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The Charm of Disenchantment: A Quest for the Intellectual Attraction of Secularization Theory

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Abstract

In the course of Western history, philosophy has proven to be an active participant in the process of secularization. This article seeks to examine that philosophical role more closely. The central question is how the role of philosophy must be rethought in light of the contemporary critique of classical secularization theory. The first part of the article sheds light on the current crisis of secularization theory. Drawing on recent scholarship in the social sciences, it explains why the classical tenets and assumptions of secularization theory are no longer being considered as plausible and empirically grounded hypotheses. Against that background, the second part turns to philosophy. It examines the implications for a philosophical tradition of religious criticism that has consciously operated within this once-undisputed model of secularization. The question is how this critique of religion must be rethought, if its prominent role in the history of modern philosophy can no longer be ascribed to a general secularization of the Western mind. The third and final part attempts to answer this question by focusing on one of the most frequently overlooked, yet most significant and crucial elements in the history of philosophical secularization: the intrinsic intellectual attraction of religious disenchantment.

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Notes

  1. Steve Bruce, God is Dead. Secularization in the West (Blackwell, 2006), 4–37.

  2. Hans Joas, ‘Gesellschaft, Staat und Religion. Ihr Verhältnis in der Sicht der Weltreligionen,’ in Säkularisierung und die Weltreligionen (Fischer Verlag, 2007), 13–14.

  3. Rodney Stark, ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’ Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 269–70.

  4. Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, ‘Secularization: The Orthodox Model,’ in Religion and Modernization. Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Clarendon Press, 1992), 27.

  5. Bryan Wilson, ‘The secularization thesis: Criticisms and rebuttals,’ in Secularization and Social Integration (Leuven University Press, 1998), 48.

  6. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), 20.

  7. Philip S. Gorski and Ateş Altınordu, ‘After Secularization?,’ Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 57.

  8. Ibid., 75.

  9. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 11.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid., 28.

  12. David Martin, ‘The secularization issue: prospect and retrospect,’ The British Journal of Sociology 42, no. 3 (1991): 466.

  13. G. Hossein Razi, ‘The Nexus of Legitimacy and Performance: The Lessons of the Iranian Revolution,’ Comparative Politics 19, no. 4 (1987): 459.

  14. Abdolmohammad Kazemipur and Ali Rezaei, ‘Religious Life Under Theocracy: The Case of Iran,’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42, no. 3 (2003): 356.

  15. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 95–96.

  16. Paul Froese, ‘Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed,’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 1 (2004): 48.

  17. Wilson, ‘The secularization thesis: Criticisms and rebuttals,’ 58.

  18. Peter L. Berger, ‘The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,’ in The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent Religion and World Politics (William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 2.

  19. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 26.

  20. Berger, ‘The Desecularization of the World,’ 11–12. See also Gorski and Altınordu, ‘After Secularization?,’ 56.

  21. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith. Explaining the Human Side of Religion (University of California Press, 2000), 57. This is a slight modification of the original passage in Stark, ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’ 249. All omissions and the insertion ‘[religion]’ are Stark’s.

  22. Thomas Woolston, A second Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour. Second edition (London, 1727), 32.

  23. Ibid., 33–35.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Frédéric le Grand, Lettre à Voltaire, 10.02.1767, in: Oeuvres de Frédéric le Grand. Tome XXIII (Imprimerie Royale, 1853), 137–38. English translation by Ben Ray Redman, The portable Voltaire (Viking, 1963), 26 (partially modified).

  27. Id., Lettre à Voltaire, 05.05.1767, in: Oeuvres XXIII, 153.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Id., Lettre à Voltaire, 13.09.1766, in: Oeuvres XXIII, 123–24.

  30. Id., Lettre à Voltaire, 24.10.1766, in: Oeuvres XXIII, 125–26.

  31. As far as I am able to determine, the quotation was first printed in 1910: ‘En présence de cette statistique, le mot de Voltaire: ‘Dans cinquante ans, la Bible sera un livre oublié,’ fait un singulier effet.’ Daniel Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible française et fragments relatifs à l’histoire générale de la Bible (Librairie-éditions Emmaüs, 1910), 282.

  32. Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance and Other Writings, ed. S. Harvey (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 83.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid., 84.

  35. Id., Lettre à d’Alembert, 13.02.1764, in: Oeuvres 43 (1881), 127.

  36. Jonathan Israel, ‘Is Religion Needed for a Well-Ordered Society?,’ in Enlightenment Contested. Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 681–692.

  37. Jonathan Swift, ‘An Argument against Abolishing Christianity in England,’ in The Works of Jonathan Swift. Volume VIII (Archibald Constable, 1814), 198.

  38. Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach, Système de la Nature (1770), in Oeuvres Philosophiques. Tome II (Editions Alive, 1999), 623.

  39. Ibid., 624.

  40. d’Holbach, Le Christianisme dévoilé (1756), in Oeuvres. Tome I (1998), 4–5.

  41. Id., Système de la Nature, 625.

  42. Bruno Bauer, Das entdeckte Christentum. Eine Erinnerung an das achtzehnte Jahrhundert und ein Beitrag zur Krisis des neunzehnten (Verlag des literarischen Comptoirs, 1843), 119.

  43. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 590.

  44. Stark and Finke, Acts of Faith, 2.

  45. Berger, ‘The Desecularization of the World,’ 10.

  46. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge: MIT, 1985), 117.

  47. Frédéric le Grand, Lettre à Voltaire, 08.09.1775, in: Oeuvres. Tome XXIII, 396–97.

  48. Id., Lettre à Voltaire, 13.08.1775, in: Oeuvres. Tome XXIII, 389.

  49. Voltaire, Lettre à d’Alembert, 13.02.1764, in: Oeuvres. Tome 43 (1881), 110. However, one cannot completely abandon the alleged ‘objective value’ of ridicule: the doctrine, often attributed to Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is a test for the truthfulness of ideas, was very much in vogue among Enlightenment thinkers, both in the British Isles and on the Continent. Still, it is clear that the ‘objectivity’ was not contained in the strategies of ridicule, but in what could stand their test.

  50. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes. Tome II, éd. A. Masson (Paris: Les éditions Nagel, 1950), § 1446, 419 (Translation by James A. Leith).

  51. Roger Scruton, ‘Perictione in Colophon,’ in Verstehen and Humane Understanding. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 41 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 287–307.

  52. Ibid., 289–90.

  53. Ibid., 291.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire. A History of Civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756, with Special Emphasis on the Conflict between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1965), 324.

  57. I borrow this quote from Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism. The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, 2004).

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  1. Philosophy Department, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13 S.D409, 2000, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Herbert De Vriese

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De Vriese, H. The Charm of Disenchantment: A Quest for the Intellectual Attraction of Secularization Theory. SOPHIA 49, 407–428 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0167-7

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