge that even in principle can be doubted. The way to arrive at the purity of one’s own consciousness proceeds through doubting literally everything.508 And this is not a road that everybody should or even could travel. But one who has been bitten by the modern trauma and ensuing radical scepticism has no alternative but to set foot on that road. In the Discourse, Descartes practically shies away from describing the method of doubt in its deepest radicality. In the first meditation of the more academic Latin work Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (1641), by contrast, Descartes felt free to let the methodological doubt unwind in all its breadth and depth.509 Descartes’s presentation of the method of doubt in the first meditation proceeds in three stages, each of which has precedents in ancient philosophical scepticism but now has been definitively surpassed by the peculiarly Cartesian doubt, speculatively marking the proprium of the 504

See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 122. See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, pp. 31, 39. 506 See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 116. 507 Consequently, Descartes presents his description of his method only as a “history” or “fable” which may or may not offer useful intellectual provocation to others (see R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, p. 112). 508 See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, pp. 126-127. 509 See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, pp. 12-15. 505

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modern break.510 The first level of doubt challenges the supposed reliability of our senses.511 We humans, like all other animals, relate to our material surroundings by seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and touching the world around us, so that we get to know it and can orient ourselves within it. But sometimes our senses deceive us, i.e. we see something which is not really there, or we see it otherwise (“wrongly”) than it actually, in itself, is. If our senses sometimes deceive us, what warrant do we have to trust them generally, as we usually do in our ordinary life, Descartes asks. As Burnyeat notes, the point here is not that if some perceptions are false, then all of them might be false (which is an invalid argument), but the valid observation that a criterium which sometimes gives a wrong conclusion is no criterium at all.512 There already existed a developed discussion on this point in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, but Descartes gave a radically new twist to it. He extended it to concern, not only the objects of the outer world, but also the reality of his own body, or better put, the latter considered as belonging to the outer world. In this vein, Descartes refers to “madmen” who entertain ideas and encounter sounds and sights that cannot be verified outside of their own experience.513 Doubting sensory perceptions concerning objects which are either too big or too small for us is one thing, but doubting our impression of our own body is a totally other thing. Thus, the example of radical mental illness allows Descartes to doubt even the most ordinary fact that “I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands.”514 The Cartesian doubt is beginning to challenge the very contact we thought we had with the reality around us. The concept of one intelligible reality is starting to collapse as our grasp of it becomes weaker and weaker. At the first stage of doubt–let us call it the “madman stage”–there still remains some kind of criterium as to our true, or truthful, relationship with reality. When speaking of a “mad” conception of reality, one presupposes that there is, or at least could be (this potentiality is enough to make the point), a (more) “healthy” way of relating to the world around one. The 510

See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, pp. 34-37. See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, pp. 12-13; M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, pp. 34-35. 512 See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 34. 513 See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 13. Again, Descartes’s description of mental illness (some type of schizophrenia perhaps) has not aged well, and it is discussed here solely for the sake of the argument. 514 R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 13. 511

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second level of Cartesian doubting–the so-called “dream doubt”515–is designed to question even this fleeting principle of reality. In the very concept of “madness” it is presupposed that it affects only certain people, i.e. those that the majority population decides to other as “mad.”516 Dreaming, on the other hand, is something which affects the great majority of us: most, if not all, human beings see dreams during their sleep, at least occasionally. Dreams can feel perfectly real to the dreaming subject themselves, even though they in reality are “only dreams,” as we say. In dreams our sensations and thoughts can be as clear and distinct as when awake, sometimes even more so. What, then, could ensure that we are not all dreaming at this very moment, or at least that some of us are and we do not know who? In such a case all criteria concerning reality would seem to vanish.517 Yet, as Descartes points out, even though we would admit that everything could be an illusionary dream (even the belief that I have a body), these dreams should, nevertheless, come from somewhere.518 In dreams we always dream of something. Dreams are essentially intentional, and thus meaningful. A dream about nothing would be no dream, but just dreamless sleep (or death). It might be that our dreams do not correspond even slightly to the objective reality, but they still retain some kind of connection to it (like sirens and satyrs retain some kind of connection to existing animals, in Descartes’s own example). The ontological connection might be however dim and remote, but it is, all the same, some kind of connection. At this point of the argument Descartes makes the typically early modern philosophical move of distinguishing between the primary and secondary qualities of things.519 We can have highly differing opinions on the latter (like color, odor, taste, and sound), depending as they do on one’s particular biological and psychological constitution (the one with jaundice sees

515

See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, pp. 13-14; M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, pp. 35-36. 516 See M. FOUCAULT, Madness and Civilization. 517 Descartes’s skeptical inferences from the reality of dreaming can obviously be challenged themselves (as Norman Malcolm, for example, did, on the basis of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, in N. MALCOLM, “Dreaming and Scepticism”). Here, to repeat, the aim is not to enter the specific philosophical debate but to work towards a phenomenological genealogy of Radical Secularization where the Cartesian doubt plays an essential role, as will progressively be shown. 518 See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 13. 519 See R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 14.

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everything as yellow is the classic example520). The primary qualities (like size, figure, number, and motion), by contrast, are what they are in themselves, independently of our impressions of them, the argument goes. We can obviously err on identifying certain primary qualities in certain objects, or in putting them together, but we cannot err in themselves, as it were. Here one at least seems to have found something indubitable and absolutely certain, on which to build one’s metaphysical relation to reality. “For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides,” Descartes concludes.521 However, the third and final stage of the Cartesian doubt, so characteristic of modern European thinking, is yet to come. Even the philosophical thought-experiment involving an all-powerful, deceiving demon (genius malignus) is known from antiquity, but the radical use Descartes makes of it has no real precedent in European thinking and marks thus a genuinely new departure for human thinking. Whereas mental illness and dreams are simply natural phenomena which happen to us and which indirectly question our ability to meaningfully relate to the surrounding world, the fiction of the malicious demon aims at directly challenging the whole idea of one meaningful reality in which we can orient ourselves. To recapitulate, in Descartes’s argument, the possibility of being mad or dreaming has driven us from the outer reality ever-more deeply into one’s own subjectivity, and away from the secondary qualities to the primary qualities of things, real in themselves because independent of all subjective impressions. Now, the genius malignus asks us to consider the last step of the Cartesian doubt and realize that we, in fact, do not have any metaphysical access to reality at all. Consequently, the whole idea of one single “reality” collapses with this ultimate step. So let us imagine with Descartes that “some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive [us].”522 Not only does the demon cheat us concerning the features of the outer reality, but it (he/she?) also misleads us into believing that we have a body, even though we might not have any. This radically radical or hyperbolical doubt does not simply claim that different people have different impressions about reality and that we hence cannot adequately decide which one of them is true (as classical scepticism claimed at its highest). Rather, the hyperbolical doubt claims that we cannot even speak about one common reality anymore. The reason for this is that even the primary qualities and the mathematics concerning them do not help us here, 520

See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 28. R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 14. 522 R. DESCARTES, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 15. 521

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because the all-powerful demon could easily deceive us in this regard, too. Let us follow the argument a bit closer. At the end of the day, what objective reason do we have for our conviction that 2+3=5 and that ¬(p‫¬ר‬p)? Nothing, except the empirical fact that all humans we know count and reason in that manner. But perhaps there can exist organisms with such a different biological or cultural constitution that they would even do mathematics and logics in a different fashion? In fact, that seems to be the case even with regard to different human populations.523 The fiction of the genius malignus leads us thus to confront a reality which is so strange that it cannot even be called a “reality” anymore, because all criteria for distinguishing the real from the unreal (the “apparent”) have been washed away. But what else should we even suppose in a phenomenologically infinite universe which is not of our making? Why should we even assume that the world studied by modern natural science would be inherently understandable to us in all its aspects? Thus rises the “problem of the external world,”524 as it is known in modern European philosophy. In its radical reality it does not concern the banal question of whether we can know for sure that there is an objective world outside of our subjective impressions. Even to raise such a question would admittedly be a “scandal”525 for a serious pursuit of thinking, especially in its post-metaphysical posture. The external world is there, has been for eons before us human beings and will be there for eons after. That much is certain, beyond all reasonable doubt (what would it even mean to doubt it?526). But then the genuine problem arises: what reason do we have to believe that this practically infinite and eternal universe is something we finite and temporal human beings can meaningfully relate to? The ontological discrepancy between the two is simply too overwhelming to bare. Let us call this question a post-metaphysical reading of the problem of the external world. It is now possible to see how the modern Cartesian movement challenges the classical metaphysical assumption, and its concomitant religious presumption. By questioning our spontaneous way-of-being-in-the-world (even the most homely occasion of “sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown”) through philosophical thought-experiments, culminating in the fiction of the malicious demon, Cartesianism pushes us to finally recognize that the surrounding world is not our world. Consequently, we 523

Even ordinary numbers, as self-evident as they seem to us, have a complex natural history behind them (see C. EVERETT, Numbers and the Making of Us). 524 See B. STROUD, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, pp. 1-38. 525 See M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, §43. 526 See L. WITTGENSTEIN, On Certainty, §84ff.

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cannot have any prima facie reason for believing in its intrinsic intelligibility and meaningfulness. On the contrary, the modern trauma concerns precisely the painful acknowledgement that the (phenomenologically, for us) infinite and eternal universe is not intrinsically intelligible and meaningful for us human beings. The modern Western revolution in science and culture crushed for ever our spontaneous but profoundly naive trust in the ultimate intelligibility and meaningfulness of reality. In the Cartesian challenging of the metaphysical assumption the speculative proprium of Western modernity shines at its clearest.527 For millennia humans had based their understanding of the surrounding world on myths and religious narratives in which humanity had a central role to play. The Greek metaphysical tradition claimed that humans can arrive at a definitive understanding of the ultimate principle (arché) of all reality. After the modern break all this seems nothing but an unfounded assumption, understandable perhaps given the poor epistemological situation of all humanity before the scientific revolution, but nevertheless only an assumption. An assumption, furthermore, that has been demolished by the modern Western mentality to such a degree that we now take great pains to put ourselves in the shoes of pre-modern people at all. What might it really have been like to live in an intrinsically intelligible and meaningful cosmos where everything had its beautifully ordered place? What might it have been like to understand and see the divine nature through the natural world (as in Rom 1:20), and thus be regarded as “God’s offspring” (see Acts 17:20)? Whatever it might have been like, it must have been very different from existing in our radically Other universe, where humans do not seem to have any objective (“metaphysical”) reason for existing in the first place.

4. The Cartesian Movement in Modern Western Secularization: What Descartes Saw but Berkeley Missed The Cartesian turn rendered obsolete the pre-modern metaphysical way of being-in-the-world. Since this modern break, Western philosophy has largely circled around the question of metaphysical dualism: how is the relationship between a subjective self-consciousness and the objective reality to be understood, and how should it be conceptualized? What is the place of mind/language in the natural world? Human beings have, of course, always been amazed at existing for a while in a world which is not theirs, but the particular character of the subjective-objective-question that 527

See FR, n. 103: “Philosophy moreover is the mirror which reflects the culture of a people.”

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Descartes gave to it has no precedents in earlier thinking. At least this is the main thesis of the highly learned essay by the English classicist Miles Burnyeat which we have been following until now.528 George Berkeley (1685-1753), in fact, claimed to have found clear forerunners to his own idealistic solution of the modern dualism already in Plato and Aristotle. However, as Burnyeat argues, nothing could be further from the truth. There are superficial similarities between Berkeley’s idealistic subjectivism and certain passages in the Platonic and Aristotelian corpora, as there are superficial similarities between ancient skepticism and the Cartesian doubt, too. Yet, the two do not really amount to the same thing. On the contrary, there is a far deeper-going dissimilarity between ancient and modern European thinking in this regard, which has crucial relevance for the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization that we are presently developing. Descartes’s hyperbolical doubt, especially with the help of the concept of genius malignus, went deeper than ever before in human thinking. Consequently, it “brought into the open and questioned for the first time the realist assumption […] which Greek thought even at its most radical never quite managed to throw off,” as Burnyeat summarizes the issue.529 Only after the realist assumption had been “brought into the open and questioned” could idealism also unfold in its modern stature, like in Berkeley. According to Burnyeat’s argumentation, this was the crucial modern break in philosophy with respect to pre-modern thinking, the reality of which Descartes clearly saw but Berkeley missed.530 Why was this so? Because the reality of reality had never been questioned as such. To be certain, long before Descartes there were already doubts about the truthfulness of different human beings’ views about reality in the Western tradition. It had even been suggested (in Pyrrhonian skepticism) that perhaps none of us even approaches the truth, in which case it would be wisest to suspend judgment on all matters concerning objective reality. But it was never suggested until Descartes that there might not even be any one reality or an intelligible order of things, to which we could rationally relate. However much different people would err on the nature of reality, the ancients never questioned the unarticulated assumption that there nevertheless is a reality on the nature of which we can err. Cartesian modernity, by contrast, unveiled this realist assumption precisely as an assumption which, as all assumptions, can be challenged. The particularly 528

See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, also in M.F. BURNYEAT, Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, pp. 245-275. 529 M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 40. 530 M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 40.

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modern Western formation of human transcendentality flows from this challenge. This might still sound too high-flowing, or metaphysical. Who would question an “assumption,” according to which there is a reality independently of our subjective impressions of it (making it exactly the realist assumption)? Was not the existence of the external world which has been there for eons before us and which will be there for eons after us considered the most indubitable fact there is? Yes, certainly so, and this objection gives us a good reason to re-identify and rephrase the realist assumption as the metaphysical assumption. For the point is not whether there is an external reality or not (of course there is!), but whether human beings can meaningfully relate to it. Is the universe such that we can find meaning in it and thus feel at home in it? Does our subjective thirst for meaning find correspondence in objective reality? This, to put it briefly, is the post-metaphysical rendering of the realist assumption as the metaphysical assumption. Whatever metaphysics might mean, it has something to do with intelligibly and thus meaningfully relating to the reality around us. A characteristic of modern, and even more so post-modern, Western thinking is that the metaphysical assumption has become an assumption for us; we are not anymore so sure if humanity belongs to this universe in the first place. We might not be God’s offspring at all (and what does “God” even mean?). What has the Cartesian challenging of the metaphysical assumption, then, to do with Western secularization, in general, and with Radical Secularization, in particular? Rahner had rejected the idea that human transcendentality might finally be directed towards infinite nothingness as false simply because “nothingness grounds nothing” (das Nichts begründet nichts).531 The only reason why Rahner can state that so matter-of-factly is because he holds unquestionably fast to the metaphysical assumption. According to it, reality in itself has a meaningfulness which human beings can relate to with their mind. We are not surrounded by an infinite void but an infinite fullness of being, Rahner assumed with the rest of the Western metaphysical tradition. Yet, take away the metaphysical assumption and everything turns out quite differently. In light of modern natural science, reality shows itself rather as an infinitely expanding universe without any stable point of reference. There are no intrinsic essences which we could grasp and control 531

See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 33. But why would one need, or want, a grounding to begin with? Would not any assumed “ground” for human transcendentality hinder its free flow towards the infinite? With these questions the phenomenological figure of Radical Secularization begins to take shape.

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with our mind, but an unlimited horizon of new stimuli and experiences without any absolute vanishing points. An ever-broadening network of relationships which clearly refuses to become closed into any limited conceptuality. Instead of a static fullness of being, a dynamic nothingness which precisely as nothingness opens up into infinity.532 One can react in different ways to a worldview which has been separated from the metaphysical assumption. On one hand, it can be a traumatic, or at least vertiginous, experience to become conscious of existing in a universe in which there are no intrinsic essences, limits or meanings.533 On the other hand, such an experience can set free an enormous amount of spiritual energy, as if one were absolutely free to realize oneself exactly as one chooses to.534 The entire spiritual trajectory of Western modernity can be read along either of these two lines (or perhaps both in a paradoxical conjunction, as in Nietzsche himself). Be that as it may, the coming of definitive post- or nonreligion as Radical Secularization can only be understood and described against the background of the modern Western questioning of the metaphysical assumption. It must thus present a focal point in a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization. To understand why this is so, we have to study more closely the original character of the Cartesian movement, now in its positive dimension. In this way, it should become clearer how the Cartesian spiritual movement paves the way for the emancipatory movement of Western secularization, in general, and the decidedly trans-religious movement of

532

Indeed, contemporary cosmology claims that dark matter and dark energy constitute even 95% of the total mass-energy of the universe. They are called “dark,” because they cannot be directly observed by us, and we do not yet understand their more precise nature. 533 See F. NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, §125: “How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?” 534 See Nietzsche’s “hymn of praise” at the end of The Will to Power: “[…] this my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of twofold voluptuous delight, my ‘beyond good and evil,’ without goal, unless the joy of the circle itself is a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself–do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, most intrepid, most midnightly men?–This world is the will to power–and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power–and nothing besides!”

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Radical Secularization, in particular.535

4.1 The Character of the Cartesian Movement: The Project of Pure Enquiry towards the Absolute Conception of Reality In its negative dimension the Cartesian intellectual movement doubts everything that even in principle can be doubted, which turns out to be absolutely everything, including the previously undoubted metaphysical assumption. Descartes’s intention with his method was not a merely negative or destructive one, however.536 On the contrary, by doubting everything he only wanted to find an undoubtably certain fundament for the new house of knowledge which he had set for himself to build.537 The constructive or positive dimension of the Cartesian movement is precisely this idea of a new, completely secure and transparent science. According to Descartes’s intellectual project, philosophy was only aimed at providing the metaphysical roots for the tree of knowledge, physics being its trunk and other particular sciences its branches.538 English philosopher Bernard Williams, one of the most respected analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, memorably characterized the Cartesian project as the “Project of Pure Enquiry,” the ultimate goal and raison d’être of which was to arrive at an “absolute conception of reality” showing the world as it really, in itself, is.539 Williams’s concepts will help us delineate the general contours of the Cartesian spiritual movement, and the Radical Secularization that it gradually came to make possible. 535

The connection between Cartesianism and modern European atheism is a muchdiscussed theme in the historical study of atheism. The Italian historian of philosophy Cornelio Fabro, for example, was even ready to identify modern atheism with the Cartesian “principle of immanence” (see C. FABRO, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, pp. 111-139, 1091-1100). In this central part of the present study, however, the aim is simply to arrive at a sufficient phenomenological description of complete nonreligion as Radical Secularization by following its speculative genealogy. Yet, as the following treatment will show, the interpretation of the connection between the Cartesian and the nonreligious spiritual movement presented here is basically opposite to Fabro’s: modern Western nonreligiosity is argued to flow, not from any sort of immanentism, but from a full-blown transcendentalism, instead, i.e. from a human transcendentality which has been given the absolute freedom to unfurl as it decides, without any pre-given limits. 536 See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes, pp. 33-34. 537 See R. DESCARTES, Discourse on the Method, pp. 116-117, 126-127; Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 12. 538 See R. DESCARTES, Principles of Philosophy, p. 186. 539 See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 32-71.

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Descartes’s philosophical project started from his recognition that his received picture of the world included many things that were not really true, i.e. that did not in fact exist there in reality. The New Science questioned basically the entire Aristotelian worldview which had given the backbone to European civilization for a millennium or so. Through his own travels Descartes had personally experienced how one’s conception of reality critically depends on the culture in which one has happened to become born. Stories and rumors from the New World encountered by European explorers suggested even more radical cultural differences than were to be found on the Old Continent. All this convened to bring about the modern break, in the wake of which we post-modern Westerners still try to understand our place in the universe. The modern break, and the ensuing modern trauma, necessitated a corresponding intellectual response from modern Europeans.540 Descartes’s response to the modern break/trauma was his Project of Pure Enquiry, as analyzed by Williams. A defining feature of this intellectual project is the insight that our beliefs about the world and the way–method!– of acquiring them are not two separate issues.541 On the contrary, the two are so intimately connected that such beliefs cannot be regarded as true, i.e. as knowledge, that have not been arrived at through a rationally justified course of investigation (knowledge as “justified true belief”). In other words, an appropriate method is necessary to attain a truthful relationship with the surrounding reality. Precisely the lack of a rationally justified method was the reason for Descartes in his youth acquiring so many false beliefs about the world. Without yet being able to use his own intellect autonomously, the young Descartes had only blindly taken in what his teachers, and the Scholastic tradition they stood in, had proposed to him. After having recognized that the traditional worldview was wrong in many aspects, Descartes set for himself the task to develop another way of relating to the world which would not (mis)represent it according to any culturally conditioned conception of it, but would reveal it as it really, in itself, is. This, to put it briefly, is the aim of the Project of Pure Enquiry. Here we do not need to enter into the particular details of the Cartesian philosophical-scientific method. We are only interested in its connection 540 See T. BERRY, The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth, p. 52: “A break of immense significance has occurred. We have moved from an earlier mythic mode of understanding the universe to an understanding based on empirical processes and expressed in numerical equations.” Berry’s evaluation of the consequences of the modern break for planet Earth is very negative (and rightly so), but now we only try to discern its phenomenological figure. 541 See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, p. 41.

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with the phenomenological possibility of transcendentally departing from traditional religion. For this, it is enough to understand the general speculative character of the Cartesian intellectual movement. The first thing to note is the ideally “pure” nature of the Cartesian movement. To avoid all peculiar perspectives on the world, which possibly tell much more about a certain cultural tradition than about reality as it is in itself, Descartes, in Williams’s words, imagined himself as a “Pure Enquirer” who has no other interests or ambitions than justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge, only.542 Normally, of course, human beings relate to the surrounding world with a myriad of different motivations. Most basically, perhaps, we are motivated to survive biologically, to find food and shelter, to mate and have offspring. Furthermore, we strive to compete with the others, to stand out as somehow special (or on the contrary, to hide from others’ attention543), to develop various ways of living together from hunter-gatherer communities to modern nation-states, and so on. All this happens according to the particular expectations and conditions of possibility given by one’s cultural tradition. The Pure Enquirer, by contrast, aspires to detach themselves from all normal human motivations in order to devote themselves only to the intellectual project of getting to know the world as it is in itself, independently of all human motivations and strategic considerations. Descartes emphasized much that the knowledge striven for by the Project of Pure Enquiry must be absolutely certain.544 The whole Project started from the acknowledgment that at least some, and perhaps even the majority, of one’s beliefs about the world were, or could be, false. Hence the method, through which knowledge was previously searched for, was seriously flawed, because it produced false beliefs about reality (like any algorithm is flawed, which occasionally gives a wrong conclusion545). The new method of Pure Enquiry should, by contrast, from the very beginning be programmed so that it would avoid all possibility of producing false beliefs. The genuinely pure search for knowledge would be “pure” precisely because it concentrated only on finding justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge. And it could be sure to do this only if the knowledge produced by it was certainly true, without any possibility of doubt. In sum, to be what it claims to be–the Project of Pure Enquiry–the beliefs arrived at through it have to 542

See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, p. 47. This, in fact, was Descartes’s own philosophy of life, to avoid Galileo’s fate: Larvatus prodeo (see P. ROSSI, The Birth of Modern Science, pp. 100-102). 544 Williams analyzes the kind of certainty required by the Project of Pure Enquiry in terms of “incorrigibility” (see B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 49-51). 545 See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, p. 34. 543

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be perfectly certain. The negative or destructive dimension of the Cartesian movement–the method of hyperbolical doubt, discussed briefly above–is consequently intimately connected to its positive or constructive aspiration to acquire certain knowledge about reality. For even the idealized Pure Enquirer embarks on their intellectual project with certain beliefs concerning reality. The project would not even start, if one did not believe something about reality. At the same time, however, one knows, or suspects, that some, or many, of one’s beliefs about the world are false. The Cartesian intellectual movement begins from this initial tension. How to proceed, then, in the Project of Pure Enquiry? By doubting everything that even theoretically can be doubted, Descartes claimed. Every belief where there is even the slightest chance of error must be rejected, if one is to arrive at a completely secure fundament on which to build one’s knowledge of the world. Thus, we receive the three stages of doubt culminating in the “hyperbolical” one caused by the malicious demon which leads us to question the very reality of reality. As emphasized by Burnyeat, the peculiarly Cartesian doubt becomes possible only because his project is exclusively of a theoretical (or pure, in Williams’s terminology) nature.546 But if absolutely everything becomes doubted, from one’s particular perceptions of outer reality (including the reality of one’s own body) to the very reality of outer reality altogether, is there any possibility of knowledge left, and of perfectly certain knowledge at that? The revolutionary Cartesian answer is that only after everything has been doubted can certain knowledge become possible. To summarize, the original Cartesian doubt resulted from the recognition that at least some of one’s beliefs were not true, i.e. did not represent the world as it in itself is but rather reflected human prejudices.547 The method of doubt was then designed to rid us of all those beliefs which have to do with deceptive human conceptualizations of reality instead of reality as such. The goal of doubting everything was to lead one to such beliefs about the world which by no means could be doubted but which were absolutely certain. Only these beliefs could be considered knowledge in the most pure meaning of the term. Such knowledge would concern the world as it is in 546

See M.F. BURNYEAT, “Idealism and Greek Philosophy”, pp. 39-40; B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 55, 61. 547 There has been much criticism of the so-called correspondence theory of truth in modern analytic philosophy, but taken at its face-value, the way of talking according to which our beliefs represent or correspond to some facts in reality (or fail to do that), should be most meaningful and fully understandable to all competent speakers of English (see B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, pp. 18-20).

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itself, independently of all intellectual conceptualizations of it. In short, according to the Cartesian project, only such knowledge could be absolutely certain which did not depend on any particular perspectives but which would only show reality as it in itself is. Williams described the positive goal of the Project of Pure Enquiry as “the absolute conception of reality.”548 The absolute conception of reality would show reality as it is in itself, absolutely and independently of any particular conceptualizations of or perspectives on it. Whereas there are various individual conceptions of reality, in fact as many as there are rational beings capable of conceptualizing it, there can be only one absolute conception of reality that shows it as it in itself is, irrespective of all possible or actual particular conceptualizations of it. To put it briefly, then, the absolute conception of reality should show reality as it is anyway, even if no particular conceptions of it existed at all.549 Only knowledge concerning the absolute conception of reality could be perfectly certain, because it would be free from all particular and possibly distorting conceptions of it. Thus, in light of the absolute conception of reality any possibility of error would not even exist. The general phenomenology of the Cartesian movement should now be visible. The Project of Pure Enquiry starts from a situation where there are different and conflicting conceptualizations of reality, a more or less radical pluralism, that is. It strives to go beyond them to reality as it is anyway, independently of those different and conflicting conceptualizations of it. But this is not yet enough. The absolute conception of reality must also be able to satisfyingly explain and include into itself the various particular conceptualizations of reality. In other words, it is not enough to present reality as it is in itself, absolutely or independently of all local representations of it; one must also illustrate how the independent reality can give rise to different and conflicting conceptualizations of it. For example, if one person says (rightly) that there is an apple to the left of the bowl on the table and another person says (rightly) that there is an apple to the right of the bowl on the table, the absolute conception of reality should be able to include them both in itself by explaining how the two persons are looking at the same table from opposite sides. Or if somebody knows that it is raining, but some other knows that it is not raining, the absolute conception of reality should be able to include them both in the same conception of reality but in different times (yes, it did rain yesterday,

548 549

See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, p. 65. See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, p. 64.

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but not today).550 The concept of the absolute conception of reality can be further illustrated by the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. This distinction was known already in Greek antiquity, but it became really popular in early modern European philosophy and has since become a part of enlightened commonsense.551 The distinction can phenomenologically be said to arise in three stages.552 First, one recognizes that one’s own perceptions are caused by things and events in the outer (“physical”) world, to which even one’s own body belongs. Second, one realizes that the same physical things and events, which cause certain perceptions in one, can produce other reactions in others (or exist without causing any reactions in any sentient beings at all). Third, one begins to develop a conception of the outer reality as it is in itself, independently of all actual or possible reactions to it. Developing a conception of independent reality would mean abstracting from all secondary reactions to it (for example, how it looks or tastes), in order to arrive at its primary qualities (for example, its shape and motion) which are there anyway, even without any sentient reactions to them. In Greek antiquity, Democritus, for example, was already of the dissenting opinion that “by convention colour, by convention the sweet, by convention the bitter, but in truth, atoms and the void.”553 The basic idea here, contrary to the metaphysical view of things, is that the world is radically different than it spontaneously appears to human senses. Rather, human beings attach to reality many things that are not really there as it is in itself, but only as human beings “by convention” (nomoi) react to it. The distinction between primary or really existing qualities in reality and the secondary qualities, which human beings themselves add to it, became then a basic component of the modern scientific worldview from the sixteenth century onwards. Galileo, for instance, claimed in his 1623 work Il Saggiatore that: “If the ears, the tongue, and the nostrils were taken away, the figure, the numbers and motions would indeed remain, but not the odours or the tastes or the sounds, which, without the living animal, I do not believe are anything else than names.”554 Descartes, for his part, thought that colors and other 550

See B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, p. 28. Barry Stroud’s detailed discussion of the philosophical “quest for reality” helpfully supplements Williams’s analysis of the Project of Pure Enquiry, as does Thomas Nagel’s scrutiny of the concept of the “view from nowhere.” All three are referred to here in tandem. 551 See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 236-248. 552 See T. NAGEL, The View from Nowhere, p. 14. 553 As quoted in B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, p. 7. 554 As quoted in B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, p. 8.

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secondary qualities could only be clearly and distinctly understood as mere sensations in the mind. Boyle supposedly coined the terms “primary” and “secondary” qualities, whereas Locke popularized the distinction for the English language in 1689 in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.555 The interesting point, and the ensuing philosophical problem, with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is, however, not the observation as such that something should belong to reality as it is independently in itself (the primary qualities), whereas something other is arguably only a subjective reaction to it (the secondary qualities). To arrive at the absolute conception of reality one should be able to explain how the primary give rise to the secondary qualities. It is one thing to claim that colors, for example, do not exist in the outer physical objects themselves but only in the eye of the beholder. It is quite another thing to explain satisfactorily how this in fact happens. The problem is fundamentally not a scientific one, but it has to do with the philosophical status of our color-language. We do in fact say that that apple on the table is red, and we (the average person) also do see it as red. The apple may seem yellow in darker light, but in reality we know that it is red. The apple also remains red, of course, even when there is nobody to see it. And it would have been red, even if there would not have been anybody to experience it as red. But can this last phrase be meaningfully said? Would the apple have been red, even if there would never have been sentient beings to see and conceptualize it as red? Here we are prone to answer in the negative. Would the universe never have produced living beings with the kind of visual system we humans have, the apple would not have been red, or better, it would never have become experienced as red. On the other hand, even without any sentient beings the apple would have been round and solid, and it would have had a certain mass, we would spontaneously think after the modern break. This is the distinction between the primary qualities which are there anyway, even without any particular experiences of them, and the secondary qualities which only reflect the particular biological-psychological constitution of certain animals. The absolute conception of reality aspires to go beyond the latter to capture the former, the world as it really, in itself, is. At the end of the day, the true description of the world should not be made to depend on completely contingent features of the universe (such as humans). Yet, the fact remains that certain animals, namely humans, perceive the apple as red. It is a perfectly objective fact about reality that humans see this particular species of apple as red. Any conception of reality which claims to 555

See B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, pp. 9-10.

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represent it as it really, in itself, is, should contain this fact. But how can it do that, when it is at the same time acknowledged that the apple’s redness, in contrast to its shape and solidity, essentially depends on the specific nature of those beings which see it? In reality, as we know, the subjective or secondary reactions are there, as truly as the objective or primary qualities are there! The philosophical challenge confronting any proposed absolute conception of reality is thus to make the intellectual movement from one’s original subjective view of the world to reality as it is in itself, objectively or independently of that particular view, without, however, denying the reality of that subjective view itself. How to move from the phenomenon to the thing in itself without losing the phenomenon on the way? The big question is whether such an intellectual movement can be done in the first place.556 Can one move from the dependent to the independent reality without annihilating oneself in the process? As Williams points out, this way of describing the Project of Pure Enquiry and the absolute conception of reality which it aspires to is a contemporary modernization of Descartes’s philosophical project and would not even necessarily have been intelligible to him.557 With the cogito and the God-given guarantee between its clear and distinct ideas on one hand, and objective reality on the other, Descartes had his own way of carrying out the Project and arriving at the absolute conception of reality. That way is no more available to us, and it shows how strongly Descartes still stood in the foregoing metaphysical tradition.558 Nevertheless, the fundamental motivation behind the Cartesian project still remains understandable and relevant for us. It might even be said to define the modern scientific ethos as such. It is the recognition that the universe is a very queer place, indeed, radically Other with respect to natural human expectations.559 Consequently, we have no a priori reason for 556

See B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, pp. 27-28. See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 65-66. 558 To put it briefly, Descartes still clung to a metaphysical interpretation of the transcendental subject, giving it an ontologically necessary posture. In Beyond Good and Evil, §17, Nietzsche called this the “logical superstition” and corrected it by reminding us of a “small short fact”: Was den Aberglauben der Logiker betrifft: so will ich nicht müde werden, eine kleine kurze Thatsache immer wieder zu unterstreichen, welche von diesen Abergläubischen ungern zugestanden wird,– nämlich, dass ein Gedanke kommt, wenn „er“ will, und nicht wenn „ich“ will; so dass es eine Fälschung des Thatbestandes ist, zu sagen: das Subjekt „ich“ ist die Bedingung des Prädikats „denke“. After the Death of God, metaphysical naïveté is dead, too: we cannot equate our human language with the objective reality anymore. 559 As the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane put it: “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own 557

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thinking that reality’s true nature would in any simple way correspond to our spontaneous reactions and conceptualizations of it (as was falsely presumed in the metaphysical assumption). On the contrary, as contingent and finite beings in the mind-blowingly large and old universe, we should rather expect that it does not turn any easily intelligible face to us. Perhaps the universe does not even have a (for humans, at least) meaningful face at all. After the modern break, we have become accustomed to considering reality as an independent reality that could and would have been there even without any sentient beings. The very least, this undeniable fact must figure in the absolute conception of reality. This conviction gives a strongly critical character to the modern Cartesian quest for reality, despite its ultimately constructive aim.560 The “purity” of the Project comes to mean the ascetic purity of dismantling one’s original conception of reality from all particularity, from everything that made it one’s own conception of reality to begin with. As particular human beings we know, for example, that everything that makes us the particular human beings we are does not have to be like it is. We do not have to have the particular evolutionary history and the ensuing biological-psychological constitution that we in fact do, and we do not have to have the particular cultural and familiar background that to a high degree makes us who we personally are. If we want to get to reality as it truly, in itself, is, we have to try to detach from everything particular and local in our conception of the world to proceed towards how it is independently of all our species-specific reactions to it. This is what the scientific, at its source Cartesian, spiritual movement has been emphasizing to us during the last few centuries. Yet, there seems to be an enormous unthought here. Something is presumed so strongly that it does not even appear to be something presumed. Both Williams and Stroud claim that the philosophical quest for the absolute or independent conception of reality has been a central, even definitive, part of Western philosophy since the ancient Greeks.561 This, however, is not at all so clear. Superficially it may of course seem that both in ancient and modern European philosophy the general intellectual movement was from appearance to reality, from myth to logic. What the ancient Greeks started, the modern Europeans should only have carried suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose” (J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds, p. 286). 560 See B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, pp. 10-11. 561 See B. STROUD, The Quest for Reality, p. 3; B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, p. 65. The claim is especially surprising from Williams’s part, given the outstanding Classicist that he also was (see B. WILLIAMS, Truth and Truthfulness).

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further, now with the help of the mathematized natural sciences. The overall project of searching for the true nature of reality, even if it had not produced any intelligent beings such as us, should nevertheless have remained unchanged. Superficially it may seem like that, but in reality it is far from the truth. The very presumption that reality as it is in itself is an independent or absolute reality is a typically, and perhaps exclusively, modern Western presumption. In ancient and medieval philosophy, the general assumption was, by contrast, that reality is intrinsically meaningful and thus intelligible to the human mind or any other intellect. In this sense, the pre-modern conception of reality considered it as necessarily dependent on taking the subjective points of view into account. This assumption we have called the metaphysical assumption. It presumes an essential conformity between the universe and its rational inhabitants.562 According to this metaphysical view it would not make any sense to search for the supposedly absolute conception of reality which would show reality as it is independently of all intelligent beings. Rather, the very point of departure for ancient philosophy was the amazement (thauma) that the surrounding world is an intelligible reality which we human beings can learn to understand more and more, perhaps even in its totality.563 To put it briefly, the ancient amazement concerned the fact that the world, which as such is not of our making but exists independently of us, has all the same made itself dependent on us by producing such intelligent beings like us without which reality cannot be understood as it really is. In sum, the ancient conception of reality as it is in itself presents it as a dependent reality, in contrast to the modern independent reality. Now these spurious remarks obviously need more illustration, especially as to how they relate to the very condition of possibility of Radical Secularization after the modern break, which has been the underlying theme of this discussion.

4.2 The Scientific View from Nowhere and Radical Secularization Thomas Nagel’s term for the absolute conception of reality is the “view from nowhere.” Human transcendentality is the continuous spiritual movement into the ever-broadening horizon of reality, as was argued at the beginning of this chapter. According to Nagel, philosophical problems arise when we try to transcend our subjective human points of view–which 562

See Pierre Hadot’s discussion of the ancient metaphysical “view from above” in P. HADOT, “The View from Above”. 563 On the experience of amazement or wonder as the motivating force of philosophy, see PLATO, Theaetetus, 155d; ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics, 982b.

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always are “views from somewhere”–for a more objective perspective on reality.564 The theoretical endpoint to this transcendental movement would be such an intellectual perspective which would not bear any trait of belonging to a certain kind of being anymore, but would express reality as it is in itself, seen from no particular point of view but from the view from nowhere, as it were. Again, the fundamental problem is that what initially gave rise to the transcendental movement, namely some kind of subjective approach to reality, threatens to become distorted when one moves towards a more objective view of things.565 However well we would understand the specific physiology of a bat, for example, we would never come to know objectively from the outside what it is like to be a bat from the inside. That is something only the bat itself can experience, from its own subjective point of view. This is a conceptual observation which no future progress of science, at least as we know it now, can overturn.566 But how, then, can this perfectly real subjective fact be assimilated– without denying it–to our conception of the objective reality, which is there independently of all subjective perspectives on it? Similar problems arise in all areas of philosophy, from the philosophy of mind and language to metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. We want to transcend our original subjective perspectives for an ever-more objective worldview, but do not know how to do this without refuting the reality of subjectivity in the objective reality. Philosophy moves in this tension between the subjective and the objective, Nagel claims.567 564

Nagel develops the idea most fully in his classic work The View from Nowhere; for a concise expression of the same fundamental insight, see Nagel’s essay “Subjective and Objective” in T. NAGEL, Mortal Questions, pp. 196-213. 565 See T. NAGEL, The View from Nowhere, pp. 3-12. 566 See Nagel’s famous essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” in T. NAGEL, Mortal Questions, pp. 165-180. 567 The whole idea of the view from nowhere (as well as that of the absolute conception of reality) can be challenged both from a Heideggerian (see F. PATSCH, “C’è mondo solo finché c’è l’Esserci umano”) and a Wittgensteinian (see E. MINAR, “A View from Somewhere”) point of view. Is it at all meaningful to aspire to a perspective beyond all perspectives if our language/thinking becomes possible only within a certain one, namely that of the human way-of-being-in-the-world or formof-life? The Cartesian Project of Pure Enquiry does not, however, claim that aspiring to the absolute conception of reality would be easy or natural for human beings. Rather, the philosophical quest for reality demands a high capacity of spiritual detachment from one’s original way of being-in-the-world which not all are equally capable to. Furthermore, it is precisely about an ongoing quest or project which can proceed only piecemeal without any pre-given guarantees of finally arriving at

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Why is the thrust towards the objective then so strong in modern philosophy, even to the point of suffocating all subjective perspectives of reality (as tends to happen in scientistic naturalism)? First, the intellectual method which we moderns have learnt to consider the most reliable and effective way to understand reality is that of mathematized physical sciences. There is no doubt that it was principally the modern scientific method that led us from the closed, mythic world to the infinite universe. And this method is essentially built on objectifying our view of the world through a mathematical language and a rigorous experimental empiricism. The whole goal of modern science is to minimize the influence of all subjectivity to arrive at an ever-more objective perspective on reality. Furthermore, in the technologized civilization of today we see and experience the effects of the modern scientific method everywhere. Which sphere of our Lebenswelt is not touched, or even critically determined, by the completely objective binary system used by modern computers? In a culture based on objectivity-aspiring science and its technological offshoots, then, it is no wonder that objectivity comes to attain a particularly high status, almost to be identified with reality itself. The second reason for the draw of objectivity is nearly connected to the success of objectifying science. The reality which modern science presents before our eyes is the infinite universe where humanity does not appear to have any particularly significant position. Through the objectifying moves of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud (not to speak about contemporary cosmology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience) we have been forced to resign the special status previously assigned to humanity. We are no longer offspring of God, but offspring of a primordial line of homo. Or this is how it can seem after the modern break: earlier humanity was assumed to be somehow essentially connected to the surrounding reality, to have a special standing in it, while now (the modern secular modo!) we have come to the (traumatizing? exhilarating?) recognition that reality in itself does not have any intrinsic meaningfulness or intelligibility, at least not any that would appear to particularly concern us human beings. The scales and dimensions of the universe are simply so huge, practically infinite for us, that humanity does not appear in any way centrally positioned in it. The universe is a very strange and foreign place for us human beings, indeed.

reality as it is in itself (as with Neurath’s boat). For the fascinations and risks about embarking on the project of transcending one’s original human point of view, see F. KERR, Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity. Even for Dante the process of trasumanar had to go through Hell and Purgatory to reach Paradise.

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Furthermore, it is not only about quantities here, but even more about qualities.568 Also qualitatively, the world revealed by modern science does not seem to be especially designed for human beings, but on the contrary humans, like any other physical beings, are the result of in themselves blind natural laws which with enough time and repetitions can happen to produce beings like them.569 The crucial point is that the universe did not have any necessity to generate humans, or any other existing beings. On the contrary, the universe would equally have been there even if humans had not happened to evolve as they have. Likewise, the universe will continue to be there after all humans have disappeared from the world (a not at all so distant possibility regarding post-industrial humanity).570 After the modern break and in light of modern science, we become confronted with our radical 568

In pre-modern thinking, for example in the monotheistic traditions of the ancient Near East, reality was conceptualized in extremely–from a modern scientific perspective, that is–restricted terms, both quantitatively and qualitatively (a 6000year-old universe with a humanity as the image of God). But even in the ancient Indian traditions, for example, which allowed for quantitatively much broader temporal and spatial dimensions, humanity was still considered to stand in a qualitatively very particular relationship with the rest of reality; there was something meaningful to be understood about the very nature of reality, be it even the recognition that everything is ultimately nothingness (but a nothingness which leads to enlightenment). In sum, the metaphysical assumption reigned supreme in all premodern religious traditions. The metaphysical assumption may even help to define religion precisely as religion (i.e. as belief in an intrinsic meaningfulness in the transhuman reality as it is in itself, or in other words, reality conceptualized as a dependent reality). 569 Modern science, especially in its Darwinian garb, performs a “strange inversion of reasoning”: reason does not ground reality anymore, but the in itself meaningless universe can give rise to apparent meaningfulness (see D.C. DENNETT, “Darwin’s ‘Strange Inversion of Reasoning’”). At least, this is how the revolutionary findings of modern science often have been experienced by modern Westerners. 570 As a reminder, we are here immersed in a phenomenological description of the connection between the view from nowhere and the conceptual condition of possibility of Radical Secularization. The metaphysical (and even more so, theological) temptation to pronounce something on the truth of the matter must still be bracketed at this stage. Suffice it to refer to the various formulations of the anthropic principle which try to grapple with the most amazing fact that, nevertheless, we are here. Physicist Freeman Dyson was prepared to go so far as to say: “The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming” (F.J. DYSON, Disturbing the Universe, p. 250). How far one can go with the anthropic principle is one of the most debated questions of contemporary philosophy of science, and it clearly has an essential theological component, too.

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contingency and finitude that, for a very long time, we had previously been fleeing from into various religious imaginaries. The scientific view from nowhere quite naturally, almost inevitably, presents us an infinite571 universe which does not have any intrinsic meaningfulness in itself. A logical corollary to the theorized absolute conception of reality is the acknowledgment that humanity does not have any special relationship with the rest of reality. The universe had no reason for generating humans, but would have been there, even if humans or any other sentient or intelligent beings had not developed. In the same way, the universe will continue to be there after all self-conscious life has disappeared. This seems to be the basic conviction of a truly post-metaphysical worldview, worth repeating time and again, and patiently delved into, if we want to understand the spiritual character of our contemporary world and enter into a dialogue with it as Christian theologians. A genuinely post-metaphysical Weltanschauung sets before our eyes a universe which is, indeed, so strange and foreign that we have absolutely no pre-given reason to think that we really could understand it in its deepest nature. Human meaning in such a universe can only come from ourselves, from our specific human form(s)-of-life, in which we strive to survive this present moment of our existence, without knowing anything about how the next moment will go. “Everything we see could also be otherwise. Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori,” as the young Wittgenstein summarized the modern scientific, definitively post-metaphysical stance towards reality.572

571

Again, “infinite,” like any other scientific-sounding term, is in the present context used only to describe a radically secular experience of reality. Most recent cosmology may or may not describe the universe as “infinite” (where much would turn on the semantic question of what we mean by “infinite”). The genealogicalphenomenological fact stands, however, that with respect to the pre-modern cosmos (inherited from the Greeks), the modern universe is definitely “infinite” in the sense that we acknowledge that it vastly surpasses our intellectual capacities, perhaps insurmountably so. And even more so, a post-metaphysical mentality can wonder why we, as the particular contingent species that we are, even should be able to understand the universe? In this fashion, the phenomenological contours of Radical Secularization are becoming clearer and clearer. 572 L. WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, §5.634. At the same time, the modern break introduces an ever-deepening alienation of the human from the rest of the universe: “Man proposes; the world disposes” (W.V.O. QUINE, Pursuit of Truth, p. 36). Yet, the modern break also opened the door to the unprecedently free unfolding of human transcendentality in and through secular Western modernity, as will be shown in the next chapter of this book.

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Here we arguably have the organic connection between modern Western secularization and modern natural science. It is not so much the case that the concrete findings of modern science would throw pre-modern religious traditions into question. Rather, the scientific ethos, aspiring as it does towards the perfectly objective view from nowhere, does not appear very hospitable to religious belief to begin with. Modern science imagines an independent reality which human beings must strive to depict as it would have been even without them or any other intelligent beings. Religion, by contrast, in all its highly varying forms, reckons with a dependent reality with an intrinsic meaningfulness to which we can personally relate. Religious belief in trans-human intentionality and meaning in reality can begin to appear quite unbelievable in the infinite universe. There is a profound contradiction in prospect between these two approaches. From a modern scientific perspective, religion can appear as fundamentally misguided, because it is based on the metaphysical assumption, which, after the modern break, must be considered a mere assumption. Perhaps only from such a radically secular perspective can one speak about “religion” in the singular in the first place. From the radically secular zero-point, all religions appear precisely as religious, i.e. based on the explicitly or implicitly acknowledged metaphysical assumption of some kind of trans-human meaningfulness in reality. All actual religions may differ as much as they do among themselves, but for Radical Secularization they all stand out as the same, because they presume the metaphysical assumption. The metaphysical assumption and the religious presumption go hand in hand. What justifies talk of “secularization” in this context? It is the simple fact that secularization becomes theologically deeply problematic and thus interesting primarily as a growing transcendental emancipation from religion, speculatively culminating in the concept of Radical Secularization as complete post- or nonreligion. Societal differentiation and statistical decrease in religious belief/practice certainly presents important challenges for pastoral theology,573 as broadening existential variety calls for a theory of religious pluralism.574 But the phenomenon of profound personal alienation from religion, not because one has not come into contact with any religious tradition, nor because one has received a corrupted impression of religious faith, but rather because reality simply does not seem to be like religions through the ages have claimed it to be–such a personal experience cannot but call the whole religious issue into question, calling for a radically 573 574

See P.M. ZULEHNER, GottesSehnsucht: Spirituelle Suche in säkularer Kultur. See E. HILLMAN, Many Paths: A Catholic Approach to Religious Pluralism.

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new theological approach. The radically secular experience has become possible only in a certain cultural setting, namely that of Western secular modernity. The point is not an empirical observation that Radical Secularization should be particularly common even in the most secularized Western societies–this is most probably not the case. The point is instead the speculative one that a completely nonreligious human form-of-life is possible in the first place. This philosophical observation already presents a serious problem for theology. How to include the subjective reality of a completely nonreligious way-of-being-in-the-world in a religiously objective worldview? This is, arguably, the deepest intellectual challenge that secularization, speculatively concentrated in the concept of Radical Secularization, presents to the fundamental theological reflection. Consider now, for example, the personal experience of William A. Anders. An American astronaut of the Apollo 8 space program, Anders took one of the first photographs of the planet Earth from the outside, from the lunar orbit. The celebrated Earthrise photo shows the Blue Planet rising in the horizon, in a majestic loneliness, amidst the infinite darkness of the surrounding universe. For millennia human beings had watched to the sky and wondered what it might contain, inventing various stories and myths about their place in the universe. Now for the first time in history somebody really saw the Earth from space, illuminating its unbelievable beauty and fragility. Such a detached view of the Earth had become possible only thanks to the unprecedented scientific and technological progress of the last few centuries in the West.575 Certainly, the Earthrise is no “view from nowhere.” It was taken from the Moon by a human being with a human-made camera on December 24, 1968. Nevertheless, it can help us imagine what intellectual detachment needed for the absolute conception of reality implies: readiness to open oneself for a perspective on reality which shows it independently of all human conceptualizations, in its utter strangeness and radical Otherness. The personal consequence of making the spiritual detachment needed for and caused by the Earthrise for Anders’s existential worldview is also worth noting. In an interview 50 years after taking the pathbreaking photo, Anders told that: “It really undercut my religious beliefs. The idea that things rotate around the pope and up there is a big supercomputer wondering whether Billy was a good boy yesterday? It doesn’t make any sense.”576 It 575

For a pertinent philosophical analysis, see Heidegger’s 1938 essay “Die Zeit des Weltbildes”. 576 See I. SAMPLE, “Earthrise: How the Iconic Image Changed the World”. As noted already in Chapter 1, it is a defining feature of Radical Secularization that traditional

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is as if contemplating the Earth from the outside had got Anders to see religion in a completely different perspective, too, namely in a radical Otherness to it. In the scientific view from nowhere there is no center of the universe; no special significance is given to any particular place (or time) in reality. Religion, by contrast, seems to presume precisely such a special significance for the planet Earth and its human inhabitants. Such a religious perspective, however, cannot but appear flawed, if not directly perverse, in a scientifically detached view of the things that modern science practically endorses us to adopt. Any sufficiently intelligent extra-terrestrial observer– like Diamond’s Andromedan anthropologist, or now the real-world spacetraveler William Anders himself–would “of course” recognize traditional religious beliefs to be literally “senseless,” “delusions worthy of study rather than of credence.”577 To recapitulate, religion as such is not contested by the concrete findings of modern science. Religious beliefs can always be reinterpreted to match the current state of scientific knowledge or then to be declared not to be

religion “doesn’t make any sense” to it. Consider also the practically quite different, but phenomenologically fundamentally similar experience of how English philosopher Julian Baggini lost his religious faith in R. BLACKFORD–U. SCHÜKLENK, ed., 50 Voices of Disbelief, 139-144. In both examples a radical experience of Otherness and a strong personal detachment appear as decisive for emancipating oneself from one’s religious upbringing. By contrast, one can presume that religion has something to do with the experience of belonging to or being able to connect with the surrounding world. Connecting people with reality at a deep, “metaphysical”, level–this can already now be said to be characteristic of religion. But how can this be done without denying–in a violently ontotheological manner– the contingent particularity of being human? This is the defining question for a truly Christian metaphysics, to be sketched in the concluding chapter of this book. 577 See J. DIAMOND, The World Until Yesterday, pp. 325-326. Radical Secularization might be relatively common in scientific circles, but perhaps not so amongst the general population. A radically secular person must consequently explain why reality does not seem so unquestionably nonreligious to many people. One line of possible explanation would be the personal and intellectual difficulty of performing such a radical spiritual detachment which is needed for contemplating the universe as absolutely nonreligious. Human beings have a strong tendency to flee from dissent and seek mutual agreement (necessary for being able to live together). The history of our species being so overwhelmingly religious, and the idea of building our communal life on a purely human or secular fundament being so recent in our cultural evolution, it is no wonder that traditional religiosity remains so common even today, and perhaps for all foreseeable future, too.

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about the objective reality at all.578 The thesis here is rather that the spiritual movement and the ensuing intellectual perspective on reality, which we have traced in Descartes and the subsequent development of modern natural science, can and has made a completely nonreligious way-of-being-in-theworld theoretically possible. Secularization is much more besides, of course, but precisely as Radical Secularization it becomes problematic and thus interesting for Christian theological reflection, challenging as it does the most fundamental premises of the latter. To be intellectually serious, a pre-modern religious tradition and its theology should be able to acknowledge and include in its own conception of reality the transcendental possibility of going beyond religion. If there really is a transcendent (or trans-human, in a post-metaphysical reading) meaningfulness in the universe, how is it then possible to bona fide see the latter as obviously lacking any such significance? Radical Secularization is not for or against religion as such, it just considers religious truth-claims so strange and foreign as not to be able to take them seriously at all. If everything really comes from God and returns to him, how is it then even possible to regard reality as an independent reality, i.e. as lacking any intrinsic meaningfulness of which only God, by definition, could be the ultimate source and guarantee? This is the form that the age-old mysterium iniquitatis naturally takes After Secularization, now in its post-metaphysical posture as mysterium vanitatis.

5. Radical Secularization: Putting the Cartesian Movement within a Broader Framework In this chapter, the first moves of the proposed fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization were performed. The goal is to develop such a conceptual framework in which the concept of Radical Secularization could show its authentic character as complete post- or nonreligion. We started from the influential analysis of human transcendentality by Karl Rahner, according to which the human mind is, by its spiritual constitution, infinitely open towards the semper maius of reality. Rahner’s philosophicaltheological analysis, with the rest of the Western metaphysical tradition until the modern break, was shown to be restricted by the metaphysical assumption concerning the ultimate union of reality and human thinking. This assumption was finally challenged, and thus unmasked exactly as an 578

As happened in Bultmannian Entmythologisierung, for instance, as the logical culmination of Protestant fideism (see R. BULTMANN, “The New Testament and Mythology”).

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assumption, by the Cartesian movement in modern Western thinking. It asks us to disengage ourselves from our received conceptual schemes to consider reality as it is independently of us, indeed, as it would have been even without us humans entering it (and as it will be after we have left the scene). From such an intellectual perspective, religious belief can definitively appear as literally unbelievable, intimately connected as it is with the metaphysical assumption concerning some kind of trans-human meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself. According to the proposed analysis, then, Radical Secularization signifies a human transcendentality that is striving to come into itself. Radical Secularization wants to be set free from all outer (“trans-human”) intentionalities and authorities, in order to perceive reality as it is in itself, independently of all human or other observers. It does not accept any other legitimization except the one given to it by itself, as through the empirical procedures of modern science. Thus, it must always retain the right of the last word on itself. Consequently, it is understandable why religion, in which the right of the last word is given to some Otherness outside humanity, must appear as literally unbelievable to Radical Secularization. To put it briefly, the overall phenomenology of Radical Secularization can be described as a thoroughly secular reditio completa in seipsum of human transcendentality–without any necessary trans-human mediation, as in religion579–, arguably made possible only by the historical conditions of European modernity.580 Secularization, in general, comes to mean human transcendentality’s entry into time and becoming, always according to a given cultural context. Yet, Radical Secularization does not mean a human transcendentality completely closed in itself. It is no ontotheological totalitarianism. On the contrary, it reserves the right of the last word on human transcendentality alone, not because there would be some other claimants to it in the world, but precisely because there are not. The universe which shows itself to Radical Secularization is a phenomenologically infinite one, without any necessary bounds or limits. This is no empirical claim but a transcendental one: the human mind is what it is exactly because it always can ask new questions and move beyond given answers. This very capacity of transcending all given phenomena defines human transcendentality, indeed, 579

See the metaphysical, and thus religious, analysis of reditio in K. RAHNER, Spirit in the World, pp. 117-120, 226-236. 580 The belief that human transcendentality can come into itself without a continuing trans-human mediation–especially of the natural world–is showing itself to be more and more disastrous. Still, it is part of the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization, as analyzed here.

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human being, as such, as was argued in reference to Rahner. And because the universe clearly is not of our making but we are its, the limitless transcendentality must somehow belong to reality as it is in itself. There is no human transcendentality in abstracto, but it comes to the fore only in concreto: there must always be something actual which the human mind transcends precisely be comprehending it (or comprehends it precisely by going beyond it).581 Traditional religion, on the other hand, posited something absolutely unconditional, something which has its meaningfulness in itself and which therefore cannot be surpassed without deforming it. In other words, religion seems to put an abrupt end to the infinitely open movement of human transcendentality. Religion and human freedom collide head-on, as it appears in light of Radical Secularization. In the Western tradition, the name for the religious blocking of the movement of human transcendentality was “God.” Nevertheless, the outmarch of human transcendentality has been inevitable, as shown by the progress of modern science and liberal democracy during the last few centuries. The absolute limit signified by “God” has been pushed further and further away, to the point of becoming the vanishing point of the highest possible abstraction (the “ground of being” or the “ultimate concern”, as in Paul Tillich, for example582). For the human transcendentality completely unchained in Radical Secularization, such a conception of God appears as trivial to negate as it is meaningless to affirm. What has the infinite opening of human transcendentality, which motivates the pursuit of science as well as that of democracy, possibly to do with traditional religion to begin with? The adequate way of arriving at such a truly postreligious approach to religion–beyond the suffocating binary of theism versus atheism–can only be through a concrete historical confrontation with one’s religious tradition. To be what it claims to be, Radical Secularization must have gone through the history of human religious evolution–and surpassed it for genuine nonreligion. Otherwise, it would only remain one or another form of atheism, scientistic naturalism or religious indifference. Radical Secularization knows its own religious roots–which are the roots of our entire globalized, hyperpluralistic world–but it just cannot meaningfully connect with them, although it is precisely by and through them that it has become what it claims to be. A detailed genealogy of Radical Secularization is obviously beyond the scope of the present study. We must and can content ourselves with a 581

Conversio ad phantasma logically precedes the knowing (and willing) subject’s transcendental coming into itself through abstractio, as Rahner explicates in K. RAHNER, Spirit in the World, pp. 264-279. 582 See I. PYYSIÄINEN, “God: A Brief History”, pp. 87-90.

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general phenomenological description of Radical Secularization against the background of its fundamental genealogy, i.e. how it has become what it is in and through our religious tradition. In the next chapter this will be done by putting the modern Cartesian movement into the broader framework of the Axial Age hypothesis. In that way, the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization, initiated in this chapter, will unfold itself more fully from its own original roots.

CHAPTER IV HUMAN TRANSCENDENTALITY 2: AXIAL AGES AND THEIR MULTIPLE SECULARIZATIONS

1. Introduction The acute “language loss” (Sprachnot) concerning a truly postreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world identified in the second chapter led the way towards a genealogical approach to Radical Secularization. If we now still lack the appropriate language for directly defining a thoroughly postor nonreligious human form-of-life, we can at least try to indirectly present the historical conditions of possibility for the total emancipation from traditional religion that has become a real possibility in the contemporary West. To this end, Chapter 3 initiated a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization by describing how a full-blown intellectual departure from religion became possible in the context of European modernity. In short, the intellectual movement of Cartesianism unmasked the metaphysical assumption of ancient Greek philosophy to be just an assumption, possible to be dispensed with. Without the metaphysical assumption, human transcendentality could freely proceed towards the infinite horizon of reality. In this light, religious belief in some kind of trans-human intentionality and meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself can begin to appear quite far-fetched, increasingly weird, and approaching the literally unbelievable. In the wake of the modern break, therefore, Radical Secularization begins to show itself as it really is according to its own selfunderstanding. Yet, this characterization of Radical Secularization in the speculative context of European modernity is still too negative and insubstantial. It presents Radical Secularization still as somehow against or in contrast to religion. Religion reckons with some sort of trans-human intelligibility in the world, whereas Radical Secularization contradicts it by negating the metaphysical assumption. However, this is not how Radical Secularization must be as genuine nonreligion, which already has gone beyond the religious

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truth-claims. For Radical Secularization, religion appears as literally unbelievable, impossible to take seriously in the first place. But neither is it indifferent to religion, for it knows that the human species has been and continues to be profoundly religious, i.e. counting on various sources of meaningfulness outside humanity itself. And precisely this puts Radical Secularization into the very tricky, or even frightening, unheimlich, situation in which it finds itself. In order to understand itself and its way-ofbeing-in-the-world, Radical Secularization should be able to understand something which it possibly cannot understand: religion. Consequently, the genealogical-conceptual framework for Radical Secularization must be broadened, and, most of all, deepened. If in light of European modernization and its secularization, Radical Secularization still appears as somehow in contrast to religion, then another, more inclusive, speculative framework must be developed. It is no wonder, furthermore, that the concept of Radical Secularization does not fit into the European framework, as imbued with metaphysical-religious notions as it is. In this way, Radical Secularization challenges us to overcome the Western metaphysical tradition with its inherent religious binaries (God–world, Church–state, theism–atheism, religious–non-religious) for the ongoing process of global hyperpluralization, where no traditional conceptuality enjoys, nor can enjoy, an absolute priority. The developing planetary community has a constitutionally open horizon before it. But in order to be able to step forward, into contemporary global hyperpluralism, a purported phenomenology of Radical Secularization must first step backward, into the deep-structures of human existential search, which are originally as thoroughly religious as Radical Secularization claims to be nonreligious. The reason for this necessary, and in fact contemporaneous, double-movement lies in the phenomenological character of Radical Secularization itself. To repeat, Radical Secularization is altogether Other with respect to religion, it cannot take it seriously in the first place, but at the same time it knows this to be extremely anomalous in the overall context of human evolution, then and now. Radical Secularization is, thus, decidedly no atheism, but neither is it indifferentism: it wants to understand its incapacity of understanding religion exactly by somehow relating to religion. And this can be done only by considering the big history of human religious evolution. If European modernization-secularization does not have enough place for Radical Secularization to show itself as it really, according to its own self-understanding, is, could Radical Secularization find a more suitable place for itself in the overall history of human religious evolution, even as a part in the very same?

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To sum up, a radically secular reading of human transcendentality is needed for an adequate phenomenological description of Radical Secularization to emerge. The reading must show how human transcendentality comes completely into itself, without necessarily reckoning with any transhuman intentionalities or meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself, independently of human transcendentality. Religion may have been useful, or even necessary, for the radically secular coming of human transcendentality into a second-orderly self-conscious (but always fragile) possession of itself. At any rate, the religious way has been the factual way which human transcendentality has travelled into itself. There is no way of denying our religious roots. Hence, already, as a matter of fact, all subtractionist approaches to human transcendentality are hopelessly impotent and uninteresting. A complete nonreligion can be what it claims to be only if it manages to meaningfully relate to our common religious past by surpassing it according to its own radically secular self-understanding. As Western secularization actually unfurled, nonreligion de facto needed the religious ladder to climb to its present way-of-being-in-the-world After Secularization. Whether nonreligion also can remain what it claims to be without the religious ladder is an interesting question which will be touched on at the end of the present chapter. Perhaps Radical Secularization has in its speculative excitement flown too near the Sun only to arrive at its own annihilation? Now, however, the sole purpose is to develop such a conceptual framework which would let the concept of Radical Secularization show itself as it really, according to its own self-understanding, is: namely, as genuine nonreligion. In the present chapter such a speculative framework is constructed on the basis of Karl Jasper’s increasingly popular theory of the “Axial Age.”583 583

Jaspers laid forth his theory of a fundamental turning-point (Achsenzeit) in human cultural evolution between 800 and 200 BCE in his 1949 book Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (English translation The Origin and Goal of History in 1953). The last millennium BCE saw the birth of those world religions and philosophies (in the ancient cultures of China, India, Israel, and Greece) which gave the spiritual direction to the human history well into the twentieth century, Jaspers claimed. Jaspers’s theory had an immediate forerunner in Max Weber’s comparative study of world religions (see M. WEBER, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie). Similar early proposals can be found in other academic traditions, too (see J.S. STUART-GLENNIE, In the Morningland, for example, from the English-speaking world), since the beginning of European historical consciousness in the nineteenth century. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the Israeli sociologist Shmuel Eisenstadt did more than anybody else to render Jaspers’s theory into a serious concept for contemporary academic debate, especially regarding the comparative study of world civilizations and their various modernizations (see S.N. EISENSTADT,

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It will hopefully provide a broad and deep enough source for a more adequate fundamental genealogical description of Radical Secularization which would not anymore contrast it with religion but would let it show itself as it really, according to its own self-understanding, is: as complete nonreligion, without any intrinsic relations to religion anymore. By starting from the beginnings of our global religious traditions, as imagined by the Axial framework, it should become intellectually visible how it became possible to surpass them altogether. Such a manner of proceeding will at the same time pave the way beyond Western secularization towards contemporary global hyperpluralization– yet another example of how the way forward usually must first travel backward. As it happens, human transcendentality seems to characteristically follow various double-movements in its gradual opening for the infinity of reality. Concreteness and abstractness, a posteriori and a priori, the empirical and the theoretical, seem to equally presuppose each other in the cognitive-volitional onwards movement of human transcendentality. This kind of essential polarity gives the spiritual energy to the gradual unfurling ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations). Since then, several highprofile, multi-disciplinary scientific conferences have been organized around the Axial Age hypothesis, and numerous anthologies discuss the theory (see J.P. ARNASON–S.N. EISENSTADT–B. WITTROCK, ed., Axial Civilizations and World History; R.N. BELLAH–H. JOAS, ed., The Axial Age and Its Consequences; S.A. ARJOMAND–S. KALBERG, ed., From World Religions to Axial Civilizations and Beyond). Even such individual giants in contemporary social sciences as Marcel Gauchet, Charles Taylor, Robert Bellah, and Jürgen Habermas have made vital use of the Axial Age theory in their work (see M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 43-46; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 146-158; R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution, pp. 265-282; J. HABERMAS, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, pp. 461-480). The controversial psycho-historical theory of Julian Jaynes’s also has certain similarities with the Axial Age hypothesis (see J. JAYNES, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind). Among the still quite scarce theological reception of the Axial hypothesis, J. HICK, An Interpretation of Religion, pp. 21-35 remains pivotal. FR, n. 1, furthermore, refers to the Axial idea without explicitly naming it. The Jaspersian theory has obviously not remained without criticism either (see E. VOEGELIN, Order and History: The Ecumenic Age; I. PROVAN, Convenient Myths; J. ASSMANN, Achsenzeit). Nevertheless, it is difficult to find a theoretical concept in contemporary social sciences which would awake so much interest, and gather together researchers from so many different disciplines, as Jaspers’s theory of the Axial Age continues to do even over 70 years after its original publication. Its heuristic and inspirational potential, rather than its historical accuracy, might be its greatest contribution to the academic debate. It offers fascinating transdisciplinary possibilities for fundamental theology, too, as this chapter will demonstrate.

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of the human spirit in history.584 There is no way of stepping outside it while existing in space and time. In this fourth chapter of the book, we will proceed in three phases. First, the fundamental conceptuality for the following fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization will be extracted from some of the central theoreticians of the Axial Age hypothesis, from Jaspers and Eisenstadt to Gauchet and Taylor. Second, a phenomenological description of Radical Secularization is presented on the basis of this conceptual framework. Third, a final analysis of Radical Secularization is suggested in light of the overall history of human religious evolution and certain questions are lifted as to the future of self-conscious nonreligion in the midst of contemporary global hyperpluralism. It should again go without saying that–as was the case in the previous chapter with respect to European modernity–the discussion about the Axial Age is here only meant to serve as a more adequate phenomenological description of Radical Secularization, not to contribute anything to the academic Axial debate as such. Admittedly, the speculative abstraction, already soaring in the clouds in the previous chapter, may risk escaping the boundaries of rational control in the present. Yet, this might be a risk inherent in the concept of Radical Secularization itself, rather than in the Axial Age hypothesis as such. A speculative concept is judged by its capacity to combine abstractness and concreteness, the a priori and the a posteriori, and by the spiritual energy produced by that combination. Whether, or to what degree, Radical Secularization succeeds in that, remains to be seen.

2. The Axial Age Hypothesis When approaching the Axial Age hypothesis, it is vital to avoid one fundamental misunderstanding which would endanger one’s whole comprehension of the subject. The Jaspersian idea of an Axial Age in human history is much more of a passionate personal call to participate in our common quest for a shared humanity than a cold scientific theory about “how it actually was” (wie es eigentlich gewesen, as the positivist Rankian dictum would have it). In other words, if one approaches the Axial Age 584

On this the two giants of twentieth-century Catholic theology, Balthasar and Rahner, agree, even though they conceptualize the fundamental ontological polarity in different fashions (see H.U. VON BALTHASAR, My Work, pp. 111-119; K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 31-35). Theologically speaking, it all comes to Christology, because he is the One who reconciles the infinite ontological tension in reality.

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hypothesis as a claim about a supposedly objective, neutrally-observable fact, it cannot but appear “a baggy monster, which tries to bundle up all sorts of diversities over four very different civilizations.”585 Always when comparing different human cultural traditions with each other one runs the risk of covering one culture’s concrete particularity under a supposed abstract communality. The risk is even bigger when considering such civilizational watersheds as ancient (mid-first-millennium BCE, that is) Greece, Israel, India, and China, as in the original Jaspersian theory. At such a level of abstraction, one cannot but read one’s own theoretical presuppositions into the already perhaps too scarce data that we have about such pre-modern societies, the critics of the Axial Age hypothesis claim.586 This skeptical view, however, even if we would concur with it, is not really a deathly blow to the Axial Age hypothesis, but, in fact, a profound vindication of it. Not approaching it as an impartial theory about ancient events, but as a self-conscious contribution to the cultural debate of today, the idea of the Axial Age cannot but demand personal engagement. In this light, the Axial Age hypothesis challenges us to reflect on where we are now standing in the overall history of human cultural evolution, how we have arrived there and where we might be going next. Thus understood, the Axial Age hypothesis serves its purpose if it manages to gather us together to discuss our various ways of being-in-theworld, as well as the historical conditions of possibility for them. In other words, the Axial framework can offer a common intellectual playground amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism which we all struggle to come to terms with.587 That would not mean ignoring the issue of wie es eigentlich gewesen but aspiring to relate this to our present self-understanding(s) of our place(s) in the world. The objective facts have their role to play in the 585

See D. MACCULLOCH, “The Axis of Goodness”, a critical review of Karen Armstrong’s proposal of popularizing the Axial Age hypothesis in K. ARMSTRONG, The Great Transformation. 586 Thus, Daniel Austin Mullins and colleagues, for example, while regarding the concept of the Axial Age as “interesting and important” (D.A. MULLINS ET AL., “A Systematic Assessment of ‘Axial Age” Proposals’, p. 597), claim that it is impossible to “measure directly” (IBID., p. 611) such large-scale changes in human consciousness and culture as the more speculative formulations of the Axial Age hypothesis propose to do. 587 According to the esteemed historian of religion Guy Stroumsa, the important Axial theoretician Shmuel Eisenstadt “urged us to dare dreaming, to speculate on the essence of the dramatic changes in patterns of thought and behavior as a consequence of the axial age. Play, indeed, is as essential an ingredient of intellectual creativity as it is of ritual” (G.G. STROUMSA, “Robert Bellah on the Origins of Religion”, p. 473).

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Axial debate, to be certain,588 but the main weight lies on how they become interpreted here and now. Such an existential reading of the Axial Age hypothesis is arguably also more in line with Jaspers’s original proposal of the idea.

2.1 K. Jaspers German psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) originally presented his theory of a crucial turning-point in human cultural evolution– named Achsenzeit or “Axial Age” by him–in the aftermath of the Second World War. By then, at the latest, the European Enlightenment’s dream of an uninterrupted progress of human welfare had shown itself to be an illusion: Europe and many other parts of the world lay in ruins. A promising future, not to speak about a shared one, seemed hard to even imagine, as the wounds of the war ran fresh and deep. Jaspers, nevertheless, set himself the task of developing an approach to human history that would highlight the commonalities between different cultural traditions rather than their internal differences. Such common ground was needed in order for countries to recover after the disaster of the two world wars. Despite all human shortcomings and parochial protests, historical development was irresistibly heading towards the ensuing world civilization (the imminent, and unavoidable, coming of which Jaspers quite far-sightedly recognized589). To find unity to human cultural evolution, an “axis of world history”590 had to be empirically identified, Jaspers argued: a sort of historical “Archimedean point” which would let one see our common past precisely as “common,” without, however, obscuring the obvious differences between various world civilizations. Jaspers claimed to have discovered such an axial turning point in the mid-first millennium BCE. During that period, according to him, the basic conceptualities and spiritual visions were born, which have inspired humanity ever since. The Greek philosophers, Israelite prophets, Indian mystics, and Chinese sages opened such vistas for 588

Baumard and colleagues, for example, argue quite persuasively that only in the higher literary civilizations of the final millennium BCE was such material welfare reached, allowing significant numbers of people to devote most of their energy to some activity other than foraging. This was a necessary historical precondition for the spiritual-transcendental breakthroughs of the various Axial revolutions (see N. BAUMARD ET AL., “Increased Affluence Explains the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions”). 589 See K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, pp. 193-213. 590 K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. 1.

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human spiritual searching that have continued to guide–and question–us to the present day (see also FR, n. 1). During the Axial period, Jaspers concluded, “[m]an, as we know him today, came into being.”591 What was the radical newness of the Axial Age in its Western (GreekIsraelite) and Eastern (Indian-Chinese) formations? What justifies Jaspers’s claim that the fundamental conceptuality, by which even we modern individuals aspire to understand our common humanity, was developed during the Axial Age? It is worth quoting Jaspers’s famous, and rather idealistic, formulation in full here: What is new about this age, in all three [ancient Greece, Israel, and IndiaChina] areas of the world, is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations. He experiences the terror of the world and his own powerlessness. He asks radical questions. Face to face with the void he strives for liberation and redemption. By consciously recognizing his limits he sets himself the highest goals. He experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence.592

“All this,” Jaspers goes on to explain, “took place in reflection.”593 The Axial revolution was, according to the original Jaspersian proposal, firstly a revolution in human consciousness or, better put, self-consciousness. For the first time in recorded history, we begin to find explicit traces of the spiritual double-movement of human transcendentality in the relatively literate civilizations of ancient Greece, Israel, India, and China. It is as if until then humans had lived in a mythical world of dreams, receiving their cultural tradition without ever questioning it and aspiring beyond it.594 The Axial consciousness, by contrast, is aware of existing in a world which is not of its own making but which, on the contrary, has somehow given rise to the temporary, contingent existence of human beings. This initial insight of existing in and trying to relate to a reality which is fundamentally Other to oneself, as self-evident as it may sound to a post-Axial consciousness, is the dynamic force that pushes human transcendentality forward towards the ever-broadening horizon of reality. This is the central claim of the Jaspersian theory of the Axial Age, as interpreted in this book.

591

K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. 1. K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. 2. 593 K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. 2. 594 Illustratively, Arnaldo Momigliano spoke of the Axial Age as the “age of criticism” (A. MOMIGLIANO, Alien Wisdom, p. 9) and Benjamin I. Schwartz referred to it as the “age of transcendence” (B.I. SCHWARTZ, “Age of Transcendence”, p. 2). 592

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However, certain modifications are needed concerning the original Jaspersian formula for it to retain contemporary relevance. To begin with, it can and must be stripped of its metaphysical garb. As Jaspers himself confessed, his outline of human spiritual evolution was based on a certain “article of faith,” namely the conviction that history in fact has “one single origin and one goal.”595 It should have been exactly this trans-human meaningfulness or transcendence in reality (“Being as a whole”), that humanity would have become conscious of in the various Axial revolutions, Jaspers claimed. Consequently, it should have been this now-discovered objective transcendence that would have sparked the subjective movement of human transcendentality towards itself. It cannot be denied that as a matter of fact the historically verifiable Axial revolutions of the final millennium BCE all reckoned with an objective goal to the movement of human transcendentality. It was conceptualized differently in different cultural traditions–from Plato’s “idea of the Good” and Deutero-Isaiah’s “one God” to the Buddhist nirvana and the Chinese tao–but what they all had in common was the assumption of an objective, trans-human, goal to the subjective movement of human transcendentality. This metaphysical assumption was discussed in the previous chapter, where the unmasking of it exactly as an assumption was argued to be an innovative creation of European modernity that simultaneously rendered its secularization and ultimate emancipation from religion possible. With his particular characterization of the Axial proprium, Jaspers clearly still moved within the unquestioned naïveté of the metaphysical assumption. That is no means necessary. A post-metaphysical reading of the Axial Age hypothesis is equally possible, even unavoidable, in the contemporary context of After Secularization. If we do not regard the Axial Age as an objectively verifiable fact about a past period in human history,596 but rather as a “heuristic tool”597 for contemporary cultural debate, we do not have to presuppose any trans-human meaning behind human evolution. It is not that the Axial Age hypothesis would reveal something objectively true about the world, but that it offers us a common speculative platform to discuss how different human subjects relate to the surrounding reality in their own selfunderstanding. In such a post-metaphysical reading of the Axial Age, 595

See K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. xv. Jaspers himself leaned on Alfred Weber’s speculations about the crucial importance of the Indo-European invasions on horseback shortly before the supposed Axial Age breakthroughs (see K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, pp. 16-17). 597 See B.I. SCHWARTZ, “Age of Transcendence”, p. 3. 596

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objective facts are not denied, but are subjected to the self-critical movement of human transcendentality. It might very well be, as for example Diarmaid MacCulloch (“hardly originally”) has suggested,598 that the whole idea of a common “Axial Age” for all of humanity during the last millennium BCE arises from an unhappy but inevitable optical illusion. The fact is that human cognitive capacities have remained practically the same since the birth of recursive language some 100,000 years ago. Having the same cerebral hardware, there is no reason to suppose that the thousands of human generations before the supposed Axial revolutions would not have been capable of exactly the same intellectual accomplishments as post-Axial generations. There remains one crucial exception, however. Pre-Axial human populations did not have the writing. We simply do not know about the intellectual and spiritual profiles of pre-Axial peoples because the data is so scarce (and before 3000 BCE, even nonexistent599). In sum, then, of course we discover an “Axial Age” of a sort during the last millennium BCE–in fact various different Axial Ages–because only then had literacy spread broadly enough in the ancient civilizations to leave traits of human transcendentality to successive generations. This is not to deny that the invention and spread of writing may have had some kind of a transformative effect on the character of human consciousness itself.600 For present purposes, however, it is sufficient to recognize that it is only with writing that it becomes possible for us to follow the explicit movement of human transcendentality through the history of our species. Before writing, and especially its wider spreading in the alphabetic form during the first millennium BCE, we simply cannot ascertain any factual actualizations of the human transcendental capacity. But since then, we can attend to how different human populations strive to make sense of their contingent existence. In sum, the Axial Age hypothesis offers the necessary a posteriori framework for the gradual unfolding of the a priori infinite opening of human transcendentality. In the proposed post598

See D. MACCULLOCH, “The Axis of Goodness”. The material remains of preliterary, prehistorical human populations are of such a non-reflective character that they do not help in this regard. 600 Literary cultures, obviously, can store exponentially more information than the illiterate ones which practically rely only on the human brain. It can be hypothesized that human consciousness changes its character also qualitatively when it has to learn to deal with increasingly large amounts of information. Robert Bellah, for example, argued that the invention and sufficient spread of writing was a necessary precondition for the birth of theoretic culture, which he, in turn, related organically to the Axial Age (see R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution, pp. 280-281). 599

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metaphysical reading, the Axial Age theory does not limit itself to any pregiven conceptuality, but lets us enter into the pluralizing dynamics of the human transcendental movement, beginning with the particular Axial breakthroughs until the threshold of contemporary global hyperpluralism.

2.2 S.N. Eisenstadt Israeli scholar Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1923-2010) made creative use of the Axial Age theory for the nascent academic field of comparative sociological study of world civilizations. Eisenstadt’s extremely broad and theoretically sophisticated analyses of the deep sociological dynamics behind world history remain a necessary point of reference for anybody who wants to understand the ever-more complex world of today.601 For the purposes of the present fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization, it is sufficient to pick out some central concepts from Eisenstadt’s analysis of the Axial Age and its various repercussions. Like Jaspers, Eisenstadt identified the original Axial breakthrough in the sphere of intellectual ideas. According to Eisenstadt, the “revolution or series of revolutions, which are related to Karl Jaspers’ ‘Axial Age,’ have to do with the emergence, conceptualization and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders.”602 Whereas pre-Axial human populations supposedly lived in a rather conservative manner, receiving their traditional way-of-being-in-the-world as given and untouchable, post-Axial cultures are driven by some kind of a spiritual ideal transcending the actual predicament of their present form-of-life. In other words, in the Axial revolutions a profound tension or even contradiction is discovered in how things are and how they should be. This, Eisenstadt claims with other Axial theorists, mobilized extensive civilizational dynamics which gradually have led to the globalized hyperpluralistic world of today. To understand the nature of the Axial transcendental visions better, it is helpful to consider their hypothesized progenitors. Eisenstadt spoke of a new type of intellectual elites, “clerics” as he calls them, as the original inventors of the transcendental visions of the Axial Age.603 These were individuals who managed to break off from their received cultural tradition 601

See S.N. EISENSTADT, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities. For a general presentation of Eisenstadt’s oeuvre, see G. PREYER, Zur Aktualität von Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. 602 S.N. EISENSTADT, “The Axial Age: The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of Clerics”, p. 294. 603 S.N. EISENSTADT, “The Axial Age”, p. 294.

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for a spiritual-moral ideal going beyond the present state of affairs. The transcendent ideals were variously conceptualized by different Axial intellectuals, giving rise to an unprecedented pluralism of worldviews.604 Yet, what they all shared was the conviction that it is not enough to preserve the current state of affairs, but that the world must be remade according to one or another transcendental vision. In sum, the original Axial visions were essentially prophetic and utopic, individual and revolutionary in character. What gave world historical significance to the initial Axial transcendental breakthroughs was the fact that they became institutionalized, i.e. officially recognized and governmentally legitimized, by the ensuing world civilizations. This did not happen at once, of course. The primary Axial breakthroughs of the mid-last millennium BCE first seemed rather to fall short of their ideal(istic) aspirations: the world did not really become refashioned according to the spiritual visions of Plato, Jeremiah, Buddha or Confucius. Eisenstadt accordingly spoke about “secondary” Axial breakthroughs following the initial, “primary” ones, but which, by contrast, managed to become generally acknowledged and authoritatively institutionalized in the deep-structures of the following civilizational traditions.605 The Christian and Islamic receptions of the ancient Israelite monotheistic legacy are cases in point, and the only ones that interest us in the present context. The initial tension between the transcendent and the immanent, the ideal and the real, remained, however, even after the secondary Axial breakthroughs. The Western tradition, for instance, has been constitutionally fragile, aspiring to conserve some kind of societal stability amidst utopistic and revolutionary currents, but always fascinatingly capable of renewing itself in each new historical era. According to the civilizational approach of Eisenstadt, the driving force behind Western societal dynamics, like in all post-Axial civilizations, was throughout the centuries the uneasy tension between the transcendental and mundane orders, first explicitly conceptualized in the Axial breakthroughs.606 Even though the post-Axial dynamics have perhaps been able to unfold most fully in the Western-Christian tradition, this should not be presented as the only way the transcendent-immanent tension can be societally processed. On the contrary, every particular post-Axial cultural tradition has its own contingent way of negotiating the tension between its founding transcendent ideals and the necessary immanent realities. This is the core thesis of Eisenstadt’s rightly famous concept of “multiple modernities.” 604

See S.N. EISENSTADT, “The Axial Age”, p. 306. See also J.P. ARNASON, Civilizations in Dispute, p. 171. 606 See S.N. EISENSTADT, “The Axial Age”, p. 305. 605

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Instead of supposing a unilinear development of the post-Axial dynamics, the “idea of multiple modernities presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world–indeed to explain the history of modernity–is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs.”607 Modernity, then, is by definition plural, as plural are the transcendental visions of the various Axial Ages which have directed human history towards the modo of today. What, then, distinguishes the “modern” from the “Axial”? How do the various modernizations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries differ from the emergence and institutionalization of the various transcendental visions during the Axial Ages? Admittedly, the idea of the Axial Age (or of various Axial Ages, in the post-metaphysical reading of Jaspers) clearly has its meaning and relevance in the context of a contemporary search for “the answer to the question for the roots of modernity.”608 Nevertheless, one should be able to distinguish between a hypothesized Axial Age back then and its particular modernization now to be able to determine the historical dynamics which have led from the former to the latter. The Axial and the modern are intimately connected, but they are not the same concept. At this point Eisenstadt is not wholly clear. He argues that what specifies modern societies with respect to pre-modern (but post-Axial) societies is the higher degree of self-reflexivity in the modern ones.609 In modern societies the pluralization inherent in the transcendental breakthroughs of the Axial Ages becomes radicalized: an unprecedented variety of different human ways-of-being-in-the-world become theoretically available and practically livable in modernizing societies. In modernity, every modernity, human transcendentality is given more freedom to unfurl according to its own particular dynamics. This, from a spiritual point of view, could be considered the essence of modernization process: by and through it, human transcendentality is allowed to self-consciously come into itself. Intimately connected to this is the quintessentially modern emphasis on human autonomy. Modern people believed that they themselves can actualize the transcendental visions inherited from their respective Axial Ages. These visions did not have to be necessarily related anymore to any trans-human intentionalities on which their realization would somehow depend. On the contrary, modernity is marked as “modern” precisely because it dispenses with all trans-human guarantees to the building of human social existence, and strives towards a purely human legitimation of society, instead. In sum, even though Eisenstadt himself does not make the 607

S.N. EISENSTADT, “Multiple Modernities”, p. 2. J. ASSMANN, “Cultural Memory and the Myth of the Axial Age”, p. 366. 609 See S.N. EISENSTADT, “Multiple Modernities”, p. 4. 608

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equation in the present context, modernization equals secularization as emancipation-autonomization of human transcendentality: emancipation from all objective pre-given limits to the movement of human transcendentality and autonomization of its own subjective dynamic.610 Secularization is the conceptual link between an “Axial Age” and the “modern” it gives rise to. And like modernizations, secularizations are also necessarily multiple, according to the particular civilizational dynamics of every cultural tradition. In light of Eisenstadt’s analysis of the Axial Ages and their multiple secularizations, some conceptual clarifications can now be done for the purposes of the present fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization. The various Axial Ages of the last millennium BCE signify the historical turning point, from which onwards we can follow the concrete movement of the human transcendental capacity. Humans become conscious of existing in a world which is not of their making but which somehow has given rise to them. Reality surpasses the boundaries of one’s own tradition and culture. The now-opened and continuously broadening horizon of reality gives motivation and direction to the movement of human transcendentality, the amazing capacity of the human mind to go beyond every given impression of reality by relating it to its ever-broadening and deepening horizon. What is peculiar to all primary Axial breakthroughs is their conviction of an objective goal to the movement of human transcendentality. They all imagined a trans-human term to the human transcendental movement, variously conceptualized as the “Idea of the Good”, the “one God”, the nirvana and the tao.611 Precisely this positing of an objective transcendent counterpole to subjective human transcendentality created the tension which has been so vital to the civilizational dynamics in all post-Axial traditions, according to Eisenstadt. And precisely the abrogation of this tension between objective transcendence and subjective transcendentality has been literally constitutive to modernizing societies, at least in the West. To put it briefly, modern liberal democracies are constitutionally secular in that they aspire to legitimize their existence by purely human means, without invoking any trans-human authorities. This is aspired to by and through the democrative-representative process. Consequently, modern 610

See S.N. EISENSTADT, “Multiple Modernities”, pp. 4-5. To what degree, if any, this comparison is justifiable internally, according to the self-understanding of the Western, Indian, and Chinese tradition, is not essential here. The point is their externally comparative position in the Axial framework, developed here purely for the phenomenological purposes of describing Radical Secularization.

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secular constitutions do not exhibit any necessary invocatio or even nominatio Dei in their preambles. On the contrary, these, where they continue to remain, appear as rather curious remnants of earlier times, when human communal existence still believed in receiving its legitimacy from the outside.612 Yet, behind this modern societal development there is to be identified the even more fundamental reconfiguration of human transcendentality which strives to come totally into itself, accepting no other authorities than those affirmed by itself. Both in its societal and spiritual dimensions, Western modernization-secularization presents, arguably, a radically new breakthrough in the overall cultural evolution of humanity, worthy to be called a properly “tertiary” Axial breakthrough.613 Radical Secularization, as rare as complete nonreligion statistically might be, even in the most secularized Western societies of today, might be much more relevant for understanding today’s hyperpluralist world than it might seem at first sight.

2.3 M. Gauchet and C. Taylor Once one has broken through the metaphysical assumption and become transcendentally free from religion, it can become difficult to see why one reckoned with any objective trans-human meaningfulness in reality to begin with, or why so many continue to do so even After Secularization. Factually it may seem that what characterizes contemporary post-secular societies is merely a continuously growing, or perhaps better put, becoming visible, number of different human forms-of-life which struggle to get themselves recognized by the institutionalized societal structures, too (“pluralism”, that is). The existential supernova continues to expand After Secularization, gradually pushing us, whether we like it or not, into contemporary global hyperpluralism. Yet, in reality, what we have in post-secular societies is a qualitatively different transcendental predicament with respect to all other known human societies, then and now. The very conditions of possibility of the human spiritual search have radically changed, as Charles Taylor, most importantly, tried to bring home with his secularization analysis.614 And 612

Some member states of the European Union, nevertheless, continue to name God in their constitution. On the illustrative theological and political, even theologicopolitical, questions concerning the heated debate on whether to name God or not in the European Constitution, see H. DE VRIES, “Invocatio Dei, la discipline de la tolérance, et la vérité de la verité”. 613 See Y. Lambert, “Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age”. 614 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 3, 539.

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precisely because this change concerns the workings of human transcendentality, it cannot adequately be approached with sociological or any other purportedly “objective” or “impersonal” means. Rather, the present spiritual predicament demands you to enter it personally with your own transcendentality, in and through it, quite irrespective of what you ultimately claim to believe or not to believe. The “Age of Authenticity” demands a deeply personal engagement.615 Despite his ultimately quite different spiritual outlook, French philosopher and social analyst Marcel Gauchet (1946-) shares with Taylor the conviction that the modern European departure from religion (la sortie de la religion616) cannot really be understood except in light of the preceding religious tradition, and that it remains an open question how nonreligion will fare in the future, amidst an overwhelmingly religious global hyperpluralism of different faiths.617 Furthermore, both Gauchet and Taylor agree that the modern Western “departure from religion” (Gauchet) or the coming of a “secular age” (Taylor) presents such a radically new phase in human spiritual evolution that to understand it properly, a very broad, and deep, perspective is needed, ultimately that of the entire history of the human species.618 After Secularization, when human transcendentality has at least theoretically, constitutionally, taken total control of itself in a liberal democracy, no prima facie external authorities are accepted concerning the personal existential decisions of the individual citizens. According to the modern secular credo everybody is free to believe what they want as long as they do not violate other people’s equal freedom to believe what they want (and act accordingly).619 From this secular perspective, and perhaps only from that, one can see how unique the modern secular predicament itself is in the overall history of human evolution. In fact, all other human cultural spheres, then and now, are characterized by what can be called the 615

See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 473-504. See M. GAUCHET, “Sécularisation ou sortie de la religion”; P. BERGERON, La sortie de la religion. Brève introduction à la pensée de Marcel Gauchet. 617 See A. CLOOTS–S. LATRÉ–G. VANHEESWIJCK, “The Future of the Christian Past: Marcel Gauchet and Charles Taylor on the Essence of Religion and its Evolution”. See Taylor’s Foreword to the English translation of M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. ix-xv, as well as Gauchet’s take on A Secular Age in M. GAUCHET, “Le désenchantement désenchanté”. 618 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 21-22; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 1. 619 See, paradigmatically, the fourth and tenth articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. 616

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“ubiquity of religion,” i.e. the universal recognition of various trans-human intentionalities and powers in reality in all known human societies. Religious legitimation of human existence is “primordial,” “universal,” and “recurrent,” Gauchet claims: It [religion] is a primordial phenomenon insofar as it can be found as far back as we go in human history; it is universal in that we do not know of any society which has escaped it; and it is recurrent, as can be seen by its influence in recent times in movements with thoroughly antireligious motives, such as the various totalitarian enterprises.620

Nevertheless, Gauchet claims that religion has now run its course in the modern West. From a modern Western perspective, religion belongs to history, one could summarize Gauchet’s interpretation of Western secularization. And this brief phrase indicates much more than a vulgar (“subtractionist”) proclamation of the Death of God. According to Gauchet’s grand narrative, it is precisely by entering into history that religion stops being religion. Secularization, conversely, as the gradual departure from religion, would mean a given human culture’s acknowledging of its own historical nature, the fact, that is, that its survival depends solely on itself. To see why Gauchet thinks in that way, and how it has some crucial points of contact with Taylor’s secularization narrative, one first needs to understand what Gauchet means by “religion.” To put it briefly, religion for Gauchet equals spiritual “dispossession.”621 As has been pointed out earlier, the original point of departure for the movement of human transcendentality is the self-reflexive recognition of the Otherness of reality: i.e. of the amazing fact that humans spend their temporal, contingent existence in a reality which is not of their own making but which, on the contrary, has somehow given rise, and continues to uphold, them. Human transcendentality, consequently, moves in this fundamental polarity between itself and the surrounding world, the subjective and the objective, the ego and the Other. In other words, there is a primordial Otherness in the transcendental constitution of being human. This constitutional Otherness is something that all human ways-of-being-in-the-world share with each other. What then differentiates various human forms-of-life from each other is the manner in which they relate to this primordial a priori Alterity, i.e. how they conceptualize it a posteriori. And the most fundamental difference in relating to the constitutional Otherness in human transcendentality is that 620 621

M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 21. See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 23-24, 33-34.

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between religion and nonreligion, whether one reckons with a trans-human intentionality in the Otherness of reality or not. Gauchet in no way denies the deep continuities which exist between our religious past and nonreligious present. In fact, according to him, behind them both there is the implicit, transcendental structure of being human, which his “transcendental anthroposociology” aims to make explicit.622 A purely functionalist approach to religion will not do, however. To understand the character of the religious dispossession, it must be seen to be based on a certain kind of belief, as Gauchet puts it: The underlying belief [in religion] is that we owe everything we have, our way of living, our rules, our customs, and what we know, to beings of a different nature–to Ancestors, Heroes, or Gods. All we can do is follow, imitate, and repeat what they have taught us. In other words, everything governing our “works and days” was handed down to us.623

Precisely in this sense there has been a radical, nothing short of allchanging, shift during the Western modernization-secularization process. We in the modern secular West do not anymore accept any such transhuman meaningfulness at face value, without first submitting it to critical, self-conscious analysis. In modernity, no order in reality as it is in itself is accepted as binding as such on how humans are to think and live (a constitutional “no ought from is,” to put it simply). Both in modern natural science and in modern liberal democracy–arguably the two most distinctive cultural creations of Western modernity–everything receives its meaningfulness only by being submitted to and analyzed by self-conscious human transcendentality itself. This does not, of course, mean that one might not acknowledge any trans-human intentionalities. The freedom of religion is one of the secular West’s most precious principles and many Western people still continue to put it positively in practice, too. But religion or the lack thereof is now seen as a personal decision of the individual citizen, without any importance as such for our common way-of-being-in-the-world. To use Gauchet’s formula, we in the modern secular West have become “metaphysically democrats” (métaphysiquement democrates).624 One’s personal existential beliefs have no essential bearing on our common form-of-life. Spiritually, we are all at the same ontological level. And this already as such signifies 622

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 166, and more focusedly M. GAUCHET, “Vers une anthroposociologie transcendentale”. 623 M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 23-24. 624 See M. GAUCHET, La religion dans la démocratie, p. 11.

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an epochal shift in human cultural evolution. Pre-modern, traditional societies, by contrast, were by Gauchet’s definition essentially religious, because they were reigned by the “absolute past.”625 In a pre-modern perspective, our form-of-life, both in its individual and common dimensions (even though already to distinguish between the two is a rather modern movement), was something essentially established already long ago and now only received by us. Gauchet sees religion as a kind of neutralization of the experience of Otherness inherent in human transcendentality. Religion means positing a trans-human guarantee to the meaningfulness of reality that humans are supposed to conserve intact with some kind of a ritual practice. Thus, religion protects humans from the allconsumptive flow of time by referring them to a reality beyond all change and corruption, the eternal “now.” The prevalent modern view of human religious evolution has seen it as developing towards an ever-clearer recognition of the transcendent nature of the trans-human meaningfulness of reality. Gauchet, by contrast, regards primeval or pre-Axial religion as the golden-age of religion, as religion par excellence, because in it human transcendental dispossession shows itself at its purest. In this Gauchetian perspective, since the Axial emergence of transcendental visions, the history of religion has been one of decline, right until the modern Western departure from religion, inscribed both objectively in the constitutions of our liberal democracies since the late eighteenth century and subjectively in our private consciousnesses since the 1970s.626 It is clarifying to relate Gauchet’s definition of religion as dispossession to Taylor’s conception of (Western) secularization as a growing disembedding of human forms-of-life.627 In Taylor’s analysis, characteristic for all pre-Axial human forms-of-life was a certain kind of existential “embeddedness” in the surrounding world, both in its cosmic, societal, and human dimensions.628 He means that pre-Axial humans understood themselves not only in relation to the surrounding world (as all selfconscious beings must do to some extent), but as somehow enclosed in and defined by it. The cosmos had a pre-given order to be respected and re625

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 23-32. See M. GAUCHET, La religion dans la démocratie, pp. 10-12. 627 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 146-158; “What Was the Axial Revolution?”. The concept of “disembedding” has its most relevant source in Anthony Giddens’s analysis of one consequence of Western modernity as “‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space” (A. GIDDENS, The Consequences of Modernity, p. 21). 628 See C. TAYLOR, “What Was the Axial Revolution?”, pp. 368-371. 626

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enacted in ritual, as did human society itself. Even pre-Axial humanity was embedded in itself in the sense that it did not aspire to go beyond the traditional strictures of one’s own culture, but rather to conserve it as it had been since time immemorial. In sum, pre-Axial spirituality was deeply distinguished by a certain kind of “mood of assent,” Taylor claims, which tended to accept life as it is, without setting up the “kind of quarrel with life” which typifies the post-Axial spiritual traditions.629 In addition to their analogous interpretations of “primeval” (Gauchet) or “early” (Taylor), i.e. pre-Axial, religion, Gauchet and Taylor agree that everything changed with the Axial emergence of transcendental visions. The various Axial breakthroughs literally “broke through” the spiritual constitution of the pre-Axial forms-of-life by positing certain trans-human ideals for humans to pursue. Our traditional way-of-being-in-the-world was not anymore something to be preserved as intact as possible for future generations. Rather, it was something to be superseded for the transcendent goal of human existence. It is only with the Axial revolutions that humans really enter into history as something that moves, and changes, and the ultimate outcome of which depends on conscious human actions, too.630 With the Axial Age, religion enters history and simultaneously begins to lose its religiosity, Gauchet claims explicitly and Taylor implicitly. Conversely, secularization starts with the various Axial revolutions and follows its multiple unfoldings in the various post-Axial civilizations. As radical as a historical shift would be, it never appears from nowhere, and neither does it ever manage to completely shake the preceding history from its shoulders. Once one has entered history, there is no way of exiting from it (except through the final exitus of biological death). “Nothing is ever lost,” as Robert Bellah used to repeat,631 but we continue to carry our evolutionary past in us. And as the transcendental beings we are, it could not be otherwise. Our infinite transcendental opening is not only directed towards the future but equally towards the past in the twofold movement that human transcendentality is. Only by and through the concrete reality here do we proceed forward toward the (still) abstract reality there. The past and the future belong essentially together in the present opening of our transcendentality towards the ever-greater of reality. Consequently, both Gauchet and Taylor agree that post-Axial civilizations did not simply leave all pre-Axial features in their forms-of-

629 See C. TAYLOR, “What Was the Axial Revolution?”, p. 372, where Taylor is leaning on W.E.H. Stanner’s work on Australian Aboriginal religion. 630 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 44. 631 See R.N. BELLAH, “What is Axial about the Axial Age?”, p. 72.

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life behind them.632 On the contrary, the cultural traditions which underwent an Axial revolution continued to carry in themselves certain vestiges of preAxiality. To be more precise, the Axial transcendental visions did not become accepted and realized easily. How could they have been? If the spiritual core of the various Axial revolutions was precisely an imagining of a trans-human, ultimately transcendent goal for human existence, it is no wonder that they did not become immediately realized. Instead, the Axial breakthroughs introduced an essential tension into the ensuing post-Axial cultural traditions between how things factually are and how they ideally should be. This historical tension, not metaphysical dualism, is the speculative heart of reality’s gradual unfolding. The essential tension in post-Axial civilizations made them structurally unstable, both Gauchet and Taylor point out.633 The Axial revolutions were literally “revolutions” in that they necessarily questioned the received wayof-being-in-the-world in light of the transcendental vision in question (of the “Idea of the Good,” the “Kingdom of God,” and so on). The secondary Axial breakthroughs tried to negotiate between the revolutionary potential of their constituent transcendental visions and the natural need for stability in any civilization. In the Christian tradition, for example, we have the Constantinian compromise between the Church and the State, the call of the Gospel and the call of the world, in the various, and always problematic, forms it de facto took during the millenarian history of Latin Christendom. Such civilizational negotiations were fundamentally unstable, though, just waiting to be released in one way or another. Hence, the speculative key to the inner dynamics of the post-Axial civilizations is the constitutive tension in them between the concrete mundane reality and the transcendent ideal. This abstract tension became negotiated in different concrete ways in the various post-Axial traditions, giving them their specific character (as the Christian, Islamic, Indian, or Chinese tradition, with all their innumerable undercurrents). Perhaps even more clearly than Taylor, Gauchet emphasizes the essentially theological nature of this tension in the Western tradition, both in its Christian and Islamic main currents.634 At the origin of the Western tradition there is the 632 Here Taylor’s analysis of the fate of the “festive” in the post-Axial Latin Christian

tradition is particularly illuminating (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 469-470). See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 49-50; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 146, 614. 634 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 47-66. Taylor’s construal of the post-Axial tension is rather anthropological, concentrating as it does on the variously experienced “fullness” of human existence (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 5-14). 633

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vision of reality’s trans-human intentionality with the one transcendent God as the objective origin and goal of the human subject’s transcendental movement. After the Western, i.e. monotheistic, Axial revolution, humans are no more enclosed and limited by any inner-worldly trans-human authorities, because all meaningfulness in reality ultimately arises from the absolutely transcendent God. Yet, if the objective term of the subjective movement of human transcendentality is the absolutely transcendent God, how could we historical beings know anything about him, not to say live accordingly? Thus, at the same time the transcendent nature of God becomes clarified in the Western Axial revolution–which happened precisely in the sixth century BCE Israel, in the immediate context of the Babylonian Exile–the need for his personal revelation becomes imminent, Gauchet rightly recognizes.635 In other words, the subsequent unfolding of the Western civilization will to a large extent depend on how the personal revelation of the transcendent God becomes understood and is received by the tradition which legitimizes its existence by referring to that same revelation.636 To put it simply, in the Christian current of the Western tradition the meaning of history turns on the interpretation of the central Christian mystery of Incarnation. According to Christian self-understanding, Jesus Christ as the Word become Flesh, is “both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” (DV, n. 2). After the Christ event, the transcendent God is no more to be searched for anywhere outside humanity but precisely in and through it–the very same humanity that Christ shares with all human beings and the true meaning of which he reveals by and through his Paschal Mystery (see GS, n. 22). Thus, with the Christian Revelation, the primordial religious search for legitimation for human transcendentality outside itself (in some form of absolutely trans-human meaningfulness in reality) radically changes meaning. It changes to such a degree that perhaps it is not completely adequate anymore to regard Christianity as a religion to begin with, Gauchet claims with various other speculative interpreters of Christianity. For Gauchet, in fact, Christianity’s peculiar reception and radicalization of Israelite monotheism makes it to a “religion for departing from religion” (la religion de la sortie de la religion).637 635

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 54-55. From this perspective, fundamental theology, exactly as the self-consciously theological discipline that it is (see FR, n. 67), is in a special position to understand the spiritual dynamics of post-Axial civilizations and their multiple secularizations. 637 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 101-106. Remember also Karl Barth’s dialectical cri de cœur: Das Christentum ist keine Religion, “Christianity is no religion,” because only in it, in difference and in contradiction 636

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Christianity’s particular, and perhaps unique, secularizing potential lies in its peculiar manner of relating the immanent and the transcendent, the lower and the higher, the human and the divine. With the Christian faith a deconstruction of the original ubiquity of religion with its metaphysicalhierarchical principle becomes possible. In the Christian vision, the human being Jesus of Nazareth becomes the one and only relation to the transcendent origin and goal of all reality. He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6); “[a]ll things came into being through him” (John 1:3); and “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Such things had never before in human religious evolution been said about a human being. This does not mean that the distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, the human and the divine would become dissolved in Christ, but that in him they can no more be separated from or pitted against each other. In Gauchet’s analysis, through the Christological debates of the early Church, culminating in the Chalcedonian dogma of 451, the hierarchical, ontotheological metaphysics becomes theoretically overcome: I cannot overemphasize the decisive importance of this debate, whose outcome for determining the possibilities inscribed in the figure of Christ can be legitimately considered the first decisive step toward the western deconstruction of the hierarchical principle. Once the orthodox interpretation of the hypostatic union was determined, an irreversible step had been made away from a central plan of the unitarian, nonegalitarian understanding of being.638

(Gegensatz) to all religion, it is not about human being’s departure (Aufbruch) towards God but God’s departure towards human being (see K. BARTH, “Das Christentum und die Religion”, p. 437). 638 M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 126. Gauchet’s Christological speculations can of course be questioned, especially when it comes to his almost complete ignoring of the essential anchoring of orthodox Christology in the Trinity (see P. BERGERON, La sortie de la religion, pp. 69-74). Yes, in the Christian vision, Christ unites himself definitively with humanity (see John 1:14), but this does not happen at the expense of his union with God the Father but, on the contrary, is supposed to reveal that most mysterious union: “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). Consequently, Christian theology as such finds itself in the necessary, and life-giving, tension between the humanity and the divinity of Christ and is called to think of them both together. The adequacy of authentic theology, in the Christian sense of the term, depends on how it succeeds in that essential double-movement relating the divine and the human, the eternal and the temporal, the universal and the particular, without discrediting either, as will be argued more in-depth in the last chapter of this book.

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In practice, of course, it took several centuries for the theoretical Christological breakthrough to begin to have real influence on Christian civilization, especially in its Latin tradition. Gauchet and Taylor again agree that the decisive turning point in this long civilizational process was the Gregorian reforms of the late eleventh century.639 Such practical decisions were then made by the highest authorities in the Church and the State which simultaneously connected the religious and secular powers more intimately than ever before and prepared the way for their ultimate separation in Western modernity. Taylor reads this deep current in Western European civilization as the moral(istic) demand “that everyone be a real, 100 percent Christian.”640 Gauchet considers it from a more political perspective, as the gradual development of a communal way-of-being-in-the-world which does not seek any legitimation for itself outside itself (in some kind of transhuman intentionality) anymore but which now–for the first time in human history–aspires to deduce the meaningfulness of its temporal existence solely from itself.641 According to the phenomenological method of this central part of the study, we do not–luckily!–have to grapple with the most inscrutable question of all concerning the ultimate unfolding of Christendom: why did something which started as a sincere desire to put into practice the Christian principle finally lead to a definitive emancipation not only from Christianity but from religion as such?642 Instead, for present purposes it is enough to gather the conceptual instruments for a sufficient phenomenological description of Radical Secularization, speculatively the most quintessential creation of Western modernization-secularization. One point should, however, be made concerning the supposed causality of Western secularization. It can by no means be adequately approached in purely intellectual terms. A common enough move in modern European scholarship has been to emphasize the via moderna of late medieval philosophy as the gate through which secularity enters and ultimately destroys Latin Christendom.643 A post-metaphysical temperament, by 639

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 155; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 243, 786 (note 92). 640 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 774. 641 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 162. 642 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 158. 643 From a more philosophical perspective, see Blumenberg’s secularization narrative (H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 145-179), as well as the “Radical Orthodox” story (J. MILBANK–C. PICKSTOCK, Truth in Aquinas; G. HYMAN, A Short History of Atheism, pp. 67-80). And in a confessedly theological vein, see Balthasar’s lamentation of the “catastrophe of nominalism” in H.U. VON

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contrast, finds it rather hard to believe that one theoretical current in the form of nominalism or voluntarism could account for the change of direction of an entire civilizational tradition. In a restrictedly intellectualist perspective perhaps, but if it is not so much about a change of philosophical direction here than about a becoming visible of the deep dynamics in the very sources of the Western tradition? From the perspective of the Greek metaphysical tradition (as it became received in Latin scholasticism) voluntaristic nominalism might certainly appear as a lax abolishing of metaphysical realism. Yet, if we dig deeper in our tradition, the predicament may turn out quite differently. If human transcendentality really opens itself for the infinite–as the various Axial breakthroughs brought to the fore–how could it be defined by any one conceptuality, even if developed by the Philosopher himself? Confronting the infinitely-open horizon of reality, all human cultural constellations are doomed to a definitive failure, sooner or later. European Christendom is no exception. Finally, Gauchet and Taylor both acknowledge the extreme complexity of the contemporary spiritual situation After Secularization. While the present epochal change is unfurling, it is difficult to see any clear indications of its direction or ultimate outcome. Taylor tends to highlight the pluralizing effect of Western secularization (its “nova effect”644), i.e. its inexhaustiveseeming capacity for producing different spiritual itineraries. Gauchet, by contrast, more clearly insists on the radical newness of the modern Western departure from religion (which Taylor, of course, in a way shares with his construal of “exclusive humanism”). Taylor is quite convinced that “we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious searching, whose outcome no one can foresee.”645 Gauchet, likewise, cannot help noting that, human evolution being so deeply rooted in religion, “we continue to explain ourselves through it, and always will.”646 In sum, the secular disenchantment of the world does not mean the factual disappearance of religion but the transcendental dismantling of its normative power for individual human ways-of-being-in-the-world as well BALTHASAR, My Work, p. 84, and Pope Benedict’s firm verdict in the Regensburg lecture: “In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit.” Yet, must there not be hidden a certain truth in this scheme, despite its confining intellectualism: nominalism as the collapse of objectivist metaphysics accelerates the unfolding of subjective (voluntarist) transcendentality? 644 See C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 299. 645 C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 535. 646 M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 104.

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as for social forms-of-life. The human potentiality for religion remains, however, as a “basic human option,”647 which many of us continue to choose, for better or worse. But the fact that religion now has become a question of pure personal choice in Western post-secular societies signifies an extremely radical change in human spiritual evolution. Religion After Secularization, even if it continues to exist, is not the same thing as before. The incredibly various human forms-of-life we meet amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism are not necessarily religious; there are alternatives, always.648 Religion cannot be taken for granted anymore (and which, whose, religion anyway?, one could and should always ask). After Secularization there is no alternative to stepping into radical pluralism. The speculative concept of Radical Secularization, by radicalizing the inherent emancipatory logic of Western secularization, aspires to bring home this fundamental fact about our contemporary spiritual predicament: nothing more, nothing less.

3. Conceptualizing Human Transcendentality in a Radically Secular Way: A Possible Unfolding of the Axial Dynamics in the Western Tradition In the preceding discussion with Jaspers, Eisenstadt, Taylor, and Gauchet, the central conceptuality of a phenomenological description of Radical Secularization has been extracted in a genealogical key, parting from the Axial Age hypothesis and ending in the contemporary hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. What remains is to put those conceptual ingredients in chronological order to show–not explain!–how an authentic departure from religion became possible in the Western cultural tradition. The following fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization does of course not pretend to be all-encompassing in any way. Its sole purpose is to perform speculatively one possible unfolding of the Axial-transcendental dynamics in the Western tradition, namely the one which made Radical Secularization possible. The huge abstraction of the following treatment is thus no mere eccentricity, but a sine qua non for it to be what it aims to be. Only in this broader perspective can the concept of Radical Secularization show itself as it really is. We will start from the beginning, i.e. from the original “ubiquity of religion” in human cultures before and outside the Axial Age. Obviously, 647

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 6. See P.L. BERGER–T. LUCKMANN, Modernity, Pluralism and the Crisis of Meaning.

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all speculation about religion before and outside the Axial revolutions remains speculative in the pejorative meaning of the word, because it is only in and through the latter that we can begin to follow the self-conscious unfurling of human transcendentality. Primarily, this was done in a religious way in all post-Axial traditions, by positing an objective term for the movement of human transcendentality. Only secondarily in the Western Christian tradition was human transcendentality conceptualized in a manner which does not necessarily presuppose any objective goal for the subjective movement of human transcendentality. In fact, the whole of secular Western modernity is built on such a postmetaphysical uncoupling of subjective transcendentality and objective transcendence.649 That distinction bordering on separation is literally constitutive to secular Western modernity. Only in such a cultural context can complete nonreligion become imaginable, even though by no means necessary. Radical Secularization, despite its statistical insignificance, somehow captures the spiritual essence of Western modernity, its radical and genuine newness within the ongoing spiritual evolution of humanity.

3.1 The Original “Ubiquity of Religion” and the Axial Spiritual Dynamics A fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization cannot even meaningfully begin, if we do not fully acknowledge the necessary historical situatedness of all human language, including the religious one. There is the word “God,” yes, but in the abstract it does not yet mean anything. Even “God” needs concrete history to come to itself (himself?), exactly as human transcendentality does. Against this background, Radical Secularization may appear to move itself in the same millenarian history of human spiritual evolution as (Western) religion did. In what follows, we will be following the unfolding of the Western Axial spiritual dynamics in that perspective. Through the shifting contours of human transcendentality during the various Axial breakthroughs the general shape of Radical Secularization will become visible.

649 See R. ZAS FRIZ DE COL, The Transforming Presence of Mystery, pp. 15-16: “It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the transcendental experience as a fundamental anthropological condition and the various forms that the experience of transcendence can take” (italics AP).

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3.1.1 “God” in abstracto “The word ‘God’ exists,” as Karl Rahner observes in his “Meditation on the word ‘God.’”650 As “nonreligious” as one would personally be, one cannot help but recognize that many people continue to believe in God and act accordingly even After Secularization. The word “God” remains there amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism, perhaps even increasingly so. Yet, to be more precise, not only “God” but various “Gods” continue to inhabit secular modernity, and they do not always share a completely peaceful existence alongside each other in the existential market of today.651 As Gods are making their return to the global public sphere, so is religiously motivated violence. In this sense, at least, anybody who wants to understand the world we are living in cannot but confront the ambivalent reality of the “Gods.” It is not, however, these concrete Gods that Rahner has in mind in his classic meditation. For Rahner, when we speak about God in the metaphysical sense, we become lifted above all concrete uses of the word “God”: “When we speak about the word ‘God’ this way, we do not only mean of course the German word. Whether we say Gott or ‘God’ or the Latin deus or the Semitic El or the old Mexican teotl, that makes no difference here.”652 God, in other words, is not intrinsically connected to any linguistic tradition, according to Rahner. On the contrary, “God” for him means the infinite opening of all reality, its dynamic movement beyond all concrete particulars towards its unending horizon. The metaphysical God is the absolute abstraction, the negative ground zero of a cosmic unitive event.653 Thus understood, the word “God” puts the person that uses it in confrontation with the wholeness of reality, as its ever-expanding limit, as it were. Pronouncing “God,” we confess to exist in relation to a reality which is not of our making but which continually transcends our intellectual and spiritual capacities. “God” draws us beyond the original narcissism of our Ego by confronting us with the radical Otherness of the universe. And still, we can somehow relate to the surrounding universe, search for an ever-more truthful relationship with it. We do not exist in an absolute darkness, but how much light there is for us, remains an open question. This is, indeed, a most remarkable and awe-inspiring phenomenon, worthy of being called the

650

See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 44-51. See F.W. GRAF, Die Wiederkehr der Götter. 652 K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 45. 653 See R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution, pp. 12-15. 651

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“holy mystery,” as Rahner does.654 In sum, “God,” in the metaphysical, abstract sense of the term means both the greatness and the humbleness of being human. This kind of metaphysical speculation speaks to people with a certain kind of temperament, but what has it to do with religion? This might be the one blind spot in Rahner’s otherwise unequalled theological achievement. From his hermeneutical situation he could not yet pose the deeper, radically secular question. On the contrary, Rahner still thought and wrote as if everybody around him would share a profoundly Christian-formed culture and as if “God” would have some concrete meaning to them. In reality, this was not the case in Rahner’s time, and it is even less so today After Secularization. The abstract metaphysical “God” continues to fascinate certain intellects, but increasingly many post-secular Westerners do not have any real concrete use for it in their various ways-of-being-in-theworld. The arguable blind spot in Rahner’s argumentation goes even deeper. It is simply not true that the words of our language could be totally detached from their cultural context. Rather, as Wittgenstein and Heidegger have taught us, a word has meaning only as part of a continuing cultural tradition and in a certain form-of-life or way-of-being-in-the-world. To understand what a word means, one cannot contemplate it in an absolute abstraction, but one has to get down to the concrete history of its use. Ein Ausdruck hat nur im Strome des Lebens Bedeutung, “An expression has meaning only in the stream of life,” as Wittgenstein put it.655 This applies to all human words, including the most mysterious of them all, the word “God.” But perhaps the word “God” is different from all other words in this sense? Perhaps only the word “God” is not related to any cultural context and tradition, because it signifies the absolute Alterity, the always Other, which precisely as such lets us imagine the wholeness of reality, not as any static whole but as a dynamic movement towards the endlessly broadening horizon of being? Perhaps only the word “God” lifts us above the historical conditioning of our existence to a condition of pure transcendentality? Is this not what “religion” and “God” exactly are all about, i.e. the transcendent realm beyond all time and space and historical becoming? It might be so (at least in some readings of “religion” and of “God”), but such a state of pure transcendentality can only be reached at the singular

654 655

See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 46, 65. See N. MALCOLM, Ludwig Wittgenstein, p. 75.

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moment of one’s death.656 “God,” thus understood, would be the last word spoken–in absolute silence!–by every person with their last breath. But before that moment–which by definition confronts all living creatures–there is the concrete world of change, event, and becoming, with its various “Gods.” Until the final consummation, “God” is sentenced to pure abstraction, to signify the Other which always remains the Other (absolute Otherness657). Until then, we are doomed to live with various, even violently competing, “Gods.” From our temporal point of view, which is the only point of view we humans have, God’s being is in becoming.658 But is it not rather about degrees than mutually-exclusive alternatives here? If we have even only an idea of an absolute Otherness, of the Infinity which necessarily surpasses all finitude, then certainly it has left at least some kind of presence in this world, some kind of trace in history, even a trace of the trace, one must presume.659 Otherwise, we would not have even an intuition about the infinite opening of reality, which only could make us truly free. We would be completely enclosed by our temporal activities, without any desire of relating them to the broader and deeper reality. This is certainly true, but the idea of absolute Otherness, it must still be emphasized, is in itself absolutely empty. Exactly this absolute emptiness makes it what it is, namely the vanishing point of all reality, the negative ground zero of our relationship with the universe. It necessarily remains outside all objectifications in language or otherwise, because it is the very condition of possibility for us to meaningfully relate to the surrounding world to begin with. To be able to speak about the world, then, there must be something outside the world which gives it its worldliness. Only with such a perfectly transcendent presupposition can the world become reality, i.e. a meaningful whole. But that presupposition also means nothing, it is nothing, at least for us spatio-temporal (i.e. secular) beings. In sum, “God,” if we want to use 656 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 35, 46-47. Interestingly, Hägglund concurs with this in his analysis of “radical atheism” (see M. HÄGGLUND, Radical Atheism, p. 8). 657 In fact, to be quite precise, God as absolute Otherness is so Other as to be beyond all Otherness (a mystery which Nicholas of Cusa tried to point to with his concept of non aliud). Thus, a serious thinking about God ultimately arrives at the Augustinian interior intimo meo et superior summo meo: God is at the same time absolutely Other to the Ego and more intimate to it than it is to itself. In other words, the metaphysical God cannot be localized in any one point in the universe because he is everywhere (and nowhere). 658 See Eberhard Jüngel’s Barth-paraphrase God’s Being is in Becoming. 659 See G. VATTIMO, “The Trace of the Trace”.

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this word for the absolutely Other, is pure abstraction in itself, infinite emptiness, which can equally be said to exist and not to exist, so that the question completely vanishes and Radical Secularization becomes possible. Thus, paradoxically, absolute religion shows itself to be absolute nonreligion, in the completely emancipated movement of human transcendentality which Radical Secularization signifies. Consequently, the “God” of Rahner and other modern metaphysical theologians signifies pure abstraction. Yet, it can have been arrived at only through the millenarian speculative development since the Western Axial revolution, when human transcendentality for the first time starts to become theoretically elaborated and thus move into itself. We will be following the unfolding of the Western Axial spiritual dynamics in that perspective, which at the same time is that of Radical Secularization. Absolute post- or nonreligion became possible when human transcendentality completely untethered itself from its historical and cultural conditioning (or thought it did). This is the same as to say that absolute nonreligion became possible when the word “God” became pure abstraction, without any intrinsic connection with concrete human history.660 The modern metaphysical, and simultaneously radically secular, use of the word “God” is of course not how the word was used during the whole of humanity’s religious evolution. On the contrary, we find the word used in relation to a variety of concrete realities, certain natural objects (the Sun, the stars, a tree, a stone), or natural events (birth, death, love, war), certain places, times, people, etc. Or to be more precise, not that the abstract metaphysical idea of the word “God” is used in these cases, but a more tangible designation of the trans-human meaningfulness encountered in this object or event or person (the “numinous” or the “sacred”, as it is traditionally called in phenomenology of religion). Thus, if we want to understand the universally human propensity to religion, and the modern Western departure from it, there is no alternative 660

Is this only abstract speculation itself? Not at all. If one wants some concrete evidence for the radically secular configuration of human transcendentality, consider the fact that humanity now has the (all-too-real) possibility of destroying itself with a few presses of button, and anyway risks doing the same self-extinction in a couple of generations because of environmental catastrophe. Perhaps an all-too-negative (in fact, absolutely negative) example of human transcendentality’s coming completely into itself, but no less real for that. In any case, we are faced with the totality of reality, be it in the negative sense of extinguishing ourselves from it or in the positive sense of opening ourselves to its ongoing expansion. Every person must eventually answer that question. There is no way around it. Being human is a very serious thing, indeed.

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to confronting head-on the “extremely obscure and difficult question”661 of what all the incredibly varied religious representations have in common. To understand religion, one has to step away from abstract speculation into the concrete facts of human religious evolution. Conversely, human transcendentality can only be understood by and through its concrete unfurling in and through history. 3.1.2 Human religiosity in concreto Modern Western religious scholars have strived to develop a comprehensive definition of “religion” during the past few centuries as this concept came to be on the academic agenda. But, as Charles Taylor, for instance, notes, in concrete human reality there appear so many different beliefs, practices, and institutions under this category that offering an all-inclusive concept of religion presents a “hard, perhaps insuperable task.”662 If we do not want to resort to any functionalist definition of religion which at the end of the day would risk making everything in human existence somehow religious, are we, then, forced to renounce any substantial definition of it as being beyond our intellectual powers? From the perspective of Radical Secularization, the entire issue seems rather different, however. Instead of concentrating on the empirical features of varied religious traditions (which present an amazing diversity that makes them impossible to group under any single concept), the idea of absolute nonreligion can highlight what all religions presume about reality implicitly–even though they do not necessarily spell it out explicitly. Such a fundamental presumption would present the transcendental condition of possibility for religion, although religions would not conceptualize it directly. This presumption would be the invisible source from which human religiosity flows without, however, being a part of that flow. This presumption is the metaphysical assumption which now shows itself more clearly as the religious presumption. The metaphysical assumption, as was argued in the previous chapter, concerns the intrinsic meaningfulness of reality, indeed it assumes that there is some kind of transhuman intelligibility in reality as it is in itself which humans (and other intelligent beings) can meaningfully relate to, “reflect” it in their mind, as it were. The religious presumption, on its part, shows itself in the concrete religious beliefs that all presuppose there to be some-trans human meaningfulness in reality as such. Not all religions exhibit explicit belief in God or Gods, but they all reckon with some kind of trans-human 661 662

K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 45. C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 15.

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meaningfulness in reality that religious humans take into account in their way-of-being-in-the-world. “Religion,” in sum, is the abstract term for the concrete “religious” beliefs and practices which presume a trans-human or metaphysical meaning in reality as it is in itself. This definition of religion may sound all too simple to be true. And indeed, it may be possible to see its adequacy only from the point of view of Radical Secularization itself. Only by theorizing absolute post- or nonreligion, does it become meaningful to speak about “religion” in the abstract singular, instead of concrete religions in the concrete plural. This has to do with the highly abstract nature of Radical Secularization as something which is not yet a real possibility and perhaps never will be: a perfectly nonreligious human form-of-life. But we already can speculate about such a way-of-being-in-the-world and aspire towards forming a coherent concept of it. From that ongoing intellectual movement towards Radical Secularization, religion can also be understood as religion, namely as something essentially based on the metaphysical-religious assumption. To see this better, let us go back to the fundamental phenomenology of Radical Secularization, as it shows itself from itself, in its own selfunderstanding. In its light (or is it darkness?), the world presents itself as blatantly without any intrinsic meaning, or at least without any intrinsic meaning for us humans (more than that we cannot meaningfully say). And how else could it be in an infinite universe that has existed for eons before the modern homo sapiens evolved, and that will continue to exist for eons more after our extinction. To put it briefly, for Radical Secularization, reality is an independent reality, the true description of which should not make any essential reference to the particularly “human” (constituting as this does a completely contingent feature of cosmic evolution). Religion sees things quite differently. From the perspective of Radical Secularization, religion is based on the metaphysical assumption that reality is a dependent reality, i.e. that it really cannot be understood without taking into account humans as an essential part. Our possibility and actuality (we are here!) must somehow be inscribed in the very fabric of the universe. In other words, religion relates the human to some larger whole, to some transhuman meaningfulness in reality, perhaps to the reality as a whole (quite consciously so in Axial transcendental religions).663 The concrete historical 663

See T. NAGEL, “Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament”, pp. 4-5. Consider also William James’s characterization of religion: “Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” (W. JAMES, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53).

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religions represent a presumed trans-human meaningfulness in different ways, certainly, but they all assume that there is something to represent. It is precisely this assumption that makes them religion. Radical Secularization as religion’s radical Other, by contrast, cannot really understand the religious presumption and the ensuing concrete religions. In its view, rather, religion flows from a massive anthropocentric illusion. The intellectual capacities of homo sapiens are unique on our planet, that much is true. What is especially fascinating is their transcendental capacity to relate their own particular existence to broader reality. Humans have a certain kind of spiritual opening towards the infinite of reality. They can always ask and enquire further, beyond their present state of knowing. Even other animals can be conscious of their individual existence and relate it to the surrounding world. But only humans have made this capacity the basis of their specific way-of-being-in-the-world, unable as they are to live without finding some meaning in their existence. As long as humans remained underdeveloped technologically, resorting only to the semantic capacity of their own body and of their own population, it is no wonder that they had a special status in their view of the world. To see the world more impartially (and thus truthfully), the theorizing revolutions of the Axial Ages were needed. The Axial revolutions are a very recent development in human evolution, however. Most human cultures have lived before and outside any Axial turn. And what is most amazing, especially for nonreligious people, is that in all of them we can find something which we spontaneously would call “religion.” To put it the other way round, no human culture has been found where religion would be missing. Of course, we have only very scarce evidence of cultures before the Axial Ages, but all human populations which we can meaningfully study through writing or direct contact have had a religious dimension. Considering the big history of human cultural evolution, religion is literally “everywhere.” Certainly, some human populations have put more weight on religion than others, but from none has religion been completely missing. This fact can be called the “ubiquity” or “universality” of religion. It is a most amazing, perhaps even disturbing fact, for a genuinely nonreligious mentality, because it risks questioning the whole idea of our common humanity. How can one identify with a common humanity and strive towards universal fraternity, if one feels totally alienated from the religious dimension of being human? The ubiquity of religion does not mean that all human cultures would share certain particular religious beliefs or practices. It is quite possible that there is no single unifying feature–such as belief in God or afterlife or the

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idea of a divine law or the practice of sacrifice or other rituals–to all concrete religions. Religion, from the perspective of Radical Secularization, is rather a very abstract notion. It has to do with assuming some kind of trans-human intentionality or order in reality that humans can meaningfully relate to. Hence, religion presumes that even though reality is not of our making, we can still somehow fit into it, consider it as our home. The religious presumption can take a myriad of different concrete forms in belief and practice, but the metaphysical assumption of our somehow belonging to the world grounds them all. Religion, to put it briefly, has to do with meaningfully relating to reality, in the sense that this meaning is somehow given to us from the outside, trans-humanly. Religion is about the infinite universe’s becoming an intelligible reality and a liveable home to us small human beings.664 To concretize these thoughts, let us briefly consider the Amazonian tribe Pirahã, famously, and controversially, studied by the American linguist Daniel Everett.665 According to Everett’s analysis, the Pirahã culture is characterized by what he calls the immediacy of experience principle (IEP).666 The world of the Pirahã is the world as immediately experienced; they believe and react only to what they can directly confront with their senses, Everett claims. The Pirahã create meaning by dancing, for example, and by telling about their immediate experiences, but they do not have the elaborated rituals and myths we are accustomed to from most other human cultures. The Pirahã, by contrast, appear to take life as it comes, without any desire to relate it to the larger world. Most importantly for us, the Pirahã do not seem to have anything we would spontaneously call “religion”: no Creator God, no creation or other myths, no sacrifices or other rituals, not even religiously imbued initiation rites. The Pirahã were not at all interested in Everett’s stories about Jesus Christ, for instance, because he self-confessedly had never seen him.667 664

For a most beautiful meditation on the foundations of religious belief along these lines, see J.L. KUGEL, In the Valley of the Shadow. 665 See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle. Everett’s analysis of the Pirahã, as everything else in the present part of the study, serves purely phenomenological or descriptive goals. That is why references to critical secondary literary are omitted as unnecessary. 666 See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, pp. 131-133. 667 See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, p. 266. Everett originally started as a Christian missionary among the Pirahã, but the personal experience of such radical Otherness as theirs led to his completely losing any religious faith (see D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, pp. 263-273).

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Yet, this does not mean that the Pirahã would be radically secular or absolutely nonreligious in the sense intended in the present study. Even they–with all other known human populations–do reckon with some sort of trans-human meaningfulness in reality. Everett, for example, reports a situation when he was talking with a Pirahã man called Kóhoibiíhíai whose daughter Xíbií was ill, apparently with malaria.668 First, Everett tried to explain scientifically to him how the sickness had to do with germs, mosquitoes, and blood. Kóhoi, however, did not buy anything of it but insisted that his daughter was sick “because she stepped on a leaf.” Puzzled by that explanation, Everett wondered how that could be, because he, too, had stepped on a leaf but had not caught malaria. Then, Kóhoi specified that it had not been any ordinary leaf but a “leaf from above,” explaining the sickness in his own Pirahã fashion: “A bloodless one from the upper bigí came to the lower bigí and left a leaf. When the Pirahã step on leaves from the upper bigí, it makes them sick. They are like our leaves. But they make you sick.”669 Baffled by the Pirahã way of relating the fact of human sickness to the functioning of the surrounding world, Everett studied the issue further. He found out that the Pirahã regard the world as a layer cake, where each boundary is called “bigí.” They do not theorize about the different layers and their various bigí but they experience them directly, for example, when somebody gets sick because they stepped on a leaf from the upper bigí. In a similar manner, the Pirahã do not speculate about various spirits inhabiting the world, but directly see and talk to them.670 Far from being nonreligious in the radically secular sense of the term, therefore, reality is full of transhuman intentionality and meaningfulness for Pirahã, thus making them “religious” in the sense just defined. Of course, the question can be raised about the commensurability between the Western and the Pirahã worldviews. Can they meaningfully be compared to each other to begin with? Can we Western people even in principle understand what the Pirahã mean with “bigí” and their different “spirits”? The Pirahã seem to lack the paramount reality in which we modern Westerners live our daily life (or we lack theirs).671 For the former, on the contrary, the spiritual dimension belongs to the ordinary way-ofbeing-in-the-world. Or better put, they do not seem to make any distinction between the human-made and controlled world and the larger, trans-human 668

See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, pp. 115-116. D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, p. 116. 670 See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, p. 141. 671 See R.N. BELLAH, Religion in Human Evolution, p. xv, 2; A. SCHUTZ, “On Multiple Realities”, pp. 226-228. 669

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reality. The Pirahã content themselves with existing in a world which is not of their making but has its own way of functioning. They accept human finitude, illness and death, as they come, without revolting against them in any way, as Everett testifies.672 The obvious difference with the Western aspiration of controlling the trans-human world by transcending human limitations should not be sought for only in modern Western science and technology. The roots for modern Western rationalization lie deeper in history, ultimately in the Axial emergence of the various transcendental visions. What all the different Axial revolutions have in common is precisely the conviction that humanity, with its present limitations, is something to be superseded for some transhuman goal. In all Axial revolutions some kind of an objective goal becomes theorized for the movement of subjective human transcendentality. The objective transcendence, however concretely conceptualized, provides inner motivation and the outer direction to the ensuing post-Axial civilizations, speculatively considered. Such transcendental-spiritual dynamics seem to be missing in Pirahã and other pre- or outer-Axial cultures. They, in a clear contrast to the dynamic movement of post-Axial civilizations, are rather static in character, content with conserving their present form-of-life. Still, they are no nonreligious cultures. By contrast, all known non-Axial human cultures are characterized by what Gauchet calls spiritual “dispossession,” i.e. the unspoken conviction that the way-of-being-in-the-world of one’s own population is somehow given in advance from the outside.673 Nonreligion, consequently, would in this perspective mean founding one’s form-of-life purely on itself, without acknowledging any outer guarantees or authorities to it. But to be able to depart from the original ubiquity of religious dispossession, the Axial intensification of the trans-human dependence was first needed, as Gauchet argues.674 Certainly, the human transcendental capacity was there all along. Rahner is right that without it we could not really recognize humans as human.675 The trademark of human transcendentality is the self-conscious recognition of the particularity of one’s own existence and the consequent desire to relate it to the surrounding world. There are traits of this capacity even in Pirahã culture, even though it has not been much developed there. For example, linguistically Everett’s most controversial claim has been that the Pirahã language would be lacking in recursion. This may or may not be the 672

See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, pp. 58, 97. See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 7, 12. 674 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 43-46. 675 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 48. 673

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case,676 but if it is, it most probably would hinder the Pirahã’s opening their mind towards the larger reality, so much is our thinking influenced, even though not completely determined, by our language. Recursive or infinitely open features can of course be found in other areas of Pirahã culture, for instance in the stories they tell, as Everett himself has demonstrated.677 The transcendental potentiality is always there in humans, even though it does not have to be actualized in all dimensions of a given culture (not even in its linguistic grammar, if Everett is right). Whether or to what degree the potentiality becomes actualized appears to depend crucially on the technological678 development of the human population in question. It can be assumed that when the technological development is low, even the concrete actualization of the human transcendental potentiality is low. All this remains empty speculation, however, because it is only from the Axial Ages onwards that we really can follow the concrete unfolding of human transcendentality. The invention and broader spread of writing must, nevertheless, have been an important precondition for the Axial transcendental breakthroughs. What does this all have to do with religion and the definitive departure from it in the modern West, which the concept of Radical Secularization speculatively signifies? To go back to Marcel Gauchet, with the Axial emergence of objective transcendental visions, humanity’s subjective transcendental capacity became at the same time radicalized and also open for disavowing all trans-human terms to it. In Gauchet’s analysis, the original ubiquity of religion signifies religion’s “most complete and systematic form” as transcendental dispossession,679 whereas the Axial breakthroughs, at least in the Western tradition, prepare the way for religion’s demise. The adequate phenomenology of Radical Secularization can only be perceived in such a deep genealogical perspective, as the following overview will show. 676

For example, German linguist Uli Sauerland has argued, building on new empirical evidence, that Pirahã language does in fact use more complex syntax than Everett would allow (see U. SAUERLAND, “Experimental Evidence for Complex Syntax in Pirahã”). 677 See D. EVERETT, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, pp. 94, 240-241. 678 “Technological” is meant here in a very general sense concerning a human population’s capacity of instrumentally controlling its material surroundings. A certain level of technological development is certainly necessary for human transcendentality to begin its movement towards itself, but at another lever technology can also begin to harm the transcendental movement more and more by leading it too far away from itself (as exemplified by contemporary scientistic naturalism). 679 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 23.

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3.2 Axial Ages, East and West Eric Weil rightly pointed out that all talk about the Axial Age or Axial revolution is “culturally autobiographical.”680 And it could not be otherwise. If the Axial Age signifies the historical epoch when a given human population attains a second-order self-consciousness, i.e. becomes explicitly conscious of one’s own cultural particularity and begins to critically relate it to other cultural traditions and to reality as a whole, this cannot be done but in an autobiographical manner. The Axial Age hypothesis is like the cogito transposed into historical becoming. Hence, one does not have to speculate about any sudden, super-natural transformation at the heart of an Axial revolution. In a post-metaphysical reading, an Axial Age is simply the age from which onwards a civilization traces its cultural roots. In all post-Axial civilizations there are historical remains even from pre-Axial times, but they seem somehow qualitatively different with respect to the genuinely Axial cultural products. How can the Axial turn be more precisely determined, then? With the help of Rahner’s analysis of human transcendentality, the Axial Age can be defined as the historical point of departure for human transcendentality’s coming into itself. To recapitulate, human transcendentality never exists in an abstract vacuum, but it must always be concretely actualized. And not any concrete actualization will do, but for transcendentality to be what it is it must be self-consciously actualized.681 Certainly, transcendentality is there in all human spiritual acts, in every genuine act of knowing or willing, but these are what they are only when self-consciously actualized. I really know something when I also self-consciously know that I know it, and I really decide something when I also self-consciously decide to decide it. The Axial Age is thus the origin of civilizational transcendentality, of a whole culture’s aspiration of relating its existence to broader reality. In this 680

See E. WEIL, “What is a Breakthrough in History?”, p. 22. This is the reason why scientistic naturalism (like political authoritarianism), despite the appearances, threatens to invalidate the movement of human transcendentality. If the continuing growth of data about the world is not selfcritically under our control, it distances us from reality rather than relates us meaningfully to it (the same risk applies, mutatis mutandis, to authoritarian approaches to human communal existence). And to have our relationship with reality under self-critical control, we cannot be considered “animals among all the others” but the (only known) “rational animal,” i.e., in a way, the transcendental subject that can scrutinize everything but that as such cannot be scrutinized by anything (see 1 Cor 2:5).

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sense, Jan Assmann is right to claim that the idea of an Axial Age has its meaning in the context of a search for “the answer to the question for the roots of modernity.”682 If “Axial Age” means the historical starting point for a culture’s transcendental coming into itself, “modernity” signifies the supposedly achieved state of spiritual self-possession for a given culture or community (a state, which, however, requires constant concern to remain in existence, as the post-secular consciousness knows). An Axial Age, thus, is a necessary speculative component of a culture’s comprehending itself in a thought (or, in an analogous fashion, of an ecclesial community’s reading of the signs of the times). Axial Age and modernity belong together. Modernities, however, are multiple, as we are becoming more and more aware amidst contemporary global hyperpluralization.683 There is no one way for human transcendentality to unfold and to come into itself. Of course, the movement of human transcendentality always takes its impetus from concrete cultural artefacts and proceeds in relation to them. When these were still in relatively small supply, and in the possession of a small elite (as they were in practically all human cultures well into the twentieth century CE), it is understandable that existing cultures were transcendentally relatively homogenous.684 In such a global perspective, it is not unfounded to make the huge abstraction of speaking of the four original Axial breakthroughs in ancient Greece, Israel, India, and China. In all these civilizations the mid-first millennium BCE saw the emergence of a cultural heritage which guided the subsequent unwinding of human transcendentality for centuries to come, all the way to the present day, our modo. Thus, by looking back at the first millennium BCE, we can more easily liberate ourselves from a narrowing “Eurocentrism” (and all other “Centrisms”) to get a better view of the spiritual dynamics of contemporary global hyperpluralization, where all cultural traditions are equally welcome to discuss and develop our common humanity. 682

J. ASSMANN, “Cultural Memory and the Myth of the Axial Age”, p. 366. See S.N. EISENSTADT, “Multiple Modernities”. 684 Admittedly, cultural homogenization is there as an undeniable concomitant phenomenon of practically all modernizations. Charles Taylor, for example, is right to note that, in a certain sense, “modern direct-access societies are more homogenous than pre-modern ones” (C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, p. 211). But this homogenization has most importantly to do with doing away with the earlier hierarchical principle of pre-modern socializing. We have to be “uniform” in order to be “equal” in all basic rights and freedoms. Following this kind of constitutional “homogeneity”, an unprecedented existential pluralism and heterogeneity can develop (in a constant struggle with the equally strong totalitarizing tendencies of our modern societies). 683

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If the idea of an Axial Age is essentially autobiographical, concerning as it does a given civilization’s understanding of itself in relation to others, is there any way of understanding a civilization other than one’s own? At least since Edward Said’s Orientalism we also in the West have become conscious of how deeply we are influenced by our own civilizational background and how difficult it is to understand the Other (in this case, the Eastern Other) without molding them into our own image.685 With transcendental conceptuality, however, it is not about a question of eitheror. Rather, precisely by being anchored in one’s own tradition does one become open to the Other, too (see EG, nn. 234-235). Human transcendentality always aspires beyond the perceived limits. A culture, like any true subject, understands itself only by relating itself to the Other, as Hegel was one of the first, and of the most profound, to argue.686 This is not a question of relativism but of relativity, of relating one’s own self-understanding to that of others. Human transcendentality always moves in such a doublemovement which never can be said to attain its final goal. Or can it? Do not the various world civilizations differ precisely in their different constructions of the final goal of the human transcendental movement? In Greek culture human transcendentality is headed towards the world of Ideas or some other supramundane reality, which ancient Israelites understood as the one transcendent God, while ancient Indians spoke about nirvana or dharma and ancient Chinese about tao. This is the received Western view of things, based as it is on the distinction between the subjective movement of human transcendentality and its objective term. But can the subjective-objective-distinction really be carried to other cultures outside the West? This distinction might be the glory as well as the misery of the Western tradition, but our fixation on it does not mean that other cultural currents would be equally, or at all, determined by it. On the contrary, it does seem that they are not.687 Be that as it may, the fact stands that in the Western tradition the conceptual distinction between the subjective and the objective was a characteristic, even defining, feature.688 This arguably had to do with the 685

See E.W. SAID, Orientalism. See P.J. KAIN, Hegel and the Other. 687 See, for example, M. HEIDEGGER, “A Dialogue between a Japanese and an Inquirer”. 688 Hans Ulrich GUMBRECHT, following Heidegger, calls the “Subject/Object paradigm” “the core element of that style of philosophizing which has been called (sometimes from a purely descriptive and sometimes from a critical angle) ‘Western metaphysics’” (H.U. GUMBRECHT, “Martin Heidegger and His Japanese Interlocutors”, p. 83). 686

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specifically Western way of combining the Axial heritages of both ancient Greece and ancient Israel. The self-conscious realization of subjective transcendentality as second-order thinking came from the Greeks, whereas the objectively transcendent term for the movement of human transcendentality came from the Israelite belief in one transcendent God. Even though one would not dare to lend any definitive significance to the traditional Western marriage between Athens and Jerusalem, one can still consider it as a rather adequate description of one civilizational current.689 In any case, the conceptual distinction between subjective transcendentality and objective transcendence can serve as a speculative tool for a phenomenological description of how it became possible for human transcendentality to release itself from all necessary objective goals for its inner movement, as has happened with Radical Secularization.

3.3 The Axial Unfolding in the Western Tradition Here we follow Gauchet’s intuition according to which the original condition of possibility for the modern Western egress from religion is sought and found in religion itself. What spiritually drove the Western tradition was not so much its Greek heritage but its Israelite one. Subjective human transcendentality experienced a brief flourishing in the fifth and fourth century BCE Athens, but what really formed the foundation of Western civilization was the ancient Israelite belief in the objective transcendence of the one God. Yet, if Gauchet’s speculation is anywhere near the mark, the dynamics of transcendence not only gave rise to Western religion but also prepared the possibility of exiting from it.690 In the following, Gauchet’s grand narrative is constantly in the background, while the main purpose is to describe a genuinely post- or nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world as conceptualized in Radical Secularization.

689

Contra Tertullian’s foundational protest–“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?”–in his Prescription Against Heretics, p. 7. Such an attitude which tends to separate rather than unite the Greek philosophical and the Christian theological movement has presented a constant minority position in the overall Christian tradition, often bordering on heterodoxy (as in Tertullian’s own case). On the vital “counterpoint” between Athens and Jerusalem for the Christian tradition, see J. PELIKAN, What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?. Faith and reason belong together in the movement of human transcendentality, not in spite of but exactly because of the necessary tension between the two. 690 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 64-66.

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3.3.1 The Israelite Background: Monotheism and the Necessity of Divine Revelation The one crucial question is, then, how it became possible to move from the original ubiquity of religion to an existential condition where religion is a completely free choice, to the point of not being understood at all by perfectly nonreligious people. Radical Secularization signifies religion’s absolute Otherness, or its complete gratuitousness. It is thus the polar opposite to the ubiquity of religion. Or better put, Radical Secularization claims to move completely outside the traditionally religious conceptuality. As far as we can study pre-modern human cultures–and more or less the same applies to modern cultures outside the West–they were imbued with beliefs in various trans-human intentionalities and related practices. Not only did people generally acknowledge various Gods and spirits and other trans-human agents as impinging on their everyday life, but the whole societal system seemed to be based on the acceptance of some kind of transhuman order and meaningfulness to reality. This is fascinating for modern Westerners because our communal existence is based solely on ourselves, we recognize our essential rootedness in a certain place and time, and the belief in any trans-human powers has become, according to our selfunderstanding, a completely free individual choice.691 Even more fascinating is the original ubiquity of religion for a radically secular temperament that cannot find any point of contact with traditional religiosity in itself. Indeed, the radical newness of our existential situation After Secularization rises most clearly to the fore with the ideal concept of a completely nonreligious form-of-life. Radical Secularization speculatively summarizes and crystallizes the novelty of our spiritual predicament After Secularization. To put the crucial question slightly differently, or existentially, as it were, it can be asked where the spiritual courage came to distance one’s own form-of-life from the original acceptance of a constitutive trans-human meaningfulness in reality. If the longue durée of human evolution has been overwhelmingly religious, then how did one get the courage of emancipating oneself from it for a truly nonreligious way-of-being-in-the-world? And not only “oneself,” but an entire human culture, namely that of Western secular modernity? True, even in the most secular societies many or even the majority of the population continue to believe in various trans-human intentionalities. But the modern secular society as such does not. And no individual citizen has 691

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 22.

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to. Some of them cannot even take those who do seriously (the necessary radicalization of the speculative logic of Western secularization in Radical Secularization). How on earth did we have the courage to create such a society, given the original ubiquity of religion from which we all come from? To answer this question, one should look at ancient Israel rather than Greece. Ancient Greece was as superstitious and full of various divinities as any other pre-modern human culture. In the Axial Age Israel, by contrast, a spiritual current was developing which would question the reality of all trans-human powers in the world, by making the one and only God thoroughly transcendent.692 It is, of course, not so original to claim that monotheism harbors in itself a strong secularizing potentiality (as Weber already had argued, and Alan Gilbert more recently693). Belief in only one God appears spontaneously as much less religious than belief in many Gods. Yet, it all depends on how this one God becomes understood. Belief in a God, even if the only one, who acts like a human despot, willing to control all aspects of the lives of their underlings, clearly would not be so favorable for human emancipation. Believing in many Gods, by contrast, who perhaps were more interested in their reciprocal power struggles than human affairs, could allow for a surprisingly large amount of human freedom.694 In sum, monotheism, as such, does not yet mean too much. The question is how the one God and especially his will towards human beings becomes understood. And this can only be considered in a concrete historical perspective (however abstract in itself). To become real for us humans, the abstract “God” needs a concrete “religion.” To have some concrete relevance for us, God has to somehow incarnate himself into human history. But in which fashion, in which style does he decide to do that? Many scholars of the religions of the ancient Near East have noted a tendency in the surviving literary documents towards a concentration of the religious worship on only one God, roughly during the Jaspersian Axial Age.695 In both the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian civilizations, the divine power tended to become focused on one single God towards the middle of the last millennium BCE, a clear reflection of their imperial 692

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 107-115. See A.D. GILBERT, The Making of Post-Christian Britain, pp. 17-18. 694 For a succinct formulation of the classical suspicion of extremely violent potential inherent in (politically used) monotheism, see J. ASSMANN, Monotheismus und die Sprache der Gewalt. 695 See already T. JACOBSEN, Treasures of Darkness, pp. 234-235; S. PARPOLA, “Monotheism in Ancient Assyria”. 693

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aspirations.696 In the politically quite insignificant people of ancient Israel (or Judah, to be more precise), the religious evolution was both similar and different. Even among ancient Israelites, religious practice was concentrating more and more on only one God, Yhwh. But then, almost certainly in connection with the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE, the specifically Israelite virtuosi, the “prophets” (naviҲ in Hebrew), began to proclaim the absolute supremacy and unique existence of Yhwh, the God of Israel and of the whole world. Here we have perhaps the most constitutive feature of the entire Western tradition: the belief in the God who is One because he is absolutely transcendent.697 Especially, the so-called Deutero- or Second Isaiah–a prophet or prophets living during the Babylonian Exile and comprising the chapters 40-55 of the canonical Book of Isaiah–has been hailed as “the parade example of biblical monotheism.”698 In Deutero-Isaiah for the first time in the Hebrew Bible,699 and possibly even the first time in the history of human religious evolution at large, we can find indications of a full-blown monotheistic belief in the transcendent God. The crucial point–it must be clearly emphasized–is not Deutero-Isaiah’s affirmation that Yhwh, the God of Israel, is the only God and that the Gods of the other peoples (especially of the Babylonians) are nothing (see Isa 43:10-11; 44:6; 45:5; 46:9). Rather, the decisive Axial-monotheistic breakthrough is their conviction that God is radically Other with respect to anything else. In his radical Otherness God is beyond all human powers of conceptualization (see Isa 40:18, 25). Indeed, 696

See W.G. LAMBERT, “The Historical Development of the Mesopotamian Pantheon”. To mark this historical, and thus ideologically neutral, fact, the capitalized word “God” could be reserved for the One who alone is absolutely transcendent, whereas the various and innumerable “gods” of different human populations could be spelled with minuscule. Previous research often reckoned with a kind of “original monotheism” in ancient Israel, even tracing its roots to the figure of Moses himself (see Y. KAUFMANN, The Religion of Israel; W.F. ALBRIGHT, From the Stone Age to Christianity). More recent research, however, is arriving at a broad consensus that the Biblical form of monotheism developed only gradually during the millenarian history of the Israelite people, emerging full-blown only during the Babylonian Exile of the sixth century BCE (see A. LEMAIRE, The Birth of Monotheism; T. RÖMER, The Invention of God; P. MACHINIST, “Once More: Monotheism in Biblical Israel”). 698 See M.S. SMITH, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, p. 179. 699 The possibly monotheistic passages in Deuteronomy, even though set in the time of Moses at the end of the second millennium BCE, in fact have been written by the Deuteronomic School of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The clearly monotheistic Ezekiel slightly precedes Deutero-Isaiah, however. On all these, see S. PETRY, Die Entgrenzung YHWHs. 697

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there is no real comparison between the truly transcendent God of DeuteroIsaiah and even the most powerful human nations in the world: “they are counted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isa 40:17). Quite logically, from the conviction of God’s absolute transcendence flows Deutero-Isaiah’s merciless critique of Babylonian and all other human-made religiosity (see Isa 41:21-29; 44:9-20; 46:1-13). The radically Other God transcends all human attempts at comprehending him. God is always greater, in fact infinitely greater, than any created reality. As the sole Creator and Master of history God controls everything without being himself controlled by anything, Deutero-Isaiah proclaimed (see Isa 40:1231; 45:9-13). In the subsequent monotheistic tradition, idolatry becomes the greatest of all sins, because it offends God’s unique nature as inviolably transcendent.700 We thus have one of the first explicit attestations of the conviction of radical objective transcendence, of something being absolutely, infinitely, and eternally, Other with respect to the movement of human transcendentality. The particularly Israelite Axial breakthrough is, arguably, exactly this monotheistic clarification of objective transcendence. But if such objective transcendence exists, i.e. if there really is the absolutely transcendent God, how could we ever know anything about him, even the mere fact of his existence? Human subjective transcendentality is in a continuous movement towards the ever-greater, but how can we form any concept of divine objective transcendence, if it (he) by definition always surpasses–indeed, transcends–all human attempts at comprehension? This is the fundamental question posed to all affirmations of absolute transcendence, if they are to avoid becoming a completely empty by being absolutely abstract because loosened (ab-solutus, literally) from concrete human reality. Deutero-Isaiah’s answer is clear. According to him God has revealed his will concerning the events of history (see Isa 45:14-25). This God stands absolutely outside the created world, but precisely as such he controls every event in it. According to Deutero-Isaiah’s proclamation it was no other than the God of Israel who called forth Cyrus the Great to defeat the NeoBabylonians and thus prepare the possibility of a return for the Israelites to their Holy Land (see Isa 41:1-5; 45:1-8). In the end, the future re-settlement of the Israelites did not go as Deutero-Isaiah had prophesized, but the revolutionary idea of the transcendent God who leads and determines the concrete unfolding of history remained in the cultural evolution of human religiosity. With the idea of the transcendent God we also get the concept 700

On the concept of idolatry in the Hebrew Bible and the subsequent monotheistic tradition, see M. HALBERTAL–A. MARGALIT, Idolatry.

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of a theology of history, of historical becoming towards a certain goal.701 The main point here is as simple as it is easy to overlook. The transcendent God must somehow reveal himself in concrete space and time, if we humans are to know anything about him (even his mere existence). Absolute transcendence is a totally empty notion, because it signifies the radically radical Otherness. But if the Otherness is so radical, it remains forever beyond our grasp–lest it (he) decides to reveal itself (himself) to us (thus, definitively, he, himself). This is the heart of Deutero-Isaiah’s proclamation, namely that Yhwh, the absolutely transcendent God of Israel, has foretold the events and the ultimate goal of history to his prophets (see Isa 48:3-5). The particularly Israelite virtuosi are the Hebrew prophets like Deutero-Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who receive the intentional message of the transcendent God and transmit it to other human beings. In their very person, prophets bridge the infinite gap between the objective transcendence of God and the immanent human reality.702 Biblical monotheism, as represented in Deutero-Isaiah most characteristically, therefore signifies belief in the absolutely transcendent origin and goal of all creation. Furthermore, this transcendent Origin nevertheless chooses to communicate with his creation. If he did not, we would not know anything about him, not even the fact of his existence (except perhaps as an infinite void or darkness, as the later apophatic tradition of theology came to understand703). Once the idea of absolute objective transcendence has entered history, it cannot be erased from there anymore (except perhaps by forgetting it, but then, as Karl Rahner points out, humans, as we know them, would have ceased to exist, too704). Rather, after the Israelite Axial Revolution, the all-decisive question becomes the manner of God’s revealing himself, his particular revelatory style.705 How has God shown himself to be, and what is the content of his Revelation? This hermeneutic question lies at the heart of the dynamics of the Western civilization, and thus the Bible as the written Word of God becomes the “great code” of Western culture.706 That hermeneutic question 701

On the ambivalent legacy of Biblical, monotheistically inspired, theology of history on the unfolding of human transcendentality in the Western tradition, see J. SVENUNGSSON, Divining History. 702 A.J. HESCHEL, The Prophets remains a particularly insightful study of the originality of the ancient Hebrew prophets. 703 See D. TURNER, The Darkness of God. 704 See K. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 47-49. 705 On the stylistic approach to the Biblical Revelation, see C. THEOBALD, Le christianisme comme un style; Das Christentum als Stil. 706 See N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature.

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gives the Western tradition both its deep continuity and continuously resurfacing revolutionary potentiality. Western tradition, spiritually interpreted, is a series of different readings (and misreadings) of the Divine Revelation. One could think that God or absolute objective transcendence could choose to reveal himself in any fashion that happens to please him. That is an illusion, however. Paradoxically, but quite understandably, the absolutely transcendent God must reveal himself in a certain manner, if he is to conserve his transcendence. For one who has grasped God’s transcendent nature, not everything will do. What will do, cannot of course be determined a priori by any created subject. But a posteriori, after the empirical fact of Divine Revelation, its fittingness can be ascertained by the one who has eyes to see and ears to hear.707 It is the same as with Spaemann’s example of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. A priori there was no necessity as to why Mozart arranged the notes like he did, or why he created the work to begin with. But a posteriori, after the Symphony No. 41, the person who understands its inner consistency and experiences its indescribable beauty knows that it had to be precisely the way it now is.708 Something similar applies to Revelation as divine creation as well. Theological aesthetics is needed to perceive the particularly divine style of God. Beauty is no subjective arbitrariness nor objective brute fact. Rather, in true beauty subjective perception and objective reality coincide to introduce us into the world as our home, created and upheld by God.709 There is a negative corollary to this, too. One who has understood the absolute transcendence of the one God cannot accept just anything as his purported Revelation. Consider, for example, the story that first-century CE Jewish historian Josephus tells about a certain Mosollamus.710 Mosollamus was a Jew serving in the Ptolemaic army. During one expedition the army came suddenly to a halt. A soothsayer had seen a certain kind of bird flying ahead the army, and now they all had to wait to discover what the Gods would tell them through the movements of this bird. However, before the army’s soothsayer had come to the ultimate conclusion, something quite unexpected happened: an arrow flew from amidst the soldiers and hit the bird, which fell dead to the ground. The 707 See Aquinas’s reflections on the “fitness” (convenientia) of the Incarnation in ST, III, q. 1, a. 1. 708 See R. SPAEMANN, Das unsterbliche Gerücht, pp. 89-90. 709 Roger Scruton developed this theme beautifully in his Gifford Lectures, published as The Face of God. 710 Contra Apionem 1.201-204, quoting Hecataeus of Abdera.

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soothsayer and others were quite irritated by the fact, but Mosollamus the Jew, the man who had shot the arrow, calmly affirmed that no harm had been done. Had the bird really had some divine meaning to carry, it would not have become so near Mosollamus the Jew, the irreverent soldier pointed out. Mosollamus, like Deutero-Isaiah before him, of course, totally misunderstood the “gentile” way of seeing the things. Their (“pagan”) religious belief was not that the bird in itself would be divine, but that its movements would somehow reveal the divinely instituted fate. But to bind the one transcendent God’s will in any manner to a bird, or to any other creature for that matter, went totally against Mosollamus’s religious instincts. For Jews raised in the belief in the absolutely transcendent God, such an enchantment of reality was simply out of the question, impossible to be taken seriously in the first place. For monotheists, there is an infinitely greater difference between the transcendent God and everything else created by him.711 According to Biblical monotheism, our only way to relate to the objective transcendence of God is to give heed to his personal Revelation, which for Jews was and is his holy Law, the Torah. It is from that belief that Mosollamus the Jew received the spiritual courage to shoot the bird, which, at the end of the day, was only a bird. 3.3.2 The Turning Point of Jesus of Nazareth If the origin of the Western cultural tradition, transcendentally interpreted, is the Axial clarification of objective transcendence as the one transcendent God, then its subsequent unfolding, as well as its various currents, can be read as different interpretations of how God has made himself known. As such, therefore, it is rather uninspiring to speak about the three “monotheistic” religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the main religious currents of the post-Axial Western tradition. The mere notion, as has been argued above, of one transcendent God is utterly empty in itself. “Monotheism,” in abstracto, does not yet say anything whatsoever, quite literally. The crucial question concerns the manner and content of this transcendent God’s revealing himself in concreto, his particular revelatory style. And in this respect there are as many differences as there are

711

As the famous second Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (from the year 1215 CE) put it: inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos non sit maior dissimilitudo notanda.

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similarities among the monotheistic “Children of Abraham.”712 For instance, the three monotheistic religions are often described as “book religions,”713 as if they all related in a similar way to their holy scriptures, considering them as the literal “word of God.” Yet, even though “comparative study of scripture as a general phenomenon is still in its infancy,”714 it is scientifically quite uncontroversial to note certain profound differences between the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian conceptions of their founding literary works. First and foremost, whereas Muslims and orthodox Jews regard their holy scriptures, the Qur’an and the Torah, respectively, as literally the Revelation of the transcendent God, lifting them to a divine position in themselves, the early Christians, by contrast, “believed that God had revealed himself, not in written texts […] but in the person and work of Jesus, his ‘son.’”715 Even the subsequent Catholic tradition of Christianity continues to hold that “the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’” but “the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living’” (CCC, n. 108, referring to a sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux).716 Instead of a book, it is a certain human being, namely Jesus of Nazareth, who becomes identified, in orthodox Christianity, as “the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” of the transcendent God (see DV, n. 2).717 712

For a general summary of the new academic field of comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by one of its founding fathers, see F.E. PETERS, The Children of Abraham. 713 For the Islamic expression of the “people of the book” (ahl al-kitƗb), see The Qur’an, 3:64. 714 H. RÄISÄNEN, “The Bible Among Scriptures”, pp. 687-688. 715 H. RÄISÄNEN, “The Bible Among Scriptures”, pp. 687-688. 716 At the same time, it must be pointed out that even the Qur’an according to the orthodox Islamic interpretation becomes the Word of God only when recited in the original Arabic (see H. RÄISÄNEN, “The Bible Among Scriptures”, pp. 694-695). But still, in classical Islam, God’s Revelation becomes identified with a book, which is not the case in Christianity (modern Protestant fundamentalist currents notwithstanding). 717 In the more recent academic study of the so-called “historical Jesus,” the factual existence of the man of Nazareth, as well as the main facts of the brief period of his public adult life (baptism by his mentor John the Baptist, proclamation of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, somehow especially related to his own person, his violent death on the cross, and the “resurrection experiences” of his disciples) are beyond serious discussion (see E.P. SANDERS, The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 10-11). The interesting, and highly controversial, questions concern how these basic facts are to be understood. The most influential interpretation of the Jesus event is, of course, that developed by Paul of Tarsus, who, consequently, can,

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Gauchet is especially clear in emphasizing the decisive significance of the Christian doctrine of the Divine Revelation for subsequent history of Western secularization.718 In the Word of God made human flesh, both the divine objective transcendence and the human subjective transcendentality become equally affirmed, neither at the expense of the other, but each reinforcing the other in the unique double-movement of Christian believing. In light of the Christian Revelation, objective transcendence and subjective transcendentality belong inseparably together. The Christian confession of Jesus of Nazareth as the singular Christ of God the Father is, therefore, no mere theological eccentricity, but marks a turning point in the entire history of human religious evolution. For those who accepted the faith of Jesus as Christ, the divine could no longer happen outside of the human, but the way towards the objective transcendence had to go through the subjective transcendentality of being human. The subsequent unfolding of the post-Axial dynamics in Western modernization-secularization can only be understood against this Christological background.719 This point is worth delving into. Its essence should be perceived as clearly as possible, in view of the presently unfolding fundamental theology of Radical Secularization. To put it briefly, in light of the Christian Revelation, the transcendental movement of human subjectivity and its objective term in the transcendent God are not two separate phenomena but form a single dynamic reality. After the Christ event, the divine and the human can still be distinguished but in no way separated from each other. According to the Christian confession of Jesus of Nazareth as Christ the Lord, the human way to God, and God’s own way to us, goes through the true humanity assumed by God himself in the Incarnation. In sum, Christianity can give one the spiritual courage to enter completely into history and search for God only in and through that (the Christian overcoming of Gnosticism and all other metaphysical dualisms).720 in this precise sense, be considered the founder of the Catholic or universal Christianity (see A. BADIOU, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism). 718 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 115-130. 719 Even Taylor, from his own particular perspective, traces the original dynamics of Western secularization to the Latin medieval demand “that everyone be a real, 100 percent Christian” (C. Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 774). In light of his more synthetic approach, Gauchet sees even deeper in history. 720 It may have taken two millennia for the Church to realize the “anthropological turn” required by the Christian Revelation itself, but it is no wonder when considering the primordial reality of the ubiquity of religion and its spiritual dispossession. Only at the end of the second Christian millennium was the Church ready to proclaim the human as the “primary and fundamental way for the Church” (prima et praecipua Ecclesiae via, as formulated by John Paul II in RH, n. 14).

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The turning point of Jesus of Nazareth radically contrasts with the original ubiquity of religion and its transcendental dispossession. For eons human beings had searched for contact with the trans-human meaningfulness of reality outside the human itself, for which the religious phenomenon of human sacrifice is perhaps the most telling example (see Gen 22:1-19). And that is no wonder, because objective reality quite evidently is not our reality. The followers of Christ, by contrast, proclaimed the Good News of the God who wants to meet us at the same level, as it were, which is that of the Incarnate Son of God (see John 14:6). The trans-human meaningfulness of reality was no more to be searched for outside the human but within it, within us (see Luke 17:21). Or better put, the Christian way to the evergreater of reality now went by and through humanity. The separation between objective transcendence and subjective transcendentality had been abolished, without the two been confused. This, to put it briefly, is the epochal turning point of Jesus Christ, speculatively considered. Both Gauchet and Taylor perspicuously highlight the post-Axial paradox of Christianity–its peculiar way of uniting human transcendentality and divine transcendence–as well as its civilizational significance.721 Yet, perhaps no other Christian theologian has seen the secularizing potential of the Christian faith in the God made flesh better than the German theologian Friedrich Gogarten (1887-1967).722 Indeed, in his 1953 Verhängnis und Hoffnung der Neuzeit: Säkularisierung als theologisches Problem,723 Gogarten claimed that the historical process of secularization, by and through which the world becomes ever-more worldly, and the human evermore human, has its starting point in the essence of Christianity, of which it is a legitimate consequence.724 How does Gogarten, then, understand the essence (Wesen) of Christianity from which secularization, according to him, legitimately follows? How, more precisely, does the Christian Revelation contribute to the world’s becoming ever-more world, and the human’s becoming ever-more human? To answer this question, one must first grasp the basic argument of Gogarten’s anthropology, which, in a sense, forms both the point of departure and the point of arrival for his theological appraisal of 721

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 49-50; C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 146, 614. 722 Several Western theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, have recognized the secularizing potential in their faith (see J.-B. METZ, Theology of the World and H. COX, The Secular City, among the classics). 723 In what follows, the references are to the English translation in F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time. 724 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 12, 155.

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secularization.725 In Gogarten’s theological-anthropological vision, human being is an essentially paradoxical being, because they exist between two radically different realities: that of the transcendent Creator God and that of the immanent created world. With Gnosticism–its main competitor with respect to the human souls of the late antique Greco-Roman world–the Christian faith shares the spiritual conviction that humans should not become totally immersed in the surrounding world, like all other creatures, but that they are, on the contrary, called to liberate themselves from all inner-worldly chains and limitations.726 Yet, in contrast to Gnosticism, the Christian faith does not consider the material world to be evil as such. What is evil is humanity’s present condition in the world, which typically remains closed in the merely immanent features of the created order. Instead of fostering the dynamic movement of human transcendentality towards the infinite transcendence of God, humans all too often fall prey to the static immanence around them. That is to betray the truly human vocation to the semper maius of reality. Gogarten reads the unhappy condition of present humanity in light of the (Western) Christian dogma of the original sin. Human beings were created in the image and likeness of God–to have part in his infinite light and eternal life–but they themselves refused this divine calling and chose to worship and adore “the creature rather than the Creator” (see Rom 1:25). Due to this, “their senseless minds were darkened,” and they could not even recognize God’s “eternal power and divine nature” from his creation, as Gogarten explains by referring to the first chapter of Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans.727 That was the anthropological condition of fallen humanity up to the historical turning point of Jesus Christ.728 Now–and this can only be expressed with a kerygmatic style–by self-identifying with this Jewish man, 725

For Gogarten’s anthropology, see F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 23-66, and more systematically, F. GOGARTEN, Der Mensch zwischen Gott und Welt. 726 It is no accident that Gogarten compares the Christian spiritual vision to that of the Gnostic religion(s), because precisely during that time, i.e. right before and after the Second World War, the German scholar Hans Jonas was publishing his seminal works on Gnosticism (see H. JONAS, The Gnostic Religion). 727 As a Lutheran, and even more so dialectical, theologian, Gogarten’s argumentation proceeds as an exegetical analysis of the Bible. For the relevant Biblical passages, see the useful index at the end of the German original of Verhängnis. 728 Gogarten’s Christology bears the appropriate title Jesus Christus, Wende der Welt.

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God reveals himself to be the merciful Father of all human beings, calling them to become his adoptive children in his Son Jesus. In other words, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross was vicarious for all humans, and shows definitively that their true anthropological condition is that of existing between God and the world, i.e. as the children of God and the heirs of the world. With the cross of Jesus Christ, the truth about human existence in the world has been revealed once and for all. Consequently, in the Christian reading of history, the future of the world after the turning point of Jesus Christ will now depend on whether humans accept this divine offering or not. Is subjective human transcendentality to unfurl freely towards its infinite goal in the objective transcendence of God, or will it be hindered by becoming attached to something lesser? Will humans accept the freely offered salvation in Christ or will they continue to try to save themselves? As the Lutheran theologian he was, Gogarten quite understandably saw the essence of Christianity in the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone (see Rom 3:28), by which godless people are declared true children of God thanks to the salvatory work of Jesus Christ (see Rom 4:5).729 The beginning of the fourth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians takes a central position in Gogarten’s argumentation.730 There the Apostle of the Gentiles encourages the recently converted Christian community of Galata not to surrender themselves again to the “weak and beggarly elemental spirits [stoicheia]” (Gal 4:9), of which the proclamation of the Gospel already had liberated them. In Paul’s proclamation, the stoicheia or the “elemental spirits” of the world can be said to mean any created reality, on which a person wants to found their own existence. In the Hellenistic culture of the time the stoicheia would have meant the Greco-Roman polytheism, first of all, and in the Hebrew tradition a blind obedience to the Mosaic Law. The radical novelty of the Christian Gospel, as preached by Paul of Tarsus, concentrates, by contrast, on the fact that human beings cannot and shall not trace their existence from anything inner-worldly, but that they can and shall receive it 729

Luther famously considered the doctrine of justification by faith alone the one doctrine on which the genuinely Christian Church either stands or falls (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae). The Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation reached a broad consensus on the issue in their 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The mutual doctrinal condemnations of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations no longer apply, both Christian traditions now agree. 730 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 14, 28-29, 61-62, 119, 147-148.

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as a completely free (gratuitous!) gift from the transcendent God. With the Pauline vocabulary, the former would signify the false tentative of a selfjustification in front of God by one’s own works (and thus creating God in one’s own image), while the latter proclaims the freely given liberation offered by God himself solely by the faith in Jesus Christ (see Rom 3:28). But now the Galatians are risking losing sight of the essence of their Christian faith, of which Paul accordingly wants to remind them, by putting the turning point of Jesus Christ in a deep historical perspective. Paul sees the entire history of humankind before the coming of Christ as a long process of education (preaparatio evangelica, as Eusebius would later put it731), during which human beings, once fallen into sin and become slaves to inner-worldly processes and powers, become slowly and gradually prepared for their true vocation: that of becoming children of God and heirs of the world. Consequently, as the central Pauline passage goes, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Gal 4:4-5). Here it is not possible (or necessary) to enter in detail into Gogarten’s soteriology and study how he explains the modality of Christian salvation. It is enough to mention that Gogarten proceeds fully biblically, following St. Paul, by relating redemption to Christ’s becoming vicariously “cursed” in our place (see Gal 3:13).732 To put it briefly, somehow–and this “somehow” is the greatest of all Christian mysteries, even greater than that of the Incarnation–Christ on the cross took all sin and alienation from God into himself and communicated his own divine likeness into the all of creation: “For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). With these words human religious evolution is at a definitive turning point. At the same time, rational thinking about the Christian Revelation meets its absolute limits, as the Triune God turns himself against himself, in order to save fallen humanity: Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse!733 Consequently, St. Paul affirms that all human attempts at building a 731

And from a more philosophical perspective, see Justin the Martyr’s First Apology 1, 20, 60, as well as Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis 6, 8, 67, 1. 732 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 42-53. 733 See E. JÜNGEL, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 119, 346, 363 (the Latin phrase seems to come originally from Goethe). Whatever one otherwise would think about the Lutheran theological tradition, Lutheran thinkers from Goethe and Hegel to Bonhoeffer and Jüngel had an amazing courage to think the contradictoriness of reality (a contradictoriness from which even God cannot escape if he is to have something to do with our world).

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relationship with God through one’s own power have been revealed as folly after the Christ event. That is why Paul wants to protect his spiritual children in Galata from losing the grace which they have received. Yes, earlier it was understandable that by the natural human ignorance of God even the Galatians were “enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods” (Gal 4:8). But now that they have come to know the only true God (or better, when the only true God has come to know them: Gal 4:9), it would be totally senseless to return to their previous condition of minority, under the Law. Now–the continually recurring eschatological “now”–in the last times initiated by the coming of Christ, we must not be minors anymore, but we shall be fully adopted as children of God and thus become the heirs God’s creation, i.e. to live really our true condition as human beings between God and the world. Time after time, and in full faithfulness to the Pauline tradition, Gogarten emphasizes that the Christian faith either is a justifying faith or it is nothing. This means that the adoption as God’s children can only be received as a radically free and gratuitous gift. Otherwise it would not be what it is. Ultimately, either everything is grace, or nothing is. Human beings can do absolutely nothing to become worthy of the grace of divine daughter- and sonship, but they can accept it in faith, in Jesus Christ who himself is this grace, i.e. the God who gives himself to us (see DV, nn. 2, 6).734 In and through justification by faith alone, consequently, humans become liberated from all natural trans-human powers to be able to exist fully for the transcendence of God. In this “fullness” of God humans find their “salvation” (as the German “Heil” suggests). At the same time, as humans become completely liberated from all oppressing trans-human powers, they equally become completely responsible for the world around them. Outside the human there is no other instance in the world which as such could direct them towards their true fullness in God. All things have been put under their feet (see Ps 8:6). Gogarten speaks of a “historicization” (Vergeschichtlichung) of the world introduced by the Christian faith.735 Justified by faith in Christ alone, humans become able to see the world as it really is, without any religious enchantment, and to take possession of it with their reason. This is the mission which God himself had entrusted to human beings in the beginning and which now becomes spiritualized and thus radicalized in Christ (see Gen 1:28; 2:15; Rom 5).736 734

This could be the Christian definition of “God”: “the One who gives” (originally, without any preceding merits on our part: see E. JÜNGEL, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 366). 735 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 80-92. 736 As Luther expressed the evangelical freedom-responsibility at the beginning of his 1520 treatise Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen: Ein Christenmensch ist

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Furthermore, Gogarten refers to St. Paul’s startling words: “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are beneficial” (1 Cor 10:23).737 For the Christian who has been made just before God by the mere faith in Jesus Christ there cannot exist anything in the world which would separate them from God. No natural law, no political or economical power, no metaphysical doctrine can pretend to come between God and the believer who is inviolably free in their transcendentality. But with this radical spiritual freedom comes an equally radical responsibility to decide which things really are beneficial. Nothing a priori necessarily limits the unfolding of human transcendentality, but what a posteriori conditions could foster it towards the objective transcendence of God, to his greater glory? Now it should be becoming clearer why Gogarten identified a secularizing potential or “starting point” (Ansatz) in the Christian faith itself.738 If, in fact, following the original, “canonical” meaning of the term (see Appendix B), with “secularization” we mean a historical process, by and through which human beings gradually emancipate themselves from various trans-human powers and become self-consciously responsible for their way-of-being-in-the-world–in their communal life, politics, economics, science, culture, even religion–it is not difficult to see a certain parallel between the justifying Christian faith and European modernizationsecularization. According to Gogarten, it is about more than a mere parallel. Gogarten considered the Lutheran Reformation at the beginning of European modernization as a sudden rediscovery of the essence of the Christian faith after the long period of medieval Christendom. In his view, during the Latin Middle Ages, the quintessentially Christian doctrine of justification by faith alone had been obscured because of the metaphysicalmoralistic thought developed by the Greeks and accepted by the Roman Church. In reality, Gogarten claims, it was only Luther who after St. Paul (and perhaps St. Augustine) managed to identify the true meaning of the Christian faith: the initium fidei is and remains a pure gift of divine grace without any mediation on the part of human reason or the action of the Church, and it can, consequently, only be received in personal faith.739 It was thanks to this rediscovery of the true essence of the Christian faith, through his own personal study of the Bible, that Luther had the courage to separate himself from the Roman Church and to initiate his own ecclesial

ein freier Herr über alle Dinge und niemand untertan. Ein Christenmensch ist ein dienstbarer Knecht aller Dinge und jedermann untertan. 737 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, p. 73. 738 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 75-79. 739 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 124-125.

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reform movement.740 From this Lutheran point of view, it is, therefore, no accident that precisely in the wake of the Protestant Reformations, an everbroader secularization had been spreading in the West. Secularization, in this sense, would simply mean the free unfolding of Christian believing, and of human transcendentality more generally, after the long stagnation of medieval Christendom. Obviously, already from where he sat in the Germany of the 1950s, Gogarten had to confront one evident objection to his claim about secularization as a legitimate consequence of the Christian faith. Western secularization has, in fact, not produced any universal acceptance of the Christian message. On the contrary, what we see today (even more so than in the post-WWII Germany) is rather an ever-deeper alienation from the Christian faith. In practically all Western, post-Christendom societies religious affiliation is steadily decreasing and human spiritual searching is taking ever-new forms outside, and often in contrast to, institutional religion. Gogarten was of course already fully conscious of this objection. That is why he developed a crucial distinction between, on one hand, “Christian faith” (Christlicher Glaube) and “Christianity” (Christentum), and “secularization” (Säkularisierung) and “secularism” (Säkularismus) on the other. According to Gogarten’s theological scheme, a legitimate secularization follows from the Christian faith, while a spiritually corrupted secularism is caused by Christianity.741 How did he more precisely argue for such a radical contraposing of the proclamation of the Christian Gospel with the institutionalized Christian religion? Answering this question leads us to the very heart of Gogarten’s theologizing of secularization. The authentic justifying Christian faith is always at risk of becoming an instrument for the powerful of this world, Gogarten claims.742 Again and again humans aspire to found their own existence on something inner740

Luther’s emancipatory courage was arguably strengthened by his belief in the imminent end of the world, an apocalypticism he shared with many of his contemporaries (see H. OBERMAN, Luther–Man between God and the Devil, p. 79). In Heiko Oberman’s words: “To understand Luther, we must read the history of his life from an unconventional perspective. It is history ‘sub specie aeternitatis,’ in the light of eternity; not in the mild glow of constant progress towards Heaven, but in the shadow of the chaos of the Last Days and the imminence of eternity” (Luther– Man between God and the Devil, p. 12). 741 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 102-111. At the root of these parallel distinctions there is, of course, the Pauline distinction between the Law and the Gospel, which as such formed the conceptual fundament to the entire Lutheran theology. 742 See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 109-111.

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worldly that they could control and dominate: themselves, in the final analysis. This applies to justified human beings, too, who continue to find themselves in the spiritual battle between the “New Adam” and the “Old Adam” (simul iustus et peccator!). That is why they always have to return to the proclaimed Word about the justification by faith alone, without any merits of one’s own. In line with dialectical theology, Gogarten affirms that it is naturally human to aspire to justify oneself before God. In fact, that is how religions are born, i.e. as attempts at initiating a relation to the divine through one’s own human powers. Christianity, too, as a historical-institutional phenomenon is merely one of those human religions, according to Gogarten. We can study the history of Christianity exactly like we study all the other religions of humanity, identifying their specific structures and particular processes, as the great historian of religion Ernst Troeltsch, for example, did.743 Nevertheless, to consider Christianity merely as a religion among others, according to Gogarten, signifies a profound betrayal of the true Christian faith. Christianity aspires to take control of the Christian faith, to take possession of it to dominate the world and human beings. Christianity makes of the Gospel, which in itself is the Word of perfect spiritual freedom, a word of human power and control. Christianity as an institutional religion claims that extra ecclesiam salus non est, while the Word of God itself assures us that the “wind blows where it chooses” (John 3:8) and that the final judgement only belongs to God himself (see Matt 7:1-2). Christianity’s betrayal of the Christian faith is indeed fated according to Gogarten, because the former arises from an almost correct interpretation of the latter. The Christian faith truly puts human beings at the center of the world, giving them power over, and responsibility for, everything, but the faith itself never becomes a part of the life of the world.744 God always remains the “totally Other” (das ganz Andere), and the “infinite distance” between his personal Being and the being of his creation can never be

743

See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 112-113. This might be the one point which truly separates the Protestant tradition from the Catholic tradition of Christianity, both East and West (from the perspective of the latter, see A. SCHMEMANN, For the Life of the World and K.-H. MENKE, Sakramentalität). With its categorical denial of the analogia entis, Protestantism risks losing all contact with the transcendent (except in one’s own inner subjectivity). Furthermore, it must be asked, why God created the world to begin with, if he does not want to use it to communicate with human beings? The Fall surely cannot be so radical as to destroy all connection between God and the world? 744

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surpassed.745 Precisely this is the essence of the Christian faith according to the dialectical analysis of Friedrich Gogarten: from his absolute Otherness the transcendent God sends his Word to human beings, revealing them their true nature as his children and heirs of the world. Everything depends on the right interpretation of this distinction between God and human beings, which is nothing other than the Pauline distinction between the Gospel and the Law. Only this distinction can put humans at their right(ful) place between God and the world. Humans become children of God by becoming truly human. If a secularization necessarily follows from the right distinction between God and the world, made in light of the Christian faith, an equally necessary secularism follows from a false interpretation of this fundamental theological distinction. In the actual condition of the human sinner, the relation between God and the world, if not made in light of the Christian faith, cannot but give rise to a human religion which is destined to create false images of the transcendent God. Before the turning point of Jesus Christ, the natural human tendency to religion typically produced various polytheistic religions. After the Christological turning point, human religiosity tends to give rise to metaphysical religions, in which God becomes venerated as the Supreme Being. Something like this happened in medieval Christendom, according to Gogarten’s analysis. The pure Gospel of the Christian faith became captured in the metaphysical-moralistic straight-jacket of Latin Catholicism. When the essence of the Good News, then, became rediscovered by Luther at the beginning of European modernity, the Western world stood before a watershed. Either one would open oneself to the truth of the Christian faith and enter into the responsible secularity desired by God himself, or one would take possession of the freedom offered by the Christian faith and use it for merely human, inner-worldly, purposes. In the latter case, we would have to do with ideological secularism, in which human reason does not limit itself to worldly things only, satisfying itself with a “questioning ignorance” (fragendes Nichtwissen) concerning the ultimate end of human existence, but would, on the contrary, aspire to comprehend the whole reality in a single salvific vision for all people. In sum, according the Gogarten’s analysis, secularism is a product of a Christian faith which has been corrupted into Christianity, because it abuses the genuinely Christian freedom and responsibility. Secularism reads only 745

From a Protestant perspective, the Divine Revelation comes senkrecht von oben, without any historical mediation, as Karl Barth memorably put it.

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“all things are lawful,” but ignores “not all things are beneficial” (1 Cor 10:23); it hears only “all belong to you,” but closes its ears for “you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Cor 3:22-23).746 3.3.3 Western Modernity as a Tertiary Axial Breakthrough: A Radically New Way of Conceptualizing Human Transcendentality? The purpose of the preceding paraphrase of Friedrich Gogarten’s interpretation of the Christian faith as opening up, from the inside of itself, as it were, for secularization was not to argue about the right reading of history. Its sole purpose, in line with the general phenomenological method of this part of the study, was to express the speculative-genealogical conditions of possibility for the concept of Radical Secularization. The guiding question was how Western humanity could move from the original ubiquity of religion to its modern departure from the same. How on earth did we have the spiritual courage to leave the primeval religious dispossession behind us and construct a social way-of-being-in-the-world, in which all religious belief in trans-human intentionalities is a purely individual issue, without any necessary communal significance? Gogarten’s analysis offers some interesting suggestions about the spiritual sources for the Western secularization process, with striking similarities to Gauchet’s reading of Christianity as the “religion for departing from religion.”747 As argued in the previous chapter, one’s overall appraisal of Western modernization-secularization crucially hinges on one’s concrete appraisal of the specific character of the Cartesian twist to the movement of human transcendentality at the beginning of Western modernity. Can the Cartesian movement be read in a way which makes room for Radical Secularization as true post- or nonreligion? Or does it necessarily remain inside the metaphysical, and inherently dualistic, categories of the Western tradition? In the latter case, Western modernity would not constitute any qualitatively new stage in human religious evolution, unless in a quantitative fashion by either diminishing or increasing certain traditional features of human religiosity.748 Correspondingly, modern Western 746

See F. GOGARTEN, Despair and Hope for Our Time, pp. 73, 109-110. Expressing the preceding point in Bonhoefferian terms, secularization recognizes the “costly” prize of the freedom it lives from, and the seriousness of the following responsibility, while secularism uses the inviolable Christian freedom as “cheaply” as its understanding of its price is superficial (see D. BONHOEFFER, The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 45-60). 747 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 101-106. 748 See Y. LAMBERT, “Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age”.

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secularization would not signify any radically new way of conceptualizing human transcendentality, but it would still have to move according to the basic rules of Greek metaphysics, i.e. either for or against God as the unifying, trans-human, principle of all reality. The metaphysical assumption would still reign supreme, even if denied, and the religious presumption would continue to be as presumptuous as ever. Let us now present a schematic summary of human religious evolution as a gradual and growingly complex conceptualization of human transcendentality, of its coming into itself in a concept. First, in the primeval origins of our humanity, we have the ubiquity of religion, when there was no clear distinction between the human subject and its transcendental capacity but all of reality was populated by various–as we have to say from our own post-secular perspective–trans-human intentionalities. The original ubiquity of religion cannot really be intellectually understood, because it precisely signifies the lack of second-order, self-critical intellectuality. Yet, we can feel its reality and even its fascination in the most primitive, mimetic and mythic, parts of our humanity.749 Nostalgia for the lost contact with the “sacred” is a recurring theme in our secular age.750 Only from the Axial Ages onward can we follow the explicit unfoldings of human transcendentality in history as human theoretic, second-order consciousness begins to emerge. The concrete actualization of the human transcendental capacity defines the Axial Ages as Axial, not so much any alleged spiritual breakthroughs. Yes, it can be said that “[m]an, as we know him today, came into being”751 during the Axial Age, but only because from the Axial Age (or better put, from our Axial Age) onwards can we begin to follow how human beings aspire to relate themselves to the surrounding world in a growingly self-conscious, self-critical manner, without taking their received way-of-being-in-the-world as given (as had been done during the age-old ubiquity of religion). Beginning with the Axial Ages, we can study the different human ways of relating to the universe which is not of our making but which we can strive to know better and better. Nevertheless, all the four Axial Ages, which we tend to identify at the beginning of the great world civilizations (ancient Chinese, Indian, Israelite, and Greek), exhibit a trait which cannot but strike a modern post-secular consciousness as rather remarkable. The four Axial Ages not only show the 749

See R.N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, pp. 272-274; “What is Axial about the Axial Age?”, pp. 77-80, building on the cognitive-evolutionary work of Merlin Donald (see M. DONALD, Origins of the Modern Mind). 750 For one recent, highly sophisticated, example, see H. DREYFUS–S.D. KELLY, All Things Shining. 751 K. JASPERS, The Origin and Goal of History, p. 1.

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first explicit formulations of human subjective transcendentality (in highly diverse ways, of course, and to varying degrees), but they all also relate this awe-inspiring capacity to an exterior objective term. In other words, all the classical Axial traditions conceptualize subjective human transcendentality as arising from and developing towards objective trans-human, i.e. divine transcendence. In such an Axial perspective, the divine can exactly be defined as the trans-human source and guarantee for the movement of human transcendentality, whether it is conceptualized as tao, nirvana, the transcendent God or the idea of the Good, or something else. In fact, the Axial transcendental visions were primarily utopic visions of some objective, trans-human, reality, and only secondarily, or accidentally, explicit conceptualizations of the peculiar capacity of human subjectivity to put everything in question and thus proceed towards the amazing multiformity of reality. In sum, the primary Axial breakthroughs were essentially religious. This strikes a contemporary post-secular consciousness as rather remarkable, because it is no longer the way in which we generally understand our secular forms-of-life. To see this, we have to glimpse Western modernization in a more general perspective, to remind ourselves of some basic facts. In the wake of the Western, and increasingly global, modernization process, all of humanity has experienced an unprecedented growth in the potentialities of putting its transcendentality into practice. Especially natural science has exponentially increased our knowledge of the world and our place in it. Furthermore, the spread of liberal democracy has made it possible for more and more people to realize their own particularity as unique human individuals. Western modernization and its globalization have revolutionized our ways-of-being-in-the-world. This is, of course, not to say that modernization would have been a solely good thing. Rather, the unprecedented and very fast–compared to the overall timeframe of human evolution–growth of human potentialities has brought equally unprecedented responsibilities with it. Some would even say that we already have shown ourselves to be unworthy of the new position in which modernization has put us. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” as Oppenheimer is said to have exclaimed, referencing the Bhagavad-Gita, after the atomic bombs had been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.752 The moral question is not relevant in the present context, however. The essential point here concerns the simple fact that humans now have 752

See A.I. BERGER, Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb, p. 79.

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exponentially broader material possibilities of realizing their transcendentality than ever before in history. The modern break and the ensuing development of science and democracy have given the Earth into our hands, terrifyingly literally. In the midst of the ongoing Anthropocene extinction and in front of impending nuclear catastrophe, our concrete decisions will determine whether we become Life or Death, the constructor or the destroyer of worlds. Never before in the history of our planet did any species stand in such a position.753 Now, the striking difference with the traditional Axial conceptualizations of human transcendentality is that After Secularization we no longer selfevidently acknowledge any objective term or limit to the transcendental movement of human subjectivity. We Western moderners delve ever-more deeply into our subjective transcendentality, devising ever-new fashions of realizing our own particularity and of exploring the diversity of our fellow beings and of reality in general. This has been made possible by the modern break, which, by unmasking the metaphysical assumption precisely as assumption, bracketed any purported objective source or term to our transcendental capacity. God or any other metaphysical, trans-human meaningfulness has not only become intellectually questioned and questionable, but we are at great pains to understand what such traditional religiosity would mean in the first place. More than a mere intellectual conviction, therefore, Radical Secularization is a spiritual statement of faith: After Secularization, completely emancipated from metaphysical religion, we transcendentally refuse to even consider such trans-human intentionalities which would happen outside and thus possibly against us. Objective transcendence has no place in Radical Secularization, because it is feared to interfere with the free unfolding of subjective transcendentality. This is arguably the radical novelty of Western modernity, speculatively considered. It can be considered a “tertiary” Axial Age by and through which human transcendentality has come totally into itself, emancipating itself completely from all outer, religious and metaphysical authorities. To understand better the profound newness of Western modernity, let us go briefly back to Descartes as the ideal father figure of modern Western thinking. The Cartesian revolution in philosophy has often been interpreted as a radical subjectivation or immanentization of thinking. Earlier, in premodern philosophy, this line of interpretation claims, human thinking took its departure from something outside itself, namely from this or that particular thing (res). With Descartes the point of departure for thinking 753

See P. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, The Future of Man, pp. 140-148.

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changes radically from the thing outside the mind (res extensa) to the mind itself (res cogitans). Now–the quintessentially modern European “now”!– all knowledge of and all relation to the surrounding world should go through the self-control of the cogito. Many scholars have seen the Cartesian, “subjectivist” or “immanentist”, turn as a fundamental factor in the development of modern European atheism.754 With that, the modern ego begins to take the place traditionally reserved for God as the center and arbiter of all reality. The immanentist interpretation of the opening movement of modern thinking, or of modern culture more generally, is, however, fundamentally flawed in light of the developed fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization. The reason why Descartes resorted to his self-critical ego rather than to the objective world was that the latter, as it had been handed down to him, had lost all its credibility. Instead of being caused by lazy subjectivism, the Cartesian movement courageously starts from the changed condition of objective facts. Descartes was one of the first early modern thinkers to recognize that the earlier conception of the world and humanity’s place in it was simply not true. And it was not true only in some of its details but in its very foundations. The whole building of traditional knowledge was about to collapse. Descartes’s genius was to understand this more deeply and earlier than most of his contemporaries. Most of all, he had the spiritual courage to leave the old world totally behind him and start entering into the new reality. Consequently, the new intellectual method developed by Descartes was not so much about founding human knowledge of the world on the human subject alone, but it was about the freer, and ever-freer, flow of human transcendentality. In traditional, “pre-modern,” cultures, to which even Latin Christendom belonged, the way-of-being-in-the-world of one’s own population was taken more or less as granted, as giving the unquestionably right picture of the world and one’s place in it. The underlying assumption, the metaphysical one, was that the way the world is and how we humans think about it somehow coincide. The world was thought to be our world. With the modern break this all changes. As Descartes showed with his radically skeptical arguments, it is not at all so clear that the world in any metaphysical sense is our world. Instead, it begins to look ever-more clearly that the world is not our world. The practically infinite universe has been there for eons before us and it will be there for eons after we all have disappeared. In the big, scientific picture of the things, humans do not 754

See, for example and most clearly, C. FABRO, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, pp. 111-139; and further, M.J. BUCKLEY, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, pp. 6899; G. HYMAN, A Short History of Atheism, pp. 19-28.

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appear to have any particular significance at all, as was believed for so long during the religious evolution of humanity. The Cartesian method, then, interpreted as the Project of Pure Enquiry,755 aims at liberating us from all traditional prejudices in order to lead us towards the reality as it is in itself, independently of how our particular cultural tradition happens to think about it. For this, the selfcritical, second-order filter of human subjectivity is needed. The Cartesian method, post-metaphysically interpreted, is not about basing our knowledge of the world on the historically contingent human subject but about filtering it through the only self-correcting epistemological criterium we know of, i.e. the human mind itself. In sum, the Cartesian turn of early European modernity aspired to enhance the continuous unfolding of the movement of human transcendentality by purging it of its particular and thus distorting elements. Descartes is the father of the modern philosophy of human subjectivity as philosophy of freedom, as Hegel very well saw.756 Since the Cartesian turn, human transcendentality has been unfurling with unprecedented speed in Western modernity, in both good and bad ways.757 Of course, this decidedly post-metaphysical manner of reading the Cartesian twist to human transcendentality would perhaps not even have been intelligible to the historical Descartes himself.758 He was still deeply steeped in Latin Scholasticism, and also ended up within a strongly metaphysical worldview himself (even though his mechanistic God, necessary to guarantee the ontological connection between the thinking subject and the objective world, as argued in the Fifth Meditation, cannot be said to have so much in common with the personal God of the Biblical Revelation). Nevertheless, the radical novelty of Western modernity is already there in Descartes, even though as an almost invisible seed. This radical newness is the uncoupling of the movement of human transcendentality from any necessary objective limit. Only from that uncoupling onwards–which is the modern break–can Radical Secularization gradually unfurl, through the further radicalizations of the subjective-transcendental principle by Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. But Descartes stands as the primus motor to this 755

Following B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. See G.W.F. HEGEL, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume One, p. 110. 757 In this sense, there is a near analogy between Descartes and Luther, as clearly laid out already by Jacques Maritain (see J. MARITAIN, Three Reformers, p. 4). What Descartes was for philosophy, Luther was for theology (and Rousseau for social sciences, to fill in Maritain’s triad). 758 See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, pp. 65-66. 756

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revolutionary spiritual movement, the full import of which we are only now After Secularization beginning to see. To recapitulate, the primary Axial breakthroughs of the mid-first millennium BCE signified the emergence of different transcendental visions in various parts of the literate world. From then on, the subjective human transcendental capacity begins to become explicitly conceptualized and related to its supposed source and goal in some kind of objective transcendence. In the subsequent secondary Axial breakthroughs, a certain vision of a transcendent meaning to human existence becomes institutionalized (and simultaneously relativized) in each of the ensuing world-civilizational traditions. Finally, in the Western tradition, or better put at its end, we can speculate a tertiary Axial breakthrough, in which human transcendentality becomes emancipated from any necessary objective term to its own free subjective movement. Rather, now human transcendentality is to decide and determine, by and through itself, the character and direction of its movement, without any pre-given, trans-human, restrictions on it. Natural science and liberal democracy are the most typical institutional features of the tertiary Axial breakthrough, while the ideal concept of Radical Secularization is designed to capture its speculative essence. In this precise sense, Radical Secularization can only be understood in the context of Western modernization-secularization, because it unveils its true nature by bringing it to its end (the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization). Secularization, in this perspective, signifies the gradual coming of human transcendentality into itself by and through history. Only secondarily does secularization mean emancipation from all outer, trans-human, authorities. Primarily, the meaning of secularization is positive and substantial, namely human transcendentality’s becoming conscious of itself and taking responsibility for itself. The fundamental spiritual insight in secularization, then, is the conviction that humans happen to exist in a practically infinite universe which did not have any necessity to create them. The universe has been there for ages before humans entered into the picture, and it will be there for ages after humans have left the scene. Secularization can thus be defined by the single question: What are we to do with our temporary, contingent, and in fact very brief existence in this, for us, radically Other universe? Secularization, in a spiritual view, is the reality of this existential question; it is the reality of our radical freedom. Radical Secularization has completely absorbed the seriousness of this question. It does not reckon with any a priori trans-human guarantees to human existence anymore. It acknowledges that humanity has taken its fate into its own hands. It has thus consciously entered into the a posteriori of

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historical becoming. It recognizes that whether there still will be humanity in the future, or what kind of humanity it will be, now depends crucially on humans themselves, on all of them together. Hence, with Radical Secularization the Western tradition of secularization has, in a sense, run its course. The speculative concept of Radical Secularization leads us into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, from which the reality of contemporary global hyperpluralism becomes visible. All of humanity is now alone, but it can also be together, if it chooses to be. Does this mean that God or all trans-human guarantees to our existence are now dead and buried for good? Is the Death of God absolutely definitive? Is there definitively no Return of the Gods to be waited for After Secularization (either in hope or in fear)? To claim anything like that would be as metaphysical as a religious presumption of a necessary term-limit to the movement of human transcendentality. To deny God is precisely as religious as affirming him. Radical Secularization, by contrast, has transcendentally decided to move completely outside the religious language-game, beyond either denying or affirming the God of the Western metaphysical-religious tradition. It transcendentally refuses to enter into the obsolete dispute between theism and atheism to begin with. Only in that manner, it believes, can we move beyond the narrow bounds of Western secularization and into contemporary global hyperpluralism. Such a universally open spiritual vision animates the radically transcendental movement of Radical Secularization. Could God, then, in principle return After Secularization, even though we would have followed through the logic of Radical Secularization? Everything depends on what one means by “God.” This, in fact, is the radical novelty of Western modernization, theologically interpreted. The meaning of “God” cannot be taken as given a priori anymore, as selfevident to all (no “hoc omnes intelligunt Deum,”759 that is). For human transcendentality come completely into itself, i.e. to its particular place and time here and now, nothing is self-evidently given. In reality, everything could be otherwise than it is. To know how it is, in truth, a radically secular consciousness has no other possibility than to look and see, a posteriori; not to think but to look.760 Consequently, it cannot be decided in advance whether there will still continue to be meaningful ways for using the word “God” After Secularization. Instead of thinking about the issue in the abstract, one must concretely look how in fact people use their language and see whether 759 760

See ST, I, q. 2, a. 3. See L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophical Investigations, §66.

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“God” will find a role to play in it or not. And here, obviously, there will be as many differences as there will be similarities between different human populations and their use of “religious” language. Amidst contemporary global hyperpluralization it could not be otherwise. Once again, secularization turns out to mean pluralization, and Radical Secularization radical or hyperpluralization. One thing, however, seems to be relatively certain concerning the particularly Western spiritual predicament After Secularization. If God is to return here, in this cultural context, he will not return as he was before the Western secularization process. To put it briefly, God cannot return from the outside of humanity anymore. A form of human transcendentality which has completely come into itself simply would not allow any purported transhuman meaningfulness to limit its free movement. That kind of metaphysical, and inherently violent, religiosity is definitively a thing of the past.761 A God who would restrict the human struggle for a more just, tolerant, and loving world is no longer welcome in liberal democracies. A God who would in advance dictate the truth is no longer desired in modern science. After Secularization we have to learn to live without such dei ex machina.762 But this cannot mean that no kind of God whatsoever could be welcomed After Secularization, informed as it is by Radical Secularization. On the contrary, it might even turn out that only a God can save Radical Secularization from destructing itself. But–apocalyptic scenarios apart–it could only be question of a God who does not happen outside or at the expense of our true humanity. A God who does not demand that we sacrifice something essential of our being human to get into contact with him. By and through secularization we are gradually learning to acknowledge the concrete reality of our extremely fragile and extremely beautiful humanity. After Secularization we do not want to flee from it anymore, despite all the problems and challenges our spatio-temporal existence brings with it. Could a “God with a human face” help us on our way to true humanity?763 Could 761

An apocalyptic future–a nuclear war, for example, or a continuing ecological or nutritional catastrophe–would completely change the issue, of course, as it would probably make us regress to a much lower level of spiritual evolution. Such an apocalyptic scenario is, however, according to its very character, totally beyond all rational thinking. That is why we do not even consider such a possibility here. (But does not the Christian eschaton–as anticipated in the written Word of God– necessarily involve apocalyptic features?) 762 See D. BONHOEFFER, Letters and Papers from Prison, pp. 281-282, 359-361. 763 Pope Benedict XVI characterized the Christian faith as belief in the “God with a human face” on several occasions, for example in his address to the diocesan clergy

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the true Son of Man return in our midst? To return to concrete reality, Radical Secularization remains a speculative concept and, in its absolute spiritual nonviolence, a fragile (may one say pious?) dream. Even the most secularized Western societies continue to be the battleground for most varied spiritual power-struggles, often with implicit, when not explicit, trans-human connotations. Killing in the name of God continues to occur amidst contemporary global hyperpluralization. Already Descartes, the father to the tertiary Axial breakthrough leading to Radical Secularization, developed his method in his individual poêle, while hiding from the hideousness of the raging Religious Wars. Humans do not seem particularly willing to enter into their common humanity and foster it together. Rather, mutual competition, struggle, and violence appears to be the normal condition for homo sapiens. And yet, the dream is there, albeit in the protective heights of spiritual speculation. The dream of a humanity which no more wants to flee from its inner fragility and vicissitudes to any absolutely trans-human realm, but which is prepared to accept our humanity as a common task for all of us to cherish and develop together. The dream of a humanity which does not accept anything as the eternal, unavoidable state of affairs, but which has the courage to work together for a more just, true, and loving world. The dream of a humanity which has the patience and humility to wait for the true humanity to reveal itself. Yes, there will always be those who long for the old Athens, the old Rome, the old Jerusalem, the old Moscow, the old Beijing, and the old New York. They will perhaps even be in the quantitative majority. But if the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization, performed here in its broad outlines, is anywhere near the mark, the future is, nevertheless, directed towards the global hyperpluralism of the new Manila, the new Jakarta, the new Buenos Aires, the new Dar es Salaam, and the new New Delhi, and yes, this possibility cannot be denied, even perhaps towards the new Jerusalem.764 of Aosta on the July 25, 2005: “In the end, faith is simple and rich: we believe that God exists, that God counts; but which God? A God with a face, a human face, a God who reconciles, who overcomes hatred and gives us the power of peace that no one else can give us.” 764 Martin Hägglund arrives very near this radically secular vision, but at the end remains trapped inside his own radical atheism (see M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 389). Where is the courage to dream radically enough? But how could we have such spiritual courage without acknowledging him who shows us true humanity and leads us into it? This, in fact, was Joseph Ratzinger’s theological response to a radically secular mentality. Even if one were altogether bona fide incapable of believing in God, one could try to live veluti si Deus daretur (“as if God existed”), to give a broad

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4. After Secularization: The Movement of Radical Secularization After these genealogical strokes, the general shape of the spiritual movement of Radical Secularization should now be visible. It is human transcendentality come into itself, in and by the ever-fragile second-order human consciousness, striving towards the ever-broadening horizon of reality. The inner logic of the concept of Radical Secularization has brought us into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, but does it have the required energy to usher us further into the epochal dynamics of contemporary global hyperpluralization? This was the main challenge for contemporary Catholic fundamental theology, as analyzed in the first chapter of this study.

4.1 The Radically Secular Temperament The speculative concept of Radical Secularization refers to a form of human transcendentality which experiences itself as having come completely into itself, i.e. to have become fully conscious of its own particularity in the constantly evolving universe. Yet, precisely in and through its own historical particularity, a radically secular consciousness experiences the infinite opening of reality, its straining forward towards the semper maius of being. By and through grasping and willing this particular thing precisely as this particular thing (this particular pen, for example), the radically secular transcendentality goes beyond itself into the constantly broadening and deepening horizon of reality. And conversely, the radically secular form of human consciousness knows that it can proceed towards the limitless existence only by and through the particular things in its vicinity. There is, thus, no short-cut to the infinite, unlimited fullness of being, as there is no particular thing which could block the inevitable onwards movement of human transcendentality. The concrete and the abstract, the singular and the universal, the local and the global, belong essentially together. Radical Secularization has completely accepted and taken into itself this simultaneously frustrating and fascinating tension, the necessary twofoldedness of its own spiritual movement (of all spiritual movement in this world). Consequently, a radically secular consciousness must altogether refuse to take any purported limitations to its infinitely open movement as preenough spiritual horizon, as well as deep enough spiritual roots, to one’s way-ofbeing-in-the-world (see J. RATZINGER, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, p. 51).

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given. It cannot even take them in serious consideration. “Metaphysics” and “religion” are the traditional names for the all too natural human hesitation before the infinite openness and radical Otherness of reality that is not of our making. In their presumptuousness both metaphysics and religion have aspired to dictate in advance how reality is and what it contains, thus retarding time after time the arduous onwards movement of human transcendentality. Yet, this must be clearly emphasized, it is not about morals here. The claim is not that the “onwards” movement of human transcendentality would always have been a “good” thing. Rather, the moral questions about the “goodness” or “badness” of the human transcendental movement do not enter this discourse at all. The claim is merely that this movement, in fact, has gone forwards, time after time, beyond the pre-given limits of traditional metaphysics and religion. Humans have always continued to go beyond the limits earlier believed to be unsurpassable by religious metaphysicians. This has been the case especially after the modern break, when the metaphysical assumption was unmasked precisely as an assumption and the religious presumption was revealed in all its presumptuousness. Furthermore, coming completely into itself, After Secularization does not mean any state beyond space and time for Radical Secularization, no “Absolute Knowing” à la Hegel. On the contrary, Radical Secularization signifies the disillusioned acknowledgement of one’s condition as a contingent, spatio-temporal being, who is confronted with an infinite universe that always surpasses one’s categories, concepts, and expectations. Radical Secularization is, thus, a self-conscious acceptance of one’s finitude, exactly by striving to go beyond, to transcend it (a passive acceptance of it would, on the contrary, mean death and nothingness765). A radically secular existence is a fragile project. It needs continuous care-taking to be able to live on, otherwise it will cease to exist and die. It must be considered and acted on as an end in itself for it to be what it is. Hence, Radical Secularization can only be grasped in itself, as an end in itself. Yet, this is no absolute, metaphysical or religious, end, but the infinitely open, radically secular, end.766 Therefore, as outrageous as it sounds, Radical Secularization cannot but consider itself as the–not metaphysical but radically secular–end to the long history of human religious evolution. Since times immemorial human beings have aspired to justify the fact of their being-in-the-world by referring to some trans-human intentionalities and powers in reality. We 765 766

See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 369. See Hägglund’s definition of “secular faith” in M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 9.

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have always been so terribly ashamed of existing in the universe and taking our place in it. Hence, we have aspired with all our forces to deny our concrete, particular existence. Our true home is elsewhere, certainly not on this fallen planet, the metaphysical-religious faith assured us. The way the world is, is the way it has always been and always will be, the religious metaphysicians claimed. Humans cannot but submit to the eternal recurrence of reality. Whether this original human dispossession was expressed as belief in Gods or spirits or forefathers or essences or whatever, is quite secondary from this speculative perspective. The point is that for most of its history, humanity remained trapped inside the narrow bounds of one’s own population and its mimetic-mythical conceptualization of the world. Or to put it less mythically, in a post-metaphysical fashion: the language and worldview of one’s own population was not to be related to and surpassed for the broader reality. The independence of reality was not acknowledged. The Other was the Enemy. With the various Axial Ages, the original ubiquity of religion begins to come to its end. There were certain material preconditions for the Axial breakthroughs (urbanization, economic growth, intercultural contacts, technological inventions, especially that of alphabetic writing), but their historical significance must rather be sought in their spiritual character. With the Axial Ages, for the first time in human evolution, we can begin to follow explicit formulations of the inborn human transcendental capacity. With the Axial Ages, humans, as we know them, come into existence, because only from the Axial Ages onwards can we directly follow the transcendental movement of human spirituality, the defining feature of being human. Ancient Chinese, Indian, Israelite, and Greek cultures started to surpass the age-old givens of their respective traditions for the transcendent visions of their Axial virtuosi (sages, gurus, prophets, philosophers). These primary Axial spiritual breakthroughs were mitigated and institutionalized in the subsequent secondary post-Axial breakthroughs, which gave rise to the various world-civilizational currents of the slowly globalizing humanity. A tertiary, and now definitively trans-Axial breakthrough, is to be identified at the beginning of Western modernity, which aspires to legitimize itself solely by and through itself, without necessarily assuming any trans-human transcendence. All post-Axial traditions of human culture can be regarded as diverse processes of secularization. By and through them, humans gradually emancipate themselves from the primeval ubiquity of religion and enter into

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historical becoming.767 Yet, only with Western modernity can the long process of secularization be said to have come to an “end” of a kind, and Radical Secularization as complete post- or nonreligion to have become possible. More than the religious past, the hyperpluralist future becomes visible from the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. Every cultural tradition has its own way of entering the global hyperpluralist predicament. Consequently, there are as many “ends” to secularization as there are different post-Axial traditions, the inner logic of Radical Secularization assures us. The illusion of a unilinear forward development from the original ubiquity of religion to Radical Secularization is, therefore, to be clearly avoided. As such, the concept of Radical Secularization is a completely empty notion, like that of absolute subjective freedom. How human transcendentality in fact comes into itself and actualizes its self-legitimizing potentiality, always depends on the actual cultural context at hand. It cannot be speculated about a priori, but only looked at a posteriori. Every secularity has its own style. Secularization might be inevitable in all societies, where human subjectivity is allowed to freely unfold, but the concrete forms it takes differ from one society to another. And this is not by accident but of necessity, because we always carry our civilizational history in ourselves and can realize our transcendentality only in relation to that tradition (nothing is ever lost!). After Secularization there are no metaphysical necessities to how we will try to construct our common humanity. Entering into contemporary global hyperpluralization remains an open challenge to us all together. The goal is the same–to safeguard and develop our common humanity on this planet–but every cultural tradition has its own path to it. But perhaps not all cultural traditions even want to enter contemporary global hyperpluralism? Perhaps not all humans even want to develop our common humanity together? The temptation of either closing fearfully into oneself or opening up violently against the Other is always there, for all of us. The transcendental tension in us can all too easily be discharged in a dualism of one kind or another. Yet, we all know that our humanity, one that has come of age, can only confront future challenges together (see FT, nn. 8, 32ff). Now we all have to decide together whether to become Life or Death, Constructor or Destroyer of worlds. Not to decide, or to decide something else (to wage war, for example, or to concentrate solely on economic growth), is already to decide against the environmental one, the only one that finally matters. 767

See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, pp. 21-22.

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After Secularization, humanity is in possession of an unprecedented freedom, and of an equally unprecedented responsibility. But can the humanity which has come into itself and taken control of the planet find the necessary spiritual ideals and motivations solely from itself? Can Radical Secularization spur us to continue to develop our transcendental freedom in harmony with nature, in a truly sustainable manner? Or is it that once we have climbed up the ladder of human transcendentality till its very end, we do not find anything to stand on anymore, but like Icarus fall into the infinite void of nothingness?

4.2 The Radically Secular Dilemma This fundamental question confronting Radical Secularization is practically the same as the German Federal justice and philosopher of law ErnstWolfgang Böckenförde (1930-2019) posed to any secular, liberal democratic constitution in “The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization.”768 Böckenförde considered the historical emergence of the modern Western liberal democracies as a gradual process of secularization, i.e. as an emancipation from an earlier religious or trans-human legitimation of the societal life for a purely worldly or human legitimation of the same.769 Since times immemorial, humans had aspired to justify their communal existence by invoking some intentionalities and authorities outside themselves: the tradition of the forefathers, the natural law, the will and ordinances of the Gods, and so on. Only in Latin Christendom can a development be identified which ultimately led humans away from that kind of religious dispossession to a self-conscious self-possession of themselves, socially objectified in liberal democratic constitutions without any necessary religious references. Böckenförde regarded the particular process of secularization in Latin Christendom as the gradual emergence of the secular liberal state. He recognized three decisive phases in this development. First, the Investiture Controversy of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries expressed the first signs of a worldly power’s affirming itself in contrast to a religious 768

The original German version of the essay was based on a lecture given in 1964 and published in 1967 (see E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, “Die Entstehung des Staates als Vorgang der Säkularisation”). There are two English translations available, in E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, State, Society, and Liberty, pp. 24-46 and in E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, Religion, Law, and Democracy, pp. 152-167. 769 Gauchet’s argumentation proceeds basically among the same lines, but he locates the beginning of the process of secularization already in the creation of the first states in the ancient Near East around 3000 BCE.

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power. The age-old trans-human dispossession was beginning to shake in relation to human freedom coming into itself. Second, and most importantly, Böckenförde acknowledged the Confessional Wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the nearest impetus to secularizing the state power in the modern West. To stop the senseless violence of the Religious Wars, the meaningfulness of communal human existence had to be sought elsewhere than in the conflicting religious interpretations. This legitimating meaningfulness was found in the inviolable subjective freedom of every human being: in their inalienable right, that is, to search for meaning and happiness as they themselves decided to do, without harming others, who also had precisely the same right. Thus, third, Böckenförde leads the practical completion of the Western secularization process to the American and French revolutions (more precisely to the Virginia Bill of Rights in 1776 and the French constitution in 1789), in which human societal existence was–for the first time in history–not legitimized by any trans-human powers but by the freedoms and rights inherent in humanity itself.770 In sum, according to Böckenförde’s analysis, the rise of the state, in the modern Western meaning of the term, was at the same time a process of secularization, i.e. of departing from all exterior, trans-human, regulations of human existence to a secular form-of-life where all regulations must be arrived at in an interior, fully human, way. The modern Western state is, then, by definition, a liberal democracy, where all power and authority come from the people themselves, which are then free to use and delegate their absolute sovereignty as they decide through democratic procedures. This has been a revolutionary, and a very recent, development, when considering the overarching history of human cultural evolution. This also explains why practically all pre-modern religious traditions have taken, and continue to take, great pains to cope, at least in some way, with the secular shift. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, officially acknowledged the freedom of religion–a non-negotiable cornerstone of liberal democracy–only with the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.771 770

See E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, Religion, Law, and Democracy, p. 165-166. On the freedom of religion from a Catholic perspective, see especially DH and NA. Since Vatican II, nevertheless, the Catholic Church has become one of the most influential global promoters of religious freedom–one more example of the Roman tradition’s admirable capacity to renew itself in every new historical constellation. For an overview concerning the complex relationships between the Catholic Church and the secular state, see M. RHONHEIMER, Christentum und säkularer Staat, and more specifically between the Church and liberal democracy, B.T. OFTESTAD, The Catholic Church and Liberal Democracy.

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However, the coming of the secular state as liberal democracy by no means signifies any metaphysical “end of history.” For quite some time it was believed by many Western liberals that secular liberal democracy would inevitably go forward and eventually conquer the whole planet.772 This, of course, has not been the case, and could not even have been so, for two related reasons. First, the Western secularization process has its own particular spiritual sources which have preconditioned and guided its onwards movement. Secularity develops in a specific way in every particular cultural tradition. To speak about “secularity” in an abstract, supposedly global, perspective has no meaning because the term signifies exactly a culture’s coming into itself, into its own particularity.773 Consequently, one cannot reasonably speculate about any empirical endterm to secularization. Secularization is not about any unilinear development but about an increasing pluralization of different human forms-of-life. Second, secularization, even if completed by human transcendentality’s taking self-consciously possession of itself, would not lift human existence anywhere outside history. On the contrary, Radical Secularization, the speculative term for secularization “all-the-way-through,” relates human existence, either individual or communal, to a particular time and space. This is what makes it “radical” to begin with, completely “rooted” in a certain cultural, spatio-temporal context (which rootedness precisely lifts it above that particular context, in accordance with the defining doublemovement of human transcendentality). A radically secular consciousness acknowledges its necessary preconditions in a certain space and time. Precisely that historical conditioning makes it into what it is. Radical Secularization is thus the opposite of Gnosticism, without abandoning the spiritual driving-force of the latter. It does not aspire outside time and space anymore, because it recognizes that only by and through a certain spatio-temporal context can it go on proceeding into the ever-broadening horizon of reality. That is why communal human freedom in liberal democracy cannot ever come to a definitive end. Its end would mean its death and disappearance. Instead, it wants to go on living and actualizing its freedom in an ever-more truthful and just manner.774

772

See F. FUKUYAMA, The End of History and the Last Man. Similarly, the very notion of “importing” democracy from one culture to another makes no sense. A liberal democracy either grows from the inside of a given culture or it does not (even though it can, of course, receive inspiration from the outside, and normally does). 774 See M. HÄGGLUND, This Life, p. 368. 773

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But then, what motivates liberal democracy to go on towards a more free and just society? Why shall we all continue to work on our common humanity, aspiring to ascertain equal possibilities for all people to attain the kind of happiness and existential meaningfulness they desire? Earlier, Before Secularization, the answer was easy and ready at hand: there were certain trans-human principles and laws which obliged all people to work for a common goal, however defined. Now, After Secularization, however, we have transcendentally refused to accept any such trans-human obligations; we cannot even take them seriously in the first place, so radically Other have they become to our wayof-being-in-the-world. By contrast, for a secularization which has come into itself, Radical Secularization, no exterior authorities are allowed to limit the free movement of human transcendentality. Rather, the only accepted authorities are the interior ones, i.e. the ones self-consciously and selfcritically affirmed by human transcendentality itself (sapere aude!). This basic secular structure is to be seen both in modern science and liberal democracy, arguably the two most characteristic, and unique, creations of Western modernization-secularization. To recapitulate, on the one hand liberal democracy acknowledges only interior, human legitimations and motivations for its existence. On the other hand, however, it knows that “humanity” is a very problematic concept, indeed, as liable to divide human individuals as it is to unite them. In a postmetaphysical, radically secular perspective, even our supposedly “common” humanity does not have any necessary, pre-given meaning, but its contents can only be arrived at through mutual discussion, debate, and struggle. Our common humanity is as fragile as it is precious. Instead of closing the discussion, invocations of the “human” open it. This, in fact, is the famous dilemma Böckenförde formulated at the end of his classic essay. The Böckenförde-Diktum confronts any liberal democratic constitution, but in reality it is the fundamental dilemma concerning all radically secular existence that has emancipated itself from outer authorities and has come into itself: The liberal, secularized state is sustained by conditions it cannot itself guarantee. That is the great gamble it has made for the sake of liberty. On the one hand, as a liberal state it can only survive if the freedom it grants to its citizens is regulated from within, out of the moral substance of the individual and the homogeneity of society. On the other hand, it cannot seek to guarantee these inner regulatory forces by its own efforts–that is to say, with the instruments of legal coercion and authoritative command–without abandoning its liberalness, and relapsing, on a secularized level, into the very totalitarian claim it had led away from during the confessional wars. The prescribed state ideology, like the revival of the Aristotelian polis

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tradition or the proclamation of an ‘objective order of values,’ abolishes the very separation by which the liberty of the state is constituted. No path leads back across the threshold of 1789 without destroying the state as the order of liberty.775

The liberal democracies of secular Western modernity are the first human attempts at founding a society on purely human means, on inalienable human freedom, and motivating its future life by equally human means, i.e. by the same absolute human freedom. This is a great “gamble” (or “adventure” or “risk,” even “hazard”–the German Wagnis means all these things), because humanity has never attempted anything similar Before Secularization. There are no pre-given necessities here. It might equally well turn out that human beings cannot trace their communal existence from subjective freedom alone, not in the long run, at least. Perhaps the modern Western attempt at liberal democracy will show itself a failure at the end. In fact, as we all know too well, there already are alarming signs in that direction (see FT, n. 14).776 It can even seem to a more cynical observer (like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor) that humans simply do not want freedom. Building a free society demands so much work and sacrifices from all of us. Indeed, liberal democracy is about building the society together, not leaving anybody outside but engaging all in the common pursuit for a way-of-beingin-the-world that has a place for all of us. That, however, does not seem to inspire so many people, the cynic could think. On the contrary, many, even after the nationalisms and totalitarianisms of the last two centuries, continue to long for external authorities who would take the burden of freedom from our shoulders and decide for us. It would be so much easier to simply follow external orders. Grand inquisitors continue to bloom even After Secularization, finding a broad response among the general public, in the guise of “populism.” The call to personal freedom, by contrast, as it becomes speculatively conceptualized in Radical Secularization, falls on deaf ears. Nevertheless, despairing cynicism aside, from the point of view of After Secularization, once having reached Radical Secularization, any step away from inviolable transcendental freedom cannot but be regarded as a regression. Even more so, once having liberated oneself from metaphysical religion and other trans-human authorities, there is really no way back (except the apocalyptic one, which we do not even consider here). Böckenförde is right: “No path leads back across the threshold of 1789 775 776

E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, Religion, Law, and Democracy, p. 167. See D. RUNCIMAN, How Democracy Ends.

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without destroying the state as the order of liberty.”777 We cannot go back. We have already transcendentally refused to go back. The only direction can be forwards on the path of freedom and truth, which is that of the movement of human transcendentality. The problems and the challenges we necessarily confront on this path are no exterior accidents, but they interiorly belong to the continuing unfolding of human transcendentality in history. Without friction there is no movement either. But how do we cultivate the moral motivation and the spiritual energy to continue going forward? It is in this perspective that the traditional human phenomenon of “religion” can have a future role to play even After Secularization. This not by any metaphysical necessity, but because we, ourselves, who accept the call of freedom and truthful existence, transcendentally refuse any other role for religion in our liberal democracies. Radical Secularization, by its own self-understanding, moves totally outside the religious language-game. As complete nonreligion it is, thus, not so much an intellectual position but a spiritual conviction: it refuses to take religion seriously in the first place, because it absolutely does not want to acknowledge any trans-human limitations on the movement of human transcendentality and the realizations of human freedom. Instead, it wants to yield full-heartedly to the “great gamble” of human freedom, both individually and socially. It is an extremely risky and hazardous gamble, to be certain, but the only one, by and through which we, all together, can move towards our true humanity. Consequently, the metaphysical God is and remains dead After Secularization. Not because of any metaphysical necessity, but because such a return is consciously and actively refused by the radically secular way-of-being-in-the-world. For such a long time in human history various Gods have violently limited the free movement of human transcendentality that, once emancipated from them, we want to remain emancipated from them. Yet, the question remains whether we can do that. Do we have the motivation and energy to continue to combat all trans-human usurpers–they continue to abound even After Secularization, in the face of contemporary global hyperpluralism–to human freedom? How do we cope with the inevitable moments of crisis when the secular state has to do something more than merely fulfil our most basic eudemonistic desires? Perhaps most importantly, how can we avoid the primordially human temptation to idolatry, i.e. of objectifying and thus petrifying the intrinsically unlimited movement of true reality? 777

E.-W. BÖCKENFÖRDE, Religion, Law, and Democracy, p. 167.

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Here a God who does not reveal himself outside or at the expense of the human, but as the Friend and Teacher of true humanity could be welcomed, perhaps even very urgently so (see DV, n. 2). Could that even be the true God, the only true God, the God with a human face (see FR, n. 12)? The God before whom one really could fall to one’s knees in awe and play music and dance, i.e. live the fullness of one’s true humanity, without being ashamed of it?778 Because–and this is the one point on which everything turns–the “human,” of which we are speaking so much, is not and cannot be any ready-defined, closed entity, no “exclusive humanism” or “buffered self” (contra Taylor). The human transcendentally analyzed is an infinitely open, continuously unfolding, dynamism. The human is an open project. In such a perspective, consequently, invocations of the human are in themselves as empty as invocations of freedom. The question is how they become actualized in the concrete. Hence, the post-secular, post-metaphysical “human” is the opening word for a common discussion on how we want to realize our humanity, knowing that how we answer this question determines our whole future on this planet. In this discussion we could certainly make do of all possible aids, even the “trans-human” ones, if only they did not happen outside or against the human but inside and for the truly, and ever-more truly, human. It might even be that the onwards movement of human transcendentality necessarily, out of its own inner dynamism, needs such a trans-human source, motivation, and end to its infinitely open unfolding. In any case, we have to stop pretending that the world is our world, with which we can do whatever we want. A spiritual revindication of the trans-human dimension of reality, without any apocalypticism, one strongly hopes, might be a necessary task, if we want to continue existing on Earth. Be that as it may, one thing stands for certain. Something has radically changed in human religious evolution thanks to Western secularization. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once identified as an “underlying trend of our times” the seemingly general conviction among post-secular Westerners that it is not we humans anymore who have to justify ourselves before God, but on the contrary God who has to justify himself before us.779 The tables have been definitively turned, we have drunk up the sea and wiped away the entire horizon of previous religious evolution of humanity.780

778

See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 72. See the interview with the Pope Emeritus in D. LIBANORI, ed., Per mezzo della fede, p. 127. 780 See F. NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, §125. 779

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No God is allowed to enter our midst anymore against or at the expense of the human. No human sacrifices are accepted anymore, no violence or killing in the name of God.781 Radical Secularization is the conceptual emblem of this new spiritual condition which we now are slowly beginning to perceive. Only it can justify us speaking about After Secularization. Only from it can we Westerners begin to see and even slowly enter into contemporary global hyperpluralism, where no particular cultural tradition enjoys an authoritative priority. This is a radically new spiritual threshold for humanity, a pious dream of a nonviolent future for us all on this planet. But where did we find the courage for this most radical and revolutionary of all human deeds? Where did we get the spiritual courage to think through the concept of Radical Secularization, even in so rudimentary a fashion as has been the case in the present study? How could one fly so high to speculate about the entire human religious evolution on this planet–on that aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci782–as the concept of Radical Secularization by its own inner nature demanded? The Christian knows the answer, has known it all along, in the deepest movements of their heart, at least. Now it is the time to make these Christian movements, this genuinely Christian motivation and courage behind and in Radical Secularization, directly explicit, too.

5. Summary of Parts I and II The main objective of the present study has now been achieved, implicitly at least. This second and central part of the study has performed a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization as a phenomenological description of a completely post- or nonreligious human way-of-being-inthe-world. A phenomenological analysis of genuine postreligion is a valuable project on its own terms, because the modern Western “departure 781 See the Document of Human Fraternity, signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb on 04.02.2019, where it is stated, among other important things, that God has forbidden to kill innocent human life and that therefore “whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity.” 782 See DANTE, Paradiso, XXII, 151, a contemplative vision, from Dante’s own constellation of Gemini in the eighth celestial sphere, of humanity’s place in the practically infinite universe, to be profitably compared to that externally quite similar but internally totally different vision of William Anders from the lunar orbit. This might be the most fundamental difference between a religious and a nonreligious, or better, a spiritual and a material, view of the world: the former can see the inner meaning of things, whereas the latter remains at their superficial exteriors.

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from religion” arguably signifies one of the most radical novelties that Western civilization brought into the overall history of human spiritual evolution. Furthermore, an explicit acknowledgement and conceptualization of a radical Otherness to religion is a most relevant task for Christian theology, if it wants to keep pace with the course of time and aspire to relate the Gospel message to the self-understanding of the people of our day. And how could genuinely Christian theology do other than that? In fact, in the first chapter of the study it was argued that the specific mission of Catholic fundamental theology is to strive to express the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a fashion which would at the same time be faithful to its objective source and succeed in rendering it intelligible to its subjective recipients. For this evangelizing mission, an adequate grasp of one’s spatiotemporal context was shown to be crucial. Consequently, it was further argued that the general cultural context, in which the Catholic Church now finds herself, is that of global hyperpluralism, not as a theoretical idea(l) anymore, but as a concrete reality. Every particular cultural tradition has its own path into contemporary global hyperpluralism, however, if it is not to remain a completely empty notion, like that of absolute freedom. Hence, the traditional Western concept of “secularization” was argued to be still relevant as a speculative tool for the Western tradition to enter into contemporary global hyperpluralization. This requires emancipating from the exclusiveness of one’s own cultural tradition to relate it to those innumerable others out there. For that goal, the inner dynamic of Western secularization should be identified and surpassed from within, as it were. Radical Secularization was then introduced as a speculative concept for deconstructing the inner-Western secularization process and entering the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, from which contemporary global hyperpluralism really could become visible. By conceptualizing definitive nonreligion, the inbuilt Western dualism between religion and non-religion would become deconstructed from within and overcome for the infinitely more complex reality of contemporary global hyperpluralism. Chapter 2 started the conceptual search for a substantial concept of nonreligion. Even though non-religious forms-of-life are quickly developing in secularized Western societies–as attested by the new academic study of secularity and non-religion–it is still very difficult to adequately conceptualize and describe such human ways-of-being-in-theworld that would not have any intrinsic connection to religion (or to what was called such in the Western cultural tradition). Neither do the popular(ized) “post-secular” turn, nor the supposedly “post-theological” philosophy of religion, help much in this regard. In sum, when searching for a substantial concept of nonreligion, we encountered a burning Sprachnot,

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a lack of adequate language, which calls for the burdensome labor of creative thinking. Consequently, in Chapters 3 and 4–the central part of the study–a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization was developed, in which the historical conditions of possibility for Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion were speculatively expressed. Even though we now, synchronously considered, still would lack adequate language for thinking and speaking of a radically nonreligious human existence, we can, nevertheless, aspire to describe phenomenologically how the idea of such an existence has become historically possible. Such a diachronic modus procedendi was, then, followed in the central part of the study. Starting from Karl Rahner’s influential analysis of human transcendentality, Chapter 3 considered the coming of Radical Secularization in the context of Western modernity. It was shown that the acknowledgment of complete nonreligion will require abandoning the metaphysical assumption about an ontological coincidence between human thinking and reality as it is in itself, the cornerstone of the Western metaphysical tradition. That was done at the beginning of Western modernity by the Cartesian twist given to the movement of human transcendentality, which at the same time signified a crucial turning point in the overall process of Western secularization. After the modern break, it gradually becomes possible to depart definitively from religion. Yet, European secularization still retains deep religious connotations in itself, albeit negatively. It cannot yet move from non-religion to nonreligion. One must, therefore, dig deeper in history to make broader room for the spiritual dynamics of Radical Secularization, and for contemporary global hyperpluralization with it. Hence, in the fourth chapter of the study the concept of Radical Secularization was put in the context of the Axial Age hypothesis, from which a truly global perspective can unfurl. From the various Axial Ages onwards we can self-consciously follow how human transcendentality strives to come into itself in and through history. In the Western tradition, the original ubiquity of religion was finally overcome by Western civilization’s modern departure from religion, in which communal human existence was founded solely on human means, on subjective human freedom, that is. From this perspective, Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion becomes visible in its inherent tension with other cultural traditions and contexts. It means the speculative endpoint to the particularly Western process of secularization in the sense that with it, humans have definitively entered into their humanity, understandable only in relation to a particular time and place. But, as it was argued at the end of Chapter 4, the radically

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secular “human” is not an already defined category but an open process, the outcome of which nobody can foresee from inside history. The movement of human transcendentality is always directed beyond itself, and precisely this “going beyond” defines it as what it is. To put it briefly, the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization, by describing a completely nonreligious human existence, has already as such led us beyond the narrow bounds of the Western cultural tradition to the threshold of contemporary global hyperpluralism. It cannot be defined or controlled in advance what particular forms human transcendentality takes in different cultural traditions (which themselves are continuously changing, too). This objective was reached thanks to the fundamental theological reduction, introduced at the end of Chapter 1. In other words, it was necessary to withhold all theological judgements of Radical Secularization for its inner dynamic to be able to unfold in the first place. Indeed, a spontaneous twofold theological criticism naturally arises against the very notion of Radical Secularization. The traditional, Westernmetaphysical, theological consciousness immediately confronts the concept of Radical Secularization, by asking, first, how something like complete nonreligion could exist in the first place in a reality which comes from God and to him returns? And second, how could one then transmit the Good News to people who in their self-understanding find themselves totally outside the religious language-game? To put it briefly, would not acknowledging the concept of Radical Secularization totally nullify the whole fundamental theological enterprise of expressing the Christian Revelation in an intelligible fashion here and now? Quite understandably, this twofold theological criticism had to be bracketed before the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization could unfold. Now, however, we have to confront the twofold theological criticism head-on. In reality, the entire study has been a kind of intellectual therapy, or a spiritual exercise, the goal of which was to liberate one from the narrow conceptual bounds of the Western tradition in order to open up oneself for contemporary global hyperpluralism. There even the Church is now called to carry on with her mission. But perhaps one did not really want to enter this therapeutic procedure and spiritual transformation? Perhaps one thinks that even to seriously consider the concept of Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion would go against the Christian Revelation and the doctrine of the Church? Instead of arguing against this conviction, the next and last chapter of the study shows that it arises from the ontotheological temperament of the Western metaphysical tradition. This metaphysical tradition, however, has very little to do with the Trinitarian metaphysics of the Christian Revelation,

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as will be shown. On the contrary, it is precisely the Christian Revelation that gives us the courage to enter fully into our humanity and to take our place in historical becoming. In the final analysis, only in light of the Christian Revelation does Radical Secularization become possible. In the Conclusion, the whole radically secular argument of the study will be summarized in a missionary perspective, which must be the ultimate direction of all genuinely Christian theological movement, as was argued in Chapter 1.

PART III A FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY OF RADICAL SECULARIZATION

CHAPTER V OVERCOMING ONTOTHEOLOGY: TOWARDS A TRINITARIAN METAPHYSICS

1. Introduction: Catholic Magisterium on Faith and Reason In the first chapter of this study, we encountered a recurring dualism in modern Western attitudes to religion, and its corollary non-religion. Western modernity has been trapped inside its own definitions of religion and its opposite, however constructed. In theological thinking, this metaphysical framework has continued to surface in the tension between “fideism” and “rationalism,” often bordering on separation in modern Western theology (see FR, nn. 45-48). Some modern theologians have emphasized the subjective dimension of religious believing to such a degree that its vital relationship with the surrounding reality risks evaporating into thin air. Other theologians have concentrated on the objective, rationally controllable direction of religious believing so strongly that the question arises concerning the need of faith to begin with. If modern science gives us an increasingly truthful description of the world, and if human existence can prosper in secular liberal democracies like never before, what need is there of religion anymore? The deep current of the Catholic Christian tradition, by contrast, has always sought to safeguard the essential unity in distinction between religious faith and human reason.783 The First Vatican Council (1870) insisted, against the rationalist spirit of Enlightenment, that there exist spiritual truths which far exceed the capacity of human reason and can only be attained to by religious faith (see DF, Ch. IV). Nevertheless, there can never exist a true contradiction between reason and faith because they both come from God who himself is the supreme Truth. Hence, the Second 783

From a Catholic philosophical perspective, see A. MACINTYRE, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition; BENEDICT XVI ET AL., Gott, rette die Vernunft!: Die Regensburger Vorlesung des Papstes in der philosophischen Diskussion.

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Vatican Council (1965), for its part, highlighted rather the original unity of faith and reason, ultimately relating as they both do to the one God who reveals himself in and through concrete history (see DV, nn. 2, 6). Recapitulating the traditional Christian conviction about the internal reciprocity of human reason and religious faith, Pope John Paul II spoke about them as the “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” (FR, n. 1). Faith and reason, thus understood, represent two different modalities for the movement of human transcendentality, but they both are needed for it to reach its true breadth and depth. Faith discloses ever-vaster spiritual horizons for reason to explore, while reason purifies faith of its irrational pathologies, and vice versa, as Pope Benedict XVI never tired of reminding us.784 In sum, the Christian Revelation introduces the enquiring human mind into an infinite spiritual dynamism, in which we can get to know the transcendent Source and Goal of all existence better and better, while never attaining to a full comprehension of him.785 How does Radical Secularization appear in this light? Would complete post- or nonreligion not block the ascension of the human spirit towards the ever-broadening horizon of reality, if it does not reckon with its objectively transcendent fullness in God? Furthermore, it is a fundamental conviction of the Catholic faith that the existence of God is no mere question of faith but can be “known with certainty” by the natural human reason, too (see DF, Ch. 1; DV, n. 6; FR, n. 8). Would the concept of Radical Secularization, if we dare to enter into its speculative logic, not thrust us into a spiritual chaos–a “dictatorship of relativism” of which Benedict XVI so strongly warned us–where nothing can be known for certain but everything becomes put in question (see FR, n. 47)? How could one then even hope to develop a meaningful dialogue with people of other religions and of none?

784

In addition to his Regensburg Address, Pope Benedict spoke about the “two-way process” of purification between secular rationality and religious belief in his Westminster Address on 17.09.2010, for instance. 785 It is interesting to note that Pope Francis has not dealt with the question of faith and reason as much as his predecessors did. This might have to do with the fact that his pastoral focus simply lies elsewhere. Yet, it might also point to the crucial observation that the question about the right relationship between reason and faith is typically a very modern European issue, indeed. From a more global, polyhedric perspective, it might not be so relevant at all, at least not in its traditional, strongly metaphysical, terms. Reason and rationality exist only in a certain tradition, as do faith and religious belief (see A. MACINTYRE, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?; W.C. SMITH, The Meaning and End of Religion).

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With this theological bewilderment we approach the twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization that had to be bracketed at the beginning of this study but that we now have to confront head-on. Could it be that far from nullifying the fact of Christian Revelation, the speculative logic of Radical Secularization allows us to find an innovative entry into it After Secularization? In any way, if the one transcendent God really has revealed himself in history, culminating in the appearance of his Son Jesus Christ among us (see DV, nn. 2-4), we as historical beings have to find a historical entry into it, too, again and again in every new historical context.

Encountering the Twofold Theological Criticism The aim of this final chapter can only be explicatory, and preliminary. This is for the simple reason that the main objective of the study has already been achieved in the second part of the study, which performed a phenomenological description of Radical Secularization as a truly postreligious human wayof-being-in-the-world. If we followed the argument all the way through to its speculative end-point in the concept of Radical Secularization, we, in fact, already have surpassed the narrow bounds of Western secularization for the infinitely more diversified reality of contemporary global hyperpluralization. This is the main challenge which confronts the Catholic fundamental theology of today, as the first chapter argued. The signs of the times ask the Church to become truly Catholic in the contemporary world, not only nominally anymore, but in truth. Thus could the Catholic truth shine ever-more brightly amidst the growing parochialisms and polarizations of contemporary globalizing humanity. For that goal we as Western Christians needed to think through the concept of absolute nonreligion, in order to liberate ourselves from the violent burden of our metaphysical tradition.786 A self-destructive enterprise perhaps, but one from which a thoroughly new constructive future opens up. And does not all genuinely Christian movement typically proceed from a descensus to an ascensus? But maybe we really did not want to embark on the proposed fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization? Maybe the mere suggestion of a completely nonreligious, i.e. not merely atheistic or religiously indifferent but truly nonreligious, way-of-being-in-the-world 786

Openness to the Other, in view of learning from them, is a constitutive character of the European, or Roman, spirit, however (see R. BRAGUE, Europe, la voie romaine).

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strikes us as an oxymoron, impossible to take seriously in the first place. We might, indeed, think that homo sapiens necessarily is a religious being, always somehow, consciously or unconsciously, dependent on something greater than themselves (and how could it be otherwise in a reality not created by themselves?). In particular, if we are monotheistic believers, we might think that everything that exists comes from God and to God returns. Hence, there simply cannot exist a truly nonreligious human form-of-life, except as an absolutely abstract idea. In concrete reality, by contrast, we should all be in one way or another “religious.” Religion, in fact, is the one element which founds our common humanity, this kind of thinking might claim. Therefore, the whole procedure of the study to this point was based on a deep, even “demonic,” error. If we were somewhere, we were in hell. This is the twofold theological criticism against the very notion of Radical Secularization. According to it, complete nonreligion cannot exist, because (i) it would abolish the very fundaments of a theistic conception of reality, and because (ii) it would make it impossible to convert any supposedly radically secular person to theistic belief in God. Otherwise put, this theological criticism against the concept of Radical Secularization claims that the mere possibility of being nonreligious would question our common humanity, or indeed make it impossible. That is why the concept of Radical Secularization cannot really be thought through and thus speculatively acknowledged. In fact, we must already transcendentally refuse to seriously consider Radical Secularization, if we want to hold on to our theistic worldview, the twofold theological criticism spontaneously claims. Obviously, the person who has fashioned–however imperfectly–a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization cannot possibly accept the theological questioning of it. Personal emancipation from traditional religion is not only speculatively possible, but it is also a concrete fact (as was shown above in Chapter 2). It is a fact, furthermore, which increasingly many of our contemporaries choose and a fact which, in any case, profoundly characterizes the contemporary spiritual landscape in the West. Nevertheless, this is not the place to argue against the named theological criticism. In fact, it cannot be argued against, because it arises, not from the intellect, but from the will.787 And arguing against someone’s will would 787

In theology, even more than in philosophy, the deepest problems are not so much intellectual but existential, concerning our will. But how to overcome a difficulty of the will? Only through a gradual therapeutic process, or more theologically put, through spiritual exercises. And on what do the proceedings and the outcome of the therapeutic-spiritual process crucially depend? On one’s will (aided by grace, for sure, without however negating one’s will).

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only result in more spiritual violence, of which there already is enough in the world. Yet, it can, arguably, be shown that the theological criticism against Radical Secularization does not arise from any facts but from a certain kind of pre-given decision or mentality. This is the primary explicatory aim of this final chapter of the study, namely, to show from what kind of mentality a transcendental refusal of the very concept of Radical Secularization logically (“metaphysically”!) arises. In order to do this, the chapter must show, furthermore, that Radical Secularization does not go against a genuinely Christian conception of reality but in fact emerges from it. This, however, can only be done in a preliminary way in the present context. Radical Secularization presents a spiritual threshold, after which the Christian Revelation must be thought anew (as has been done in every new epoch of the Christian tradition, but perhaps never before as radically as must be done today).

2. The Ontotheological Temperament: Brains in a Vat In the following, a kind of inverse ontological argument is formulated. The concept of Radical Secularization is shown to speculatively destroy the ontotheological temperament of the Western metaphysical tradition. This is further explicated by a discussion of Hilary Putnam’s famous thoughtexperiment involving “brains in a vat.” From that perspective, the possibility of a truly post-modern and post-metaphysical thinking about God opens itself up. And in a truly “post-metaphysical” perspective, it would be all too metaphysical to be against all metaphysics tout court.

2.1 A Speculative Destruction of the Ontotheological Temperament To put it briefly, the twofold theological criticism against the very notion of Radical Secularization arises from what here will be called the ontotheological temperament. The term “ontotheology” (or “onto-theological”, onto-theologisch) was first used by Kant,788 but it has become a household concept–usually in a very critical light–in post-modern theology and philosophy of religion mainly thanks to Heidegger’s particular use of it.789

788

See I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A631/B659. Merold Westphal states bluntly that “[i]n postmodern contexts, onto-theology is one of the deadly sins” (M. WESTPHAL, Overcoming Onto-Theology, p. 13). More

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In his influential article, originally an ending lecture in a university seminar on Hegel, “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics”, Heidegger analyzed the deep structure of the Western metaphysical tradition as being of an essentially ontotheological character.790 The main point of Heidegger’s argument can be understood even without his idiosyncratic terminology, and grasping it is crucial for understanding the kind of spiritual temperament which already in advance refuses to consider Radical Secularization as a real possibility for human existence. Western metaphysics aspires to think “being as being” (to on hôs on, as the Greeks said, ens qua ens, as the Romans).791 This does not only mean thinking about every particular being as it really, in itself, is (its “essence,” that is), but also, and in equal measure, about the whole of being (literally everything that exists) as it really, in itself, is. The fundamental metaphysical movement is, therefore, directed towards understanding everything that is, reality in its wholeness. It cannot content itself with anything less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as it reveals itself in the wholeness of being.792 For this goal every particular perspective on reality must be overcome for the ever-greater of reality. Finally, the metaphysical movement could only rest in the complete comprehension of everything that is, in the “metaphysics of presence” fully realized. Yet, there is one fundamental problem for the metaphysical project. The being who engages themselves in it, the human being in our case, forms themselves a particular part of reality, not its whole. This most self-evident fact needs to be repeated all over again, because it, like all self-evident facts, all too easily becomes forgotten (and the more self-evident the fact is, the more easily it is forgotten). The most fundamental and self-evident and thus most easily forgotten fact of metaphysics is that reality as it really, in itself, is, is not of our making, but it has been there for ages before us, and it will also continue to be there for ages after us. We, in other words, are a completely contingent feature of reality as it is in itself; it could equally well exist without us (as it probably soon will). Reality, as it truly in itself is, can, therefore, by no means be equated with our comprehension of it. And this is the case not only factually, but also hypothetically. We, as being inside reality, as it were, can never attain a full, complete comprehension of it. Reality always surpasses our (very) narrow understanding of it. For the complete comprehension of reality, a view from outside it would be needed. generally on the contemporary theological discussion, see H. VON SASS–E.E. HALL, ed., Groundless Gods: The Theological Prospects of Post-Metaphysical Thought. 790 See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 54. 791 See J. GRONDIN, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 14ff. 792 See M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, §§1-4.

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The metaphysical project of understanding everything in reality, reality as it is in itself, thus seems to find itself in an insurmountable dilemma. On one hand, there is our undeniable consciousness of existing in a reality which is not of our making but which we, nevertheless, can learn to understand better and better, perhaps even in its totality (the dream of the “theory of everything” is there even in modern science, and necessarily so, given the transcendental constitution of the human mind). On the other hand, there is the equally undeniable fact that to truly understand reality in its wholeness we should also be able to account for our very possibility of understanding reality, something we ultimately could do only if we had an outside view of reality itself (this is why all naturalisms and scientisms are doomed to fail). In sum, the metaphysical desire of relating intelligibly to reality as a whole is a real, even necessary feature of being human, but it cannot possibly be fulfilled by ourselves. Reality, at the end of the day, is not our reality, and it never will be that either (as much as we would aspire to subject it to ourselves with our science and technology). The response of modern Western thinking to this fundamental metaphysical dilemma has already been analyzed. It holds fast to the metaphysical desire of understanding everything, but proceeds towards that ideal goal by a certain kind of via negativa, i.e. by aspiring to surpass every particularly human (or any other perspectival) approach to reality for reality as it is anyway, independently of all such specific perspectives. Behind the particularly modern metaphysical project of pure enquiry,793 there lurks a “nominalistic premetaphysics,” which does not recognize any intentionality or meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself.794 Whether the particularly modern Western formation of metaphysics necessarily leads to a widespread nihilism or loss of meaning in a concrete human existence, is an important question, which we unfortunately have no space to enter into here.795 It is enough to remind oneself of the specifically modern form of metaphysics. In ancient Greek metaphysics it was all different. As has been argued above in Chapter 3, metaphysics in its pre-modern formation was based on the metaphysical assumption. Reality as it is in itself was no independent reality, but was dependent on a primordial intentionality which gave inner meaningfulness to everything that existed. Hence, the pre-modern metaphysical assumption signified simultaneously the religious presumption 793

See B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. See J. GRONDIN, La bellezza della metafisica, pp. 8-11. 795 And if metaphysics finally leads to nihilism, that could also be deemed as liberating, because it allows us to imagine a different kind of human existence (see G. VATTIMO, The End of Modernity). 794

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about the necessarily religious nature of being human. If we really understand anything in reality, even the tiniest of things (like a pen on my table), it is ultimately possible only because reality itself has an intelligible order and structure. The reality which is not of our making becomes intelligible to us thanks to a trans-human principle of intentionality which renders reality intelligible to us. Without assuming such a trans-human, and ultimately trans-real, principle of intentionality we, as the perfectly contingent beings we are, would have no chance of relating intelligibly to the world around us, ultimately in its wholeness. This, very roughly put, is what Heidegger means with the onto-theological constitution of (ancient Greek, and subsequent Western) metaphysics. His analysis proceeds in basically three steps. First, ancient metaphysics desires to relate intelligibly to the world around us; it is, therefore, a logic (from the Greek logos, meaning “word,” “intelligence,” “meaning”). Second, to relate intelligibly to the world around us, metaphysics must be able to think of beings both as such and as a whole; it is, hence, an ontology (from the Greek root onto, meaning “being”). But, third, to be able to think about the whole of reality, metaphysics must appeal to a Ground beyond reality itself which only as such can ground the whole of reality. Metaphysics, thus, is necessarily a theology, too (from the Greek theos, “God” or the “divine”). As Heidegger himself puts it: Metaphysics responds to Being as ȁȩȖȠȢ, and is accordingly in its basic characteristics everywhere logic, but a logic that thinks of the Being of beings, and thus the logic which is determined by what differs in the difference: onto-theo-logic. Since metaphysics thinks of beings as such as a whole, it represents beings in respect of what differs in the difference, and without heeding the difference as difference. What differs shows itself as the Being of beings in general, and as the Being of beings in the Highest.796

The essential point for us to note here is that, according to the Heideggerian analysis, the particularly Western formation of metaphysics is necessarily both ontology and theology, i.e. it needs a trans-human, ultimately transcendent, principle to think the wholeness of reality.797 In other words, “God,” or however one decides to call the transcendent Principle of all reality, enters into metaphysics as a necessity, as something absolutely needed for metaphysics to be able to carry out its own project. In 796 797

See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 70. See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 71.

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fact, every particular being in reality could either exist or not exist, because their existence depends on the existence of other beings (and so ad infinitum). Therefore, to think of the wholeness of reality, and to avoid falling into the void of infinity (the Greek apeiron), metaphysics necessarily needs to assume a unique transcendent Being which as the only causa sui grounds the existence of all immanent beings.798 That is how the Deity, according to Heidegger, enters into Western philosophy, and necessarily so, given the self-understanding of the latter.799 The problem with the onto-theological constitution of the subsequent Western metaphysical tradition is not–as a rather vulgar interpretation of Heidegger would have it–that a difference is drawn between individual concrete beings and the abstract Being which gives them all their being. On the contrary, as explained above, the assumption of a transcendent, meaning-giving Source to all that exists is a necessary presupposition of the metaphysical project to begin with. The ontological difference between the being of beings and Being as such grounds the whole metaphysical enterprise. Problems begin when we forget that this difference itself cannot be thought.800 The Ground which grounds everything, the Being which gives being to all beings, the Principle which renders the whole reality intelligible–this must forever remain beyond the horizon of our comprehension; it can only be received on one’s knees as an unquestionably gratuitous gift.801 Forgetting the ontological difference would at the same time mean forgetting the true nature of Being, as that which gives being to us, and to everything else that exists. Precisely this is what according to Heidegger happened in the Western tradition. Forgetfulness of Being led to an evermore violent stance towards the surrounding world, culminating in the development of modern science-technology and of the bureaucratic state (the two most characteristic creations of secular Western modernity). The modern Western stance towards reality was increasingly violent, because it was based on submitting the world ever-more effectively to human needs. 798

See the basic structure in all of Aquinas’s quinque viae in ST, I, q. 2, a. 3. See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, pp. 71-72. 800 See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 71. 801 Among contemporary thinkers, Jean-Luc Marion has done most to overcome the traditional metaphysics of being by and through a phenomenology of givenness: see his classic Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Furthermore, in a more explicitly theological fashion, Marion analyzes the concept of religious (Christian) Revelation as the ultimate form of givenness in Givenness and Revelation. The Church has always known that the initium fidei is a pure gift of divine grace, as the fifth Canon of the Second Council of Orange officially affirmed. 799

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The onto-theological constitution of metaphysics that began with the Greeks ultimately led to the modern construction of a reality which is completely of human making, refusing as it does all trans-human principles of meaning. Practically everything in the modern world reflects only human needs and leads back to human intentions. Everywhere we turn our gaze in our urbanized existence we only see reflections of ourselves. Such transcendental openings (as Lichtung also could be translated) that would let the trans-human, ultimately transcendent Ground of all being shine through are hard to find in the modern West. This is the spiritual enframing (Gestell) of our modern, human (all too human), world.802 Here, furthermore, lie the speculative roots to the contemporary ecological crisis that more than anything else questions the human.803 Now we can go back to the ontotheological temperament and see why it necessarily is closed to the concept of Radical Secularization. Like the Heideggerian onto-theo-logy, the ontotheological temperament is not so much an explicit doctrine but a largely implicit form-of-life, a temperament, in short. At the roots of the ontotheological temperament there is the–more often unconscious than not–refusal to recognize the ontological difference; a refusal, that is, to enter into the “nothingness” from which the infinite difference between Being and beings only can become experienced (while not, to be quite precise, thought).804 Post-metaphysically put, the ontotheological temperament tends to identify reality with a certain human conceptualization of it, without recognizing that that conceptualization is only one among innumerable others. Reality is much more complex and much more wonderful than the ontotheological temperament would allow in its rationalistic hubris. Theologically focused, the ontotheological temperament tends to consider God as the highest, because the most perfect, Being. The ontotheological temperament capitalizes the “Being” of God, not because it wants to safeguard the infinite ontological difference between the Being of God and all other beings, but because it conceptualizes God as the transhuman Being who has all the advantages we humans have but to an infinite

802

Belonging to the idiosyncratic terminology of the later Heidegger, discussions of the Lichtung can be found in the 1964 lecture “Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens” and of the Ge-stell in the 1954 work Die Frage nach der Technik. 803 See C. RENTMEESTER, Heidegger and the Environment. 804 Heidegger developed the theme first in his 1929 article “Vom Wesen des Grundes”.

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degree, and none of our deficits.805 The Being of the ontotheological God is necessary and eternal, while all other being is contingent and temporal, in some way dependent on this Highest Being which singularly is its own cause. According to the ontotheological temperament, reality thus forms a unified whole where everything necessarily leads back to the First and Highest Being, God as the one and only causa sui. Consequently, for someone with the ontotheological temperament, it is impossible to have an accurate view of the world without taking into account the First Being, the Being par excellence. Indeed, without it one cannot think at all, because all intentionality and meaning must lead back to its foundation in the First Being. The ontotheological God thus holds all of reality together. The answer to why something exists in the first place must ultimately lead back to the Highest Being, which as the only causa sui can uniquely explain itself and hence the whole of being. In sum, in light of the ontotheological temperament, everything that exists, the universe in its totality, forms a single onto-theo-logical unity, held together by the metaphysical God. Now, it should be clear that for someone with the ontotheological temperament, Radical Secularization or a completely nonreligious way-ofbeing-in-the-world is not only a factually false theory and worldview, but it is in fact impossible, it cannot really exist. If everything that exists ultimately depends on the First Existent, God, then one cannot so totally emancipate oneself from that as to lose any necessary metaphysical contact with that Foundation of all being. Hence, Radical Secularization defined as complete emancipation from God would have to signify a metaphysical and existential nothingness. The sincere inability to take the absolute transhuman intentionality of God seriously in the first place would be “nothing” in the most serious sense of the word, the ontotheological temperament would have us believe. If it was something, it would be hell as the spiritual condition of absolute contradiction. But is Radical Secularization really “nothing”, i.e. an illusionary and factually impossible idea of a possible human existence? If the argument of the present study is at all on the right track, then Radical Secularization cannot be bypassed as uninspiring befuddlement. The particularly Western modernization process has made such a human way-of-being-in-the-world possible that cannot see any point in “religion,” as defined in its tradition, 805

To speak with Richard Swinburne, one of the leading modern Western philosophers of religion, the ontotheological God is the person ”picked out” [!] by the description ”a person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who necessarily is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of all things” (R. SWINBURNE, The Existence of God, p. 7).

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and, especially, in its “God.” Rather, the development of modern science has made “God” an increasingly unnecessary hypothesis, and the spread of liberal democracy has dismantled “religion” of its normative force on people’s lives, as was argued above in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. Far from being “nothing,” the concept of Radical Secularization is crucial for any speculative understanding of Western modernity in its relation to religion. The reason why many “religious” people, i.e. people with the ontotheological temperament, cannot take Radical Secularization seriously as a real human possibility is, arguably, that they at least deep in their heart guess that an adequate acknowledgement of the profound spiritual Otherness described by Radical Secularization would seriously affect their own ontotheological metaphysics. In fact, as will be argued here, it would completely destroy it.806 The point here is as simple as it is profound. If we acknowledge that one in fact can relate to the surrounding reality in a completely nonreligious way, i.e. without taking into account any trace of a trans-human intentionality and meaningfulness in the world, then it means that reality is not as it is represented in ontotheological metaphysics. If God really was the First, omnipotent and omniscient, Being, the unique causa sui, then one could possibly not become so totally emancipated from him as a radically secular temperament claims to be. Humans simply are not so free as to become totally independent of their Creator, but they always remain in one way or another dependent on him, whether they want it or not, whether they realize it or not (see Ps 139: 1-12). Ultimately, you always have to either affirm the existence of God or to deny it; everybody, in the last analysis, is either a theist or an atheist. Tertium non datur. This is also the point where the phenomenological-grammatical method of the preceding study meets its limit. If we really have managed to sketch an intelligible description of a completely nonreligious human way-ofbeing-in-the-world, it cannot remain at a merely “descriptive” level. A true description cannot but have consequences for the truth of reality. Even the factual reality aside, if one succeeds in forming a coherent concept of Radical Secularization, this already in itself means that reality is not like the ontotheological temperament imagines it to be. Being ourselves part of the world, the possibilities of our thinking also reveal something–perhaps even more than any empirical investigations–about how the world really, in itself, is. In short, already the very possibility of Radical Secularization reveals 806

On the Heideggerian sense of the term Destruktion, see M. HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, §6.

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that the world is not the metaphysically closed whole which the ontotheological constitution of Western metaphysics claims it to be. This is a kind of inverse ontological argument: from a feature of the human mind (its infinitely open transcendentality) it is concluded that reality is not like ontotheology would have it (a closed whole held together by the causa sui). Tertium datur.807 The speculative destruction of ontotheology is the most important speculative conclusion of the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization. It asks us to let go of something–namely, the violent primacy of the Western cultural tradition–for entering into something else–namely, contemporary global hyperpluralism. In fact, this step forward has already been achieved, at least implicitly, in the central part of the study by its speculative step back to the Axial revolution(s). Whether one wants to take the step explicitly, too, is an issue which cannot be forced, but it can be described, and thus prepared, and speculatively invited. In Catholic fundamental theology and in the Church at large that step is what the signs of the times, as analyzed in the present study, encourage us to take. Given the decisive significance of the speculative destruction of ontotheology by Radical Secularization, it is worth considering it in a more focused way, and from another perspective.

2.2 The Terrifying Vision of the Brains in a Vat In his article “Brains in a Vat”,808 American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016) wanted to show that “meanings just aren’t in the head,” as magical theories of reference would have it. Rather, human language and thinking is an ability that can only be learnt and practiced in a real human community, as Wittgenstein had shown with his Philosophical Investigations.809 Far from being a mystical feature of certain “intentional” signs to carry meaning, language is something human beings do and meaning is produced by participating in a human form-of-life, Putnam argued. This Wittgensteinian sort of naturalism asks us to consider language and its meaning-creating potentiality as a particular ability of the human animal, extremely fascinating in itself but as such no more “mystical” than the human ability to see or smell or dance or sing. 807

Another way of formulating the conclusion of this inverse ontological argument is that the necessary God does not exist. Yet, far from being atheism of any sort, this conclusion only prepares the path of thinking about the God who is more, or Other, than necessary. 808 See H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, pp. 1-21. 809 See H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, pp. 19-20.

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A logical corollary of Putnam’s Wittgensteinian argument is that there cannot be any absolute conception of reality that would be there “anyway,” independently of all subjective observers.810 It is not only that we human beings de facto need a particular language to describe the world, but that this language itself is a part of the world as it really is. Any talk about an “absolute conception of reality” would have to accomplish the impossible task of lifting oneself by one’s hair. In other words, a description of the world as it is independently of different cultural-linguistic traditions would not be a description of the real world we are living in. Or rather, it would be a certain kind of description, a certain kind of perspective on the world, like the one that modern natural science tries to offer. Obviously, there is a lot more to the world than that. Putnam’s insightful development of Wittgenstein’s philosophical insights also refutes global skepticism, or the hyperbolical doubt that we, nevertheless, might be totally misled about the nature of reality and our place in it. We could, according to the skeptical imaginary, for example be continuously dreaming or–in a more modern version of the same argument– imagining our life to be real even though we are only electrically stimulated brains in a vat of nutrients that keep us alive. We think that what we see and touch and talk about have their origin in the outer world, but in reality everything is only going on in our brains without any direct relation to how the things really are.811 We humans, and all conscious life, might always have been there simply as brains in a vat, or we might have been captured and put there by an evil scientist. In any case, reality can be a radically different place than we think it is, this sceptic scenery claims. Yet, Putnam argues in his article that the mere fact that we can entertain the thought of being brains in a vat proves this not to be the case.812 To repeat, the ability to refer and thus create meaning is no magical property of certain kinds of things in the world (those with “intentionality”), but meaning-creating and meaning-recognizing become possible through participating in a human form-of-life. It can be said that language (and hence “intentionality” in general) is precisely an ability to become and remain a part of humanity.813 810

See Putnam’s critique of Bernard Williams’s idea of the “absolute conception of reality,” in particular of its inbuilt fact-value dichotomy, in H. PUTNAM, Renewing Philosophy, pp. 80-107. 811 See H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, pp. 5-8. 812 For Putnam’s own explanation of his argument, see H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, pp. 14-16. 813 Wittgenstein’s ideas about language are developed in this direction in R. GAITA, A Common Humanity.

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The mere “physical possibility” of our being brains in a vat, by contrast, must be pure science-fiction, because it presupposes a magical theory of reference, according to which words bear meaning thanks to some kind of intrinsic quality (“intentionality”). In reality, however, intentionality is an ability of a concrete language-user, as Wittgenstein showed with his philosophical investigations into “what we say.” Even if we grant that brains in a vat could develop some kind of language, it is absolutely inconceivable that they, with that language, from the perspective of that form-of-life, would be able to create and meaningfully entertain the idea that they are merely brains in a vat imagining a real world with real things. Simply put, in that case, they would no longer be only brains in a vat living in a virtual reality, but rather real minds trapped inside brains in a vat. And that completely changes the subject, of course. Hence Putnam draws the conclusion that we cannot possibly be mere brains in a vat, because we can meaningfully entertain the idea that this, nevertheless, could be the case.814 Now, I claim that an analogous argument can be formulated against the ontotheological temperament in light of the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization (as developed above in Chapters 3 and 4). If we, in fact, have managed to form a meaningful concept of radical nonreligion, or at least meaningfully point towards one, this simultaneously means that reality is not like the ontotheological temperament imagines it to be. As was argued above, according to the ontotheological constitution of Western metaphysics, every being that exists ultimately receives its being from the ontological First Being that as the only causa sui has its Being in itself (why we capitalize only this truly transcendent Being in contrast to all other, immanent beings). All beings are ontologically dependent on this First and Highest Being, without which they could not exist at all. All meaning in reality, and the reality itself as the meaningful whole it is, leads back to this ontotheological First Cause. However convinced we would be of our intellectual autonomy and inviolable freedom, that is only an illusion. We remain puppets in the divine theater, prisoners in the ontotheological cave. The First Cause is like the evil scientist of the brains in a vat-scenario, who stimulates the brains to experience what they perceive, without there, however, being anything objectively real corresponding to their subjective experiences of an autonomous world in and through which human freedom unfolds.815 814

See H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History, p. 7. At this point of the argument, it is crucial not to stop its flow with referring to the medieval metaphysical theories of primary and secondary causes or the analogous use of human language concerning the First Cause, which would supposedly admit at least some kind of autonomy to the created reality (see GS, nn. 36, 41). The crux

815

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That is how the ontotheological temperament imagines human beings to be: necessarily dependent on a trans-human intentionality and meaningfulness (however defined in detail). Now, to cut a long story short, that is not how Western humanity has come to fashion itself through its specific modernization-secularization process. With the modern break, we unleashed ourselves from the preceding metaphysical tradition for the infinitely open horizon of modern science. Furthermore, with the modern development of liberal democracies, human transcendentality came completely into itself by founding its communal existence solely on itself. With Western modernization an “anthropological turn” is de facto realized, the “kingdom of man” really comes to be, for the first time in human evolution.816 From this point of view, the Western modernization process can be identified as secularization in general, and as Radical Secularization in particular, as argued in Chapter 4. One does not have to see the speculatively destructive force of the concept of Radical Secularization with respect to the ontotheological temperament. It is always possible to argue that the modern departure from religion is somehow only illusionary, and thus illegitimate. Yes, in the present we can drown in the “religious debate,” losing all perspicuous representation out of sight. In the bigger, “Axial,” picture, however, sketched briefly in the fourth chapter of this study, the radical novelty of Western modernity should become unquestionable. Religion has been dismantled of its primordially normative role over all things human, becoming a question of pure individual choice. The concept of Radical Secularization wants to bring home this all-changing revolution in the spiritual landscape of today. Without acknowledging it profoundly enough, we cannot even begin to discuss adequately the future of human religiosity After Secularization. According to the traditional ontotheological temperament, meaning was somehow already there in reality, waiting for us to be found. All meaning had its ultimate source in the First Cause, the eternal causa sui. If humans or other intelligent beings failed to see meaning in reality, it was in one way or another their own fault, because it certainly was there, at least in the mind of the Highest Being (see Rom 1:19-20). In a way, everything that happened remained in the absolutely trans-human mind, as Robert Spaemann tried to of the argument lies elsewhere. For a pertinent criticism of an “analogous” approach to religion (“metaphysics of presence”), in light of what he calls “anticipation,” see J.F. HAUGHT, The New Cosmic Story, pp. 34-42. 816 See R. BRAGUE, The Kingdom of Man. A Catholic appropriation of the more general anthropological turn has been developing since the Second Vatican Council (see RH, n. 14: Hic ipse homo est via Ecclesiae).

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bring home with his “last argument” for the existence of God.817 There was no nothingness, no infinite void, because the First Cause held everything together. Yet, because of that, there was no inviolable freedom either, no radical creativity, no infinitely open horizon of becoming. Everything went on as planned and guided by the Highest Being, all other beings being mere brains in its vat. This ontotheological metaphysics found its logical reflection in the pre-modern societal system, based on eternal hierarchy and submission. One who has recognized the meaning of Radical Secularization approaches the surrounding reality quite differently. Everything which is could also be otherwise than it in fact is. There is no pre-given order to things that we could grasp with our mind a priori. In the infinite universe any idea of a definitive trans-human meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself loses thus its prima facie meaningfulness. By contrast, the meaning which we struggle to find in reality, and by which we live, is related by and through participating in a concrete human form-of-life. And human meaning, the only meaning that exists for us human beings, is as fragile and vulnerable as everything human. As everything else in the universe, also we could either exist or not to exist. But we do exist now, and it is possible to find meaning in our existence here and now. Possible, not necessary. Liberated from the vat, we confront a world that is radically Other and infinitely open with respect to us, but to which we, perhaps, can learn to meaningfully relate. But how to really survive outside the vat? What kind of a society are we to build after ontotheology, what kind of a Church? The radically secular vision of reality is as terrifying as it is fascinating, as tremendous as it is exhilarating.

3. The Challenge of Post-Metaphysical Philosophy of Religion: Getting out of the Vat Alive Thinking through the concept of Radical Secularization–if we allow ourselves to step onto that path–leads us out of the ontotheological brains in a vat. We are not restricted by a pre-given order of reality, but instead, an infinite horizon spreads out before us. A human transcendentality which has come into itself, taken self-conscious responsibility for its forward movement, cannot accept any absolute trans-human limits to its dynamic. Radical Secularization overcomes the ontotheological temperament not so much with a rational argument, but by a profoundly honest and selfconscious decision of the will: “But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, 817

See R. SPAEMANN, Der Letzte Gottesbeweis.

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my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Hence there are no gods.”818 Does this, then, mean that religion has been definitively overcome and that no God can return After Secularization? What an epochal question! Who could imagine to be potent enough to answer it? One thing is clear, though. It would be all too metaphysical to answer this question either in the affirmative or in the negative.819 It all depends on what you mean by “religion” or “God.” The speculative process of secularization has led us to recognize that words do not have any eternal meanings in themselves, but their meaning depends on the cultural context in which they are used. And this context is continually changing, too. Furthermore, no one cultural tradition can claim superiority over all the others (except by force). The ontotheological God of the Western metaphysical tradition, consequently, was only one God among many other possible ones. Certain authorities (!) would undoubtedly still want to cling to that God. Nevertheless, it seems quite secure to claim that that God is not returning (except through an apocalypse which we are consciously disregarding here, because it would at the same time mean the end of thinking about God, of theology, that is). Yet, some other kind of God could very well return even After Secularization, perhaps even especially then. A God who does not happen at the expense of the human but who enhances its movement towards the ever-greater reality. A God before whom one could play music and dance, i.e. express the wholeness of one’s humanity.820 A God who would teach us to feel at home on this planet, in a mutually enhancing relationship with other species, without any need for exploiting them to merely human needs.821 Yes, such a God could very well return After Secularization. So imbued has the Western metaphysical tradition been with the ontotheological temperament that it might be necessary to give it up altogether. Words are instruments, and if a certain kind of instrument has become too worn out, it is better to dispense with it for another one. Postmodern, truly post-metaphysical philosophy of religion can be defined as the attempt at thinking about God without the ontotheological temperament, 818

F. NIETZSCHE, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, XXIV. The short-lived “death-of-God-theology” of the 1960s was still far too deeply steeped in the Western metaphysical tradition to allow for a truly new beginning of theology After Secularization. That is the reason why it is not discussed here more in detail. It was certainly needed in its time, but it did not succeed in overcoming its particular place in time. 820 See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 72. 821 See M. JOHNSTON, Saving God; E.A. JOHNSON, Quest for the Living God; S. MCFAGUE, A New Climate for Theology. 819

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duly acknowledging Radical Secularization and thus situating oneself definitively After Secularization. It is not clear if it can succeed in its attempt, however. Can “God” and “religion” be retrieved from ontotheology or are they definitively remnants of the past (nostalgia for some, burden for others)? The question cannot be answered in advance of trying to develop a truly post-metaphysical thinking about things religious. That cannot be done here. Yet, two essential components of a post-metaphysical philosophy of religion can be briefly mentioned. Without giving due attention to them, one cannot even begin to get out of the ontotheological vat alive.

3.1 The Death of the Metaphysical God First, the fundamental conviction of a post-metaphysical philosophy of religion is that the ontotheological God of the Western tradition really is and remains dead, i.e. impossible to be taken seriously in the first place. The God who as the absolutely transcendent causa sui held the whole universe together as one unified and comprehensible whole is not credible anymore. Step by step the progress of modern science has pushed the traces of the divinity further and further away, towards the vanishing point of pure abstraction (God as the “ground of being” or the “ultimate concern”). The universe which spreads itself before our eyes does not spontaneously show any pre-given order or readily understandable meaningfulness. On the contrary, reality as gradually revealed by modern science always seems to surpass our expectations and anticipations. The more we understand its structure and regularities, the more its irreducible Otherness shines forth. All “Gods” who claimed to know the secrets of reality have been shown to be mere human creations, products of a certain cultural constellation and power-struggle. Whether any pre-modern religious tradition of humanity will succeed in credibly adapting itself to our intellectual situation after the modern break is still an open question. Yet, the ontotheological God is definitively a thing of the past. The Death of God is no mere intellectual issue, however, as revolutionary as the development of modern science has been for our manner of understanding our way-of-being-in-the-world. Even more so, the death of the ontotheological God is built into the constitution of our liberal democracies. We in the West do not accept any trans-human authorities anymore for our communal forms-of-life. No pre-given hierarchical principle or eternal tradition or supposed “naturalness” is allowed to determine the life in liberal democracies. On the contrary, it is up to us and us, alone, to arrive at the best possible manner of arranging our societal existence–a continuous, extremely vulnerable project, as everything truly

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human is, always under the threat of being hijacked by some violent will to power. A radically secular human transcendentality, which has come to fully assimilate its spatio-temporal existence into its self-understanding, cannot accept any intervening trans-human intentionalities; in fact, it transcendentally refuses all such. Yet, human transcendentality can obviously never fully come into itself by assimilating its necessary spatio-temporal context into its own selfunderstanding. Fully assimilating one’s transcendental condition in a certain time and place would mean becoming assimilated by it. That will happen for all of us in the grave, quite literally. Until that, we, by contrast, struggle to overcome our spatio-temporal limitations. As was analyzed above in Chapter 3, this does not happen by denying our situatedness in a certain cultural (linguistic, national, religious…) tradition, but by aspiring to relate it to the broader reality. In this fundamental tension between the singular and the universal, the concrete and the abstract, the a posteriori and the a priori, human transcendentality moves and thus lives, as was described in the central part of this study. When the transcendental movement closes itself into a single one dimension of reality, it necessarily stops moving and thus dies–even though it would not recognize it itself (as happens in all sorts of traditionalism822). The Death of God signifies the end of a specific formation of human transcendentality, namely that of the Western, Greco-Roman, metaphysical tradition. Only an aesthetically blind person could not see the greatness of the Greek spirit which molded European civilization for two millennia, and which successively spread to the whole world. The Greek clarification of being gave unprecedented spiritual energy to the ensuing Western civilization, which ultimately let it conquer the entire planet. But precisely in its spread beyond the narrow European bounds, the Greek, essentially ontotheological, spirit showed its radical self-centeredness. With how much violence did the Western formation of human transcendentality conquer the world? How many innocent victims (both human and non-human) did the onset of a global hyperpluralism require? Was the price really worth paying, as inevitable as it now seems to have been? The inherent violence of the Western metaphysical tradition was no accident.823 If one is certain of having grasped the fundamental structure of 822

As such, the onwards movement of human transcendentality is in no way opposed to past tradition–dynamically understood–but is, on the contrary, made possible by it. As Jaroslav Pelikan’s immortal summary puts it: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living” (The Vindication of Tradition, p. 65). 823 As argued by Levinas from Totality and Infinity onwards.

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reality, and its essential order, how could one not end up taking a violent posture towards the Other who conceptualizes reality in a different style (or does not conceptualize it at all)? If one absolutizes the way-of-being-in-theworld of one’s own cultural tradition as the only true one, or even as the truest one, how could one not look down on all the others (if one manages to see them to begin with)? Through the extremely ambivalent process of Western modernization, it has nevertheless become clear that the Western tradition–epitomized by its ontotheological metaphysics–is only one amongst many other human ways-of-being-in-the-world, and by no means the unquestionably best one. At the same time, this recognition of the limits of the West signifies the end of its absolutist metaphysics. In other words, by recognizing that one very well can live without the ontotheological God means overcoming him. The acknowledgment of Radical Secularization and the Death of God coincide, as was argued above. It is, however, one thing to announce the Death of God and to really live it. Nietzsche’s prophetic “madman” knew it was still too early,824 and too early it might still be at the beginning of the third millennium, as our great pains at even sketching the broad outlines of Radical Secularization show. The Western metaphysical tradition might be a particularly clear, or betterput: violent, example of human religiosity, but it is by no means the only one. On the contrary, all human cultural traditions before and outside Western modernity have been and continue to be religiously, i.e. ontotheologically, constituted, albeit in various ways and degrees. This has certainly something to do with the genealogical structure of human transcendentality. Having come only gradually and very recently into existence, human transcendentality is only beginning to explore its inherent possibilities. For millennia it imagined that some objectively pre-given trans-human intentionality already had done its work ready for it. And how could it have been otherwise in a reality which clearly is not of our making? Surely the undoubtable meaningfulness in human existence must come from the outside? After Secularization, we are only beginning to take the first steps towards an existence, where all meaningfulness must be related to human existence in its limitless opening towards reality. Somehow, the “human” is only now beginning to emerge. Will it include some kind of reference to the “divine”? This is a difficult project, and it is not at all self-evident if we ever will accomplish it. We might be too profoundly steeped in religion (at least in the present form of humanity). Perhaps our consciousness simply cannot fully acknowledge the radically secular character of being human? Perhaps 824

See F. NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, §125.

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we are too scared to step out of the ontotheological vat? We might not be able to bear the fact that reality also could be radically different than it now happens to be, that it in fact is radically different beyond our paramount form-of-life. Furthermore, we would have to grapple with the fact that everything can happen any time, that nothing really is certain. And most importantly, the fact that we all shall ultimately die and return to the earth that we originally come from. How could a finite transcendentality acknowledge its finitude without at the same time acknowledging an infinite term to its own movement? And in any case, what marvelous things were made in the belief that we human beings are so very special, that the movement of our transcendentality really is directed towards the infinity of Being itself! That is why the Death of God requires constant reminding, and an active work of mourning. While the mourning is still going on, while the metaphysical God’s decomposition is still to be smelled,825 it is only understandable that drawbacks will occur. Either out of a nostalgia for the past, or of a fear of the future (and of an impatience amidst the present). Gods keep on returning as long as the Death of God has not been fully assimilated into our consciousness. But they never return like they were before, but always only as symptoms of the divine decomposition.826 The fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization reminds us of this. In sum, the Death of God remains a challenge for the thinking about God that wants to take the present cultural situation seriously. A truly God-less thinking remains yet to be explicated. May we avoid explicating it in an ontotheological fashion! For that reason, constant reminders of the Death of God are required. Only then, perhaps, the radically secular or genuinely God-less thinking might begin to approach the truly divine God.827

3.2 The Kenosis of the Metaphysical God If the death of the metaphysical God is a process of mourning still going on, how should one proceed in a healthy direction? The pathology of falling back to ontotheological metaphysics is always there lurking behind all our efforts of going forwards. The burden of our Western tradition is simply so heavy. Even behind the most avowedly post-modern and post-metaphysical philosophies of religion there all too often shows itself the inherent spiritual 825

See F. NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, §125. This is the reason why neo-traditionalist movements, inside and outside the Church, will not have a more enduring relevance despite their temporal popularity. Perhaps they are needed for our communal mourning of the Death of God? 827 See M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, p. 72. 826

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violence of the Western metaphysical tradition. Certainly, any deus ex machina is no longer a serious option for a humanity come of age,828 but neither can its shadow be waved away by a mere fiat. The mourning must be duly done to its necessary end; only then can one really become free again (or for the first time). In other words, emancipating oneself of one’s religious tradition requires that one engages in it in a renewed way. Now not in order to remain inside one’s religious tradition, but to overcome it by relating it nonviolently to contemporary global hyperpluralism–an epochal event in which something radically new is born (the planetization of humanity).829 The step forward requires the step backward, as was argued in the preceding genealogy of Radical Secularization.830 Imagining that one can accomplish the step forward simply just like that (by describing oneself as a religious “none”), is a deep illusion. But where in one’s tradition could one find the impetus for going beyond it? How could a religion make room for nonreligion? Already the mere fact that one can pose the question is significant. Given the original ubiquity of religion, it is not self-evident that humans would or even could begin questioning all trans-human limits to the movement of their own transcendentality. Yet, precisely this is what happened in the Christian tradition. The Western Christian tradition is unique among all religious traditions in that it itself prepared the way for secularization as world’s becoming ever-more worldly, and the human’s becoming evermore human, as was shown above in Chapter 4. In Gauchet’s striking words, Christianity’s world-historical significance is that it became the first religion to allow for departing from religion.831 Whether that is possible in other religious traditions, too, is not certain. It remains to be seen a posteriori. But then again, even for Christianity the departure from religion remains an open task, a mission to be accomplished. Christianity, like any living religious tradition, is a “large loose baggy monster,”832 incorporating in itself a myriad of different religious and cultural traits. As time goes on, certain traits remain, while others drop off, but, in any case, the whole is in a constant state of becoming. So strong and violently intimate has the coupling of the Gospel with Greek metaphysics been that for many the two 828

See D. BONHOEFFER, Letters and Papers from Prison, pp. 281-282, 359-361. See P. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, The Future of Man, pp. 124-133. 830 The Heideggerian inspiration should be evident concerning this modus procedendi: see, for example, M. HEIDEGGER, Identity and Difference, pp. 72-73. 831 See M. GAUCHET, The Disenchantment of the World, p. 101. 832 To quote Henry James’s famous characterization of nineteenth-century novels. 829

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continue to belong essentially together. Consequently, a self-avowedly post-metaphysical thinking about Christianity finds itself in the task of finding such an entry into the Christian message that would let this be read in a decidedly post-metaphysical fashion from inside itself. That is the necessary sine qua non for developing a truly post-metaphysical thinking about the Christian religion. Various thinkers, both philosophers of religion and theologians, have claimed to find such an entry into Christianity in St. Paul’s proclamation of the kenosis of the Son of God as the privileged place for the Revelation of the Glory of God.833 The crucial passage, in fact an early Christian hymn preceding Paul himself, goes as follows (Phil 2:5-11): Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied (ekénǀsen) himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Here St. Paul centers the whole Christian message on the one man Jesus Christ, and especially on his redemptory death on the cross. According to Paul’s reading of the Christ event, God reveals his full divine glory only in the human abasement of his Son Christ Jesus. The divinity preached by Paul is thus characterized, not by self-possession as the Greeks thought, but by self-denial for the Other (see DCE, n. 9). The Christian God becomes his radical Other, human, and a suffering human, for that, and precisely thus shows his true divinity. The clearest–initially, at least–sign of this divine, kenotic style is the death of Jesus on the cross. For St. Paul, the cross becomes the emblem of God’s Self-Revelation to human beings and the only way for humans to regain a living contact with their Creator. God, in fact, reconciled the whole world with himself in Christ Jesus, making all things new (see 2 Cor 5:1421). Consequently, as Paul writes in another passage, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). The early Christian predication of the kenosis of God introduced a 833

For a general overview of the kenotic motif in the Christian tradition, see D.G. DAWE, The Form of a Servant. See also H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Mysterium Paschale, pp. 23-36.

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revolutionary spiritual dialectic into the religious evolution of humanity. Certainly, for ages had the Gods taken human forms and participated in all things human, including suffering and death and new life.834 As such, connecting divinity and humanity somehow was nothing new. Indeed, divinity and humanity must be somehow connected with each other, if we humans are to know anything about the former, as was argued above in Chapter 4. Christianity’s religious novelty is the “how” of its connecting the divine with the human. In light of the Christian Gospel, the divine does not happen outside or against the human anymore, but precisely in and through the human, especially in its most vulnerably human features of suffering and death. Furthermore, the crucial point here is that the identification of God with the suffering and dying of Jesus is no diminution of divinity but exactly its definitive eruption into the world. The kenotic God is no less God than the metaphysical one. On the contrary, according to Christian preaching, it is precisely in and through his human abasement that God reveals his true divinity, now inseparably united with the true humanity of Jesus Christ.835 This is a paradox in the highest degree, and to which degree one has the courage to enter into this paradoxical tension determines the stature of one’s being a Christian theologian. So heavy was the weight of Greek metaphysics that it took a long time for Christian thinkers to really begin to think about the kenosis of God. For certain, the emphasis on God’s self-identification with the suffering and dying (and even more so, dead) Jesus survived and lived on in the various mystical currents of the Christian tradition, while it tended to become ignored in the official ecclesial tradition and its theology. The proclamation of the divine kenosis can hardly be combined with a struggle for earthly power and authority. Only from late medieval period onwards, the human Jesus as the privileged locus of God’s Self-Revelation began to gain more ground in broader theological thinking. The significance of the devotio moderna is well known, as is its influence on Luther and other Reformers, including the Catholic ones, especially St. Ignatius of Loyola. Hegel’s philosophy of religion is essentially kenotic, and in his wake much of 834

For historical examples on “dying and rising” Gods from the ancient Near East, the genealogical context of the Christian Revelation, see T.N.D. METTINGER, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising” Gods in the Ancient Near East. 835 Aquinas expressed this fundamental theological factum by saying that God manifests his omnipotence particularly by exercising mercy (see ST, II-II, q. 30, a. 4). In a similar vein, DV, n. 13 speaks about the “marvellous condescension” (admirabilis condescensio) of the Triune God who adapts his language to our human weakness.

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modern Western thinking about religion took a rather kenotic turn. In short, it appears that the modern West’s particular fate to understand its relationship with its religious past goes through the kenotic lens.836 The kenotic character of the particularly Western modernizationsecularization process has been recognized by several contemporary readers of the signs of the times, by no means necessarily “religious” ones. Perhaps most famously, the Italian hermeneutic philosopher Gianni Vattimo interpreted the whole history of Western civilization as a gradual weakening of the metaphysical, and inherently violent, power-structures, in thinking as well as in society.837 Superficially observed, the coming of secular modernity in the West may appear as a weakening of the influence of Christianity in this cultural sphere. Vattimo, by contrast, came to view secularization as ushered by the Christian message itself, thus finding his own way back to the faith of his youth; certainly not to the authoritative faith of much of the ecclesial tradition, but to the caritative faith of the Gospel.838 Here the hermeneutic key to the Christian meaning of secularization is to be found in Christianity itself, namely in its kenotic message of the God of Love who for the salvation of the Other is ready to even negate himself, precisely thus revealing his true nature.839 The realization of this enabled Vattimo to joyously thank God for his atheism (grazie a Dio sono ateo), and to confess cautiously “to believe to believe” (credere di credere).840 In a similar vein, the French deconstructionist philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy sought for the origins and deeper meaning of Western modernity in the Christian faith itself.841 According to his analysis, it is no accident that the definitive departure from religion happened only in the modern West, in the wake of Latin Christendom. Western secularization was made possible by the Christian message, because it is itself “deconstructive,” i.e. its own inner structure allows or even necessitates its own dismissal. Consequently, Nancy deconstructs Christianity by letting it deconstruct itself by and 836

For historical references, see D.G. DAWE, The Form of a Servant. The best-known champion of the European philosophical current of “weak thought” (pensiero debole), Vattimo offers a good summary of his mature thought in the texts collected in G. VATTIMO, After Reality. 838 Beautifully chronicled and philosophically analyzed in G. VATTIMO, Belief. 839 See G. VATTIMO, Belief, pp. 49-50. 840 See J.D. CAPUTO–G. VATTIMO, After the Death of God, p. 92; G. VATTIMO, Belief, pp. 69-70. 841 See J.-L. NANCY, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity. For a good overview of Nancy’s deconstructionist “atheology,” see C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism, pp. 111-121. 837

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through its own proclamation of the kenosis of God. The Christian God himself decided to enter into space and time, in secular becoming, thus ending the original ubiquity of religion. The end-result is no “deconstructed Christianity” but a complete departure from religion altogether, made possible by the Christian religion itself. Thus, in Nancy’s deconstruction, “The structure of origin of Christianity is the proclamation of its end.”842 These sporadic observations are merely intended as indications of the direction a post-metaphysical thinking about religion is to take if it is to be truly postmetaphysical, and postreligious in the same breath. Getting out of the ontotheological brains in a vat is no easy challenge. First, one must remember to cling strongly to the Death of God: the old metaphysical God cannot and must not return, despite all the nostalgia we sometimes would feel for him (anyway, it felt somehow secure inside the vat). Second, one should not pretend that the Death of God can be simply announced just like that. On the contrary, so long has religion defined all human ways-of-beingin-the-world that truly entering into a completely nonreligious human formof-life will require much spiritual effort (if it ever totally becomes possible, at least given the psycho-physiological constitution human beings still have). To put it briefly, even here the concept of Radical Secularization serves as a necessary control case: only if we manage to imagine and conceptualize complete nonreligion, can we be said to have come out of the ontotheological vat alive. As long as our concept of “Radical Secularization” retains traits of the metaphysical dualism between “theism” and “atheism,” we are still in the process of mourning the Death of God and have not really reached the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization.

3.3 Interrupting the Ontotheological Temperament: Avoiding the Impotency of Modern Western Philosophy of Religion If the successful construction of the concept of Radical Secularization would serve as a positive control for a truly postmetaphysical thinking about God, its failure signifies a negative control for not yet having reached beyond the binary dynamics of Western secularization (and its inherent spiritual violence). The ontotheological temperament is no mere theoretical issue, however, but shows itself first and foremost in how one relates one’s own thinking to that of others. It makes no real difference even if one loudly denounces the “metaphysics of presence” and its “violence,” but nevertheless in fact continues to absolutize one’s own thinking with respect to others. 842

J.-L. NANCY, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, p. 149.

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“Metaphysics” can continue to be violent even when transported from the upper world to here below, perhaps even especially then. To avoid the ontotheological temperament, much more is needed than pious words. This can be clearly seen in much of modern Western philosophy of religion. Both in its continental and analytic forms, modern Western thinking about religion has strived to discuss religion by relating it to a specific formation of human transcendentality, namely that of Western modernity. The aim, in Kant’s classical formula, has been to either justify or denounce religion “within the bounds of bare reason.”843 This, however, is a flawed enterprise to begin with, resulting in what can be called the “impotency of modern Western philosophy of religion.”844 Religion as religion is based on unconditional judgements about reality, i.e. judgements about reality as God sees it in itself. Religious judgements cannot therefore be intelligibly conditioned by any particular conception of reality. Or of course they can, but that only changes the subject totally. In other words, modern Western thinking about religion has tended to create a religion of its own, about the rationality or irrationality of which it has then debated. That is a completely impotent way of approaching the deeper, pre-modern religious traditions of humanity, however, based as these are on unconditional judgements about reality. Unfortunately, modern philosophy of religion has more often than not been unconscious of its own impotency with respect to more original human religiosity. Quite naively it has aspired to discuss the deepest existential questions of humanity without having a potent or spiritually dense enough conceptuality to do that. The impotency of modern Western philosophy of religion is not only an intellectual blunder, but has serious moral consequences, too. In that it shows itself to be equally affected by the ontotheological temperament. Premodern religion cannot potently be approached by the means of modern secular reason.845 Nevertheless, modern Western thinking cannot help trying to do precisely that. In the process, modern Western philosophy of religion comes to found ever-new religions of its own, always in the image and likeness of the philosopher of religion in question. These functionalist, human-made religions have very little, if anything, to do with traditional religions. Otherwise put, modern Western philosophy of religion tends to present as a religion something which is only a creation of its own, without so much to do with the concrete religious traditions of humanity. This is both its impotency and its violence: it displays a very particular formation of human transcendentality as universal, thus blocking the way towards the 843

See I. KANT, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. See A. PENTTINEN, Om den moderna religionsfilosofins impotens. 845 This remains an adequate conclusion of J. MILBANK, Theology and Social Theory. 844

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ever-greater reality. Blocking the participation of human transcendentality in the ever-broadening horizon of being is the hallmark of spiritual violence. Consider, for instance, how the Biblical concept of kenosis is generally approached in contemporary, self-avowedly “post-metaphysical,” philosophy of religion, including the two prominent authors mentioned above.846 The original motivation for considering the kenosis in philosophy is that this concept seems to capture especially clearly the specific character of the Christian faith, and successively that of Western secular modernity. To put it briefly, one aspires to do the same movement in speculative thinking that Western modernity has in fact done in empirical history, namely moving beyond Christianity by and through Christianity itself. In this intellectual aspiration, post-metaphysical thinkers emphasize the style of the Christian God’s revealing itself: not by power and authority, but by self-emptying love for the Other. Somehow the Biblical God himself appears to want to move beyond himself to reach human beings, precisely thus revealing his true nature. The kenosis of the Son of God becomes thus the key to the right understanding of the Christian God, as one author has recently put it: However, in this free act of self-limitation, through which God empties himself of himself in order to become fully human, God nevertheless equally remains God: the self-revelation of God takes places [!] precisely as the human life of Jesus Christ. […] Without ceasing to be God, he therefore emptied himself of his divinity for the sake of humanity, namely so that it might receive his revelation and be saved thereby.847

This is clearly very potent thinking about the Christian Revelation. It testifies to the necessary humility to let the kenosis show itself from itself, as it really is, without violently pressing it into any predefined framework. The essential point to note is that in the kenosis the Christian God does not merely empty himself of his divinity, but precisely by doing so he reveals his true divine nature as self-communicating Love. By “self-limiting” himself, the Triune God reveals himself as limitless Love. This central paradox of the Christian faith should be able to be recognized by any person who really wants to understand Christianity and its relation to secular Western modernity, quite irrespective of whether one calls oneself “philosopher” or “theologian,” or “religious” or “non-religious.” Once more: according to the Christian Revelation, God shows himself to be God 846

For a perspicuous overview, see N. CASSIDY-DEKETELAERE, “Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis”. 847 N. CASSIDY-DEKETELAERE, “Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis”, p. 132, referring to D.G. DAWE, The Form of a Servant, pp. 13-14.

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exactly by and through becoming human, without any detriment to either but to the glorification of both (the Chalcedonian dogma again as the hermeneutical key to all things Christian). Yet, in their more elaborated approach to the kenosis, the supposedly post-metaphysical philosophers of religion typically lose this initial and theologically correct starting point out of their view. Yes, in their attempt at speculatively understanding the spiritual genesis of the modern West, they adequately connect it with the Christian doctrine of the kenotic God who exactly by distancing himself from his divinity really enters into it, i.e. reveals it to the fallen world. But then immediately in the next move, they mystically forget this theologically sound analysis of the Christian Revelation and reinterpret it philosophically as God’s withdrawing from reality, making space for the ever-worldly world.848 In light of the theologically sharp observation of the kenotic nature of the Christian God, the post-metaphysical philosophers of religion explain the disappearance of God by and through Western secularization. As if God, nevertheless, by and through becoming human would cease to be truly God.849 In sum, by turning towards theology, post-metaphysical thinking aspires to turn away from theology.850 This cannot be done, however, at least not yet. The Christian tradition, despite all announcement to the contrary, is still so living in the post-secular West that one cannot completely distance oneself from it without an inherently violent move, thus ending up in a suffocating Sprachnot. The speculative control for this, as suggested above, is the failure of the postmetaphysical philosophers of religion to develop a coherent concept of complete nonreligion or a truly “post-theological” thinking.851 However strongly they already would like to move beyond religion and theology, they still remain undeniably trapped inside the Christian symbolic universe (as all of us do). Getting out of the ontotheological brains in a vat shows itself to be extremely difficult even in this case. Even Vattimo is still forced to exclaim: “Thank God, I’m an atheist.” Non-religious people cannot help defining their worldview still as being somehow in contrast to religious 848

This movement is especially clearly illustrated, in reference to Levinas, Vattimo, and Nancy, by N. CASSIDY-DEKETELAERE, “Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis”, pp. 139-144. 849 The infinite tension between the true divinity and the true humanity of Christ is impossible to bear for any thinking. Recognizing this might be the one factor that characterizes theology as theology in contrast to philosophy (theology as the humility of thinking). 850 See N. CASSIDY-DEKETELAERE, “Towards a Phenomenology of Kenosis”, p. 132. 851 See C. WATKIN, Difficult Atheism.

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ones.852 They have not yet got out of the ontotheological vat alive. Yet, the radically secular intuition is clearly there. It cannot be denied as such. Even though we might not (yet!) be able to fully think through complete nonreligion, the concept exists. It arises, and must arise, from the personally experienced impossibility of taking religion seriously, marking a radical break in one’s cultural tradition. The universe simply does not appear to be like traditional religion–all traditional religions!–claimed it to be. This radically secular mentality is not produced by the liberal ethos of our modern democracies, but is certainly strengthened by it: as a matter of fact, we modern Westerners live in societies into which God or any other trans-human intentionality does not constitutionally enter, and in which, indeed, any such entrance is constitutionally refused outside the sphere of one’s individual existence. Be that as it may, the intuition of Radical Secularization hovers in the air, felt by many, perhaps, but still impossible to be satisfyingly put into words. This is the reason why the concept of Radical Secularization is necessarily both speculative and empirical. It is designed to capture the essence of the ongoing epochal shift from a spiritual point of view and to present it for future theological thinking: the old does not exist anymore, but the new has not yet arrived. They who aspire to read the signs of our times are thus forced to move in a liminal twilight-zone.853 But is the surrounding darkness the dusk of the old or the dawn of the new?854 In an attempt to read the signs of our times adequately and profoundly enough, it is quite secondary whether one decides to call oneself a “theologian” or “philosopher,” or whether one categorizes oneself abstractly as “nonreligious” or as adhering to some concrete “religion.” The question that matters is whether one succeeds in taking such a posture towards our past religious tradition that would let one go courageously towards the open future of a sustainable human existence on this planet. We are all there in the fundamentally same hermeneutical condition in the post-secular West. We know that our whole culture has been crucially molded by the Christian tradition, in its strange combination with the Greek metaphysical one. At the same time, we know that this tradition is not readily available anymore After Secularization. Reality is much more complicated and beautiful than the late Latin Christendom could even imagine. We have to go forward into contemporary global hyperpluralism, without, however, losing ourselves into it. This is to be done, but how? 852

From a sociological perspective, see J. BLANKHOLM, The Secular Paradox. From a Catholic ecclesiological perspective, see M. FAGGIOLI, The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis. 854 Or the afternoon? See T. HALÍK, Der Nachmittag des Christentums?. 853

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On the other hand, therefore, we still clearly lack the intellectual means to go forward. Speculatively put, we still lack the words to conceptualize the way-of-being-in-the-world that already fully acknowledges the disappearance of Latin Christendom and its “religion.” The concept of Radical Secularization is the speculative emblem of this epochal challenge. History certainly will go forwards, as it always does, but if we want to go on with it, we had better to invest more intellectual energy into understanding its inner motivation and future direction, in the Church as well as in society at large. To put it briefly, a more potent thinking about our religious past is needed: a thinking that would definitively interrupt the ontotheological temperament and thus avoid the impotency of modern Western philosophy of religion. A thinking that would allow for Radical Secularization to show itself from itself, as it really is, even though an explicit conceptualization of it would still be beyond our reach. Such a thinking could succeed in overcoming the inner dualism of the Western metaphysical tradition and its inbuilt spiritual violence. Consequently, such a thinking could help us enter into contemporary global hyperpluralization, by and through which we only can develop our common humanity and live our responsibility for the whole planet.855 Kenosis is the way to go; here the post-metaphysical philosophers of religion are right. But how to proceed on that road without falling again into the spiritual violence of the Western metaphysical tradition? Certainly, once liberated from him (better:it), we do not want the metaphysical God to return (occasional religious regressions apart). On the other hand, we need all the help we can get in our challenge to develop a sustainable human form-of-life on this planet. Could the Christian tradition still harbor such spiritual energy that would help us go forward, rather than blocking the way? The question is the same as whether the Christian faith itself would allow for the reality of Radical Secularization. Could a human transcendentality, which has completely come into itself, find a movingspace inside the Christian Revelation? That would be a speculative test for the future potential of Christianity amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism, where no cultural hegemony and spiritual violence can be allowed for. Perhaps in light of the paradox of Christianity we could also understand the paradox of Radical Secularization. Perhaps, to put it sharply, to be radically secular we have to become profoundly Christian enough, even to the very 855

Developing such a planetary consciousness that would allow humanity to exist in a mutually enhancing relationship with the global ecosystem was identified as the “Great Work” of future humanity by Thomas Berry (see T. BERRY, The Great Work).

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roots of our being?856 It is not about personal decisions here, however. Identity thinking would only block the evolution of future, radically polyhedric thinking. Whether one wants to call oneself “Christian” or “religious” or “non-religious,” or “theologian” or “philosopher of religion (of nonreligion?)” is totally uninteresting in this context. The issue concerns precisely overcoming such binary etiquettes. What matters is the potency of one’s thinking: can you think in a way that would meaningfully connect you with the past and adequately orient you towards the future? Amidst the ongoing epochal shift, this is a fundamental challenge for present thinking, both philosophical and theological. To put it even more sharply: Can you think Radical Secularization? Do you have the courage to enter into its inner logic and dynamism without losing yourself in it (the fate of Icarus…)?

4. Back to Balthasar, and Beyond: The Historical Kenosis of the Triune God Some indications are now given for a positive fundamental theology of Radical Secularization. The Balthasarian aesthetic approach, introduced at the beginning of this study, will especially continue to guide us. The aim is not to develop a full-blown theological appraisal of Radical Secularization, however. Here we can only point towards the possibility of finding a rightful place for Radical Secularization inside the Christian Revelation itself, understood as the Self-Communication of the Triune God in and through concrete human history (see DV, nn. 2-6). The central challenge here is to attain such a posture towards the Christian Revelation that would allow it to show itself from itself as it in itself really is,857 and to ask whether it precisely as such could make room 856

Remember Ernst Bloch’s original intuition that “[o]nly a good atheist can be a good Christian, and only a Christian can be a good atheist” (E. BLOCH, Atheism in Christianity, p. 15). This could be read as the Christian paradox that overcomes both theism and atheism. In a Christian perspective, at any rate, the futures of religion and post-/nonreligion will go hand in hand towards the open horizon in front of us. Even for this radical re-departure, however, there are inspirational precedents in the Christian tradition. From a mystical-spiritual perspective, see Meister Eckhart’s famous prayer to God to free him from God (insightfully discussed in J.D. CAPUTO, More Radical Hermeneutics, pp. 249-263). Even St. Francis of Assisi reminds us in his Canticle of the Creatures that “no human is worthy to mention Your name.” Spiritual courage and humility are both equally needed for the future theological thinking to emerge. 857 See Heidegger’s definition of the phenomenological task in Being and Time, 7C.

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for Radical Secularization as complete nonreligion. A Christian believer can already in advance be certain of the issue: in Christ Jesus the Triune God has reconciled the entire reality with himself. Nothing can thus be completely foreign to or perfectly separated from the Triune God. In fact, the Christian is certain that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), as also the natural human religiosity always, however dimly and like in a mirror, has intuited. But how can this basic intuition be combined with the reality of Radical Secularization, without relativizing either, but fully acknowledging both? This is the question. Both the very question and the desire to answer it arise from the Christian faith. We would not even pose the question, if we were not interested in the fate of Christianity in today’s globalized, hyperpluralistic world; and we would not even dare to try to answer it, if we did not trust in Christianity’s potency in front of this question. In an academic context, the question of one’s own personal faith or the lack thereof is not relevant, however (better leave it to God). What is relevant, is the potency or impotency of one’s thinking about the Christian faith, i.e. whether one succeeds in expressing it as it really is, according to its own selfunderstanding, or whether one reduces it according to one’s own prejudices and ways of thinking. The latter was the besetting sin of the ontotheological temperament, which ultimately led to spiritual violence, still to be seen in the impotency of modern Western philosophizing about religion. That is to be avoided at any cost. After Secularization spiritual violence–meaning reference to any trans-human intentionalities that would limit or even block the movement of human transcendentality–is not allowed anymore. This is the radically secular credo adopted here. How, then, to attain such a posture of spiritual detachment and selftranscendence that would let the Other reveal itself in its utter Otherness, without violently recreating it in one’s own image? This is the one question that Radical Secularization poses to any religious tradition, the Christian one in the present case, as well as to nonreligiosity itself. How can we acknowledge the reality of the Other precisely as they are, without criticizing, judging or evaluating them in any way? The point, of course, is not that we should relate thus to everything. There are many things in the world that one should criticize and judge, absolutely negatively even in some cases (in the case of absolute evil). Yet, if we relate with judgement to everything in our surroundings, our way-ofbeing-in-the-world becomes equally corrupted. In any case, without being able to attain a posture of radical detachment and self-transcendence, we cannot even hope of developing a sustainable relationship with this world of ours that, nevertheless, is not ours. Hence, the concept of Radical

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Secularization can serve as a speculative exercise for imagining a common humanity which duly takes care of its common home. In sum, such a modus procedendi, such an intellectual structure, is needed which would not already in advance push us towards a certain restricted way of relating to reality, thus limiting its infinite multiformity. And this is not about any abstract idea but about a very concrete reality. The question is, most importantly, can I succeed in relating to the Other human being, my sister and my brother, as they really are, without molding them in my own image and likeness (the ultimate idolatry, spiritual violence par excellence)? The Christian believer finds such an absolutely nonviolent spiritual structure in the Christian Revelation itself. In the Good News, transmitted by the Church, of the Son of God given to us in perfect freedom to our salvation something radically new appears. To return to the Balthasarian, “radically objective,” starting point of this book (the starting point and the ending point always ultimately coincide in speculative thinking): Such a structure calls, in the first place, for a radical objectivity: in the subject himself the light of faith is truly a light only if man looks away from himself and, renouncing his own evidence, entrusts himself to the Source that, as a result of grace, stands wide-open before him. But he is capable of achieving such interior self-transcendence perfectly and without a secret mystical identification, only if he recognises the Source of the Light in the form of Jesus Christ, as this form reveals itself to him within the sphere of the Church.858

This is the radically objective character of the Christian spiritual movement. The Christian believer has come to perceive the divine Light in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, dead and risen for the life of the world. The Christian theologian then takes upon themselves the task of expressing the Christian message as intelligibly as possible in their particular spatiotemporal context. Only thus can the Gospel produce its cruciform effect in the world, i.e. to enter as a radical contradiction into people’s lives, revealing themselves as radical contradictions in a desperate need of salvation by the Other than them. Only such Christian thinking (and preaching) would be potent enough for the ongoing epochal transformation of humanity. In this light, the task for Christian theology (whether it directs itself outside or inside the Church is ultimately quite secondary) is to express the salvatory kenosis of the Triune God in our midst, but in such a manner that 858

H.U. VON BALTHASAR, The Glory of the Lord, p. 216 (italics AP).

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“the cross of Christ might not be emptied (kenǀthƝ) of its power” (1 Cor 1:17). The historical kenosis of the Triune God does not mean that the divine or trans-human intentionality would be engulfed by spatio-temporal becoming, leaving merely intra-human meaningfulness in the world. Rather, the Christian kenosis reveals human reality in its intrinsic intertwining with divinity since the creation of the world, and vice versa. In the written Word of God–the beating heart of Christian theologizing (see DV, n. 24)–we do not have only the Christological hymn of the Philippians, but also that of the Colossians (1:15-20). The Christian paradox is that he, who is “before all things” and in whom “all things hold together” (see Col 1:17), is the very same Person who assumed human flesh and “became obedient to the point of death–even death on the cross” (Phil 2:8).859 This Christian paradox is there in the very fabric of our reality, being chosen and predestined before all ages (see Eph 1:4-6): the divine and the human belong inseparably together. Consequently, in light of the Christian Revelation, the finite human can only be adequately thought of in its limitless opening towards the infinite trans-human.860 The potency of one’s Christian thinking–indeed, its very “Christianity”–is judged according to how one manages to express this one cruciform paradox in one’s particular cultural context.

4.1 A Theology of the Holy Saturday: Kenosis before Kenosis An admirable spiritual detachment and personal self-transcendence characterizes the thinking of Hans Urs von Balthasar about the Christian Revelation. An unconditional respect and radical openness for the unfathomable richesses of the Word of God are necessary requisites for a truly Christian theologian, if they do not want to fall prey to the impotency of modern Western philosophy of religion. By looking away from himself and entrusting himself to the only Source of the Christian Revelation, Balthasar managed to develop a highly original and at the same time ecclesiastically fully loyal approach to the Biblical kenosis that can continue to guide us into the radically open horizon After Secularization.861 Some few indications of the Balthasarian line of thought are enough here, always related to the question of Radical Secularization. 859

See R. WILLIAMS, Christ the Heart of Creation. See P. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, The Future of Man, pp. 270-280. 861 In a synthetic but preliminary way, see Balthasar’s earlier work on the Triduum sacrum: H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Mysterium Paschale. This line of thought is then fully developed in his “dramatic soteriology”: H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, pp. 317-423. 860

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First, some methodological reminders are in order. Following the aesthetic approach to the Revelation, the theologian has no need to speculate (in the pejorative sense of the term). Instead, the theologian simply desires to perceive the Divine Self-Revelation as it really, in itself, is, i.e. as it shows itself from itself for the salvation of the world (see DV, nn. 2, 6). This, however, is anything but simple. The extremely restricted human mind typically relates and thus reduces the Divine Self-Revelation to its own prejudices. This is certainly inevitable, given the hermeneutical structure of all human understanding.862 Not least the theologian–especially they!– should honestly confess the limited nature of their knowledge. At the same time, though, the Christian theologian cannot deny the factum of God’s Revelation. God has spoken, and not only something, but Someone: namely his own personal Being in his Son Jesus Christ. We human beings might be at great pains to understand the Word of God, but the fact stands that God has spoken fully and perfectly in giving his only begotten Son. He has nothing more to say. Consequently, the theologian has no other possibility than trying to listen, however imperfectly, to God’s own perfect Self-Revelation. Yet, right at the center of the Divine Revelation, the theologian encounters an infinite void and meaninglessness that threatens to abolish the theological enterprise already before it could even begin its movement. Balthasar writes: If without the Son no one can see the Father (John 1, 18), nor anyone come to the Father (John 14, 6), and if, without him, the Father is revealed to nobody (Matthew 11, 27), then when the Son, the Word of the Father is dead, then no one can see God, hear or attain him. And this day exists, when the Son is dead, and the Father, accordingly inaccessible. Indeed, it is for the sake of this day that the Son became man.863

The fundamental theological attempt to situate Radical Secularization inside the Christian Revelation must focus on this cruciform center of the latter, i.e. on Jesus’s own pesach. Approaching the mysterium paschale, the theologian should not speculate at all, but simply contemplate the divine style of expressing the eternal truth in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the proposed Balthasarian manner of approaching theologically Radical Secularization, sketched briefly here. There was no way of knowing in advance that the transcendent God 862

See Gadamer’s revindication of prejudices and tradition in H.-G. GADAMER, Truth and Method, pp. 289-318. 863 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Mysterium Paschale, p. 49.

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would reveal himself exactly in the manner he did. For us, who try to understand the Paschal Mystery after it has been performed in history, the challenge is to capture both its perfectly contingent and absolutely necessary character. The Triune God had no necessity to reveal himself precisely in that fashion, but once he has done so, that particular historical form remains necessary because it is complete, expressing the whole of God’s Being. In comparison to the historical kenosis of the Triune God, even the Jupiter Symphony of Mozart appears as an accidental collection of different sounds. Such is the “more necessary than necessary” style of the Revelation of the Triune God.864 It overcomes all human-made metaphysics by revealing the true depth and breadth of reality’s coming into itself in and through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. Following the speculative (now in the positive meaning of the term) lead of the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov, Balthasar searched for the inner-Trinitarian roots of the economic Revelation of God’s unconditional love to us in the Paschal Mystery of Christ.865 It all starts on Good Friday. By climbing to Golgotha and rising to the cross, Jesus shows us the true nature of divine glory and lordship. The Triune God does not rule by annihilating the Other, but by taking it into himself, into his own communion of perfect love. God’s glory is not that of violent power but that of self-sacrificing love, as Balthasar puts it: God is not, in the first place, “absolute power,” but “absolute love,” and his sovereignty manifests itself not in holding on to what is its own but in its abandonment–all this in such a way that this sovereignty displays itself in transcending the opposition, known to us from the world, between power and impotence.866

By and through his redemptory suffering and death on the cross, Jesus reconciled the whole reality to God. There is no word or deed against God that could not become redeemed into God by the one and only sacrifice of Christ. By becoming a curse for us (see Gal 3:13), Jesus received all human disappointment and anger against God (and vice versa!) into himself, thus uniting it again in the communion of Love that the Triune God himself is. Consequently, the absolute and universal event of salvation on the cross is the reason why the Christian may hope that all will be saved. Or to be more precise, Christians not only may hope for universal salvation, but 864

On the Triune God as “more than necessary” (mehr als notwendig), see E. JÜNGEL, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 24-25, 395-396. 865 See S. BULGAKOV, The Lamb of God, pp. 213-247. 866 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Mysterium Paschale, p. 28.

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indeed should do that, as Balthasar controversially but convincingly argued.867 How could anything escape the all-embracing mercy of the Father, revealed to us in the kenosis of his only-begotten Son? However, there is even more to the Paschal Mystery of Jesus; yes, its deepest center is yet to come. On Good Friday we still see Jesus actively working out the salvation amidst the fallen world. Jesus brings God to where there is only opposition to him, hatred and violence and spiritual darkness. True, in the crucified one the violent dispute between theism and atheism becomes theologically solved as God turns himself against himself for the salvation of the world.868 But there it is still the question of either confessing or refuting God, either opposing him or consenting to him. In the cross event the metaphysical God descends down to the earth and enters into the violent dialectics of human religious evolution. Indeed, in light of the Christian Revelation, all spiritual violence in the world concentrates itself on the cross of Jesus. The inner logic of Radical Secularization, by contrast, requires a spiritual dynamic beyond such a binary, and inherently violent, dynamic of either-or. One must dig deeper in the mystery of the kenosis of the Triune God to relate it meaningfully to Radical Secularization. The Paschal Mystery of Christ by no means ends with his death on the cross. In fact, it only starts there. It is still rather simple to perceive God’s action in the suffering and death of Jesus. The Son of God is still there to be directly seen, as it were, forcefully acting out God’s salvation for the fallen world, like numerous mythic figures had aspired to do before and after him. It all changes once Jesus has died on the cross. He does not do anything anymore. On the contrary, now everything is done to him.869 He is taken down from the cross and laid down into the grave inside the earth. Now he is no longer to be seen either. In fact, he is never to be seen again in his earthly form. Once put into the grave, Jesus–the Light of the world– disappears from our sight for ever. On Good Friday, God can still be said to “reign” from the cross (see Matt 26:53), but after he has died and is put into the grave, he is there no longer (see Matt 27:46). Human religious evolution is at its turning point. Consequently, on Holy Saturday only an absolute silence reigns over the 867

See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”?, pp. 169177. 868 See E. JÜNGEL, God as the Mystery of the World, pp. 119, 346, 363. 869 Whereas theological thinking often has not had the courage to delve deeper into this mystery of divine passivity (perhaps fearing the ancient Magisterial condemnations of patripassianism), it has inspired many artists throughout the Christian centuries, as the numerous masterworks with the theme of depositio or pietà attest.

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earth. This is the day when God is not, because our only naturally human way to him is no longer there for us to see and touch and smell (see 1 John 1:1). One of Balthasar’s greatest theological merits was to put Holy Saturday again into its rightful place in the economy of Christian Revelation; indeed, into its very center.870 Inspired by the mystical visions of Adrienne von Speyr,871 Balthasar came to understand that the kenosis of the Triune God reaches much deeper than we can see or even anticipate with our bodily eyes. To follow the Paschal Mystery of Jesus into and through Holy Saturday, a radical spiritual transformation is required, and it can be a very painful process for the natural human being (see John 12:24). In fact, the kenosis of Holy Saturday, which reaches all the way to the deepest abysses of hell,872 reveals to us a God who in his very transcendent Being wants to be kenotic, and thus to make room for the radically Other.873 By and through his descent into hell–which we cannot see in any way, or otherwise experience with our natural human constitution874–the Son of God reveals unfathomable abysses in the divine nature itself. Certainly, in the Triune God himself, the radically Other remains eternally related to him as his natural Son in the perfect communion of the Holy Spirit, sealing their mutual love (the Spirit as the osculum Patris et Filii875). Yet, the possibility of a separation, even of a total and infinite separation from God, is there in God himself as the necessary presupposition of perfect love. As Balthasar 870

The Tridentine fashion of celebrating the Easter Vigil already on the morning of Holy Saturday obviously made it rather impossible for Roman Catholics to enter into the deeper spiritual dynamism of Jesus’s Paschal Mystery. Much has been improved after the Liturgical Movement and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, but one still asks if the Church yet celebrates Holy Saturday in an adequate enough manner. One hopes that even in this question lex credendi and lex orandi would proceed hand in hand, fecundating each other. For a recent theological discussion of the topic, see G. O’COLLINS, “Christ’s Descent to the Dead”. 871 See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr. 872 On the early Church’s belief in Christ’s descent into hell (Hades), and the hope of universal salvation intimately connected with that, see H. ALFEYEV, Christ the Conqueror of Hell. 873 Thus, in light of the Christian Revelation, the self-contraction of God does not begin only with creation (as in the Kabbalistic tzimtzum), but has its eternal origin in the Godhead itself. 874 Except through a special grace, as in the case of St. Silouan the Athonite. Elder Silouan’s ascetic endeavor for true humility was guided by the spiritual motto “Keep your mind in hell, and despair not” (see ARCHIMANDRITE SOPHRONY, Saint Silouan, the Athonite, pp. 208-213; J.-C. LARCHET, “La formule ‘Tiens ton esprit en enfer et ne désespère pas’ à la lumière de la tradition patristique”). 875 See M. SCHEEBEN, The Mysteries of Christianity, p. 160.

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himself puts it: He [the Father] lets go of his divinity and, in this sense, manifests a (divine) God-lessness (of love, of course). The latter must not be confused with the godlessness that is found within the world, although it undergirds it, renders it possible and goes beyond it.876

Here Balthasar follows the only method there is for the human being who wants to enter into the divine reality, without molding it into their own image and likeness: to fully let go of themselves, in order to contemplatively perceive God’s own particular fashion of revealing himself by and through the Paschal Mystery of his Son. God as he is in himself is absolutely transcendent with respect to created being. In his perfect Otherness, “God” signifies for us total abstractness and spiritual darkness: by always being the Other, “God” can be anything, and thus nothing. “God” as such is the infinite void and suffocating meaninglessness for us: hell, in a word. Hence, “God” can become real–God without the quotation marks!–for us only by becoming concrete, by entering into our reality in space and time. The true Christian scandal is to accept this fundamental and liberating fact. The fact that God himself has decided to become one of us, and precisely thus introduce us into his own divinity, which then is not only his anymore, but also ours (see 2 Pet 1:4). In sum, according to the Christian Revelation, God for us (pro nobis) is God as he is in himself (in se).877 The infinite reality is no independent reality with respect to the human, but has made itself dependent on our human reality. But how can this be? Now, in Bulgakov’s speculative footsteps, and inspired by the mystical visions of von Speyr, Balthasar related the historical Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ to the inner-Trinitarian life of God. If God is not to negatively negate himself in the death and descent of Jesus,878 there must be an immanent counterpart to it in God himself. The Paschal Mystery of Jesus certainly reveals a negation in God, but it is a positive one, by and through which God receives all Otherness into himself, without, however, denying 876

H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 324. Karl Rahner formulated this fundamental Christian truth with his Grundaxiom: “[t]he economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa” (K. RAHNER, “Oneness and Threefoldness of God”, p. 114). The Christian God is no static essence, no abstract idea, but the dynamic movement of self-giving Love, fully visible for us in the face of Christ (see DCE, n. 1). 878 As arguably happens in the Hegelian “speculative Good Friday” (see G.W.F. HEGEL, Faith and Knowledge, pp. 190-191; D.S. ANDERSON, Hegel’s Speculative Good Friday). 877

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its Otherness. The kenosis of the Son of God is no historical accident, as if God could have manifested his true essence in some alternative fashion, too. Or purely abstractly considered, a priori, God could, of course, have revealed himself to us in any way pleasing him. A posteriori, however, after the factum of mysterium paschale, and considering the actual course of history, the one who has ears to hear and eyes to see can perceive the inner necessity of the kenosis of Christ, ever-more clearly (akin to the inner necessity of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 or any other true work of art). That was at the same time the only way for God to save the world and reveal his whole Being to it as unconditional Love. Felix culpa, must one exclaim when one recognizes the transcendent Beauty of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, in which historical contingency and metaphysical necessity, the a posteriori and the a priori, become perfectly and uniquely reconciled (liturgically concentrated in the Easter Vigil, the spiritual source of all Christian way-of-being-in-the-world). In Balthasar’s words, the historical kenosis of Jesus of Nazareth flows from the primal or initial kenosis (Ur-kenosis) in the Godhead itself.879 The Christian Revelation shows that the true God is not a monolithic entity but a communion of Love. In the divine communion or perichoresis nothing is held to oneself, but all is shared, which only contributes to the eternal dynamism in the Godhead itself (its epektasis, as St. Gregory of Nyssa said880). Contemplating the mystery of Holy Saturday, the Christian theologian is thus allowed to look inside God himself, as it were, and to see that divinity is an eternal transcendental movement that originally flows from the Father’s initial gift of himself to the Son.881 In this primal, theologically immanent kenosis, as Balthasar writes, “the Father strips himself, without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son; he ‘imparts’ to the Son all that is his.”882 The Father does not jealously hold on to his divinity, but in the eternal generation of the Son he distances himself absolutely from it to give place to a Person completely Other than himself, the Son.883 The mystery of the Trinity is that such perfect self-giving does not end in death and annihilation, but instead opens up for the unending dynamism of life in the Spirit. Precisely in their personally radical Otherness, the Father and the Son remain eternally united in the Holy Spirit by and through their mutual openness to each other, in 879

See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, pp. 323, 331. See J. DANIELOU, Platonisme et Théologie Mystique, pp. 259-314. 881 See J. ZIZIOULAS, Communion and Otherness, pp. 113-154. 882 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 323. 883 In this sense, the cross already belongs to the immanent Godhead (see Rev 13:8; N.H. GREGERSEN, “The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World”, p. 203). 880

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which divinity is not decreased, but is continuously increasing in the transcendental fullness of Being.884 Only this divinely immanent event or infinite separation within the Godhead itself–in which the Father eternally gives himself completely to the Son by and through the dynamism of the Holy Spirit–makes the historically immanent Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ possible and meaningful to begin with. In the death of Christ on the cross, and even more in his descent to hell, becomes manifest to the world something that has existed from all eternity in the transcendent God: the deepest reality, despite all its superficial appearances, is essentially good. God does not want to take but to give. Bonum diffusivum sui. God is not the ideal of perfect selfpossession that would suffocate all Otherness (like in Greek metaphysics), but he is, on the contrary, the absolutely radical, “all the way through,” openness to the infinite Otherness of the Other. As Balthasar expresses it: God the Father can give his divinity away in such a manner that it is not merely “lent” to the Son: the Son’s possession of it is “equally consubstantial.” This implies such an incomprehensible and unique “separation” of God from himself that it includes and grounds every other separation–be it never so dark and bitter.885

The historical kenosis of the Son of God reveals a God who in his very transcendent Being wants to be kenotic, and thus to make space for the radically Other. In God himself the radically Other remains eternally related to him as his natural Son in the perfect communion of the Holy Spirit, which seals their mutual love. Yet, the possibility of a separation, even of a total and infinite separation from God is there as the necessary presupposition of perfect love. The divine God-lessness (of kenotic love) must not be confused with the worldly godlessness (always ultimately of egoistic love), as Balthasar is keen to emphasize, but it “undergirds it, renders it possible and goes beyond it.”886 The historical and personal reasons for complete alienation from religion, conceptualized as Radical Secularization in the present study, can 884

This is a very human way of speaking about the immanent life of God, of course. In and by himself, God must be enjoying a perfect fullness of Being and Love, where quantitative distinctions simply do not make any sense. But now, after the factum of Christ, God has eternally bound himself with humanity, with all that it brings with it. The fate of God has become a human fate, too, as the human fate has become a divine one. Hence, we cannot but speak humanely about God, indeed, if we want to be Christian theologians, we must do that (ad maiorem Dei gloriam!). 885 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 325. 886 H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 324 (italics AP).

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be as varied as there are genuinely nonreligious persons, but the metaphysical possibility for such a complete emancipation from religion is given by the Christian Revelation itself. It belongs to the very dynamism of human transcendentality. Indeed, Radical Secularization is demanded by the Triune God himself as a necessary precondition for the possibility of perfect, unlimited love to begin with. Consequently, it is not for us to offer any universal and totalitarizing views of humanity, not even of their essential “religiosity”; this can and should be left to the Triune God himself, because only he can encounter and relate with every human person in their unique Otherness. Ultimately, only God himself can create the absolute surprise of Easter Sunday after the total darkness of Holy Saturday. We can only receive it in an ever-deepening thankfulness humbly on our knees and gradually learn to sing and dance and rejoice accordingly. In sum, metaphysically expressed, the Christian Revelation opens up an infinite abyss in being, destructing all totalizing ontotheological metaphysics. God being the limitless dynamism of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, reality can never be petrified in any one conception, however “absolute” it would claim to be. The Christian Good News protects people from all totalitarian attempts at limiting and controlling them. That kind of ontotheological and spiritually violent attempts are many and always recurring in human history, but they can all be questioned with the one word “God,” Christianly interpreted. Confessing and proclaiming “God,” we challenge all worldly powers which claim to confine the human by any “trans-human” means. “God” introduces human persons into the infinite opening of reality, into their very “personhood.”887 That is why the word must be safeguarded at all cost, especially against all abuses of it. It is the most valuable word we have in the world which is not of our making but in which we are called to live our temporary existence. “God” opens up the future for us, and renders thus true historical becoming possible.888 But, the Thomas in us still asks, how does “God” do that, to be more precise (see John 20:24-29)? Yes, even a radically secular person can cherish the word as expressing the infinite opening of reality, as well as the inviolable spiritual freedom of every human person,889 but how is this 887

See J. ZIZIOULAS, Communion and Otherness, pp. 99-112. See the motto of Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Journey to Germany September 22-25, 2011: Wo Gott ist, da ist Zukunft. 889 According to Hent de Vries, “even the most secular, profane, negative, or nihilistic of utterances, directs or redirects itself unintentionally and unwittingly toward the alterity for which–historically, systematically, conceptually and figuratively speaking–‘God’ is, perhaps and so far, the most proper name” (H. DE VRIES, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, p. 26). 888

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unlimited openness and radical freedom to be really lived? Purely abstract statements are no longer of any use After Secularization when we have selfconsciously entered into historical becoming. Nothing is given a priori anymore after the modern break, as was argued above in Chapter 3. If one claims to proclaim true freedom and a hopeful future for humanity, one must somehow show what these could mean concretely, a posteriori. Otherwise, one would just introduce people into the infinite void of abstract freedom that only breeds more violence. One cannot remain in the suffocating emptiness of hell for too long, however infinitely open it would be. Yes, in the Christian economy of Revelation, Good Friday and Holy Saturday reveal the radical Otherness in God himself, but how is one to arrive through them at the Easter Sunday of new life and communion? With this question we approach the second dimension of the twofold theological criticism of the concept of Radical Secularization.

4.2 Encountering Theologically Radical Secularization: Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics It would be all too metaphysical to ban the word “metaphysics” tout court. If we accept that words do not have eternal meanings in themselves, but receive their meaningfulness from how they are used in a given tradition, in a given context, they cannot be evaluated a priori (except in ideological totalitarianism). The fundamental question is whether a word a posteriori manages to convey the meaning we would like it to convey (an ever-open, and ever-fragile, undertaking, like everything truly human is). It can, of course, be asked whether a word has become so worn-out and empty in a given linguistic tradition that it would be best to altogether stop using it. Or perhaps the word carries in itself so heavy a burden that it cannot but be misunderstood. In any case, the usability of a word or less cannot be decided in advance, but must be evaluated individually in every concrete situation. Furthermore, we can never know for certain whether a word has succeeded or not to carry the meaning we intended it to carry–only time, i.e. the subsequent unfolding of our relationship, our history, will tell. This is the radically secular, constantly evolving and inherently “terrifying” vision of human life with and in language.890 Hence, the ontotheological meaning of metaphysics must be absolutely refuted, as was argued above. Yet, this does not mean that “metaphysics” as such should be banned from all responsible thinking. On the contrary, the 890

See Cavell’s classic characterization of the Wittgensteinian vision of language in S. CAVELL, Must We Mean What We Say?, p. 52.

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word may signify such an intellectual enterprise that responsible thinking cannot but participate in it. Yes, reality cannot be captured in any one conceptual representation of it, as was shown above.891 The concept of Radical Secularization speculatively destroys the very attempt at such petrification of reality. It presents human transcendentality as come into itself to stand in a self-conscious posture at the threshold of the infinite opening of reality. Metaphysics as ontotheology claimed to uncover the hidden structures of reality, explaining this in all its being, culminating in the Highest Being of the causa sui. Such a claim cannot even be taken seriously by Radical Secularization; it is, in fact, transcendentally refuted by it. The movement of human transcendentality must be infinitely open for it to be what it really is. To claim anything else is but spiritually violent will to power. But why could not the metaphysical movement be infinitely open, too? Why could we not aspire to formulate such a metaphysics that would conceptualize our relationship with reality as an infinitely open quest rather than a closed system? In any case we are here. We wonder at our temporary existence in the infinite universe and ponder how to relate with it. It would be very difficult to imagine humanity without this transcendental desire to go beyond its present limits towards the limitless horizon of reality. Existential thauma or “wonder” was understood to lie at the root of philosophy by the Greek philosophers. Why could not such a thinking be developed that did not diminish our wonder at existence, but would also enhance it ever-more? For a long time, Christian theologizing remained trapped inside a given conceptual scheme, namely that of the Greek metaphysical tradition.892 This “Greek captivity” gave Christian theology a strongly ontotheological and thus spiritually violent posture, reflected in the strongly hierarchical posture of the Church. Of course, there were courageous voices, typically in ecclesial peripheries (monasteries), that reminded the official Church about the essential unboundedness of the Christian Revelation. Already St. Gregory of Nyssa talked about the infinite ascent of the spirit to God with his doctrine of epektasis: the soul can never get tired of God, because there is always more and more to learn about him.893 And St. Anselm of 891

See further Donald Davidson’s analytical destruction of the very idea of a conceptual scheme in D. DAVIDSON, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”. 892 On whether the classical category of “Hellenization” of Christianity is still adequate, or to what degree, see C. MARKSCHIES, Hellenisierung des Christentums. 893 Gregory first formulated his teaching about epektasis in opposition to Origen’s reincarnational intuitions (see L. PETCU, “The Doctrine of Epektasis”, p. 777). Successively it came to form the center of Gregory’s mystical theology, as argued

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Canterbury knew that God is not only a being “than which a greater cannot be thought” (quo maius cogitari nequit), but altogether “greater than can be thought” (maius quam cogitari possit).894 God is God precisely because he always surpasses our expectations and ideas, as St. Ignatius of Loyola, among many other spiritual masters of the Christian tradition, very well knew (ad maiorem Dei gloriam!). In practice, however, the Church followed alongside the normal human struggle for worldly power with her claim of possessing the eternal and immutable truth about divine and human existence (depositum fidei). Consider, for instance, the apologetic scheme of Catholic fundamental theology that preceded the renewal of Vatican II. It divided the Christian Revelation into two different components (the natural and the supernatural), and then argued for its truth with the three demonstrations.895 The underlying assumption in the apologetic enterprise was that there is only one universal conceptuality or language that captures the objective structure of reality. Consequently, for anyone who could use their reason correctly, the truth of the Christian Revelation could in principle be proven. The question is not whether apologists ever succeeded in convincing anybody about the Christian truth, but that they tried to do anything of the sort to begin with. As if any person could be talked from the outside into believing certain things about their most intimate existential concerns! Or of course they can, and precisely that is the method of spiritual violence.896 The concept of Radical Secularization, on the other hand, as it was developed in the present study, makes explicit the implicit logic in secularization and thus introduces us into the hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. In its light, human transcendentality has come completely into itself and people’s existential decisions are thus perfectly free. They are of course conditioned by most varied historical and cultural contexts, but still, Radical Secularization helps us recognize that ultimately every person must decide for themselves what they believe or do not believe. Ready-made solutions from the outside are not accepted anymore. by Jean Daniélou (see J. DANIÉLOU, Platonisme et Théologie Mystique, pp. 259314). 894 Chapter XV of Anselm’s Proslogion is arguably the most succinct destruction of the ontotheological temperament in the Western theological tradition. 895 On the history of fundamental theology, especially its paradigmatic transformation with Vatican II, see C. BÖTTIGHEIMER, Lehrbuch der Fundamentaltheologie, pp. 23114; G. O’COLLINS, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, pp. 7-47; H. FRIES, “Dall’Apologetica alla Teologia Fondamentale”. 896 The Catholic Magisterium, for its part, has always taught that the act of faith is “of its very nature” a free act (see CCC, n. 160).

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The spiritual horizon of human transcendentality must remain radically open. Hence, the only true credibility comes from an authentic personal conviction, from a “courage to be”897 what one decides to be, and to bear witness to that with one’s whole being.898 Could a Christian metaphysics be formulated in such a cultural context After Secularization? That would be a metaphysics that would not take any one language as the model for all others but that would open itself for the plurality of different languages in our increasingly hyperpluralistic, polyhedric world. Then, one could speak about a truly Christian metaphysics that would start from the Christian Revelation itself, not from any later conceptualizations of it. The question is not about aspiring anywhere beyond space and time, but exactly about entering into concrete historical becoming where no one cultural tradition can enjoy a prima facie priority. The direction of such a metaphysical movement would not be backwards, but forwards. The theological factum stands: God has spoken everything, all himself in his Son Jesus, and this living Word struggles ceaselessly to spread its enlightening Spirit to ever-new regions of the world. Do we promote or hinder its–his–movement in our individual lives, in the life of our society and of the Church? This might be the one deciding question for the Church of today amidst the ongoing epochal shift. On the one hand, there continue to be those who identify the Catholic tradition with a certain cultural current, namely the Greco-Roman one, as if it were particularly chosen by Providence to carry forward the immutable depositum fidei. On the other hand, there are those who acknowledge that even though the faith always lives in a certain time and place, it also transcends all spatio-temporal conditioning. Indeed, this essential tension makes the Christian faith what it is, i.e. human transcendentality truly come into itself by and through the acknowledgement of its essential spatio-temporal conditionedness. If the preceding reading of the signs of our times is anywhere near the mark, it should be clear that the latter, polyhedric path is the one to tread for the Church of today, and of future. As argued in Chapter 1 above, the main thrust of the Second Vatican Council can be interpreted in that direction, now hopefully aided by the various synodal processes well into the third millennium.899 The Catholic Church is slowly but steadily becoming what 897

See P. TILLICH, The Courage to Be. Remember St. Paul VI’s prophetic words in EN, n. 41: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” 899 See M. FAGGIOLI, A Council for the Global Church; P. CODA, “The Way of the Church in the Third Millennium”. 898

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it always claimed to be: a truly universal Church, which comes into being “in and from” particular Churches all over the world (see LG, n. 23). Any one cultural tradition cannot enjoy an uncontested hegemony in such a Church. In fact, a truly Catholic, global and fraternal Church questions all human hegemonies in the name of the Gospel (sine glossa!900). The “Roman” nature of the Church is not questioned in this perspective, but on the contrary, self-consciously re-vindicated. The romanità of the Church will show itself as convinced openness to the Other. True Romans know that they have what they have originally thanks to Others. Consequently, it is their vocation to transmit what they have received from Others to Others still, learning from them ever-more in the process.901 Such a Church–despite her unavoidable human shortcomings–would truly reflect the inner-Trinitarian reality where nothing is possessed but all is shared. This could be the particular calling of the Catholic Church amidst the ongoing global humanitarian and ecological crisis.902 Here we already have certain building-blocks for a Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, metaphysics. These building-blocks are not retrieved from abstract speculation, but from concrete reflection on the world we are living in right now. The goal is not to arrive at a supposedly “eternal” truth behind all historical becoming. But neither do we want to immerse the Christian Revelation in the present context (however defined). The fundamental theological aim is to relate the two with each other, as meaningfully and credibly as possible, so that the Gospel can produce its cruciform effect on the world (unmasking its sin as sin in light of the infinite mercy of God). The Christian faith is not about a transcendent ideal beyond this world. Neither is it about bringing change to this messy world we are living in. Or rather, it is equally about them both, at the same time, inseparably but distinctively. Christianity is a religion of paradoxes, and so must its metaphysics be, too. A Trinitarian metaphysics would, consequently, express the eternal truth of the Triune God in the present historical-cultural context of its audience. The absolutely transcendent God did not have any necessity to create this world. He had the fullness of Being already in himself, or better put, in the inner-Trinitarian communion of Love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Ontologically, God lacked nothing. Nevertheless, he decided to give rise to the ontologically radically Other by creating the universe and human beings in his image and to his glory. In his overflowing love and by 900

See G. LAFONT, “La Chiesa che verrà”. See Rémi Brague’s analysis of the “Roman” way of European culture, and especially of the Western Church, in R. BRAGUE, Europe, la voie romaine. 902 See T. BERRY, The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth, pp. 46-58. 901

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pure mercy God wanted to call human beings to participate in his own divine life (see 2 Pet 1:4). By and through giving us his Son, God gave himself to us, and what God once has given, he will never take back (see DV, n. 4).903 This is the great “gamble” or “adventure” (Wagnis) of the Christian economy of salvation. The central challenge for a Trinitarian metaphysics is, therefore, to express the specifically Christian unity of the abstract and the concrete, the a priori and the a posteriori, the universal and the particular: in short, Jesus Christ as the one universale concretum personale.904 It has to give heed both to the historically immanent kenosis of Jesus of Nazareth and his theologically transcendent condition as the eternal Son of God. Both the Christological hymn of the Philippians and that of the Colossians are there in the written Word of God, bound together by the one of the Ephesians. The goal of Trinitarian metaphysics is to express how the movement of human transcendentality is not blocked or hindered by the Christian message, but finds its true source and motivation in the latter. Even more, a Trinitarian metaphysics should show how the movement of human transcendentality comes into itself only in and through entering into the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. In Christ our radically secular transcendentality can truly move towards the limitless horizon of being without being restricted by any purported trans-human intentionalities. I cannot see how the Rahnerian transcendental approach could stand up to this theological fact. For that, the radical objectivity of the Balthasarian aesthetic approach is needed. Thus, in light of our chosen aesthetic approach to the Christian Revelation, it all turns on perceiving the Beauty of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. Trinitarian metaphysics should show how the death and descent into hell of Christ reveal the true nature of reality as self-giving, self-sacrificing Love. How everything in its very being is not self-possession but selfgiving, because all being is gift, to be received and given further in complete gratuitousness. The cross of Jesus shows the true Beauty, because it does not draw attention to itself but to the Other, the Others for whom the Son of God gave his life into the absolute void of hell.905 The Christian believer, consequently, is one who has been drawn into the movement of Jesus Christ by its indescribable Beauty, and who has experienced how it leads to new life through suffering and death. The 903

See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Mysterium Paschale, p. ix. See H.U. VON BALTHASAR, A Theology of History, p. 92. 905 One thinks of Eastern icons of the Anastasis where Christ is depicted to rise with the fallen, and now redeemed, humanity (see G. O’COLLINS, “Christ’s Descent to the Dead”, pp. 179-181). 904

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Christian theologian, then, aspires to express this most remarkable of experiences: the dogmatic one to those who already believe it, ever-more deeply, and the fundamental one to those who still cannot see how true life could be hidden in death, light in darkness, meaning in meaninglessness. Yet, ultimately, we are all equally immersed in the mystery of life and death, however we would try to conceptualize it a posteriori. Even the dualism between dogmatic and fundamental theology must be overcome, as was necessarily done in this final chapter of the study. In sum, the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ embraces all reality and reveals its true essence.906 It unveils the inner law governing all happening in the universe as the law of Love opening itself for the Other. A Trinitarian metaphysics requires, thus, an aesthetic approach, and its aim will be relational, presenting reality as an ever-more complex network of different relationships (see LS, nn. 238-240). At the same time, however, it is deeply rooted in our existence in time, i.e. in history. The Paschal Mystery of Jesus was predestined before all times (see Eph 1:3-14), and its final consummation transcends all temporal connotations, but our entry into it can only go by and through the concrete history of the Church.907 That is the reason why a Trinitarian metaphysics must have a necessary corollary in a Christian theology of history. They are two sides of the same coin that is the Christian Revelation.

5. The Theological Meaning of Western Secularization Now, as a way of conclusion, we might be able to offer some words on the theological meaning of “secularization” from the hermeneutical perspective of After Secularization. The central part of the study, including Chapters 3 and 4, was about a phenomenological description of Radical Secularization as the real novelty and speculative essence of Western secularization. 906

Whatever one might think about Teilhard de Chardin’s work, he did more than anybody else to remind the twentieth-century Church about the necessarily cosmological consequences of the Christian faith. For an excellent contemporary continuance of Teilhard’s evolutionary thinking in Catholic theology, see J.F. HAUGHT, The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe. 907 As important as it is to rediscover the cosmic dimension of the Catholic faith in light of the new evolutionary story of the universe (see I. DELIO, The Emergent Christ; J.F. HAUGHT, God after Einstein), such thinking should not depart too far from the concrete Sitz im Leben of the ecclesial tradition. For certain thoughts time will come, but it might not yet be at hand (the difficult virtue of theological patience). In this sense Ratzinger’s caveats concerning Teilhard’s evolutionary approach remain valid (see J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, pp. 177, 179).

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Surpassing the fundamental theological reduction, introduced at the end of Chapter 1, we can now ask how a Christian believer and a theologian could meaningfully relate to the historical transformation process, by and through which Western people have emancipated themselves from institutional religion? Is there a Christian view of history to begin with? Only a few words, in light of the preceding analysis, and pointing towards future research, are possible here.

5.1 The Question of a “Theology of History” The German secularization debate, especially as it broke out between Hans Blumenberg and Karl Löwith in the 1960s, looms in the background of all contemporary discussions of a “theology of history,” meaning attempts to relate the coming of Western secular modernity to its Christian past.908 “Löwith” has become an emblem for the outlook that sees deep continuities between Latin Christendom and Western modernity. In his 1949 book Meaning in History, Löwith had argued that Western modernity can best be understood as a secularization of the preceding Christian civilization. “Secularization” in this context would mean the transfer of semantic content from one language to another, in this case, from a religious language to a non-religious or secular one. For instance, and most importantly for Löwith, the modern belief in historical progress would turn out to be a secularization of the Christian eschatological faith, now only transferred from the world to come to the world here and now. European modernity would, thus, ultimately receive its inner meaning from the Christian theological tradition. With his 1966 book Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, Blumenberg questioned Löwith’s view of the coming of European modernity.909 Blumenberg criticized Löwith for a certain kind of historical substantialism which would risk making European modernity internally dependent on the preceding Christian epoch, thus delegitimizing the autonomous self-understanding of the former.910 Since then, “Blumenberg” stands for the intellectual perspective that underlines the creative novelty of secular modernity with

908

See Jean-Claude Monod’s article “Heaven on Earth? The Löwith-Blumenberg Debate” in S. LATRÉ–W. VAN HERCK–G. VANHEESWIJCK, ed., Radical Secularization?, pp. 7-16; and more in detail in S. GRIFFIOEN, Contesting Modernity in the German Secularization Debate, pp. 13-68. More generally on contemporary Christian theology of history, from a Catholic perspective, see G. PASQUALE, Teoria e teologia della storia. 909 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 27-35. 910 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pp. 28-29.

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respect to its religious past.911 In a Blumenbergian perspective, European modernity is no mere secularization of Christianity, but a genuinely new human form-of-life, now based on human self-assertion instead of religious dispossession. For Blumenberg, European modernity had a legitimacy of its own as a re-vindication of the natural human way-of-being-in-the-world in contrast to a Gnostic self-denial from which Christianity had never really managed to free itself.912 Without entering deeper into the Löwith-Blumenberg debate, two points arising from it should be mentioned for the present discussion regarding theology of history. First, not all similarities between Western modernity and Latin Christendom are to be regarded as direct derivations from the latter to the former. Human history, as all becoming in time, is a mixture of continuities and discontinuities, developments as well as raptures. Considering the amazing complexity of human evolution, it is difficult to speak of any immutable substances there. Rather, it is a constant flux of change. Whether one concentrates on the similarities or the differences, crucially depends on one’s own perspective in time. While one still finds oneself inside a given secularization process, it is understandable that one emphasizes its roots in the preceding religious epoch (Löwith). By contrast, when one already has the courage to look beyond the named secularization, one can see its creative character with respect to its religious background (Blumenberg). It is no wonder if a secular-to-be language retains certain religious features, however, if the only languages to start from were religious through and through!913 The situation changes as a secularization proceeds and nonreligious forms-oflife develop, giving rise to an unprecedented variety of different human ways-of-being-in-the-world. At any rate, a simple, one-way “theorem of secularization” is not credible After Secularization anymore, because it cannot recognize the spiritual dynamics of contemporary global hyperpluralization clearly enough. Second, it must be asked whether the modern West has already gone through its own particular process of secularization or whether it still 911

As always with such binary confrontations, they hide as much as they reveal about the real thinking of Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg. Nevertheless, “Löwith” and “Blumenberg”–put in quotation marks–can exemplify two different ways of approaching Western modernity and its secularization. 912 See H. BLUMENBERG, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, p. 27. 913 This is the reason why an artistic creation of new languages–especially during the Romantic period–played such a crucial role in the development of European secularization (see Taylor’s discussion of “subtler languages” in C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 353-361).

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remains dependent on its Latin Christian heritage.914 The characteristic cultural products of Western modernity, from laissez-faire capitalism and liberal democracy to scientific reason and universal human rights, might be best considered on their own terms, without any necessary references to the Christian tradition. But what about the more general Western ethos according to which these cultural products have a normative superiority over other ways of understanding and organizing human existence? The often-unstated presumption of Western supremacy as the unquestioned protector of world order might be surprisingly derivative from Latin Christendom’s millenarian belief in its own particular eschatological significance.915 “In God we trust,” when we defend our political power and economic system around the globe, even though in our private life we would rather be described as “non-religious.”916 While remnants of a Christian theology of history may survive behind the Western hegemonic consciousness, it appears to be all but disappeared in the Church herself. As the Church gradually has had to strip herself of all temporal power, she seemed to lose any awareness of her worldly mission, too. To be sure, the juridical dimension of European secularization (Säkularisation) has led to a growing marginalization of the Church in modern Western societies. In such a situation it is not clear what else the Church would have to offer but give consolation to those who have fallen out from the ever-accelerating pace of modern life? But can a Christian Church, if it really wants to be Christian and thus faithful to her Founder, content herself with offering spiritual consolation to those whom society has forgotten? Did not Christ come to this world, this saeculum, to lead it to its consummation in the Kingdom of God (see GS, n. 45)? Do we not confess in the credo to believe, not any ephemeral heavenly existence, but “the life of the world to come”? The preceding study of Radical Secularization compels us who care for the future of the Church to ask these questions with a renewed urgency. The Roman Church started to reestablish her relationship with modernizing societies by and through her “social teaching,” beginning with

914

See S. LATRÉ–W. VAN HERCK–G. VANHEESWIJCK, ed., Radical Secularization?, p. 10). 915 See S. LATRÉ–W. VAN HERCK–G. VANHEESWIJCK, ed., Radical Secularization?, pp. 9-11. 916 For a criticism of American foreign policy that at the same time recognizes its crucial importance for the future of humanity, see N. CHOMSKY, Who Rules the World?

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Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum.917 In the Second Vatican Council, the Church officially stated to share “[t]he joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties” of all the people she lives with in the world, confessing that “nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo” in the followers of Christ (see GS, n. 1). Since then, the Church officially acknowledges the “autonomy of earthly affairs” (GS, n. 36), and wants to give her contribution to the construction of a better and more just world. Indeed, the Church’s proclamation about the universal fraternity of all people, and about their equal responsibility of taking care of our common home, is directed, not only to religious believers, but to “all people of good will” (see FT, n. 6). Yet, the contemporary Church’s desire to “contribute to the rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity” (FT, n. 8)–a highest ideal as such, and a necessary precondition for our adequately confronting the ecological crisis– needs a strong enough intellectual backing to carry conviction amidst contemporary global hyperpluralism. Yes, encouragement to “dream” together about a better future for all of us is undoubtedly needed (see FT, n. 8), but dreams without a robust anchor in concrete reality are ultimately as good as nothing. Certainly, they would not help the Church to enter into dialogue with the powerful of this world. For that, equally inspiring intellectual visions are needed. A Trinitarian metaphysics combined with a Christian theology of history would contribute to that direction. French historian and scholar of St. Augustine Henri-Irénée Marrou provided a clear presentation of the basic outlines of a Christian view of history with his 1968 work Théologie de l’histoire. It is still worth considering as a third way between Löwith’s religious and Blumenberg’s secular interpretation of Western modernity. Perhaps most importantly, Marrou wanted to remind Christian believers that there exists such a thing as a truly Christian concept of historical becoming. A Christian theology of history does not claim to unveil the inner meaning of all historical events, as various “philosophies of history” had aspired to do. The actual unfurling of history remains a mystery for the Christian believer, too. But neither are they doomed to a historical quietism.918 By reflecting on certain New Testament passages, and by relying on the general historical thinking of his master from Hippo, Marrou dared to say at least something about how a Christian in light of the Divine Revelation should think about the unfolding of concrete history. 917

For general discussions of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, see C.E. CURRAN, Catholic Social Teaching 1891–Present; A. SCOLA, La dottrina sociale della Chiesa. 918 See H.-I. MARROU, Théologie de l’histoire, p. 31.

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To put it briefly, in Marrou’s analysis, human history shows its deepest meaning as salvation history. At the most general level, human history proceeds as a struggle between the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of civitas divina and the self-centered, self-enclosed love of civitas terrena, Marrou argued in the wake of St. Augustine.919 In fallen humanity the egoistic love that greedily closes itself in the world (“my” world!) might even be the driving force, while the unfolding of the Kingdom of God–based as it is on humble service and openness to the Other–is silent and almost invisible. The theological appraisal of secularization crucially depends on from the perspective of which love we consider the world (John 3:16 vs. Gal 1:4). At any rate, the two loves and the two kingdoms normally appear as intimately intertwined, impossible to be separated from each other, while history is still unfolding. Perplexae quippe sunt istae duae civitates invicemque permixtae, Marrou cites St. Augustine time and again.920 Jesus’s parable of weeds among the wheat (Matt 13:24-30) becomes a narrative prophecy of the spiritual course of the world after the turning point of the Christ event: in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, the true and perfect love has been completely revealed to humanity, the destiny of which is now determined by how it decides to respond to it. The time of the pilgrim Church is a constant spiritual struggle between these two loves. Relying on the written Word of God, Marrou had the courage to say something more concrete about a Christian theology of history, too. Of course, he underlines again and again, not even the Christians should imagine that they know anything specific about the course of history or the definitive coming of the Kingdom of God. Yet, with uttermost caution Marrou refers to the mysterious passage in the Book of Revelation where the Lamb himself answers the martyr’s question concerning the felt delay of the Final Judgement: they should wait “a little longer” until the predestined number of God’s holy ones should be full (see Rev 6:11). Thus, in Marrou’s reading, the deepest sense of history is hidden in the fifth seal: “To be, to become truly Christians, we have to rediscover this fundamental truth: the true subject of history is the Mystical Body of Christ, and for it to reach its full growth is the meaning and standard of the time that still flows.”921 As in the sketched Trinitarian metaphysics, so also here in the proposed theology of history, the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ presents itself as 919

See H.-I. MARROU, Théologie de l’histoire, pp. 31-35, 49-52. See H.-I. Marrou, Théologie de l’histoire, pp. 71-75; the reference is to AUGUSTINE, De civitate Dei, I, 35. 921 H.-I. Marrou, Théologie de l’histoire, p. 44 (translation AP). 920

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the center and heart of all reality. By and through his suffering, death, and resurrection, Christ reveals the essence of all being as eternally self-giving Love, and invites all people to enter into his own movement of infinite opening to the Other. Subsequent history of the world will be determined by how we react to this unique invitation of merciful love: whether we let us be drawn into its infinite opening, or whether we close ourselves onto anything less than that. After Christ it is not a question anymore of whether to submit or not to submit to any trans-human powers outside us. The primordial, and inherently violent, religious dynamic is at its end.922 Christ asks us to recognize the infinite potential in our own humanity, as revealed and redeemed by him (see GS, n. 22). It is an invitation of infinite freedom in which one can either lose everything or win everything. Now, to relate Marrou’s theological analysis to the interpretation of secularization developed in this study, it seems warranted to regard secularization as a process of gradual emancipation from all trans-human limits to the movement of human transcendentality, i.e. as a process of growing spiritual freedom. This would be a third way of reading secularization beyond the more unidimensional narratives of the Death of God or of the Return of Religion. At the same time, however, it must be remembered that freedom as such is an absolutely empty notion, meaning literally nothing. The question is how abstract freedom becomes put into concrete use, i.e. what can be done with it. And in this light, growing human freedom shows its Janus-faced character. By and through various secularization processes around the globe more and more people receive the possibility of actualizing their inner potential and unique personality. But how is one to do that without falling prey to the hugely homogenizing forces of modern mass media? And from another, more “serious” perspective: how are we to use our unprecedented global power for the best of all humanity and of our common home, instead of increasing global inequality and destroying the planet? Freedom is a very difficult thing, indeed. A Christian theology of history guides us deeper into the hidden meaning of the paradoxical character of human history. Balthasar spoke about a “fundamental theodramatic law of world history” that he summarized in the following words: “the greater the revelation of divine (ground-less) love, the more it elicits a groundless (Jn 15:25) hatred from man.”923 The deepest mystery of human history is the ever-recurring circle of violence. The more we become acquainted with the infinite horizon of 922 923

See R. GIRARD, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 338.

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being, the more we cling to our parochial way-of-being-in-the-world. The more we recognize our human interconnectedness, the more we distance ourselves from the Other. The nearer God draws to us, the blinder we become to his presence. The mysterium iniquitatis lies at the center of human existence, especially as the mysterium vanitatis, but only to let the Glory of the Triune God shine ever-more brightly over all darkness. While human violence seems to escalate more and more, the Christian puts their hope in the Paschal Mystery of their Lord, as Balthasar testified: No end to this escalation can be envisaged, so the Cross must be deferred to an endless end (since Jesus has atoned for all sin). The Cross is raised up at the end of evil, at the end of hell. The Cross, like the Son of God himself, is unique, peerless.924

5.2 Western Secularization as a Path into Contemporary Global Hyperpluralism: The “Principle of Incarnation” Goes Forth Contemporary sociologists and social theorists may debate on whether there has been “secularization” in the modern Western societies, or to which extent, and whether the concept is applicable to societal developments outside the West. Everything depends on what one means by “secularization,” of course, as is often the case in intellectual debates. Many different motives enter into the academic discussion, the desire to say something “new” and “original” not being the least prominent of them. Putting the prefix “post” in front of an old concept can make it a trendy one, at least for a couple of years. Concerning secularization, from a deep historical perspective, it would be particularly important to try to see the forest for the trees. We should avoid becoming too caught up by the specialized debates that would only hinder one from understanding the main issue. This would especially be the case, if we really are living through an epochal shift (see VG, n. 3; LS, n. 102), the timespan of which does not concern only decades or even centuries but even millennia in human religious evolution. To even hope to grasp such a deep-going cultural change, a very broad and general perspective is a sine qua non. In this book, such a perspective was developed on “secularization.” This old and much (over-)used concept was still deemed to be useful as a speculative instrument for the attempt of “comprehending one’s own time in thoughts,” or, theologically put, of “reading the signs of our times” (see GS, n. 4). In the Church and its thinking (theology), we do not yet seem to 924

H.U. VON BALTHASAR, Theo-Drama: The Action, p. 338.

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have fully grasped the epochal shift that “Christendom no longer exists,” as was claimed in Chapter 1. During the millenarian formation process of Western civilization, official Christianity defined the “religion” Western people were practically forced to follow. Nowadays, however, the Church (any Church, in fact, not least the Roman one) and its official “religion” no longer determine the spiritual search of Western people as they struggle to enter into the contemporary reality of global hyperpluralism, with all its risks and promises. Post-modern, post-secular people are freely on the move. They experiment with a myriad of different spiritual traditions, beliefs, and practices, aspiring to develop a sustainable human form-of-life on the planet. Pre-modern institutions which have been accustomed to an authoritative manner of relating to natural human religiosity take great pains to even recognize the new spiritual dynamics, not to speak of entering into them themselves. After Secularization, the free flow of human transcendentality cannot be stopped from the outside anymore. Spiritual violence is transcendentally refused in liberal democracies. Everybody is free to believe or not to believe what they decide as long as it does not harm others. Whether one likes it or not, contemporary global hyperpluralism is, thus, the historical condition of possibility of being “religious” today (or however one would like to call one’s existential-spiritual stance). The temptations of nostalgic traditionalism and violent fundamentalism are there, of course, but precisely as temptations. The way forward goes by and through the global hyperpluralism of many different, even incommensurable, human ways-of-being-in-the-world. The analysis of the present study suggests that the main challenge for future humanity will be to learn to navigate responsibly amidst the infinite sea of different spiritual possibilities, even to enjoy the feeling of not really understanding its dynamic movement but still being part of it. The Catholic Church, as the only truly global institution that it is, would have an important role to play in the development of the new sustainable, planetarian humanity, if she only has the courage and humility to enter into these epochal dynamics. As so very often, St. John Henry Newman offers a particularly clear summary of the inner dynamics and effects of Western secularization. It is not about a theory or idea here, but a historical fact that he experienced firsthand in his lifetime. During the nineteenth century the secularizing revolutions of the eighteenth century became largely visible in Western societies, until they unfurled their full potential during the latter half of the

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twentieth century.925 There is nothing to add to Newman’s perspicuous survey that in a way summarizes the secularization analysis developed in the present study: Such was the position of free opinion and dissenting worship in England till quite a recent date, when one after another the various disabilities which I have been recounting, and many others besides, melted away, like snow at spring-tide; and we all wonder how they could ever have been in force. The cause of this great revolution is obvious, and its effect inevitable. Though I profess to be an admirer of the principles now superseded in themselves, mixed up as they were with the imperfections and evils incident to everything human, nevertheless I say frankly I do not see how they could possibly be maintained in the ascendant. When the intellect is cultivated, it is as certain that it will develope into a thousand various shapes, as that infinite hues and tints and shades of colour will be reflected from the earth’s surface, when the sunlight touches it; and in matters of religion the more, by reason of the extreme subtlety and abstruseness of the mental action by which they are determined. During the last seventy years, first one class of the community, then another, has awakened up to thought and opinion. Their multiform views on sacred subjects necessarily affected and found expression in the governing order.926

So John Henry Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk in 1875. Born in 1801, Newman had lived through the crucial decades in England when the society became increasingly secularized, i.e. liberated from juridical restrictions on individual citizens’ existential beliefs and practices (“one after another the various disabilities […] melted away, like snow at spring-tide”). The gradual introduction of religious freedom in England and other modern Western societies was certainly a “great revolution,” as Newman says, but even more amazing was the speed with which it spread through the various classes of the community. Only in a few decades did nineteenth-century Europe move from a religiously governed society into a secular one.927 And now “we all wonder how they could ever have been in force,” as Newman wrote in the 1870s, referring to the previous statal 925

Taylor speaks of the spiritual “nova” of the nineteenth century when secularization begins to spread into the broader spheres of modernizing Western societies, creating more and more varied ways of understanding and living human existence, while the whole process nothing less than explodes in the spiritual “super-nova” of the late twentieth century (see C. TAYLOR, A Secular Age, pp. 299-300). 926 J.H. NEWMAN, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, pp. 266-267. 927 See O. CHADWICK, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century.

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restrictions on religious freedom. Newman was no secular progressivist himself, of course. Rather, he even confesses to have a certain nostalgia for late Christendom (“I profess to be an admirer of the principles now superseded in themselves”), although he was fully conscious of its shortcomings, too (“mixed up as they were with the imperfections and evils incident to everything human”). Indeed, in his Letter, Newman defended the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, where the Roman Pontiff had reaffirmed the religious authoritarianism of Latin Christendom in front of the ascending liberal democracies. Nevertheless, Newman could, thanks to his particular spiritual clairvoyance, already see that the time of religiously homogeneous societies was definitively over in his cultural context (“I say frankly I do not see how they could possibly be maintained in the ascendant”). History had taken a decisive step forward, for better or for worse. Secularization was a fact impossible to be undone, even though its deeper consequences would still require a long time to become fully visible (as Nietzsche’s contemporary “madman” knew, too). Newman’s reason for his conviction is especially worth noting. Why would the cultural homogeneity of Latin Christendom never return in the predictable future? Because, Newman argues, when people are given the possibility to develop their spiritual conception of reality in growing freedom, without any necessary outer authorities, an amazing pluralism of different views naturally follows. The spiritual reality is so “subtle” and “abstruse,” particularly concerning “the matters of religion,” that when people begin to explore it spontaneously, they cannot but arrive at very different and multiform ideas about it. In this context Newman uses a beautiful image of the sunlight reflecting itself from the earth’s surface: the light does not remain the transparent, practically invisible one it was in the space, but it bursts into “infinite hues and tints and shades of colour.” Secularization equals pluralization. Now, Newman, a self-professed “admirer” of the superseded metaphysical principles, supposedly considered the pluralizing effect of secularization as a basically negative development. By and through it more and more people would distance themselves from the spiritual Truth transmitted to them by the Church (backed up by the State in the ancien régime). Newman’s ideal remained in the other, invisible reality, the existence of which he had never doubted, or even could doubt. Indeed, since his early years he had been more certain of its existence than he had been of the existence of his own material body.928

928

See J.H. NEWMAN, Apologia pro vita sua, p. 16.

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In light of the preceding analysis of this study, it is possible to theologically deconstruct Newman’s vision by reading it against itself according to the logic of Radical Secularization. All light comes from above, that is certain (sursum corda!). Yet, the central Christian mystery is precisely that the Light really has come down from above (descendit de caelis!). After the Incarnation we should not anymore seek for the meaning of our existence in any static reality outside ourselves, in any supposed trans-human intentionalities or “higher spiritual realms.” Instead, God as the Giver of all meaning has drawn himself near to us. In Christ, his Son, he has entered into our very humanity, revealing how its infinite opening is directed towards the infinite Being of God. The mystical marriage of divinity and humanity in Christ is thus a call to enter ever-more deeply into our humanity so that we, through it, could enter ever-more deeply into his divinity. Neither at the expense of the other, but both enhancing one another. This is the most holy calling of being, of becoming a Christian (see GS, n. 22). For human beings it seems easier to locate the meaning of one’s existence in another, trans-human realm, where it cannot be harmed or destroyed. It is more difficult to find meaning for one’s existence in the here and now of one’s unique life, always in risk and under threat. Yet, if we follow the logic of Radical Secularization, we cannot but seek for the human raison d’être in humanity itself. But if the theological analysis of the study is anywhere near the mark, we may follow the radically secularizing logic and still remain Christians. In fact, when we become freed from all transhuman restrictions to the movement of human transcendentality, we may find new, unprecedented potentialities in it. Paradoxically, by transcendentally refusing the trans-human, we may enter into the truly trans-human movement of the dynamism of Being. It would be the movement of Jesus Christ through suffering and death into the eternal life of resurrection. To conclude, the “infinite hues and tints and shades of colour” of the concrete human existence are not to be feared. Even Radical Secularization can be included in the brilliant prism of human existence, as has been argued throughout the study. Hence, no plurality, not even that of contemporary global hyperpluralism, is to be fled from. Human existence in all its multiformity has been assumed by Christ and redeemed into its vital relationship with the Triune God. The Biblical Revelation assures us that we belong to this world. Humanity is no contingent accident, but intentionally wanted, in all its multiformity and pluralism (see Gen 9:1316). The movement of Christ shows the movement of human transcendentality as opening for the infinite Being of God, not at the expense of humanity but

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precisely by and through it. The time of the Church appears consequently as a gradual proliferation of the “principle of Incarnation” into the whole world (see VG, nn. 4-5). Concretely, it means stripping oneself of all egoistic pretenses of power and opening up oneself for the equally real reality of the Other. Contemporary global hyperpluralism becomes thus more and more visible, and livable. Certainly, the Christian hope does not restrict itself to any earthly imaginable realities,929 but neither does it surpass all human prospectives. A Trinitarian metaphysics and a Christian theology of history coincide in the eschatological hope that Jesus Christ will return, in his equally true divinity and true humanity.

929

The eschatological reservation must always be kept in mind (see J.B. METZ, Theology of the World, p. 97).

CONCLUSION

In accordance with the Balthasarian starting point of the present study, the fundamental theologian is called to express the Christian Revelation in their spatio-temporal context in such a fashion that it could unveil its cruciform Beauty for the salvation of the world. This includes the twofold task of identifying the heart of the Christian message and presenting it as intelligibly as possible for its audience. For this task, an adequate reading of the signs of the times is a necessary presupposition. Indeed, the whole fundamental theological enterprise can be regarded as an attempt to discern how the original movement of Jesus Christ continues to unfold in one’s particular historical condition, including the fundamental theologian themselves. Accordingly, this book aspired to pave a third way into the spiritual predicament of our day beyond the all too unidimensional narratives of the “Death of God” and the “Return of Religion.” By introducing and developing the speculative logic of Radical Secularization, the study argued that what most deeply characterizes the post-modern, post-secular condition is the increasing becoming-visible of natural human diversity concerning existential decisions. This is the contemporary global hyperpluralism where we all, more or less self-consciously, find ourselves. Secularization was analyzed to be the historical process by and through which human transcendentality comes into itself, increasingly emancipating from transhuman authorities and recognizing its spatio-temporal conditionedness. Human freedom from traditional religion was argued to come most clearly to the fore with the concept of Radical Secularization, meaning complete post- or nonreligion. Thus, the logic of Radical Secularization–if we have the courage to follow it–was shown to lead us into the truly new hermeneutical opening of After Secularization. The originality of the study was to bring this decidedly postsecular perspective into dialogue with the ongoing renewal process of the Catholic Church. As was argued in Chapter 1, the Catholic Church has been becoming a truly Catholic, i.e. universal and global, Church since the Second Vatican Council. This marks a radically new beginning in the history of the Church, comparable only to the transition from Jewish

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Christianity to Hellenistic Christianity in the early Church.930 Consequently, the traditional conceptuality of the Latin Church must be speculatively overcome and thoroughly revised to keep pace with this development. Even the traditional concept of “secularization,” masterfully studied by Charles Taylor in his A Secular Age, is not enough to allow us to enter into our new hermeneutical condition of global hyperpluralization. Latin Christendom does not exist anymore, to be certain, but that only opens the doors for a truly global Christianity to unfold. In light of this reading of the signs of the times, the concept of Radical Secularization asks us to imagine a perfectly nonreligious human form-oflife, so nonreligious, in fact, that it should not even be named nonreligious anymore, because it is thoroughly postreligious. In that manner it would become possible to overcome the “religion” of the Western tradition for the much more complex and diverse reality of contemporary global hyperpluralism. The main objective of the study was simply to contemplatively listen to the inner logic of Radical Secularization, following it to its very end. This might have sounded a rather self-destructive enterprise from a theological point of view. Yet, the whole argument of the study was guided by the conviction that the Christian Revelation itself is potent enough to acknowledge every human way-of-being-in-the-world in their amazing variety, including that of Radical Secularization. But this radical spiritual transformation could only be realized by letting oneself be carried by the conceptual movement of Radical Secularization itself. That is why a particular fundamental theological reduction had to be introduced at the end of Chapter 1. It meant bracketing the spontaneous twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization until the end of the study. The central part of the book was, then, concerned with a phenomenological-grammatical description of a completely nonreligious human form-of-life, conceptualized as Radical Secularization. Thus would a speculative overcoming of Western secularization become possible for contemporary global hyperpluralism. Only afterwards could the theological criticism of Radical Secularization, questioning both its inner meaningfulness and its outer relevance, be adequately encountered. Amidst the ongoing epochal shift, the theologian is to move in a continually changing twilight-zone, transcending all metaphysical binaries, be they between theology and philosophy, or religion and non-religion, or the Church and the world.

930 See K. RAHNER, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”, pp. 721-722.

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Consequently, Chapter 2 put the concept of Radical Secularization into dialogue with the popular concept of the “post-secular,” especially as it was introduced by Jürgen Habermas during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Furthermore, Radical Secularization was related to the exponentially growing academic research on secularity and non-religion, both in social sciences and in post-modern philosophy of religion. Rather than explicating a speculatively satisfying postreligion, these contemporary discourses unveil a burning Sprachnot (Gadamer) or lack of adequate language concerning a truly nonreligious human way-of-being-in-the-world. The signs of our times suggest that traditional religion is not relevant or even credible for many Western people anymore, but we do not yet know how to describe and live a genuinely nonreligious human existence. Hence, a more indirect, diachronic and descriptive approach was needed to get a speculative grasp of Radical Secularization, imagining its genealogicaltranscendental conditions of possibility. Such a fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization was developed in the central part of the study, comprising Chapters 3 and 4. Given the fact that all human societies have been strongly religious both before and outside Western modernity, the aim of the named fundamental genealogy was simply to analyze the main speculative thresholds of the coming of Radical Secularization. By deconstructing the original ubiquity of religion, we could hope to free ourselves from our traditional metaphysical burden and enter into contemporary global hyperpluralism where the Church is now called to carry on with her missionary task. Chapter 3 started from Karl Rahner’s influential analysis of human transcendentality that argues for humanity’s essential openness to the infinite. Nevertheless, Rahner’s analysis was shown to be still limited by the metaphysical assumption of an inherent, rather static, meaningfulness in reality as it is in itself. The way to proceed was consequently to unveil the metaphysical assumption precisely as an assumption, possible to be dispensed with. This was done by a near-reading of the philosophical conversion of Descartes, fundamental for the spiritual figure of Western modernity. The Cartesian movement lies at the root of modern natural science that introduced us into the practically infinite, constantly evolving universe that does not have any prima facie meaningfulness like the premodern cosmos did. Only against this genealogical background could the phenomenological contours of Radical Secularization begin to emerge. Yet, the phenomenological analysis of Chapter 3 was deemed to be too negative in its approach. It still considered Radical Secularization as lacking something, namely the metaphysical assumption, whereas religion was argued to be based on the very same presumption. Thus would Radical

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Secularization still appear as somehow in contrast to religion, not yet as genuinely after or beyond it. The perspective of the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization had to be further broadened and deepened to allow for Radical Secularization to unfurl in its full speculative force. In Chapter 4, accordingly, the genealogical analysis of human transcendentality was related to the Jaspersian theory of the Axial Age, in order to make it broad and deep enough to include Radical Secularization, too. In the proposed post-metaphysical reading of the theory, an “Axial Age” signifies the concrete historical epoch from which onwards we can follow the gradual unfurling of human transcendentality, as it becomes conscious of its own spiritual movement towards the infinite horizon of being. In the Western tradition, beginning with the birth of monotheism in ancient Israel and continuing with its radicalization by the Christian faith, human transcendentality did unfold in a way that ultimately made the complete departure from religion possible by and through the specifically modern Western process of modernization-secularization. Following Marcel Gauchet among others, the development of liberal democracy was argued to be pivotal in the gradual appearance of Radical Secularization. Thus, the developed genealogy of Radical Secularization showed that only against the speculative background of modern science (Chapter 3) and liberal democracy (Chapter 4) do the general outlines of the concept of Radical Secularization become visible. In sum, Radical Secularization presented itself as the spiritual temperament for which the trans-human claims of traditional religion appear as totally out of the question, because it has thoroughly acknowledged the human conditionedness in a certain time and place, and wants to hold fast to the inviolable human freedom in existential decisions. Hence, the process of secularization, if it is allowed to unfold in all its inherent dynamism, introduces us into historical becoming, from which all the other historical becomings become potentially visible (contemporary global hyperpluralism). At the same time, however, Radical Secularization exposed an equally radical dilemma: the concept opens up an infinitely dynamic, constantly broadening spiritual horizon before us, but we, nevertheless, are obviously no infinite, limitless beings. With this question we began to overcome the purely phenomenological method of the central part of the study for more a more metaphysical posture, without which one could not hope to adequately approach the fullness of the Christian Revelation (see FR, n. 83). Thus, Chapter 5 encountered the twofold theological criticism against the very concept of Radical Secularization that emerged immediately in Chapter 1 but had to be bracketed for the fundamental genealogy of Radical Secularization to be able to unfold in the central part of the study. Instead

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of responding directly to the criticism, however, it was shown, in a Heideggerian manner, to arise from what was called the ontotheological temperament. As a consequence, a kind of inverse ontological argument appeared, revealing that the static fullness of Western metaphysics factually cannot exist given the transcendental constitution of human spirituality. Instead of banning absolutely all metaphysical thinking (which would be all too metaphysical in itself!), the speculative force of Radical Secularization was shown to lead us to overcome the ontotheological formation of metaphysics for a truly Christian, i.e. Trinitarian, metaphysics. A Trinitarian metaphysics cannot be articulated in abstracto, as if a priori, but only in concreto, by and through the a posteriori unfolding of salvation history. In this manner, a Trinitarian metaphysics has a necessary corollary in a Christian theology of history. The infinite Source and Mystery of all being is no more to be sought anywhere outside spatio-temporal becoming, but precisely in and through it. Thus can even the movement of Radical Secularization be related to and redeemed into the movement of Jesus Christ.931 To conclude, the whole study can be regarded as a continuous speculative Anstrengung of the concept of Radical Secularization, which in the end appears as its ultimate reductio in absurdum. Why is this? To be able to make space for Radical Secularization, we were led to analyze human transcendentality in a way that would show its infinite opening to the continuously broadening horizon of reality. Nothing statically trans-human can be allowed to limit the intrinsically limitless movement of human transcendentality. In this dynamic sense, to be human is to be trans-human, incessantly going beyond our spatio-temporal conditions. At the same time, however, we obviously are finite and limited beings, belonging to the biological species of homo sapiens. If the preceding analysis of human transcendentality is basically correct, there is an infinite potentiality in the very fabric of humanity. On the other hand, actually, in concrete existence, we humans are very restricted, by our spatio-temporal surroundings as well as by the neurological constitution of our mind-brain. This is the fundamental paradox, not to say absurdity, of being human. Radical Secularization reveals the human as constitutionally open in its transcendental movement towards the ever-broadening horizon of reality. To recognize this is to transcendentally refuse all, potential and actual, transhuman claimants to terminate the movement of human transcendentality. This is to come totally into oneself, in complete spiritual freedom, that is the 931

In this way, Radical Secularization logically opens up for Radical (Deep) Incarnation (see N.H. GREGERSEN, “The Cross of Christ in an Evolutionary World”; D. EDWARDS, Deep Incarnation).

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driving motivation of our liberal democracies, too. But how can this be, when we at the same time know that we are limited by all sorts of concrete issues? Indeed, it is precisely by recognizing our conditionedness that we can overcome it for the semper maius of reality, as was argued above. This is the inherent absurdity of Radical Secularization. To be what it claims to be–human transcendentality come into itself–it has to acknowledge something beyond itself–the ever-growing horizon of reality. How can this be done without either impotently denying the infinite potential of the human (subjectivism) or falsely identifying it with the actual infinity of reality (objectivism)? Here the fundamental theologian can ultimately–in complete freedom, without any a priori necessities–only bear witness to their faith: I have found the true nature and direction of my transcendentality in the figure of Jesus Christ that the Church transmits to the world. The Good News proclaimed by the Church convinces the believer that they are no natural being whatsoever, but are truly open to infinity (finitum capax infiniti!). Hence, no trans-human claims of any sort, even in the abstract name of “God,” can restrict the movement of human transcendentality. The human person is radically, transcendentally, and inviolably free in their spiritual decisions (see DH, nn. 2, 10). Yet, for this radical spiritual freedom to be what it claims to be, it needs to be related to something beyond itself, to an equally (or even more?) radical Otherness (see GS, n. 17). Otherwise, it could not be what it is, i.e. the radically infinite freedom of a concrete, finite human being. How can this be realized without any spiritual violence that would alienate oneself from oneself? During the history of human religious evolution, “God” has been equally used to foster as well as to hinder the progressive movement of human transcendentality. It all changes, however, if or when the trans-human source and goal of the movement of human transcendentality itself (himself!) enters into its movement and leads it into itself by and through itself (himself). In this sense can the existence of God be “proved” even After Secularization. I, as the concrete human person I am, can fully actualize my radical transcendental freedom only by assenting to the radically transcendent God who reveals himself to me. Thus, in light of the Christian Revelation, transcendental coming into oneself reveals itself as coming into the Other. Furthermore, coming into oneself is coming into the Other, because the Other has already come to oneself in an even more radical freedom. Radical Secularization is possible only thanks to the radicality of the Christian Revelation itself. It was the movement of Jesus Christ that guided the movement of Radical Secularization all along, all the way through the ever-deepening spiritual darkness of Good Friday and Holy

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Saturday to the infinite light of the Easter morning. Hence, after the Christian-guided transformation process of secularization, focused by and in Radical Secularization, God may, indeed he must (an aesthetic, a posteriori necessity!), return, but only the God with a human face. Recognizing this leads us into the new hermeneutical opening of After Secularization, from which contemporary global hyperpluralism becomes increasingly visible, and livable, for the Church as well as for society at large. Thus, paradoxically, the most radical subjectivity becomes converted into the most radical objectivity, and the most radical objectivity returns into the most radical subjectivity, by and through the humble confession of Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God, the saving Beauty of all reality, who is coming soon (Rev 22:20).

APPENDIX A ABBREVIATIONS

1 Cor 1 Pet 1 Tim 1 Thess 2 Cor 2 Pet CCC CIC Col DCE DF DH DI

DV DVE EG

The First Letter to the Corinthians The First Letter of Peter The First Letter to Timothy The First Letter to the Thessalonians The Second Letter to the Corinthians The Second Letter of Peter The Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 11 October 1992. The Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 25 January 1983. The Letter to the Colossians Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical on Christian Love, promulgated on 25 January 2006. Dei Filius, the First Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Catholic Faith, promulgated by Pope Pius IX on 24 April 1870. Dignitatis humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 7 December 1965. Dominus Iesus, a Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, published on 6 August 2000. Dei verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 18 November 1965. Donum veritatis, an Instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, published on 24 May 1990. Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, promulgated on 24 November 2013.

376

EN Eph FR FT Gal Gen GME GS Heb Isa LS LG Matt OT Phil Ps Rev RH Rom ST VG

Appendix A

Evangelii nuntiandi, Pope Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation on Catholic Evangelization, promulgated on 8 December 1975. The Letter to the Ephesians Fides et ratio, Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical on the Relationship between Faith and Reason, promulgated on 14 September 1998. Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Fraternity and Social Friendship, promulgated on 4 October 2020. The Letter to the Galatians The Book of Genesis Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, the Opening Declaration of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962. Gaudium et spes, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 7 December 1965. The Letter to the Hebrews The Book of Isaiah Laudato si’, Pope Francis’s Encyclical on Care for Our Common Home, promulgated on 18 June 2015. Lumen gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 21, 1964. The Gospel of Matthew Optatam totius, the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Priestly Training, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 28 October 1965. The Letter to the Philippians The Book of Psalms The Book of Revelation Redemptor hominis, Pope John Paul II’s first Encyclical Letter, promulgated on 4 March 1979. The Letter to the Romans Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas Veritatis gaudium, Pope Francis’s Apostolic Constitution on Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties, promulgated on 29 January 2018.

APPENDIX B THE SECULARIZATION SCHEME

“Secularization” ‫ ޒ‬Lat. saeculum, in the Classical Roman usage a rather neutral designation for the longest possible human life (i.e. the “age” of ca. 100 years). In Latin Christianity, on a New Testament basis, the word receives an ambivalent flair, depending on whether the “age” (the Greek Į‫ݧ‬ȫȞ) designated by saeculum is considered as having been redeemed by the Triune God or not (see the Vulgate translation of Rom 12:2, Gal 1:4 etc.). 1. The canonical saecularisatio

2. The juridical Säkularisation

3. The hermeneutical Verweltlichung

4. The sociological secularization

The oldest attested use of “secularization,” denoting the transfer of a “religious” priest living in a monastery to living in the “world” (saeculum).

The expropriation of ecclesial (“religious”) goods by civil (“secular”) authorities, especially in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion.

Since the Enlightenment, “secularization” has been used to interpret the relationship between Western modernity and the Christian tradition.

After the Second World War, “secularization” has been used to describe and explain the changing religious landscape of modernizing societies.

> The “post-secular”?: a growing acknowledgment of the historically and culturally conditioned nature of the various secularization processes, with a public recognition of the “fact that religious communities continue to exist in a context of ongoing secularization” (Habermas). Perhaps even, “we are just at the beginning of a new age of religious searching, whose outcome no one can foresee” (Taylor)?

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INDEX OF NAMES

Albarello, D., 15, 379 Albright, W.F., 259, 379 Alfeyev, H., 342, 379 Almeida, R., 40, 403 Al-Tayyeb, A., 296 Anders, W.A., 208, 209, 296 Anderson, D.S., 343, 379 Anselm of Canterbury, 348, 349, 379 Anthony the Great, 109 Aquinas, T., 13, 129, 172, 177, 238, 262, 311, 327, 376, 379, 398 Archimandrite Sophrony, 342, 379 Ariew, R., 181, 379 Aristotle, 73, 79, 128, 166, 179, 190, 202, 379 Arjomand, S.A., 218, 379 Armstrong, K., 220, 379 Arnason, J.P., 218, 226, 379 Asad, T., 91, 112, 122, 126, 380 Assmann, J., 218, 227, 254, 258, 380 Athanasius the Great, 109 Athenagoras of Athens, 63, 380 Atkins, P., 80, 380 Augustine of Hippo, 13, 127, 142, 146, 173, 271, 357, 358, 380, 383 Austin, J.L., 13, 220 Badiou, A., 136, 138, 265, 380, 409 Baggett, J.P., 120, 121, 380 Baggini, J., 209 Baring, E., 143, 380 Baron d’Holbach, 64 Barr, J., 63, 380 Barth, K., 236, 237, 244, 274, 380, 395 Barth, U., 103

Baumard, N., 221 Beaman, L.G., 170, 380 Beckford, J.A., 87, 102, 380 Bedouelle, T., 103, 380 Bellah, R.N., 36, 55, 56, 101, 218, 220, 224, 234, 242, 250, 276, 380, 381, 405 Bély, L., 90, 381 Benedict of Nursia, 110 Berger, A.I., 277 Berger, P.L., 34, 36, 88, 240, 381 Bergeron, P., 230, 237, 381 Bergunder, M., 103, 381 Bering, J., 76, 381 Berkeley, G., 190 Bernard of Clairvaux, 264 Berry, T., 194, 334, 351, 381 Berwick, R.C., 163, 381 Bevans, S.B., 25, 381 Biernot, D., 145, 382 Bilgrami, A., 40, 382 Blackford, R., 209, 382 Blankholm, J., 123, 333, 382 Bloch, E., 335, 382 Blond, P., 86, 94, 382 Blumenberg, H., 26, 33, 39, 73, 77, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113, 173, 238, 354, 355, 357, 382, 390, 391, 399 Boersma, H., 74, 382 Bonhoeffer, D., 269, 275, 283, 325, 382 Bossy, J., 57, 382 Boyer, P., 80, 126, 382 Brague, R., 305, 318, 351, 383 Bremmer, J.N., 103, 107, 383 Bridle, J., 162, 383 Bruce, S., 33, 50, 383

412

Index of Names

Buber, M., 19, 383 Buckley, M.J., 64, 279 Bulgakov, S., 340, 343, 383 Bullivant, S., 34, 63, 118, 119, 383 Bultmann, R., 210, 384 Burchardt, M., 40, 384 Burnyeat, M.F., 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 195, 196, 384 Böckenförde, E.-W., 106, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 382 Böttigheimer, C., 11, 12, 349, 382 Calhoun, C., 86, 87, 88, 94, 99, 384, 398, 408 Campbell, C., 34, 121, 384 Camus, A., 134, 142, 384 Caputo, J.D., 102, 139, 143, 328, 335, 384 Carnap, R., 177, 384 Casanova, J., 90, 101, 103, 384 Cassidy-Deketelaere, N., 331, 332, 384 Cavanaugh, W.T., 75, 91, 102, 129, 384 Cavell, S., 180, 347, 385 Censorinus, 108 Chadwick, O., 362, 385 Chakrabarty, D., 34, 385 Chenu, M.-D., 22, 28, 385 Chomsky, N., 163, 169, 356, 381, 385, 392 Cicero, M.T., 129 Clement of Alexandria, 269 Cloots, A., 230, 385 Coda, P., 350, 385, 389 Cogan, J., 83 Comte, A., 134 Conway Morris, S., 162, 385 Conze, W., 103, 107, 108, 409 Copernicus, N., 180, 204 Cornwell, R.E., 171, 380, 405 Corporale, R., 118, 385 Costa, P., 40, 87, 91, 385 Cotter, C.R., 123, 385 Cox, H., 266, 385 Curran, C.E., 357, 386 d’Ayala Valva, L., 110

Danblon, E., 179, 389 Daniélou, J., 344, 349, 386 Dante, A., 204, 296 Darwin, C., 66, 171, 180, 204, 205, 386, 387 Davidson, D., 348, 386 Davie, G., 35, 36, 381, 386 Dawe, D.G., 326, 328, 331, 386 Dawkins, R., 63, 171, 386 de Botton, A., 69, 386 de Certeau, M., 104, 386 de Lubac, H., 47, 74, 386, 398 de Vries, H., 87, 88, 229, 346, 383, 386, 406 Deleuze, G., 3, 60, 386 Delio, I., 353, 386 Delsol, C., 28, 386 Delumeau, J., 57, 386 Democritus, 198 Dennett, D.C., 147, 205, 387 Derrida, J., 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 380, 387, 392, 405, 407 Descartes, R., viii, 181-190, 193198, 200, 201, 210, 278-280, 284, 309, 369, 379, 384, 387, 391, 397, 409 Deutero-Isaiah, 223, 259, 260, 261, 263 Di Somma, E., 41, 387 Diamond, J., 80, 81, 82, 209, 387 Diderot, D., 64 Dillon, C., 36, 89, 387 Dobbelaere, K., 42, 387 Donald, M., 276, 387 Donne, J., 180 Dostoyevsky, F., 293 Dotolo, C., 1, 17, 35, 387 Dreyfus, H., 276, 388 Dukas, H., 171, 388 Dulles, A., 14, 388 Dunning, S.B., 103, 388 Dupuis, J., 53, 388 Dworkin, R., 66, 388 Dyson, F.J., 205, 388 Ecklund, E.H., 44, 388 Eder, K., 86

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath Edwards, D., 371, 388 Einstein, A., 171, 180, 353, 388, 392 Eisenstadt, S.N., ix, 56, 217-220, 225-228, 240, 254, 379, 388, 401 Eliade, M., 54, 388 Elkana, Y., 164, 388 Evagrios Ponticos, 110 Everett, C, 188 Everett, C., 388 Everett, D.L., 163, 249-252, 388 Fabro, C., 193, 279, 389 Faggioli, M., 27, 333, 350, 389 Farias, M., 118, 119, 383 Feeney, D., 103, 108, 389 Ferrara, A., 34, 389 Ferry, V., 179, 389 Feuerbach, L., 134 Filoramo, G., 103, 389 Finlayson, J.G., 94, 389 Fitch, W.T., 163 Flew, A., 70 Foucault, M., 57, 180, 186, 389, 392 Francis of Assisi, 335 Freud, S., 204 Friedman, J., 54, 405 Fries, H., 12, 349, 389 Frye, N., 261 Fukuyama, F., 90, 291, 389 Gadamer, H.-G., 32, 37, 40, 67, 78, 104, 112, 339, 369, 389, 406 Gaillardetz, R., 22, 390 Gaita, R., 61, 316, 390 Galen, L.W., 34, 116, 117, 119, 123, 125, 410 Galileo, G., 180, 195, 198 Gauchet, M., ix, 1, 67, 90, 124, 218, 219, 229-240, 251, 252, 256258, 265, 266, 275, 288, 289, 325, 370, 381, 385, 390 Gautama Buddha, 47, 226 Giddens, A., 233, 390 Gilbert, A., 258, 390 Girard, R., 359, 390 Gogarten, F., 102, 266-275, 390

413

Gordon, P.E., 41, 49, 107, 143 Gorski, P.E., 87-89, 391 Graf, F.W., 242, 391 Grafton, A., 182, 391 Gregersen, N.H., 344, 371, 391 Greisch, J., 39, 391 Griffioen, S., 354, 391 Grondin, J., 308, 309, 391 Grumelli, A., 118, 385 Guattari, F., 3, 60, 386 Gumbrecht, H.U., 255, 391 Haarscher, G., 101, 391 Habermas, J., 68, 86-100, 102, 130, 137, 152-155, 218, 369, 377, 384, 389, 391, 392, 403 Hadot, P., 127, 202, 392 Halbertal, M., 260, 392 Haldane, J.B.S., 200, 201, 392 Halík, T., 333, 392 Hall, E.E., 87, 308, 408 Harnack, A., 63, 392 Haught, J.F., 133, 318, 353, 392 Hauser, M.D., 163, 392 Hawking, S., 171 Hecataeus of Abdera, 262 Heelas, P., 35, 393 Hegel, G.W.F., 1, 25, 33, 38, 61, 62, 114, 129, 130, 142, 145, 175, 181, 255, 269, 280, 286, 308, 327, 343, 379, 392, 393, 395, 399, 406 Heidegger, M., 37, 41, 67, 82, 142, 168, 175-178, 188, 208, 243, 255, 295, 307, 308, 310-314, 320, 324, 325, 335, 391, 393, 400, 403 Hemming, L.P., 93, 393 Hervieu-Léger, D., 28, 51, 393 Heschel, A.J., 261, 393 Hick, J., 218, 393 Hillman, E., 207, 393 Hoffmann, B., 171, 388 Hume, D., 69, 129 Husserl, E., 83, 394 Hyman, G., 63, 71, 130, 238, 279, 394

414

Index of Names

Hünermann, P., 22, 393 Hägglund, M., viii, 138-151, 155, 157, 244, 284, 286, 291, 382, 392, 394 Ignatius of Loyola, 327, 349 Inglehart, R., 33, 92, 394, 400 Irenaeus of Lyons, 48, 394 Jackelén, A., 151, 394 Jacobsen, T., 258, 394 James, H., 325 James, W., 247, 394 Jaspers, K., ix, 217-219, 221-223, 225, 227, 240, 276, 394 Jay, M., 58 Jaynes, J., 218, 394 Jenkins, P., 35, 92, 115, 394 Jeremiah, 226, 261 Jesus Christ, vi, vii, ix, 3, 11-17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 32, 47, 48, 49, 63, 73, 109, 110, 126, 236, 237, 249, 263-271, 274, 297, 305, 326, 327, 331, 336, 337, 339-345, 350, 352, 353, 358, 360, 364, 365, 367, 371, 372, 373, 375, 390, 403, 404 Joas, H., 55, 75, 87, 218, 381, 394 John of Jandun, 128 John of the Cross, 14, 394 Johnson, E.A., 320, 394 Johnston, M., 66, 320, 394 Jonas, H., 267, 394 Justin the Martyr, 269 Jüngel, E., 244, 269, 270, 340, 341, 395 Kain, P.J., 255, 395 Kalberg, S., 218, 379 Kant, I., 32, 98, 129, 178, 280, 307, 330, 395 Kaufmann, Y., 259, 395, 399, 400 Kelly, S.D., 276, 388 Kerr, F., 204, 395 Kilby, K., 165, 395 King, M.L., Jr., 146 Knippenberg, H., 101, 395 Knoepffler, N., 165, 395 Knuuttila, S., 128, 133, 395

Koselleck, R., 105, 395, 409 Kosmin, B., 117 Koyré, A., 180, 395 Kugel, J.L., 249, 395 Künkler, M., 40, 382, 395 Lafont, G., 351, 396 Lambert, W.G., 259, 396 Lambert, Y., 229, 275 Lanman, J., 118, 119, 383 Larchet, J.-C., 342, 396 Larkin, P., 68, 69 Larson, E.J., 171, 396 Lassander, M., 87, 89, 400 Latré, S., 230, 354, 356, 385, 396 Lee, L., 34, 116-119, 121, 122, 124, 125 Lefort, C., 95, 396 Lemaire, A., 259, 396 Lessing, G.E., 129 Levinas, E., 322, 332, 391 Levine, G., 40, 403 Lewis, C.S., 146 Libanori, D., 295, 396 Lindeman, M., 119, 120, 396 Locke, J., 129, 199 Lombaard, C., 145, 382 Lonergan, B., 163, 396 Luckmann, T., 240, 381 Luther, M., 57, 146, 268, 270-272, 274, 280, 327, 386, 397, 400 Lübbe, H., 103, 397 Löwith, K., 52, 105, 107, 354, 355, 357, 390, 391, 397 MacCulloch, D., 220, 224, 397 Machinist, P., 259, 397 MacIntyre, A., 149, 303, 304, 397 Mackie, J.L., 69, 397 Macron, E., 98 Madeley, J., 40, 395 Malcolm, N., 103, 178, 186, 243, 397 Margalit, A., 260, 392 Marion, J.-L., 14, 48, 73, 181, 311, 397 Maritain, J., 280, 397 Markschies, C., 348, 397

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath Markus, R.A., 103, 112, 397 Marramao, G., 103, 397 Marrou, H.-I., 357, 358, 359, 398 Martin, D., 34 Martini, C.M., 28 Martinson, M., 35, 398 Marx, K., 145, 149, 392 Masuzawa, T., 76, 126, 398 Mattesilano, M., 77 McDowell, J., 77, 398 McFague, S., 320, 398 Meillassoux, Q., 136, 138, 409 Mendieta, E., 86, 87, 88, 94, 99, 384 Menke, K.-H., 273, 398 Mercer, C., 79, 398 Mercier, H., 164, 398 Mettinger, T.N.D., 327, 398 Metz, J.-B., 266, 365, 398 Middell, M., 40, 384 Milbank, J., 53, 58, 74, 91, 93, 94, 238, 330, 398 Minar, E., 203, 398 Momigliano, A., 222, 399 Monod, J.-C., 39, 354, 399 Morelli, A., 35, 399 Morra, S., 12, 399 Mozart, W.A., 132, 262, 340, 344 Mullins, D.A., 220, 399 Mutter, M., 102, 399 Nagel, T., 38, 66, 68, 164, 170, 198, 202, 203, 247, 398, 399 Nancy, J.-L., 136, 138, 328, 329, 332, 387, 399, 409 Neurath, O., 77, 204 Newman, J.H., 361, 362, 363, 364, 380, 399 Nicholas of Cusa, 244 Nichols, A., 15, 399 Nietzsche, F., 124, 134, 135, 147, 192, 200, 280, 295, 320, 323, 324, 363, 399 Nijk, A.J., 103, 400 Nishitani, K., 176, 400 Norris, P., 92, 400 Nynäs, P., 87, 89, 400

415

O’Collins, G., 12, 22, 342, 349, 352, 400 Oberman, H., 272, 400 Oftestad, B.T., 290, 400 Otto, R., 79, 400 Parpola, S., 258, 400 Pasquale, F.L., 34, 116, 117, 119, 123, 125, 354, 400, 410 Patsch, F., xi, 12, 26, 203, 399, 400 Paul of Tarsus, 86, 109, 148, 264, 268, 269, 271, 326 Pelikan, J., 256, 322, 401 Penttinen, A., xii, 330, 401 Pera, M., 28, 403 Pesce, M., 28, 385 Petcu, L., 348, 401 Peters, F.E., 264, 401 Petry, S., 259, 401 Pickstock, C., 53, 93, 238, 398 Pié-Ninot, S., 11, 12, 401 Pinborg, J., 26, 71, 401 Placher, W.C., 137 Plato, 31, 148, 175, 178, 190, 202, 223, 226, 401 Pope Benedict XVI, 7, 12, 31, 239, 283, 295, 304, 346, 375 Pope Francis, xii, 3, 4, 12, 15, 26, 27-30, 36, 59, 65, 105, 108, 296, 304, 333, 375, 376, 389 Pope Gregory XVI, 65 Pope John Paul II, 24, 265, 304, 375, 376 Pope John XXIII, 14, 21, 22, 23, 376 Pope Leo XIII, 357 Pope Paul VI, 12, 29, 118, 350, 375, 376 Pope Pius IX, 363, 375 Popkin, R.H., 182, 401 Poulat, É., 35, 401 Presley, E., 65 Preyer, G., 225, 401 Provan, I., 218, 402 Putnam, H., 307, 315-317, 402 Pyysiäinen, I., 80, 212, 402 Quack, J., 34, 64, 120, 402

416 Quadrio, P.A., 123, 385 Quine, W.V.O., 63, 66, 152, 178, 206, 402 Raffelt, A., 165, 402 Rahner, K., viii, xi, 21, 27, 48, 62, 74, 76, 130, 131, 162, 164-169, 171-176, 178, 191, 210-212, 219, 242-246, 251, 253, 261, 298, 343, 368, 369, 395, 402404 Ratzinger, J., 15, 28, 86, 100, 102, 127, 173, 174, 284, 285, 353, 392, 403 Rawls, J., 91, 94, 389, 403 Rectenwald, M., 40, 403 Rees, D.H., 99, 154, 403 Rentmeester, C., 312, 403 Rhonheimer, M., 290, 403 Richard, R.L., 102 Rilke, R.M., 18 Rorty, R., 68, 183, 403 Rossi, P., 180, 195, 403 Rousseau, J.-J., 280, 397 Routhier, G., 23, 404 Ruggieri, G., 23, 404 Runciman, D., 293, 404 Ruse, M., 63, 383 Rüpke, J., 103, 404 Räisänen, H., 12, 264, 403 Römer, T., 259, 403 Said, E., 51, 255, 404 Salatiello, G., 165, 404 Sample, I., 208, 404 Sanders, E.P., 264, 404 Sauerland, U., 252, 404 Scheeben, M., 342, 404 Schelling, F.W.J., 132 Schmemann, A., 48, 49, 273, 404 Schmitt, C., 102, 106, 391, 404 Schroeder, R.P., 25, 381 Schuh, C., 34, 64, 402 Schutz, A., 250, 404 Schwartz, B.I., 222, 223, 404 Schüklenk, U., 209, 382 Schüssler Fiorenza, F., 11 Schöne, A., 102, 404

Index of Names Scola, A., 15, 357, 404 Scruton, R., 18, 262, 405 Shah, T.S., 54, 405 Shakespeare, S., 139, 405 Shankar, S., 40, 395 Shermer, M., 80 Shook, J.R., 116, 410 Silouan the Athonite, 342 Sloterdijk, P., 1, 405 Smith, J.K.A., 93, 94 Smith, M.S., 126, 259, 395, 405 Smith, W.C., 76, 126, 304 Solovyov, V.S., 132 Sorrentino, P., 152 Spaemann, R., 127-133, 144, 180, 262, 318, 319, 405 Sperber, D., 68, 164, 398 Stagi, P., 54 Stanner, W.E.H., 234 Stark, R., 33, 405 Stenmark, M., 66, 405 Stewart-Williams, S., 81, 405 Stirrat, M., 171, 405 Stroud, B., 13, 188, 196, 198-201, 405 Stroumsa, G.G., 76, 220, 405 Strätz, H.-W., 103, 107, 108, 409 Stuart-Glennie, J.S., 217, 406 Sullivan, L.E., 87, 88, 386 Svenungsson, J., 1, 261, 406 Swimme, B.T., 17, 406 Swinburne, R., 82, 313, 406 Tallon, A., 165 Taylor, C., vii, ix, 4, 33, 36-47, 4959, 65-67, 70, 86, 89, 91, 97, 101-103, 114, 116, 146, 147, 148, 156, 218, 219, 229-231, 233-235, 238-240, 246, 254, 265, 266, 295, 355, 362, 368, 377, 385, 387, 390, 396, 399, 406, 407 Teilhard de Chardin, P., 26, 27, 164, 278, 325, 338, 353, 407 Tertullian, 256 Theobald, C., 12, 21, 261, 407 Thiessen, J., 120, 407

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath Tillich, P., 212, 350, 407 Tracy, D., 111, 407 Trothen, T.J., 79, 398 Tucker, M.E., 17, 381, 406 Tuckett, J., 123, 385 Turner, D., 261, 407 Tyssens, J., 35, 399 Utriainen, T., 87, 89, 400 Van Herck, W., 354, 356, 396 VanAntwerpen, J., 86, 87, 88, 94, 99, 384, 398, 408 Vanheeswijck, G., 230, 354, 356, 385, 396 Vattimo, G., 102, 244, 309, 328, 332, 384, 407 Veight, G.E., 35, 407 Verweyen, H., 165, 402 Voegelin, E., 218, 408 von Balthasar, H.U., ix, 15-20, 24, 25, 30, 111, 132, 133, 142, 219, 238, 239, 326, 335, 337-345, 352, 359, 360, 399, 404, 408 von Sass, H., 308, 408 von Speyr, A., 342, 343, 408 Wade, A., 118 Wade, N., 76 Ward, G., 53, 93, 386, 388, 398, 409

417

Watkin, C., 134-138, 143, 144, 328, 332, 409 Weber, A., 223 Weber, M., 50, 56, 68, 75, 102, 217, 258, 409 Weil, E., 253, 409 Weinberg, S., 181, 409 Westphal, M., 307, 409 Whitham, L., 171 Whitmarsh, T., 64, 409 Wilkins-Laflamme, S., 120, 407 William of St. Thierry, 109, 409 Williams, B., 193-198, 200, 201, 280, 309, 316, 409 Williams, R., 338 Wittgenstein, L., 41, 46, 59, 71, 83, 101, 103, 125, 134, 167, 172, 177, 178, 186, 188, 206, 243, 282, 315-317, 397, 398, 409 Wittrock, B., 218, 379 Wohlrab-Sahr, M., 40, 384 Woodhouse, L., 35 Zabel, H., 103, 107, 108, 409 Zas Friz de Col, R., 241, 409 Zizioulas, J., 344, 346 Zuckerman, P., 34, 116, 117, 119, 123, 125, 395, 409, 410 Zulehner, P.M., 207, 410