The Immanent Counter-Enlightenment: Christianity and

Morality

1

Charles Tay lor

McGill Uni ver sity and North West ern Uni ver sity

Ian Jennings

(trans la tor)

Uni ver sity of KwaZulu-Na tal and the Humboldt Uni ver sity

E-mail: [e-mail]

Ab stract
In this trans la tion of Charles Tay lor's pa per, ‘Die Immanente Gegenauf klä -
rung: Christentum und Moral’, the au thor dis cusses the re la tion ship be tween
Chris tian ity and mo ral ity, in the light of de vel op ments in the West over the
past five cen tu ries. Par tic u lar at ten tion is paid to the re la tion ship be tween
mo ral ity and the de vel op ment of un be lief, the re jec tion of God, and athe ism.

I

I would like, un der this some what enig matic head ing, to say some thing about the re la -

tion ship be tween Chris tian ity and mo ral ity. In do ing so, I will set out a rough over -

view of the prog ress of this re la tion ship over the past five cen tu ries, sketch ing in par -

tic u lar the re la tion ship be tween mo ral ity and the de vel op ment of un be lief, of the re jec -

tion of God, and athe ism in the West. It will un doubt edly be a very con cise over view,

but will nev er the less al low us to ex am ine cer tain ques tions.

We are deal ing, in a cer tain sense, with a tri an gu lar re la tion ship in volv ing Chris tian -

ity, mo ral ity, and un be lief, in which the two outer con cep tions op pose each other, and

con duct their dis pute through the mid dle one. Our un der stand ing of this tri an gu lar re -

la tion ship will de pend greatly on how we see the gen e sis of un be lief in the mod ern pe -

riod. These two ques tions will be very closely re lated in the dis cus sion that fol lows.

The first point that needs to be made is a neg a tive one. It strikes me that there is a

widely-ac cepted view of how un be lief has de vel oped in the West, which is, in ter est -

ingly enough, held not only amongst be liev ers. This view takes the rise of un be lief to

co in cide with the de cline of be lief. In other words, ac cord ing to this pic ture, the first

thing that hap pened was the loss of faith: at a par tic u lar time, and for var i ous rea sons,

whether sci en tific or moral, whether ow ing to the prog ress of sci ence, or to con sid er -

ations of theodicy, peo ple be gan to re ject re li gion and Chris tian ity, to criti cise, to give

up their faith, and so, to a cer tain ex tent, to ex plode the ho ri zons of Chris tian ity. As a

1

This pa per was first writ ten in French un der the ti tle, “Les anti-Lumières immanentes: Christianisme et
mo rale”. A Ger man trans la tion, ‘Die Immanente Gegenaufklärung: Christentum und Moral’ was pub -
lished in the book by Lud wig Nagl (ed.), Re li gion nach der Religionskritik, Akademie Verlag: Berlin,
2003. The Eng lish ver sion pub lished here was trans lated from the Ger man ver sion, with the per mis sion
of the au thor. Grate ful thanks to Ruth Ab bey for her very help ful com ments on the trans la tion.

re sult, var i ous forms of un be lief came to oc cupy the now empty space. That which ex -

pressed it self as purely im ma nent mo ral ity was la tent, po ten tially al ready there in hu -

man life; its meta phys i cal-theo log i cal ex te rior had to be rup tured and its Chris tian su -

per struc ture re moved. This I call the ‘sub trac tion story’: un be lief came af ter the loss of

faith. The dis ap pear ance of the for merly Chris tian ho ri zon made the way clear for a

pos si bil ity that had al ways been there, and which now showed it self. An ex am ple: the

this-worldly mo ral ity, to which, ac cord ing to this un der stand ing, peo ple have al ways

been in clined, had been held in check for many long years by the ex is tence of re li gion,

and could now at last free it self.

It was not merely su per fi cial spir its who saw things this way. On the con trary –

some of the most sub tle and in tel li gent ad vo cates of un be lief made it their own. As an

ex am ple, I quote a pas sage from Paul Bénichou's fa mous work Mo rales du grand
siècle: ‘Hu man kind re presses its mis ery when ever it can; and at the same time for gets

that hu mil i at ing mo ral ity by which it had con demned life, and in do ing so had made a

vir tue of ne ces sity.

2

’ In this ver sion, the la tent hu man ist mo ral ity suc ceeds in es tab -

lish ing it self, and in so do ing helps to throw the theo log i cal-as cetic code onto the scrap

heap. On this view, it is as if the hu man ist mo ral ity had al ways been there, wait ing for

the chance to over throw its op pres sive pre de ces sor.

What is most sur pris ing is that it is not only the un be liev ers who ad here to the story

of sub trac tion. Many of those who have set them selves against mo der nity turn this ap -

proach up side down and sug gest their own vari a tion of this his tory: in stead of lib er a -

tion they talk of de cline. Ac cord ing to their view, only the ho ri zon of re li gion guar an -

tees com mu nity, civili sa tion or mo ral ity; its dis ap pear ance sig nalled the be gin ning of

an age of dis or der and strug gle, in short, the end. This is also a story of sub trac tion –

but one which ends badly. That which the man tle of re li gion had hid den from view

was noth ing other than chaos, de struc tion and sin.

My view is very dif fer ent. As I see it, the im ma nent, hu man ist con cep tions of mod -

ern mo ral ity were not al ways la tently pres ent, but are in fact new and re mark able con -

struc tions. I am not us ing the term “con struc tions” in the sense that takes the his tor i cal

cre ations of hu man cul ture to be ar bi trary. In fact I be lieve that suc cess ful con struc -

tions al ways an swer to some thing that lies deep within hu man ity. But they are nev er -

the less con struc tions, as one had to cre ate and shape new hu man pos si bil i ties. An im -

ma nent mo ral ity with out con nec tion to tran scen dence – whether one un der stands this

in the Pla tonic, Stoic, or Chris tian man ner – was, in Chris ten dom, al most un heard of.

Epicureanism per haps came close, but it had noth ing of the ac tiv ist spirit and uni ver sal

ethic that mark mod ern hu man ism.

It is a con struc tion that de mands ad mi ra tion. It is no small irony that it is of ten eas ier

for be liev ers to re cog nise the true value of this re mark able achieve ment, given the ex -

tent to which un be liev ers are pris on ers of a sub trac tion story that trivi al ises athe ist hu -

man ism by re duc ing it to a com plex of tru isms which had pre vi ously been kept in the

shad ows by an op pres sive and dis tort ing re li gion.

Im ma nent hu man ism is not sim ply the re sult of the de cline of re li gion, but rather the

prod uct of a chain of con struc tions whose first links were forged by Chris tian ity it self.

Five hun dred years ago, such a hu man ism was un imag in able in West ern Chris ten -

dom. Some of the ob sta cles to peo ple leav ing the Chris tian fold were re moved by

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

225

2

Mo rales du grand siècle, Paris 1952, page 226.

226

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

West ern Chris tian ity it self.

3

Most ob vi ous, from our point of view, is the fact that one

used to live in an “en chanted” world, a world, in other words, in which one felt the

pres ence, amongst the things which sur rounded us, of spir its and mag i cal pow ers.

Our peas

ant an

ces

tors rang the church bells dur

ing storms – the so-called

weather-bells. In do ing so, it was as sumed that the light ning was con trolled by spir its

or spir i tual pow ers, and that the ob jects and ges tures of the church also car ried spir i -

tual force, in this case pos i tive and be nign, ca pa ble of pro tect ing us from the pow ers of

evil dwell ing within the storm.

Such be liefs are still held to this day. Many peo ple would ad mit that they, in one or

other con text, are in clined to be lieve in oc cult pow ers of this kind. But be liefs of this

kind no lon ger form a co her ent whole, and are no lon ger shared by ev ery one. This is

be cause, in the world in which we live to day, it is no lon ger ob vi ous that things re ally

do hap

pen in this way. This kind of spir

i

tual power is no lon

ger ex

pe

ri

enced

phenomenologically in our ev ery day ex pe ri ence. On the con trary: if we ac cept the “of -

fi cial his tory” of our civili sa tion – in other words the view from “sci ence” – this kind

of spir i tual power or in flu ence does not ex ist for us.

What is the re la tion be tween be lief in God and this pro cess of dis en chant ment?

Now a days we have a kind of un be lief, which as sumes that be lief in God is a mo dal ity

of the en chanted worldview. With the dis ap pear ance of the whole of this worldview, it

was in ev i ta ble that this par tic u lar part of it would also be ex tin guished. But, as his to ri -

ans know, this is not how things ac tu ally hap pened. Chris tian ity, like Ju da ism, had a

com plex, of ten in im i cal, re la tion ship with the en chanted worldview. In re al ity the Jew -

ish, and later the Chris tian, re li gions were al ways a sig nif i cant driv ing force for dis en -

chant ment, par tic u larly in the last few cen tu ries in the af ter math of the Protestant and

Cath o lic ref or ma tions.

The re la tion ship was something like the fol low ing: As long as one lived in the en -

chanted world, where the weather-bells chimed, one felt one self to be in a world full

of threats, vul ner a ble to black magic in all its forms. In this world God was for most

be liev ers the source of a pos i tive power, which was able to de feat the pow ers of evil.

God was the chief source of coun ter-, or white, magic. He was the fi nal guar an tor

that good would tri umph in this world of man i fold spir its and pow ers.

For those com pletely ab sorbed in this world, it was prac ti cally im pos si ble not to be -

lieve in God. Not to be lieve would mean de vot ing one self to the devil. A small mi nor -

ity of truly re mark able – or per haps truly des per ate – peo ple did in deed do this. But for

the vast ma jor ity there was no ques tion whether one be lieved in God or not – the pos i -

tive force was as real a fact as the threats it coun ter acted. The ques tion of be lief was a

ques tion of trust and mem ber ship rather than one of the ac cep tance of par tic u lar doc -

trines. In this sense they were closer to the con text of the gos pels.

The re la tion ship be tween be lief and the en chanted world was such that athe ism in

that world would have been com pa ra ble to re fus ing, in this age, to be lieve in elec tric -

ity. I do not doubt in any way that Hy dro-Qué bec sup plies elec tric ity; whether they

can keep the sup ply to my house in good or der or not is an other mat ter. It makes sense

to ask whether I should trust them. But there is no ques tion about whether to be lieve in

their ex is tence or not.

Fur ther more, the im pos si bil ity of God's non-ex is tence was a so cial fact. The chan -

nels of di vine power went through so cial in sti tu tions, in the main through the church.

3

Here one will note cer tain par al lels be tween my re flec tions and the well-known the sis of Mar cel
Gauchet; see his Le Désenchantement du monde, Paris 1985. It is true that our po si tions have some thing
in com mon, but dif fer ences will also re veal them selves in what fol lows.

The ap pli ca tion of this power hap pened at all lev els, and to what ever ex tent was pos si -

ble for the peo ple in volved. Ring ing the weather-bells was an act of the con gre ga tion,

its priest, or the sex ton. God's pres ence per me ated the so cial fab ric. This made un be -

lief im pos si ble in an other way: de fence against evil as sumes the sol i dar ity that is re -

quired for the ap pli ca tion of the force of good. Bring ing God's power to bear against

light ning was a com mu nal act, and ev ery one needed to play their part. Ab sten tion

would have been trea son.

II

With the fad ing of the en chanted world, an im por tant bar rier against un be lief dis ap -

peared. There were, how ever, other bar ri ers. One in par tic u lar arose with the pro cess

of dis en chant ment. This is so be cause the re form move ments that de ter mined the new

or der and drove the spir its and pow ers from the old world, were an i mated first by the

Chris tian faith and later by a De is tic worldview. This or der fol lowed that of di vine

prov i dence, and made God pres ent in an other way. He may no lon ger have been a

force in the spirit world, but he had be come that much more in dis pens able as ar chi tect,

guar an tor and in spi ra tion of the cos mic as well as the so cial or der.

I will come to the cos mic as pect in a mo ment. But let us first ex am ine the found ing

of the United States of Amer ica, in or der to un der stand this new form that the pres ence

of God took. For many of the Found ing Fa thers un der stood their task as that of set ting

up a new form of po lit i cal so ci ety, which would real ise God's pur poses. In do ing so

they fol lowed the Pu ri tan tra di tion, which saw the new Amer i can col o nies as an op -

por tu nity to real ise God's will more fully. The new Je ru sa lem was to be a shin ing “city

on a hill”, a source of light in the dark ness.

For the rev o lu tion ary lead ers, God's prov i dence re quired a par tic u lar kind of or der.

The well-known words of the Dec la ra tion of In de pend ence, “We hold these truths to

be self-ev i dent, that all men are cre ated equal, that they are en dowed by their Cre ator

with cer tain un alien able Rights, that among these are Life, Lib erty and the pur suit of

Hap pi ness”, re veal this. Their in ten tion was to set up a so ci ety that trans lated these

ide als into re al ity – the first time this had been at tempted. This mi lieu was very

Protestant – even De ist. For these peo ple, God was not pres ent in the Sac ra ments, let

alone in rel ics, places of pil grim ages, or re li gious fes ti vals. But he was un doubt edly

pres ent both as the will which one obeyed, and as a moral force that en abled one to

obey His will. He was not pres ent in the Holy. In other words, he was not pres ent in a

par tic u lar im ma nent con cen tra tion of di vine Power in cer tain ob jects (rel ics), ges tures

(con se cra tion), places (Je ru sa lem, San ti ago de Compostela) or times (Christ mas,

Easter); but he was that much more pres ent as the Will who had cre ated the or der in

which we hu mans live.

One is eas ily de ceived by this new form of pres ence, be cause it later be came stan -

dard to equate the rev o lu tion with a form of col lec tive ac tiv ity in which hu man ity

takes over all re spon si bil ity, and in which there there fore no lon ger re mains any place

for God. It is true that hu man re spon si bil ity is an in te gral part of the mod ern con text,

but this does not nec es sar ily rule out God.

The dif fer ence be comes par tic u larly ob vi ous when one com pares the new Amer i can

re pub lic with a mon ar chy such as France, whose roots were in the Mid dle Ages. The

mon ar chy is not merely grounded in the col lec tive acts of its sub jects; it pre cedes

them, and makes pos si ble their acts, which could not have pro duced France with out

this al ready ex ist ing frame work. This frame work as sumes more than just hu man ac -

tion. The king dom is also a “mys ti cal body”; the ac tual, con crete king does not ex -

haust the king dom. He is the rep re sen ta tive of a higher re al ity, which ex ists not in pro -

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

227

228

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

fane, ‘sec u lar’ time, but in an other, higher, time. This is the doc trine of the ‘king's two

bod ies’ .

4

One could say that pre-mod ern so ci ety is grounded in a tran scen den tal re al ity, in

eter nity, or at least in a higher time, which is su pe rior to pro fane time, whereas mod ern

states are grounded in col lec tive ac tion in sec u lar time, such as in the Dec la ra tion of

In de pend ence, the Con sti tu tional Con ven tion in Phil a del phia, etc. In this sense hu man

re spon si bil ity is com pre hen sive. But this does not rule out God, as the plan that our ac -

tions fol low co mes from him.

Mo der nity has, on the con trary, opened a new niche for the pres ence of God in so ci -

ety. A so ci ety grounded in a col lec tive act, such as a rev o lu tion, or a con sti tu tional

con ven tion, re quires a col lec tive def i ni tion that is an chored in the so cial imag i na tion.

One could call this def i ni tion the po lit i cal iden tity of the so ci ety. This iden tity might

en tail a sig nif i cant ref er ence to God, as in the case of the new Amer i can re pub lic. We

be come “one na tion un der God”. God is there fore an chored in the so cial imag i na tion.

This rep re sents a wide spread mod ern phe nom e non. The na tional sense of a peo ple

could de fine it self in terms of ad her ence to a par tic u lar con fes sion. Here one thinks,

with ref er ence to the Ro man Cath o lic Church, of the Poles, the Irish, and the for mer

French Ca na di ans.

But ad her ence to a faith does not last for ever; the case of the Quebecois is a re -

minder of this. To un der stand our con tem po rary world, one must look at what this sec -

ond form of the pres ence of God in so ci ety has un der mined. I will men tion three sig -

nif i cant changes here.

First of all, there is the cre ation of an ex clu sive hu man ism, one that rules out the

tran scen dent. Very soon af ter the Amer i can Rev o lu tion, the French Rev o lu tion pre -

sented the drama of the found ing of a state on the ba sis of a Prov i dence, which (at

least for some) was at trib uted not to God, but to na ture. The will to ex clude the tran -

scen dent was clearly ex pressed.

As I have in di cated above, we are used to re gard ing this de vel op ment as se cure; for

some it is sim ply the dis cov ery of hu man truth, for oth ers it is plain apos tasy. In my

opin ion, how ever, we are deal ing here with a re mark able turn around, a sur pris ing, and

in many ways ad mi ra ble, achieve ment. How is it that hu man be ings, af ter cen tu ries

and mil len nia, dur ing which the moral life with out God or an other tran scen den tal re al -

ity was un think able, came to un der stand their ex is tence purely in terms of the im ma -

nent?

I don't have the time to dis cuss this cru cial ques tion here. It will suf fice to say that

this reali sa tion dis plays two as pects. A hu man good, rad i cally sev ered from tran scen -

dence, had first of all to be con ceived. This role was ful filled, in the first in stance, by

the hu man moral or der which was de rived from Locke and the mod ern nat u ral law the -

o rists. Ev ery hu man be ing pur sues life, free dom, and hap pi ness. But God (and later

na ture) has cre ated them so as to live to gether. They form a so ci ety so as to live better

than they oth er wise could have. But this un ion, which is not hi er ar chi cal, but fun da -

men tally egal i tar ian, must suc ceed in such a way that the pur suit of hap pi ness of each

does not de tract from that of oth ers, but rather con trib utes to it. This way of see ing

things is at the root of our con tem po rary con cep tion of uni ver sal hu man rights.

The sec

ond as

pect was even more dif

fi

cult. Hu

man mo

ti

va

tion had to be

reconceived so as to at trib ute to us the ca pac ity to live out this mo ral ity with out the

4

See Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bod ies. A Study in Mediaeval Po lit i cal The ol ogy, Prince ton
1957

help of any tran scen dent source. It is not just God's mercy that has to be ruled out; the

Pla tonic re course to the Form of the Good and the Stoic ref er ence to the di vine Lo gos

within – all of this be comes re dun dant. The sources of mo ral ity as well as the most ex -

alted al tru is tic de vo tion are fully im ma nent.

The most im por tant im ma nent sources of mo ral ity were:

(a) Rea son: the means whereby we raise our selves to the level of uni ver sal ity, and that

which gives us the ca pac ity to dis tance our selves from our par tic u lar ity and to think in

terms of the uni ver sal, im par tial good. Here we think of the mean ing ac corded to the

con cept of the “im par tial spec ta tor” in Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and, later, the util i tar -

i ans.
(b) Sym pa thy: an in nate ten dency, na ture's dowry, which drives us to help our fel low

hu mans, and which forms us such that we live spon ta ne ously ac cord ing to the moral

or der that I have de scribed above. Rous seau is the sem i nal fig ure in this tra di tion.

What is sur pris ing is not so much that it was pos si ble to es tab lish the o ries of this

kind, but rather that peo ple have, in the fi nal anal y sis, be come able to base their lives

on these moral sources. This is an ex traor di nary achieve ment, which is gen er ally

passed over in the sto ries of nor ma tive sub trac tion. If one sees in this a cer tain nov elty,

one might speak as though we are merely deal ing with a the o ret i cal dis cov ery. But it

can not just be a the o ret i cal nov elty: for one must be mo ti vated by a con cep tion of im -

par tial rea son, and it re quires very deep changes of sen si bil ity, in one's un der stand ing

of one self, and in peo ple's life styles, be fore this is pos si ble. One needs to be re minded

that no great con cep tion of the sources of mo ral ity, whether the Pla tonic Form of the

good or the Chris tian con cep tion of God, is some thing ob vi ous. Rather these con cep -

tions have been goals that hu mans have set them selves, and many have failed in the at -

tempt to reach them. I can, as a Chris tian, be un happy about the fact that I am not gen -

u inely in spired by God's love, and I could want this, and per haps even achieve it. That

it is pos si ble to be in spired by an ob jec tive and im per sonal worldview is not ob vi ous.

Some thing new in the field of eth i cal mo ti va tion had to be cre ated. This is at the same

time both sur pris ing and ad mi ra ble.

In any case, the cre ation of this ex clu sive hu man ism changes the en tire start ing

point. From now on the so cial imag i na tion of the new so ci ety can at tach it self to im -

ma nent points of ref er ence. It could be a meta phys i cal con cep tion of “na ture”, as with

the Jac o bins, or one might at tempt to de fine po lit i cal iden tity solely in terms of com -

mon con crete and ideal in ter ests. And for the in di vid ual there is also the op tion of a

mo ral ity with out ref er ence to the tran scen den tal.

The sec ond im por tant change – tem po rally speak ing – is the tran si tion from a cos -

mos to a uni verse. Liv ing in a cos mos means to live in a world struc tured and re -

stricted by a plan, whether its scaf fold ing be Forms, as with Plato, or the cre ation as

de scribed in the Bi ble (or both, as they were usu ally com bined). De spite our con fu sion

and our lack of de tailed knowl edge, and de spite lo cal signs of dis or der, one knows that

the struc ture holds, and that one would sense it were one to reach its lim its.

These struc tures are moral: in other words, the plan is grounded in the Good. The

cos mos stands in re la tion to our eth i cal life. Its mes sage is pos i tive in ev ery way.

Again, I don't have space to here to de scribe the pro cess in sin gu lar de tail, but the

last two hun dred years have seen how the sense of be long ing to a cos mos has been

eclipsed by the idea of a uni verse. The lat ter is enor mous, with out con ceiv able lim its,

and does not pres ent it self im me di ately, as if it were part of a plan. Such a struc ture

would not ap pear to have any moral rel e vance. Above all, this uni verse ap pears in dif -

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

229

230

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

fer ent to the small drama of hu man ity, which plays it self out on the sur face of a small

planet, or bit ing an un re mark able star, in a gal axy of thou sands.

This dem on strates a con cep tual change, but it is more than just that. In the last one

or two cen tu ries, a change of imag i na tion – this time of a cos mo log i cal na ture – has

car ried it self out in our civili sa tion. It is not just that we know that the uni verse is

many bil lions of years old, and not just 6000, as our an ces tors rather hast ily con cluded

from the Bi ble. It is also that we feel that be hind us is what Buffon has called “the

dark abyss of time”.

5

This abyss is dark, be cause one can not see down to the ground, un like our an ces tors,

who be lieved that they could do so on the ba sis of bib li cal tes ti mony, which they

some what naïvely and lit er ally un der stood. The be gin ning of their world was for them,

in a cer tain sense, bathed in light. For us, how ever, it is lost in the dark, as is our gen e -

sis from the non-hu man, in deed from the non-liv ing on wards.

This new cos mic imag i na tion works it self out in both di rec tions in the strug gle be -

tween be lief and un be lief. On the one hand, it is clear that for many the the ory of evo -

lu tion has dis cred ited the Bi ble, and even ap pears to be proof of ma te ri al ism. But it

also goes in the other di rec tion, in that it brings mys tery back into the world. When

one con sid ers clas si cal apologetics, such as that of New ton, who dem on strates the ex -

is tence and good ness of God on the ba sis of the form of the uni verse and its ad van -

tages for hu man kind, we see that it pos tu lates a world gov erned by strict, un al ter able,

com pletely ex pli ca ble laws, a world in which there is no place for mys tery. Ev ery thing

be yond our un der stand ing is to be found in the coun te nance of God, the cre ator, in

other words be yond the lim its of the world. There was no mys tery in ter nal to the cos -

mos.

But our uni verse, which stands open to the im mea sur able and dark abyss from

whence we come, arouses a sense of mys tery even amongst un be liev ers. This sense of

mys tery shines through the words of many athe ist schol ars, such as, for ex am ple, the

fol low ing com ment of Diderot's from more than two hun dred years ago:

... what is the du ra tion of our time com pared with eter nity? Less than the drop I

have taken up on a nee dle-point com pared with the lim it less space sur round ing

me. Just as there is an in fi nite suc ces sion of animalculae in one fer ment ing

speck of mat ter, so there is the same in fi nite suc ces sion of animalculae in the

speck called Earth. Who knows what an i mal spe cies pre ceded us? Who knows

what will fol low our pres ent ones? Ev ery thing changes and passes away, only

the whole re mains un changed. The world is cease lessly be gin ning and end ing;

at ev ery mo ment it is at its be gin ning and its end.

6

Par a dox i cally one finds in the con tem po rary de bate a strange al li ance, one that re jects

any thing mi rac u lous, be tween Protestant “fun da men tal ists” in the United States and

con firmed ma te ri al ists, against un be liev ers in the tra di tion of Diderot, who can not

avoid a sense of hu mil ity and won der be fore that which stretches out over us to in fin -

5

See Paolo Rossi The Dark Abyss of Time, Chi cago 1984, pages 108-9.

6

Denis Diderot, 'D'Alembert's Dream', in Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream, trans lated by
Leon ard Tancock (Pen guin Books 1966), p. 174.

ity. This uni verse re minds one of what the eigh teenth cen tury termed “the sub lime”,

and Kant saw fit to com pare the starry heav ens with the moral law within.

7

The last of these three changes is very re cent. It has hap pened in the last fifty years,

per haps even more re cently. I have spo ken above of the two ways in which God is

pres ent in the pub lic realm, in the holy or in the po lit i cal iden tity of a so ci ety. In one

way or an other the tran scen dent is con nected to so cial re la tions. In this re stricted

sense, these so ci et ies are ‘Durkheimian’ .

8

But to day forms of spir i tu al ity that are rad i cally dis so ci ated from so cial sol i dar ity

have evolved. This is par tic u larly ob vi ous in man i fes ta tions of what has come to be

called “New Age” spir i tu al ity. But the phe nom e non is in fact far broader than this. It

might be nec es sary to speak of a post-Durkheimian age. A cer tain sol i dar ity is nec es -

sary both for a spir i tu al ity grounded in a God who is rooted in the holy, and for the

kind of spir i tu al ity me di ated through the po lit i cal iden tity. This sol i dar ity might ex -

press it self through mem ber ship of a par tic u lar church (the Cath o lic model) or through

mem ber ship of “the church of one's choice” – in other words through mem ber ship of

one of a group of churches which re cog nise each other's le git i macy (the Protestant

model, which one sees in the United States).

But this kind of so cial con nec tion is be com ing less and less suited to the expressivist

cul ture of our times, which is sat u rated with the ethic of au then tic ity. This cul ture is

con cerned, above all, with the ne ces sity of be ing true to one's own spir i tual path. This

con cern cer tainly does not pre vent ref er ence to the tran scen den tal or striv ing to go be -

yond the self; but it does cre ate a cli mate in which ad her ence to a form of spir i tu al ity

which does not speak to us, on ac count of it not be ing part of “our” tra di tion or “our”

iden tity, makes less and less sense. One need not nec es sar ily go as far as a speaker at a

New Age fes ti val in Eng land, whose motto was “Only ac cept what rings true to your

own in ner self

9

." But the priv i leg ing of one's own in spi ra tion is ever more openly re -

vealed. We are ex pe ri enc ing the break through of this form of spir i tu al ity.

This clearly changes the po si tion, and not only for re li gions such as Chris tian ity; it

also un der mines sec u lar forms of po lit i cal iden tity such as, for ex am ple, the par tic u lar

meta phys ics which for a long time un der pinned the “re pub li can” iden tity in France.

III

As I ex plain things here, it is clear that the mod ern con cep tion of the hu man moral or -

der plays an im por tant role. In the space be tween or tho dox Chris tian ity and de ism, so -

ci ety was able, by vir tue of this mod ern con cep tion, to see it self as con sti tuted by in di -

vid u als who were lib er ated from any pre vi ous hi er ar chi cal or der, and who pur sue their

own vi tal in ter ests, al beit in such a way as to sup port one an other. Var i ous in ter pre ta -

tions of this moral or der of mo der nity have come to un der pin the re spec tive so cial im -

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

231

7

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and in creas ing ad mi ra tion and awe, the of tener and more
steadily we re flect on them: the starry heav ens above and the moral law within.” Im man uel Kant, Cri -
tique of prac ti cal rea son, (tr Lewis Beck White) Chi cago Uni ver sity of Chi cago Press 1949, p. 258.

8

I do not here ad vo cate Durkheim's much stron ger the sis, whereby the tran scen dent or the holy is so ci ety.

9

Sir George Trevelyan, on the oc ca sion of a lec ture at the ”Fes ti val for Mind, Body and Spirit", cited in
Paul Heelas The New Age Move ment Ox ford 1996 at page 21. One might be tempted to be lieve that this
slo gan ap plies only to rep re sen ta tives of the New Age move ment. But Heelas claims in chap ter 6 that
this po si tion has cer tain af fin i ties with far more com monly held at ti tudes. A 1978 Gal lup Poll re vealed,
for ex am ple, that 80% of Amer i cans agreed with the state ment that “an in di vid ual should ar rive at his or
her own re li gious be liefs in de pend ent of any churches or syn a gogues.” (Heelas on page 164, cited like -
wise in Rob ert Bellah et al., Hab its of the heart Berke ley 1985, page 228.)

232

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

agi na ries as so ci ated with them, whether that of the dem o cratic and egal i tar ian so ci ety

which is made up of le gal sub jects, or the mar ket econ omy that ties free par tic i pants

to gether.

But it has also given us a new con cep tion of Prov i dence – one dom i nated by the

apologetics of New ton's time, in which God ex presses his good ness in the cre ation of

a uni verse or dered around the prin ci ple of mu tual sup port. God among us, made pres -

ent in hu man so ci ety, meant ap ply ing this prin ci ple in po lit i cal and so cial life.

10

In West ern his tory it is pre cisely this con cep tion of or der that re veals the con ti nu ity

be tween the so cial mo ral ity that was first em bod ied in di vine Prov i dence and that ver -

sion of it which re placed Prov i dence with Na ture – a con cept which it self barely sur -

vived the death of the cos mos. The lo ca tion of mo ral ity has sub se quently be come an

ever more in ter nal one, and now finds it self within civili sa tion, un der stood as the ca -

pac ity of “ad vanced” hu mans to cul ti vate the moral sources which lie within them -

selves. This moral or der is also the site of com plex re la tions be tween faith and un be -

lief.

One speaks of ten of the re la tion Chris tian ity has with Lib er al ism, and, in do ing so,

re lies on a par tic u lar pic ture of its con nec tion with the moral or der of mo der nity: I

think here of “Chris tian ity squared”. This means: Chris tian ity had, in a cer tain way, al -

ready taken each in di vid ual to be holy and there fore wor thy of re spect, but there re -

mained nev er the less a cer tain un rest on the bor der be tween Chris tians and non-Chris -

tians. This lim i ta tion had to be over come in or der to es tab lish the mo ral ity of mo der -

nity, which we may see as “Chris tian ity squared”, be yond the nar row bound aries of

ad her ence to a re li gious com mu nity.

There is some thing to this. We be liev ers must con cede that un be lief has done us a

great ser vice. It has helped free us from Chris ten dom which, de spite all its lus tre and

no ta ble achieve ments, was one of the great fac tors in lim it ing the Gos pel in our lives.

11

In this sense mod ern lib er al ism is Chris tian ity squared through and through. Un for tu -

nately this is not the only way in which the two are con nected, as, in an other sense,

mod ern lib er al ism is ‘Chris tian ity lite’. This moral or der can also turn out to be a

prison, one that lim its and blinds us.

This point has been made in a num ber of ways, or, to put it dif fer ently, along a num -

ber of axes. And this al lows me to come fi nally to my dis cus sion of the im ma nent

Coun ter-En light en ment. But first a gen eral re mark about re sis tance to the he ge mony

of the moral or der of mo der nity, in what ever form this or der takes. In ter est ingly, such

re ac tions have come not only from Chris tian au thors or think ers, but also from com -

plete un be liev ers. In other words, cer tain kinds of ob jec tions to mo der nity which have

of ten been ex pressed by Chris tian au thors - in par tic u lar the sense of im pris on ment

which mo der nity is al leged to pro duce - have also been ex pressed, al beit in dif fer ent

ways, in the work of un be liev ers.

There are a num ber of axes of re bel lion. I will dis cuss two of them:
a) First of all the moral or der of mo der nity aims to fur ther life, hap pi ness, and pros -

per ity. Locke saw the right to life as the first among rights – not the good life, as Ar is -

10 Mi chael Buckley has shown the im por tance of the mo tif of heal ing di vine prov i dence to sev en teenth

and eigh teenth cen tury apologetics, and how cen tral theodicy was for this era. The fate of God, one
might say, was tied to this new con cep tion of or der. (At the Or i gins of Mod ern Athe ism. New Ha ven,
1987).

11 Here I am clearly in debted to Em man uel Mounier. Cf. his Feu la Chrétienneté Paris 1947. I have de vel -

oped these thoughts in A Cath o lic Mo der nity? Charles Tay lor's Marianist Award Lec ture. New York,
James Heft (ed.), 1999.

totle had it, but sim ply life. The rights to free dom and prop erty are de rived from it.

This set of val ues is deeply con nected with the af fir ma tion of or di nary life, some thing

I re ferred to in Sources of the Self.

12

While many would greet this af fir ma tion with ap proval, oth ers see it as a lim i ta tion.

They rather strive for some thing that goes be yond life, some thing which might even

re quire los ing one's life. This theme is well-known to Chris tians – “ich freue mich auf

meinen Tod,”

13

in the words of the well-known Bach can tata. And it is mak ing a re -

turn, sur pris ingly enough, in the con text of pure im ma nence.

As Mallarmé says:

“Ainsi, pris du dégoût de l’ homme à l’ âme dure

Vautré dans le bonheur, où ses seuls appétits

Mangent ...

Je fuis et je m’ accroche à toutes les croisées

D’ où l’ on tourne l’ épaule à la vie, et, béni,

Dans leur verre, lavé d éternelles rosées,

Que dore le matin chaste de l’ Infini

Je me mire et me vois ange! Et je meurs, et j’ aime

... Que la vitre soit l’ art, soit la mysticité –

... renaître, portant mon rêve en diadème,

Au ciel antérieur où fleurit la Beauté!

(Les Fenêtres, 21-32)

14

In this youth ful work one can still see the re li gious sources of dis sat is fac tion with the

or di nary life: the im age of the win dow, pic tured in var i ous ways, which splits the uni -

verse into an up per and lower part; the lower part un der stood as a san a to rium, and life

it self as a kind of pu tre fac tion. But be yond it there is heaven and a river; the pic tures

are still im preg nated with the re li gious tra di tion: eter nity, an gels, mys ti cism.

But later, af ter his cri sis, Mallarmé took a more ma te ri al is tic view of the uni verse.

Be neath ob serv able re al ity lies noth ing ness, the void. The poet's vo ca tion re mains nev -

er the less that of go ing be yond life. In fact he speaks of this vo ca tion in terms bor -

rowed from ro man ti cism: the search for the orig i nal, per fect, lan guage, ‘l’ explication

orphique de la Terre.’

15

With re gard to re li gious con vic tions, Mallarmé holds to an im ma nent hu man ism.

But he finds him self in op po si tion to it with re gard to the ques tion of the pur pose of

life. He strongly re jects the priv i leg ing of life – in fact he re gards it with re vul sion.

What be comes ap par ent re sem bles some thing more like a coun ter-priv i leg ing of death.

Real is ing the poet's vo ca tion to cre ate a pu ri fied lan guage re quires, for Mallarmé,

some thing that re sem bles the poet's death; at least, it re quires go ing be yond ev ery par -

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

233

12 Charles Tay lor Sources of the Self: The Mak ing of the Mod ern Iden tity. Cam bridge, Mas sa chu setts: Har -

vard Uni ver sity Press, 1989.

13 ’ I look for ward to my death with joy’
14 'thus, seized with dis gust at the hard-souled man who wal lows in the plea sures on which his ap pe tite

feeds ... I flee and cling to all the win dows from which one can turn one's back on life; and blessed in
their glass, bathed in eter nal dews, in the chaste morn ing of the In fi nite, I look at my self and see an an -
gel! and I die, and I long – whether the win dow be art or mys ti cism – to be re born, wear ing my dream as
a di a dem, in the an te rior sky where Beauty flow ers!’

15 'the Or phic ex pla na tion of the Earth.’

234

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

tic u lar ity. This is a pro cess that is only con sum mated in death: ‘Tel Qu’ en Lui-même

enfin l’ éternité le change.’

16

Tout ce que, par contre coup, mon être a souffert, pen dant cette longue agonie,

est inénarrable, mais heureusement je suis parfaitement mort, et la région la

plus im pure où mon Es prit puisse s’ aventurer est l’ éternité, mon es prit, ce Sol -

i taire habituel de sa propre Pureté, que n’ obscurcit plus même le frelet du

Temps.

17

Mallarmé be came the first great mod ern poet of ab sence (‘aboli bi be lot d'inanité

sonore’ ).

18

Eliot, Celan, and oth ers were to fol low him in this. We are ob vi ously deal -

ing with the ab sence of the ob ject: (‘sur les crédences, au sa lon vide: nul ptyx’)

19

But one only reaches this first ab sence by means of an other, namely dis ap pear ance –

in other words the death of the sub ject (‘Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au

Styx / Avec ce seul objet don't le Néant s'honore’).

20

There is a strange par al lel with

pre vi ous re li gious tra di tions, al beit one that is es sen tially a rad i cal ne ga tion of tran -

scen dence.

Death, and the mo ment of death, have an in erad i ca ble place in more than just one re -

li gious tra di tion: death as the ul ti mate giv ing up of the self, and thus as de ci sive mo -

ment (“pray for us now and at the hour of our death”). Some thing sim i lar is to be

found in Bud dhism. In the Chris tian tra di tion the place of death, the great est loss of

self, is also that of the great est un ion with God, and there fore, par a dox i cally, the rich -

est source of life.

In Mallarmé's new per spec tive, the place of death has re newed para dig matic sta tus.

The Chris tian par a dox dis ap pears: death is no more the source of new life. But it is re -

placed by an other par a dox: what ap pears to be a new af fir ma tion of tran scen dence, in

the sense of a def i nite goal be yond life, is in fact grounded in a de ci sive ne ga tion of all

tran scen dent re al ity. There is only noth ing ness.

This con fus ing con cep tion of a, so to speak, im ma nent tran scen dence is a sig nif i cant

as pect of what I term the im ma nent Coun ter-En light en ment. In a cer tain sense death,

as the place where life col lects and cen tres it self, grants us a priv i leged per spec tive.

This per spec tive keeps re turn ing in our cul ture – and not only as in the ex am ple of

Mallarmé. Heidegger's ‘Be ing to ward Death’ is a well-known ex am ple of this, but this

theme is taken up in dif fer ent ways by Sartre, Camus, and Foucault, and one hears

weak ech oes of it in the fad of the “Death of Man”.

Let us now turn to the sec ond axis. If we note on the first axis pri mar ily a re volt

against life it self as re stric tion, on the sec ond it is more that one in sults ev ery day con -

tent ment, which is seen as con tempt ible. One re fuses to re cog nise the pri macy of or di -

nary life in the name of great ness, the ex traor di nary, the he roic. One sees in the equal -

ity of all claim ants to the or di nary life the lev el ling that ex traor di nary, ec cen tric be -

16 'As into Him self, at last, Eter nity changes him.'
17 'Ev ery thing that, as a re sult, my be ing suf fered dur ing that slow death was hi lar i ous, but hap pily I am

per fectly dead, and the most im pure re gion where my Spirit can ven ture is eter nity, my spirit, that ha bit -
ual Re cluse of its own Pu rity, which even the re flec tion of Time no lon ger ob scures'; let ter of March
1866 to Henri Cazalis, re pro duced in Propos sur la poésie (Mo naco: Edi tions du Rocher, 1946), 66.

18 'abol ished knick-knack of so no rous inan ity'; Plusieurs son nets, IV, 6.
19 'On the cre den zas in the empty sit ting rooms: no ptyx.'' ibid, 5.
20 '(For the Mas ter has gone to draw tears from the Styx / With this ob ject, the only one in which Noth ing -

ness takes pride).' ibid, 7 - 8.

ings, who are greater than the av er age, wish to rid i cule. In stead of priv i leg ing the or di -

nary life as peace ful pros per ity, one sees in it rather the re jec tion of the war rior ethic,

of cour age, her o ism, and risk ing one's life.

One ex pe ri ences the moral or der of mo der nity as an other kind of lim i ta tion. Here it

is not so much that one strives for death (al though there are deep af fin i ties be tween the

two axes), but rather that one sees it as an at tempt to re duce the goals of hu man life to

the core of a strict and ab stract mo ral ity. Many have ex pe ri enced this mo ral ity as re -

pres sive, as a re fusal of all that is no ble and weighty in hu man be ings.

Tocqueville, who can hardly be re garded as an en emy of equal ity and de moc racy,

feared pre cisely this kind of loss of great ness, es pe cially of that which gives hu man

life a greater mean ing. To show this, we need merely re fer to the well-known chap ter

on mod ern des po tism, in which one finds the fol low ing ex traor di nary pas sage: “I see

an in nu mer a ble crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon them selves in a rest -

less search for those petty, vul gar plea sures with which they fill their souls.”

21

It is in ter est ing to note that Tocqueville sees a con nec tion be tween great ness and the

po lit i cal free dom of mo der nity on the one hand, and des po tism and pet ti ness on the

other. In this re mark able pas sage writ ten by a man who, at least in his youth, was a

con ven tional Chris tian, and who did not want to re ject Chris tian ity as an ideal com -

pletely, one sees an ex traor di nary an tic i pa tion of Nietz sche. I think in par tic u lar of the

lines on the sub ject of the last man taken from the Fore word to Zarathustra, which

make a sim i lar kind of point. In stead of Tocqueville's petty, vul gar, plea sure, Nietz -

sche writes of ‘a mis er a ble ease’.

22

Nietz sche re jects the idea that the high est goal of life could lie in the pres er va tion

and im prove ment of life and the re duc tion of suf fer ing. He re jects not only the priv i -

leg ing of the or di nary life, but also the egal i tar i an ism that goes with it. But his re bel -

lion re mains, nev er the less, in ter nal in a cer tain sense. Life it self, ac cord ing to Nietz -

sche, im plies cru elty, dom i na tion, and the elim i na tion of the weak and the mis be got -

ten, and it drives us in these di rec tions in pre cisely the mo ment of its most ef fu sive

self-af fir ma tion.

Nietz sche there fore re mains, to a cer tain ex tent, within the mod ern af fir ma tion of

life. For him there is noth ing higher than the move ment of life it self – the will to
power. But this move ment tol er ates be nev o lence, uni ver sal ity, har mony, and or der li -
ness only with dif fi culty. All of this acts as a brake on its as pi ra tions to great ness, to
the ex traor di

nary, to that which goes be

yond the hu

man and reaches out to the

Übermensch, the Su per man. The true move ment of Life wishes to re ha bil i tate de struc -
tion and chaos. In other words, it wishes, in the course of its self-af fir ma tion, to im -
pose suf fer ing and ex ploi ta tion. The re flec tive life also af firms death and de struc tion.
Claim ing the op po site means re strict ing it, op press ing it, tam ing it, lock ing it in, and
rob bing it of those higher man i fes ta tions which alone make the Übermensch's af fir ma -
tion of life worth any thing.

Nietz sche en dorses, by a round about route, the war rior ethic, which was the tar get of

both Plato and Chris tian ity, and which praises cour age, great ness, and the vir tues of

the elite. And here also one finds that death is al lo cated a para dig matic place. Not

death as the ne ga tion of life, but rather the cour age to look death in the face, to es ti -

mate life as less valu able than hon our and sta tus. This has al ways been the mark of the

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

235

21 Alexis de Tocqueville, De moc racy in Amer ica (tr. Ger ald Bevan). Lon don: Pen guin, 2003. p 805.
22 Friedrich Nietz sche Thus spake Zarathustra (tr RJ Hollingdale) Lon don: Pen guin, 1961. p 43.

236

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

war rior, and of his su pe ri or ity over or di nary mor tals. Mod ern hu man ism gen er ates

faint heart ed ness. This ac cu sa tion re turns fre quently in the cul ture of the Coun ter-En -

light en ment.

It is un nec es sary to emphasise the im mense in flu ence of Nietz sche's anti-hu man ism

on the cul ture of the last cen tury. It has left its mark above all in France: think of

Bataille, Foucault, and Derrida. In the early part of the twen ti eth cen tury it was as so ci -

ated with anti-dem o cratic re ac tion. There is a cer tain “elec tive af fin ity” be tween the

cult of her o ism and risk as so ci ated with Nietz sche and the po lit i cal re ac tion against the

“es tab lished dis or der” which man i fested it self at the be gin ning of the twen ti eth cen -

tury. One is se duced by the ideal of a hi er ar chi cal or der, in which the higher be ings

give the or ders, and the or di nary peo ple are led to great heights. The Coun ter-En light -

en ment of the faith ful meets that of the un be liev ers. Maurras is one of the points at

which these two streams meet.

Later, af ter the war, the Coun ter-En light en ment of the un be liev ers would find po lit i -

cal ex pres sion ex clu sively in fas cism. I do not say this for the pur poses of dis cred it ing

it. On the con trary, we need to un der stand why think ers who ab horred fas cism from

the depths of their be ings were nev er the less at tracted to antihumanism. This is pos si -

ble be cause the moral or der of mo der nity can al ways be ex pe ri enced as a prison. And

this on many lev els. James Miller's book on Foucault shows the power of this re bel lion

against the cramped, suf fo cat ing cell of hu man ism.

23

The antihumanism ar tic u lated by Nietz sche has sub se quently been strength ened by

our con scious ness of liv ing in a uni verse, as op posed to a cos mos, to use the con cepts

I in tro duced ear lier. For the Dar win ian uni verse is the site of a bru tal strug gle, of na -

ture “red in tooth and claw”. An ethic that in te grates strug gle and de struc tion into the

good life finds it self seamlessly con nected with the na ture of things. Nietz sche, who

saw in the will to power a uni ver sal force, him self called for just such a ground ing in

the nat u ral. And one sees some thing sim i lar in the youth ful Ernst Jünger, as well as the

Amer i can poet Rob in son Jeffers, not to men tion many oth ers. In a strange in ver sion of

things, the uni verse plays, for mod ern antihumanism, the role that was al lot ted to the

cos mos in tra di tional mo ral ity. Tra di tional mo ral ity un der stood it self to be sup ported

by the cos mos; mod ern antihumanism grounds it self in the com plete ab sence of a plan

in a uni verse de void of mean ing. This dem on strates the ex tent to which this kind of

ground ing in the real re mains nec es sary for mod ern peo ple.

On an other level, the war rior ethic, which Nietz sche re ha bil i tated – the ma chismo of

the war rior – still ech oes in mod ern lib eral so ci ety – above all amongst young men.

We need to ac cept that this ethic still has a cer tain res o nance for us, and ask what its

mean ing is. How are we to un der stand it? How are we to live with it?

All tra di tional re li gions found a way of liv ing with this. René Gi rard writes of a de -

ci sive dif fer ence be tween the un der stand ing of vi o lence in the Judeo-Chris tian re li -

gions on the one hand, and re li gions out side the Judeo-Chris tian tra di tion on the other.

I find his the ory pro foundly in ter est ing, even though it is also pos si ble to take this dif -

fer ence into ac count in other ways. From a Chris tian view point, such as we see in Gi -

rard as well as oth ers, there is a par tic u lar way of re cog nis ing this di men sion of hu -

man ity, whereby we hope to trans form it from within into some thing else. This does

not mean sim ply re press ing it, nor be liev ing that cul tural prog ress will de stroy this

pow er ful hu man in stinct, nor that prog ress, dis ci pline, or the good lib eral so ci ety will

neu tral ise it suf fi ciently for us no lon ger to be threat ened by it. One sees, or so I think,

23 James Miller, The Pas sion of Michel Foucault. New York: Harper Col lins, 1993.

in the cur rent fash ion of “po lit i cal cor rect ness”, par tic u larly as prac tised in Amer ica,

how this pro cess re sults in a dead end, be cause the chief weapon of the war rior ethic,

namely shame, is turned against it self. The aim is to get peo ple to feel ashamed of

them selves, and by do ing so to ren der ev ery re flex of ex clu sion, vi o lence, and dis crim -

i na tion ab so lutely un ac cept able, in valid, im pos si ble. It strikes me that this way of pro -

ceed ing re veals it self with time as ever more of an ob vi ous cul de sac. This in di cates a

de fi ciency that is im plicit in the moral psy chol ogy of this un der stand ing of mo ral ity.

Once more its im pris on ing ten den cies are shown. And here one sees how com plex

the re la tions be tween be lief, un be lief, and mo ral ity are. I have spo ken above of

“Chris tian ity squared” and “Chris tian ity lite”, but one can not take only the di a logue

be tween lib er al ism and Chris tian ity into ac count. There is a third player, or se ries of

play ers, whom I have termed the im ma nent Coun ter-En light en ment. They have turned

away from the tran scen dent, but are nev er the less crit i cal of lib er al ism and the moral

or der of mo der nity. In do ing so they lay claim to be ing more con sis tent in their re jec -

tion of the tran scen dent than lib er als, whom they ac cuse of ad vo cat ing a neo-Chris tian

mo ral ity.

But de spite these dif fer ences, their ob jec tions to the moral or der of mo der nity of ten

re sem ble closely those of be liev ers. In fact, there is a strange tri an gu lar re la tion ship

be tween be liev ers, mod ern hu man ists, and antihumanists, whereby each pair can make

com mon cause against the third on some is sue, but re main at odds on other is sues. To

this ex tent both forms of op po si tion to tran scen dence meet each other. Chris tians and

antihumanists agree in cer tain ways on the fail ings of the moral or der of mo der nity;

but be yond this cri tique Chris tians re cog nise the claims of their own faith in the fun da -

men tal val ues of the mod ern or der, and in this sense they are closer to the hu man ists.

IV

This tri an gu lar per spec tive, as well as the his tory of the or i gins of un be lief that un der -

lies it, leads us to an other un der stand ing of mo der nity. It gives us, first of all, a dif fer -

ent per spec tive on the clas si cal goals of the de vel op ment of mo der nity. If the sub trac -

tion story is cor rect, and it means that we are mov ing in the di rec tion of the com plete

dis ap pear ance of re li gion (or at least its dis ap pear ance within a cer tain range, in that

peo ple are al ways likely to be some what ir ra tio nal: let us rather say, the di min ish ing

im por tance of re li gion) and a har mo ni ous world be yond it, I would say rather that the

di rec tion it is lead ing us in, if it is in deed lead ing us any where, is more likely to be that

of an ever more highly de vel oped plu ral ism. I do not mean by this plu ral ism on a nor -

ma tive level, but rather an ever more frag mented spir i tual plu ral ism, whereby many

dif fer ent va ri et ies of liv ing the spir i tual life, both within and out side of Chris tian ity,

will arise. One sees in the cre ation of im ma nent forms of Coun ter-En light en ment that

the power to con struct new eth i cal per spec tives has not waned with the birth of mod -

ern hu man ism. This power is in fact stron ger than ever; spir i tual fam i lies are split ting

and mul ti ply ing in our post-Durkheimian age.

A con se quence of this is the re cip ro cal weak en ing of these fam i lies. The fact that

one lives with oth ers who, de spite be ing of good will and just as in tel li gent and as tute

as one self, choose pro foundly dif fer ent spir i tual op tions, can not re main with out ef fect.

The cru cial fact is that to day one lives next to these oth ers, in con trast to cer tain tra di -

tional so ci et ies in which spir i tual fam i lies lived in ghet tos, in su lated to the ex tent that

they had no con tact with each other. In con trast, we live in a thor oughly mixed so ci -

ety. The spir i tu ally “other” might turn out to be one's brother, sis ter, son, or daugh ter.

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

237

238

S. Afr. J. Philos. 2005, 24(3)

It some times seems as if gen er a tions al ter nate be tween dif fer ent sets of spir i tual val -

ues, for which we have the ten dency of chil dren to re act against their par ents to thank.

In cer tain fam i lies it seems that sons change course from their fa thers, and daugh ters

from their moth ers. One thinks here of the Eng lish Evan gel i cals, whose chil dren at one

time joined the camp of the un be liev ers. In the next gen er a tion, Vir ginia Woolf, née

Ste phen, re jects the mor al ism in which she was brought up. She is one of the found ers

of the at tempt, which we call Blooms bury, to break open the prison.

And so it con tin ued, al though it had not in fact be gun there, as the Evan gel i cals had

adopted and re newed the re li gion of their grand par ents in re ac tion against the lib er tine

gen er a tion of Gibbonians. It seems to me that the pat tern es tab lished in the en closed

world of the elites of eigh teenth cen tury Eng land an tic i pated what has be come the rule

in mo der nity. We are deal ing here with a kind of plu ral ism that is not static, but rather

in con tin ual mo tion, and whose fi nal goal is in fact to es tab lish that there is no fi nal

goal, but rather a set of spir i tual paths that cross and branch out from each other. All of

this makes clear is that any at tempt to re-es tab lish Chris ten dom, in clud ing those that

take the form of an er satz, non-re li gious form of Chris tian ity, are doomed to com plete

fail ure.

This world of dif fer ence will bring about new ways of liv ing with dif fer ence. We

should per haps re cog nise that it will not suf fice sim ply to pur sue a neg a tive pol i tics of

non-dis crim i na tion. What is in fact re quired is a gen u ine co ex is tence of dif fer ences,

which goes be yond sim ple tol er ance. This is not to dis par age tol er ance, that is a valu -

able achieve ment in com par i son to the in tol er ance and ex clu sion which has been the

rule in most of hu man his tory. But if one wants to move in the di rec tion of an ever

more hu man ex change, one needs to do more than just re spect those who are dif fer ent,

but in fact to help them find their voice or path, to the ex tent that this is both nec es sary

and pos si ble. The idea of gen u ine trans for ma tion is that these dif fer ent voices gen u -

inely have some thing to say and some thing to give one an other; but for this to hap pen

it is nec es sary that oth ers find their voices or their paths. It is some times in suf fi cient to

re move all that dis crim i nates against and bars the way to those who are dif fer ent. It is

also some times the case that they must have, or must be given, the nec es sary means.

Of course it is very com pli cated and dif fi cult to ap ply this kind of ideal. And nor can it

be the only ap pli ca ble prin ci ple, for it also has the po ten tial for ex cesses and de vi a -

tions.

I am un able to sum ma rise the some what dis jointed set of re marks that com prise this

pa per with out de fin ing what the re la tions be tween Chris tian ity and all those moral and

eth i cal vi sions that I have de tailed ought to be. It is clearly not pos si ble for Chris tian ity

to re duce it self to a par tic u lar mo ral ity, or to see it self as sat is fied or com pletely ex -

pressed by one of these mo ral i ties. We can there fore draw the fol low ing les son: it is

cer tainly the case that the moral or der of mo der nity does pose cer tain prob lems for

Chris tian ity. But this is not an ac ci dent, a sim ple con tin gency, or a prob lem that arises

only with this par tic u lar model – it arises with any given model. There are par al lels in

the New Tes ta ment, which make this clear: for ex am ple that of the work ers who are

in vited to work in the vine yards, and where those who worked only an hour re ceive

the same wages as the oth ers. This pol icy, of course, would con tra dict any pol icy the

gov ern ment of a de cently ad min is tered coun try would be able to jus tify. But the mes -

sage is not that we have here a gen eral and fun da men tal prin ci ple which could serve as

the ba sis for a well-or dered so ci ety. We could never con ceive of a hu man so ci ety in

which one could as sume that those who work one hour are to re ceive the same wage

as those who work ten hours. What this par a ble ex presses, how ever, is rather that there

are con sid er ations that go be yond any pos si ble moral or der for the world of hu man be -

ings, and that there will be con stant ten sion be tween the de mands of faith, the re la tion -

ship with God, and the de mands of mo ral ity.

This his tory of the moral or der of mo der nity and its ten sions with Chris tian ity is not

an ex cep tion; on the con trary, it is ab so lutely foun da tional. But it is not be cause of any

fail ings in the moral or der of mo der nity that these ten sions ex ist. On the con trary: it is

per haps one of the best that has been es tab lished in the his tory of hu man kind. It has

cer tain prob lems, some of which I have noted, but when one com pares it with any

such or der that has pre vi ously ex isted, then I would say that it is in fi nitely su pe rior.

The moral or der that re cog nises de moc racy and the uni ver sal ity of rights has to date

not been equalled. I do not say that it is not pos si ble for a su pe rior con cep tion to arise

at some point in the fu ture, but to date there has not been a better one. This fact is not

un im por tant.

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