Secularization
Another in a series about confirmation and disconfirmation in history
Not too long ago in Confirmation and Disconfirmation in History I discussed whether we can say certain socioeconomic ideas like communism or capitalism have been “proved right” or “proved wrong” by history. There are partisans on both sides of these contentious issues who main mutually irreconcilable positions in the philosophy of history.
Another perfect candidate for investigation regarding its historical viability is the idea of secularlization. There are two primary forms of secularization thought. The first sense comes from Karl Löwith, who maintained in his famous book Meaning in History that the sociological categories of modern society are “secularizations” of originally theological concepts, and therefore not legitimate.
The other sense might be traced to Comte’s “law of the three stages,” which held that explanations of the world pass through three stages, being the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, or scientific. For Comte, the secularizing process passing from theological to positivistic explanations represents progress in human thought.
Since Löwith was a scholar and not an ideologue, he did not draw that conclusion that, “since concepts of modernity are illegitimate secularizations, the truly legitimate concepts are the original theological concepts.” However, I can easily imagine someone making this claim. This claim (most likely remaining in its implicit form), together with Comte’s positivist claim of secularization as progress, are locked in a dialectic not unlike that defined by the respective advocates of collectivist and individualist economics (i.e., communism and capitalism).
In contemporary scholarly discourse, it has become a commonplace that the “secularization thesis” (that societies would move toward a more secular form over time) has been “proved wrong” by history. Secularization theory was a big thing in the 1960s and 1970s (around the time of Kennedy’s “Sea speech”), but has few friends and advocates now. It is thought that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism among some Muslims and the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US demonstrates that religion is a stronger influence upon events than ever before, and becoming stronger over time.
The reader can easily guess what I am about to say. These short term trends of religious fundamentalism and the apparent vigor of religion today in no sense proves the defeat of secularization. On the contrary, I would argue (as I have argued elsewhere, e.g., in relation to cinema I made this point in A Tale of Two Films) that the very fact that many societies are engaging in spectacular displays of religious observance is “proof” (in so far as anything can be proved by history) that religion is perceived to be under threat. More importantly, religion today is perceived to be under existential threat.
Past challenges to the overwhelmingly religious organization of society could safely be allowed to go unchallenged because they had little or no chance of gaining traction, and they posed no existential threat to the status quo. This has changed. The continued progress of science, technology, and industrialization has demonstrating ways of organizing society that are utterly divorced from religious faith. For the first time in human history, the theological organization of society is under threat; it is being questioned at the same time that there is a real alternative available.
Not surprisingly, the existential threat to the theological organization of society has called forth an existential response. Thus, the rise of religious radicalism and religious fundamentalism, and the claims that secularization has been “proved wrong” by history ought to be taken rather as the ultimate confirmation that the secularization theorists are (or were, if they have all disappeared) right.
Industrial-technological civilization is experiencing a development toward secular institutions; this development has resulted in a violent backlash, but anyone with an appreciation of la longue durée ought to be able to see the handwriting on the wall.
