Secularization as Kenosis

192 | postmodern condition and secularity
of its own historicity and the artificiality of life conditions. The postmodern idea of
progress no longer expects any salvation from this progress, rather it is willing to call
salvation the very possibility of progress and variety in a culture that has learned that
there is not one single trajectory that leads to salvation for all. Vattimo recognizes in
Gehlen’s essay an understanding of secularization as a crisis in the heart of modern
scientific, secular culture. The secularization of progress, according to Vattimo, means
an end to its unitary pretensions, not a return to a pre-scientific mode of existence. Secularization
in the end secularizes itself: secularizes the idea of progress and dissolves it.
It belongs to the essence of modernity and hence of postmodernity that it jumps over
its own shadow. Modernity cannot define itself, rather, in being new, modernity creates
a distance from itself. ‘The essence of modernity becomes truly visible only from the
moment in which . . . the mechanism of modernity distances itself from us.’ 82
The notions of dissolution of progress and post-historicity suggest that secularization
changes the very experience of what it is to have a history. Whereas the postmodern
critique starts off as a historicist critique of metaphysics, it tends to leave the
idea of history behind. Vattimo sees this account of progress as secularization and as
intrinsically connected with dissolution and nihilism. 83 Modern, utopian thought tends
to leave history behind and makes the present entirely dependent on the future. This
is latent in modernity, but becomes excessive in postmodernity. Vattimo writes: “. . . the
post-modern displays, as its most common and most imposing trait, an effort to free itself
from the logic of overcoming, development, and innovation.” 84 It is at this point that
Vattimo sees the value of Heidegger’s term Verwindung as distinct from Überwindung.
This term functions to let secularization cohere with nihilism. This term “deserves to be
placed alongside those of secularization and (Nietzschean) nihilism in any consideration
of modernity that is philosophical and not merely historisch.” 85
The distinctive postmodern trait of secularization is the dissolution of progress.
This means that progress becomes so routine in modern societies dominated by technology
and modern communication media, that the idea of progress itself becomes
problematical. Arnold Gehlen speaks of an emptying out of progress. Differentiation
in highly advanced societies, Gehlen says, “fans out in divergent processes that develop
their own internal legality ever further, and slowly progress . . . is displaced towards the
periphery of facts and consciousness, and there it is totally emptied out.” 86 Expanding
on what Gehlen says here, Vattimo asserts that “secularization itself . . . contains
a tendency toward dissolution.” 87 Modern secularization is generally understood as a
82 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 103.
83 “Progress seems to show a tendency to dissolve itself and, with it, the value of the new as well, not
only in the effective process of secularization, but even in the most extremely futuristic utopias.” Vattimo, End
of Modernity, 104.
84 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 105.
85 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 106.
86 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 102. The original reads: “Säkularisierung wird dann ebenfalss zu einem
mehrdimensionalen Vorgang. Sie besteht im allgemeinen darin, dass die Eigengesetze der neuen Welt den
Glauben erdrücken, oder vielmehr nicht eigentlich ihn sondern die siegesbeglückte Gewissheit. Zugleich
sich der grosse Entwurf, dem Sachzwang folgend, in auseinanderlaufende Prozesse auf, die immer mehr ihre
eigene Gesetzlichkeit entfalten, und langsam verschiebt sich der grosse Fortschritt, da man unbedingt an ihm
festhalten will, an die Peripherie der Tatsachen und der Geister und entleert sich dort.” Gehlen, 409. A term
such as ‘emptying out’ used here and on page 103 by Vattimo reminds us of Vattimo’s later use of the term as
a translation of the Pauline term kenosis. Here it is not explicitly linked to that theological term.
87 Vattimo, End of Modernity, 102–3.