Comments on: Is critique secular? http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/30/is-critique-secular-2/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:52:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Nathan Suhr-Sytsma http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/30/is-critique-secular-2/#comment-1736 Nathan Suhr-Sytsma Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:03:22 +0000 http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/30/is-critique-secular-2/#comment-1736 I find intriguing your efforts to consider what, beyond argument or analysis, draws people to "the secular story." I'm thinking specifically of what you call "the thick texture of affinities, prejudices, and attachments that tie us (cosmopolitan intellectuals and critics) to what is loosely described as a secular worldview." I wonder how such a "texture" might be analyzed: do you suspect that there are common or overlapping aspects of this texture among "cosmopolitan intellectuals and critics"? Or, given the number and diversity of such individuals, do you mean for this "texture" to be less an object of analysis than of self-reflection? I wonder, too, about the relation of present-day intellectuals' outlooks to the "new moral outlook" among post-Darwinian Victorians and their successors that Charles Taylor sketches in A Secular Age: "a view of our ethical predicament, namely, that we are strongly tempted, the more so, the less mature we are, to deviate from this austere principle [of believing only what is clearly demonstrated by evidence], and give assent to comforting untruths" (563). While the epistemological framework may have changed, perhaps part of that "moral outlook"—that the desire for belief is a kind of (immature) temptation—has carried over into current academic culture. Do you think that Taylor is on a parallel track here, or is your sense of a "texture" to be distinguished from a "moral outlook"? Both you and Taylor also seem to suggest a more institutional aspect to the draw of "the secular story." What you frame as critical reason's "disciplinary formation, its moral and structural unconsciousness" to my mind resembles Taylor's concept of the "unthought" of much secularization theory, a set of assumptions that considers the decline of religion inevitable because it is (assumed to be) false, irrelevant, &/or authority-based (c. 427-29). While you invoke secular "self-critique" as the necessary next step, Taylor turns to "a continuing open exchange with those of different standpoints" as the best correction for the blindspots produced by his own (religiously committed) "unthought" (428). I would be curious to know whether you see his approach as promising or not for your own project. I find intriguing your efforts to consider what, beyond argument or analysis, draws people to “the secular story.” I’m thinking specifically of what you call “the thick texture of affinities, prejudices, and attachments that tie us (cosmopolitan intellectuals and critics) to what is loosely described as a secular worldview.” I wonder how such a “texture” might be analyzed: do you suspect that there are common or overlapping aspects of this texture among “cosmopolitan intellectuals and critics”? Or, given the number and diversity of such individuals, do you mean for this “texture” to be less an object of analysis than of self-reflection? I wonder, too, about the relation of present-day intellectuals’ outlooks to the “new moral outlook” among post-Darwinian Victorians and their successors that Charles Taylor sketches in A Secular Age: “a view of our ethical predicament, namely, that we are strongly tempted, the more so, the less mature we are, to deviate from this austere principle [of believing only what is clearly demonstrated by evidence], and give assent to comforting untruths” (563). While the epistemological framework may have changed, perhaps part of that “moral outlook”—that the desire for belief is a kind of (immature) temptation—has carried over into current academic culture. Do you think that Taylor is on a parallel track here, or is your sense of a “texture” to be distinguished from a “moral outlook”?

Both you and Taylor also seem to suggest a more institutional aspect to the draw of “the secular story.” What you frame as critical reason’s “disciplinary formation, its moral and structural unconsciousness” to my mind resembles Taylor’s concept of the “unthought” of much secularization theory, a set of assumptions that considers the decline of religion inevitable because it is (assumed to be) false, irrelevant, &/or authority-based (c. 427-29). While you invoke secular “self-critique” as the necessary next step, Taylor turns to “a continuing open exchange with those of different standpoints” as the best correction for the blindspots produced by his own (religiously committed) “unthought” (428). I would be curious to know whether you see his approach as promising or not for your own project.

]]> By: Nathan Schneider http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/30/is-critique-secular-2/#comment-1717 Nathan Schneider Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:15:27 +0000 http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/03/30/is-critique-secular-2/#comment-1717 For years (since reading "Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual" as a freshman in college) I have been grateful for your efforts to push past fictional categories, tempting as they may be for making bold assertions like Gourgouris’s. I think you are right with the direction you point to at the end, the "feeling good" of secularism, the experience of the people involved in it. This kind of attention is also what makes Asad's <em>Formations of the Secular</em> so powerful: its willingness to see the phenomenon beyond social-structural conditions to a more precise cultural anthropology: How does secular culture feel? Secularists rejoice in the experience of liberation in secularism, and it is true, this liberation comes from a critique. It can be emotionally exhilarating, filled with the thrill of unsettling old dogmas and seeing the world with fresh eyes. I give it that. But this is not lost on so-called religion either. Much the same exhilaration, built also on a kind of critique, is part of the experience of cradle-secularists who "find religion." I myself was one; when I was 18 years old, I converted to Catholicism from my secular upbringing. It was a thrilling experience, a liberating one, built on a critique of how secularism had fallen short. Since, I have undergone a number of pendulum-swings back and forth between secular and religious thinking. Each move has been infused with its own form of critique and its own sense of exhilarated liberation. As you say, it is not the category of "critique" that identifies secularity. Rather, the differences are more specific. Critique, with its attendant emotional drives and payoffs, are possessed by neither imaginary <i>civitate</i>, that of the religious or the secular. If anything, it depends on the possibility of moving among them, of mobility among cultures. For years (since reading “Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual” as a freshman in college) I have been grateful for your efforts to push past fictional categories, tempting as they may be for making bold assertions like Gourgouris’s.

I think you are right with the direction you point to at the end, the “feeling good” of secularism, the experience of the people involved in it. This kind of attention is also what makes Asad’s Formations of the Secular so powerful: its willingness to see the phenomenon beyond social-structural conditions to a more precise cultural anthropology: How does secular culture feel?

Secularists rejoice in the experience of liberation in secularism, and it is true, this liberation comes from a critique. It can be emotionally exhilarating, filled with the thrill of unsettling old dogmas and seeing the world with fresh eyes. I give it that.

But this is not lost on so-called religion either. Much the same exhilaration, built also on a kind of critique, is part of the experience of cradle-secularists who “find religion.” I myself was one; when I was 18 years old, I converted to Catholicism from my secular upbringing. It was a thrilling experience, a liberating one, built on a critique of how secularism had fallen short. Since, I have undergone a number of pendulum-swings back and forth between secular and religious thinking. Each move has been infused with its own form of critique and its own sense of exhilarated liberation.

As you say, it is not the category of “critique” that identifies secularity. Rather, the differences are more specific. Critique, with its attendant emotional drives and payoffs, are possessed by neither imaginary civitate, that of the religious or the secular. If anything, it depends on the possibility of moving among them, of mobility among cultures.

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