Abstract
Secularism is difficult to disentangle from kindred ideas of the “Enlightenment heritage,” “modernity,” “rationalism,” and the “Age of Reason.” There is about these widely used terms a shared sense of worldliness, of scientific method, and of suspicion about claims of transcendence and the sacred, and a refusal to be bound by tradition. Instead, there exists a belief in progress, in technological innovation, and in Western superiority and destiny. Secularism is also tied historically and ideologically to the fate of the sovereign state as the primary organizing unit of world order. Thus, at a moment when these keystone terms are all subject to doubt and controversy, the challenge of situating “secularism” in relation to religion, and otherwise, is indeed formidable.
How to hold secure one’s own moral and spiritual self, one’s personal, reflexive destiny—amidst the crushing institutional forces of the state, but also of the marketplace and, yes, the church in its decidedly secular aspect?
Robert Coles, The Secular Mind
That a delicate shuttle should have woven together the heavens, industry, texts, souls and moral law—this remains uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
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Notes
Significantly, at this time there are various uses of the terminology of the “new medievalism” to describe world order, reflecting the rise of overlapping authority sources displacing the clarity of a “world of states.” For an influential formulation see Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977);
also, Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997). The use of “medievalism” as a metaphor for an emergent world order has not been extended to the revival of the religious state, but it could be, if qualified.
There are many postmodernisms, but in particular is the split between deconstructive postmodernism, which consists of radical criticism of modernist pretensions of knowledge and ethics, and reconstructive (or restructive) postmodernism, which seeks to nurture an emergent respiritualization of culture and society. For an excellent exploration along these latter lines see David Ray Griffin, ed., Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988);
Charlene Spretnak, The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World (Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley, 1997);
see also Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1994);
and David Ray Griffin and Richard Falk, eds., Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993).
For an account of this point stressing the influence of John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (first published in 1689; cited edition Buffalo, NY, 1990),
see W. Cole Durham, Jr., “Perspectives on Religious Liberty: A Comparative Framework,” in Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective, edited by Johan D. van der Vyver and John Witte, Jr. (The Hague: Klewer, 1996), pp. 1–44, esp. pp. 7–12.
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 27–47, pp. 178–99.
See Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
See Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
For one account of globalization in relation to the state, see Richard Falk, Predatory Globalization: A Critique (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1999).
See Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), esp. pp. 134–96, pp. 234–74.
For illuminating discussion of the general problematique, with explicit reference to McNamara, see John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 23–5.
See Albert Speer, Inside The Third Reich: Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1970);
Robert S. McNamara and Brian Van De Mark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1996);
see also Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (New York: Knopf, 1995);
Robert S. McNamara, James C. Blight, and Robert K. Brigham, Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999).
See the important modification of Hobbesian realism in Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 23–52, n. 1.
For an expansion of this argument on behalf of a different possible modernism deriving from Montaigne, see Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. H. Reeve (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 235; see also pp. 238–9, p. 304.
See Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modem Mind, rev. ed. (Wheatley, IL: Quest Books, 1989), pp. 191–2.
For one line of interpretation that focuses on the changing role of the state see Richard Falk, Predatory Globalization: A Critique (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999), pp. 35–47.
See George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 1998);
and John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: New Press, 1999).
See Richard Falk, Law in an Emerging Village: A Post Westphalian Perspective (Ardsley, NY: Transnational, 1998).
See Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons (New York: Routledge, 2000).
See William E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
This perspective is set forth in Richard Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995).
For a suggestive exploration of these emancipatory potentialities, see Joel Kovel, History and Spirit: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), esp. pp. 197–237.
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© 2001 Richard Falk
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Falk, R. (2001). Secularism in an Era of Globalization. In: Religion and Humane Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62975-6_3
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