Secularization as Kenosis

202 | postmodern condition and secularity
behind. The Christian witness of the innocence of the victim is unique and will not
only unveil sacred violence, but will also evoke a counter-force, as the gospels also narrate.
131 Although both Vattimo and Girard understand the Christian unveiling of sacred
violence as the event in which secularization is rooted, they draw opposite conclusions
from there. Girard says that, as inheritors of the unveiling of sacred violence, we lack
an efficient theory of secularization. For Girard, the relationship between Christianity
and secularization is more complex than Vattimo suggests. As Girard sees it, the paradoxical
result of the centrality of love in Vattimo’s interpretation of Christian theology
makes it increasingly difficult to oppose violence. 132 The idea of secularization as a mere
weakening and disappearance of religion makes us blind to the fact that this cannot explain
the violent nature of a secularized culture itself, and it leaves us bereft of a means
by which to counter violence. Now let me discuss these two points in some more detail.
Vattimo’s discussion with René Girard turns on the point of relativism. Relativism,
says Vattimo, is perfectly consistent with the Christian religion, as the God of the Bible
is not an abstract truth, but a relational person, who has incarnated. 133 The weakening
of Being, and the relativism that flow from this conception of God and truth, enable
us to live according to a rule of love and tolerance only. In practice this means that
Vattimo is an advocate of negative liberty and of proceduralist ethics, which he defends
with a theological idea of a divine pedagogy. 134 Vattimo’s idea of the eventuality of Being
translates into a radically sociological account of philosophy. Philosophy is never
‘first philosophy’, but is concerned with the always shifting processes and conflicting
interpretations of the world. Therefore nothing is sacred and everything is open for
political discussion, with as guidelines the avoidance of violence in the context of “informed
and explicit consent.” 135 For Vattimo, the outcome of the secularization process
that first started with the Jewish and Christian scriptures is now being achieved in the
postmodern culture of relativism. Vattimo claims that the central insights of Heidegger
and Girard are essentially consistent with relativism. He reads Heidegger’s history
of metaphysics as a history equivalent to the history of the violence of the scapegoat
mechanism. When the metaphysical mechanisms that Heidegger and Girard, each in
their own terms, identify are unmasked, there is something like a continued revelation
of the anti-metaphysical God of the Bible. 136 In a fascinating exposition on the similarities
between Heidegger and Girard, Vattimo says that for both Girard and Heidegger,
131 Girard, 109.
132 “We are in need of a goog theory of secularization because secularization also entails the end of
the sacrificial, and that is a development that deprives us of the ordianry cultural equipment for facing up to
violence. There is a temporality to the sacrificial, and violence is subject to erosion and entropy, bu t Vattimo’s
approach seems to me to combat its symptoms. When, thanks to Christianity, get rid of the sacred, there is
a salvific opening up to agape, to charity, but there is also an opening up to greater violence. . . . And if one
has a theory of culture, he or she must account for the extraordinary aspects of this culture.” René Girard
and Gianni Vattimo, ‘Christianity and Modernity’, in: Pierpaolo Antonello, René Girard and Gianni Vattimo,
editors, Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 32.
133 René Girard and Gianni Vattimo, ‘Geloof en relativisme’, in: Pierpaolo Antonello, René Girard and
Gianni Vattimo, editors, Waarheid of zwak geloof? Dialoog over christendom en relativisme (Kapellen: Pelckmans
/ Klement, 2008), 48–9.
134 Gianni Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation. Ethics, Politics, and Law (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004), 104.
135 Vattimo, Nihilism & Emancipation, 105.
136 Gianni Vattimo, ‘Girard en Heidegger: Kénosis en het einde van de metafysica’, in: Pierpaolo Antonello,
René Girard and Gianni Vattimo, editors, Waarheid of zwak geloof? Dialoog over christendom en
relativisme (Kapellen: Pelckmans / Klement, 2008), 85.