Secularization as Kenosis

190 | postmodern condition and secularity
that we are formed by a history we cannot undo. Vattimo employs the Heideggerian
term Verwindung for this way of dealing with history. 74 The postmodern was thus, in a
way, already present in the modern. The secularization of history and progress is not a
mere contingent development, but radicalizes an aspect of modernity itself.
Secularization, especially in relation to the role of aesthetics, enables Vattimo to
see a deeper unity underneath the changing conditions of western culture. It is in
particular the relation secularization has with aesthetization of experience, that marks
out its specific postmodern character.
Secularization . . . is a term that describes not only what happens in a certain era and
what nature it assumes, but also the ‘value’ that dominates and guides consciousness
in the era in question, primarily as faith in progress – which is both a secularized faith
and a faith in secularization. But faith in progress, understood as a kind of faith in the
historical process that is ever more devoid of providential and meta-historical elements
is . . . identified with faith in the value of the new. 75
The postmodern experience of time and history emerges in early twentieth century
thought. The possibility of the new as such is considered more important than
a substantial, utopian ideal. We can think for example of Heidegger’s idea of human
existence as ‘project’. Vattimo speaks of a tendency to ‘locate the value of an action in
the fact of its making possible other choices and other actions.’ 76 Other examples of the
arrival of a postmodern, aesthetic understanding of secularity are the literary experiments
by such early twentieth century writers as James Joyce and Marcel Proust. In the
German tradition of Verweltlichung a version of secularization was articulated that implies
a farewell to a transcendent reality and the emergence of a science and rationality
that tries to be wholly immanent. Vattimo sketches this modern account of secularization
as the centrality of the idea of the new. This is reflected in modernity’s fascination
with the concept of genius and in the central role artists and art acquired in modern
culture and the obsession with the new in the cultural Avant Garde as in Dadaism and
Futurism. 77 Vattimo sees the relation of modernity, secularization and ‘the appreciation
of the new’ as follows:
1. Modernity is characterized as the era of Diesseitigkeit; as the abandonment of the
sacred vision of existence and the affirmation of the profane realm instead.
2. As concepts, secularization and modernity hang together as a belief in progress,
which takes shape as a resumption of Judeo- Christian belief in the meaning of
history from which all references to transcendence are eliminated.
3. This extreme secularization of the providential vision of history is simply the
equivalent of affirming the new as the fundamental value. 78
Vattimo thus places postmodernity in the perspective of a modern secularization. The
modern concept entails an affirmation of the profane, implicit in Judaism and Christianity,
on the one hand, and a cultural transformation from a religious worldview
74 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 179.
75 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 99–100.
76 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 100.
77 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 100.
78 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 101.