Secularization as Kenosis
Secularization as Kenosis Secularization as Kenosis
204 | postmodern condition and secularity secularization is used to affirm the world and to save it from transcendental abstractions, nihilism is usually defined as a denial of the inherent worth of reality and the impossibility of knowing that world. 141 The postmodern habit to refuse to speak of ‘the world’ and instead to speak in a fragmented mode of multiple worlds, makes the question urgent whether the idea of the world has any meaning left. 142 In this section I will set out to demonstrate that Vattimo’s position in the end denies the world. In this perspective his reflections on art and the artificial nature of postmodern society are very instructive. In Vattimo’s philosophy of language there is no reference between words and the world, as the only conceivable meaning is in intertextual allusions. The world itself has no meaning. Whilst single things belong to the world insofar as they are inserted in a referential totality of significance . . . the world as such and as a whole does not refer and thus has no significance. Anxiety is a mark of this insignificance, the utter gratuitousness of the fact that the world is 143 In the primacy of fear and the loss of “sense of reality”, 144 Vattimo echoes the concerns of existentialists like Sartre. Despite his effort to distance himself from the humanism of the existentialists, both observe an Entwirklichung of the world and man. 145 When Vattimo uses the word secularization to express the way man is in the world; he does not mean a restored relation with the world, but a definite loss of the world. The very notion of reality becomes problematic. He sees the idea of a single, objective reality springing from a desire to escape a world of contingency. Giving up of reality is the radical consequence of modernity, as the metaphysical notions of ground and a systematic account of reality reach a culmination in technology. In technology, an objectifying stance is applied to man and the inner self. In this sense metaphysics becomes fully apparent in its collapse. Everything dissolves in communication. In the postmodern world, every account of the world turns out to be but another local construction, a dialect as it were. When all accounts of reality are exposed as just as many contingent narratives, there is no need to mourn the loss of the single world; instead this can be experienced as liberation and emancipation. 5.3.1 World Dissolution as a Mark of Postmodern Culture At several places, Vattimo refers for his account of the relation man has to the world, to the three stages of Verfall in Nietzsche’s philosophy. In his Götzendämmerung Nietzsche distinguishes between three stages of a Verfall. First he discerns the stage of the Platonic Hinterwelt. According to Plato the truth of the world was to be thought of 141 I refer here particularly to Nietzsche’s reduction of the world to ‘will to power’ Richard Schacht, ‘Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm’, in: Robert Audi, editor, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 615. 142 Silverman voices this question explicitly in Hugh J. Silverman, ‘Can the Globalized World Be in-the- World?’, in: Weakening Philosophy. Essays in honour of Gianni Vattimo (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007), 111. 143 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 150. 144 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 24. 145 The term Entwirklichung in relation to Sartre is from Gerrit Cornelis van Niftrik, De boodschap van Sartre (Callenbach, 1953), 201. He also uses the term Entweltlichung with regard to Sartre.
secularization as kenosis | 205 as a realm beyond this world. The stable and static world of ideas made it possible to have knowledge of the transient and mutable world. The second stage is the stage of the Kantian discovery that the world is co-constituted by the human subject. Without the constituting activity of the human subject, there is no world to be known. The thing in itself cannot be known. The only thing we can say about it is that we cannot deny its existence. The third stage of Verfall is the stage of positive science. This is the stage in which the world is claimed to be known as it is in itself. It is the activity of the establishing of facts, which marks out its ultimately subjective character. This is why we speak of the world as a product of modern science. So even in the stage of positive science, argues Vattimo, there is no longer a true world, rather “. . . truth is reduced entirely to what is ‘posited’ by the human subject, namely – ‘will to power’.” 146 In trying to find the true, objective world, we stay within the boundaries of metaphysics. What Vattimo rejects in metaphysics is that it “identifies being with the objectively given” and “the calculable, measurable and definitively manipulable object of techno-science.” 147 Vattimo’s effort is not to improve the objective picture of the world, rather to leave the subject-object scheme behind and replace it with another way of relating to the world. Vattimo seeks to “quit a horizon of thought that is an enemy of freedom and of the historicity of existing.” 148 This condition is one of a dissolution of reality: . . . as science speaks increasingly little of objects that can be compared with those in everyday experience, it is no longer clear what to call ‘reality’ – what I see and feel or what is described in books about physics or astrophysics? Technology and the production of commodities increasingly configure the world as an artificial world, where one cannot distinguish between natural, basic needs and those induced and manipulated by advertisement, so that here too is no longer a measuring-stick to distinguish the real from the ‘invented’. 149 In the emergence of nihilism, the world is increasingly a product of human creativity. Vattimo does see this happen in postmodern culture and there is absolutely no doubt that his observations are to the point. It is quite another thing, however, to equate this loss of reality with an aesthetic experience and to defend it philosophically. As Vattimo sees it, aesthetic experience is paradigmatic for postmodern culture. In an aesthetic culture, the loss of reality and solidity of the world can be experienced as a liberation. The aesthetic experience opens up our everyday life for other possible worlds, in the light of which the world of science is but a limitation. 150 In modern technology (and for Vattimo this is most of all information technology), there is a constant production of world pictures, which makes the classical distinction between the humanities and the sciences problematic. The sciences too are caught up in a process of redescribing the world. 151 In this paradox, that our reservoir of scientific knowledge is exploding at a time in which the world is increasingly designed by human beings, modern rationalism is both declining and triumphing. The sciences of 146 Vattimo, Belief, 29–30. 147 Vattimo, Belief, 30. 148 Vattimo, Belief, 31. 149 Vattimo, Belief, 31. 150 Vattimo writes: In an aesthetic culture, the loss of reality and solidity of the world can be experienced as a liberation. The aesthetic experience opens up our everyday life for other possible worlds, in the light of which the world of science is but a limitation. Vattimo, Transparent Society, 156. 151 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 41.
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204 | postmodern condition and secularity<br />
secularization is used to affirm the world and to save it from transcendental abstractions,<br />
nihilism is usually defined <strong>as</strong> a denial of the inherent worth of reality and the impossibility<br />
of knowing that world. 141 The postmodern habit to refuse to speak of ‘the world’<br />
and instead to speak in a fragmented mode of multiple worlds, makes the question urgent<br />
whether the idea of the world h<strong>as</strong> any meaning left. 142 In this section I will set out<br />
to demonstrate that Vattimo’s position in the end denies the world. In this perspective<br />
his reflections on art and the artificial nature of postmodern society are very instructive.<br />
In Vattimo’s philosophy of language there is no reference between words and the<br />
world, <strong>as</strong> the only conceivable meaning is in intertextual allusions. The world itself h<strong>as</strong><br />
no meaning.<br />
Whilst single things belong to the world insofar <strong>as</strong> they are inserted in a referential<br />
totality of significance . . . the world <strong>as</strong> such and <strong>as</strong> a whole does not refer and thus h<strong>as</strong><br />
no significance. Anxiety is a mark of this insignificance, the utter gratuitousness of<br />
the fact that the world is 143<br />
In the primacy of fear and the loss of “sense of reality”, 144 Vattimo echoes the concerns<br />
of existentialists like Sartre. Despite his effort to distance himself from the humanism<br />
of the existentialists, both observe an Entwirklichung of the world and man. 145 When<br />
Vattimo uses the word secularization to express the way man is in the world; he does not<br />
mean a restored relation with the world, but a definite loss of the world. The very notion<br />
of reality becomes problematic. He sees the idea of a single, objective reality springing<br />
from a desire to escape a world of contingency. Giving up of reality is the radical<br />
consequence of modernity, <strong>as</strong> the metaphysical notions of ground and a systematic<br />
account of reality reach a culmination in technology. In technology, an objectifying<br />
stance is applied to man and the inner self. In this sense metaphysics becomes fully<br />
apparent in its collapse. Everything dissolves in communication. In the postmodern<br />
world, every account of the world turns out to be but another local construction, a<br />
dialect <strong>as</strong> it were. When all accounts of reality are exposed <strong>as</strong> just <strong>as</strong> many contingent<br />
narratives, there is no need to mourn the loss of the single world; instead this can be<br />
experienced <strong>as</strong> liberation and emancipation.<br />
5.3.1 World Dissolution <strong>as</strong> a Mark of Postmodern Culture<br />
At several places, Vattimo refers for his account of the relation man h<strong>as</strong> to the world,<br />
to the three stages of Verfall in Nietzsche’s philosophy. In his Götzendämmerung Nietzsche<br />
distinguishes between three stages of a Verfall. First he discerns the stage of<br />
the Platonic Hinterwelt. According to Plato the truth of the world w<strong>as</strong> to be thought of<br />
141 I refer here particularly to Nietzsche’s reduction of the world to ‘will to power’ Richard Schacht,<br />
‘Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm’, in: Robert Audi, editor, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge:<br />
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 615.<br />
142 Silverman voices this question explicitly in Hugh J. Silverman, ‘Can the Globalized World Be in-the-<br />
World?’, in: Weakening Philosophy. Essays in honour of Gianni Vattimo (Montreal: McGill-Queens University<br />
Press, 2007), 111.<br />
143 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 150.<br />
144 Vattimo, Transparent Society, 24.<br />
145 The term Entwirklichung in relation to Sartre is from Gerrit Cornelis van Niftrik, De boodschap van<br />
Sartre (Callenbach, 1953), 201. He also uses the term Entweltlichung with regard to Sartre.