Abstract
There are good reasons to expect that modern societies, East and West, will continue to be shaped by an increase of religious, spiritual and secular worldviews, practices and forms of life. What consequences can be drawn from this unprecedented condition? How does the acknowledgment of irreducible religious and nonreligious diversity transform membership and experience in these societies? Rather than simply accommodating religion within the modern state, the version of postsecularism put forward calls for a productive engagement and mutual critique between immanent and absolute conceptions of transcendence.
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Notes
- 1.
Blumenberg, for example, argues that “transcendence makes gentle, immanence violent.” Lebenszeit und Weltzeit, 245 [6].
- 2.
Jacques Derrida emphasizes the violent history unleashed by the three monotheisms: “The war over the ‘appropriation of Jerusalem’ is today’s world war. It is taking place everywhere.” Cited in Sloterdijk, God’s Zeal, 2, 105 [20].
- 3.
Taylor, A Secular Age, [21]539–592.
- 4.
Löwith, Meaning in History [15].
- 5.
Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age [5].
- 6.
Tugendhat: Egocentricity and Mysticism, 48–67 [23].
- 7.
Walter Benjamin, “Fate and Character,”, 201–206 [4].
- 8.
See for example Larmore’s review, “How Much Can We Stand?” https://newrepublic.com/article/63415/how-much-can-we-stand [14].
- 9.
Taylor, “Western Secularity,”, 31–53.[22].
- 10.
Roetz points out that Taylor’s project is deeply Eurocentric. Not only does Taylor not engage non-Western forms of religious life, but he also fails to address the influence that the reception of non-European traditions, especially the reception of Chinese classics mediated by the Jesuits, has had on the emergence of secularism during the Enlightenment period. “The Influence of Foreign Knowledge on Eighteenth Century European Secularism” [19].
- 11.
Casanova, “The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms,” 54–74 [7].
- 12.
Haynes, Immanent Transcendence[12].
- 13.
The classical account of the concept of the at once mysterious, terrifying and fascinating dimension numinous is developed by Otto, The Idea of the Holy [18].
- 14.
Beck, Risk Society [2].
- 15.
Dawkins, The God Delusion [8].
- 16.
Van der Veer, “Smash Temples, Burn Books270–281).[24].
- 17.
Wu and Wenning. “The Postsecular Turn in Education” 1–21 [13].
- 18.
Madsen, “Secularism, Religious Change, and Social Conflict in Asia,” 248–269, 266 [16].
- 19.
- 20.
Bellah and Joas, The Axial Age and its Consequences [3].
- 21.
Assmann, The Price of Monotheism [1].
- 22.
In the following interpretation I draw on Sloterdijk, God’s Zeal [20].
- 23.
Adorno and Levinas pursued this project in their attempt to rescue metaphysics in the moment of its fall and to break the spell of ontology by becoming attentive to the alterity of the trace of the other.
- 24.
Metz writes: “Schließlich gibt es gerade auch für die Theologie nicht nur den betenden Aufstieg zu Gott im Flügelschlag der Seele, sondern—auch den Abstieg zu Gott, gewissermaßen die ‘Transzendenz nach unten’, dorthin, wo nur noch die Verzweiflung bleibt oder eben der Schrei aus der Tiefe.” Memoria Passionis, 100 [17].
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Wenning, M. (2016). The Fate of Transcendence in Post-secular Societies. In: Brown, N., Franke, W. (eds) Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43092-8_11
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