The Secularization Theorem in the Long Nineteenth Century

Project Information

SECULAR

Grant agreement ID: 898294

DOI

10.3030/898294

Project closed

EC signature date 17 March 2020

Start date 1 May 2020

End date 30 April 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 162 806,40

EU contribution

€ 162 806,40

Coordinated by

FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SECULAR (The Secularization Theorem in the Long Nineteenth Century)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2022-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

My project, The Secularization Theorem in the Long Nineteenth Century (SECULAR), centered on the continued relevance of religious ideas in the social and political imaginary of the modern age. What is the role of religion in modern social and political theory? How is it that an age calls itself “modern,” without breaking with the past completely? The main problem addressed was how society understands itself in light of a theorem of secularization, i.e. how theological thought content is thought to still lie at the base of modern politics and society–albeit in various reworked, altered or reduced forms. This problem is relevant since it radically challenges certain standard views held in today’s social sciences which hold that we inhabit a post-religious or even a secular world. The overall objective of SECULAR was to analyze – in the light of secularization theory – the actual complexities and interanimations within multiple strands of modern social and political theory.

Focusing on an especially relevant case of the religious/secular divide, I traced 19th Century precursors of the “theorem of secularization” (Hans Blumenberg) – theories that explain the coming into being of modernity with more or less explicit reference to, or in direct continuation of, theology. Generally speaking, this includes instances where the modern age understands itself through the lens of a historically earlier time. This is directly relevant for current society insofar that the project tried to grasp elements foundational to the constitution of modern consciousness. An important part of social life consists in processes by which society is understanding itself. Hence, explanations about the coming into being of modern consciousness directly impact visions of society and politics today. Within modern European intellectual history, the theorem of secularization resulted in explanations about post-religious structures with reference to an allegedly hidden existence of theology. Within modern political science, this figure of thought has received critical acclaim under the label of political theology. This label had mainly been popularized by the intellectual historian, political philosopher and fascist legal theorist Carl Schmitt. I traced the 19th Century origins of the idea of political theology through an analysis of Carl Schmitt’s reception of the work of the Spanish conservative Catholic thinker Juan Donoso Cortés. Through this reading, various hidden assumptions within the modern theory of politics become obvious. Above all, this concerns an amalgamation of method, mode of historical explanation and political normativity. Another major theorist of secularization is the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who investigated the elementary religious forms of social existence while at the same time questioning the religious nature of societies: For Durkheim, social hierarchy and a socialized process of knowing and understanding form the beginnings of religious phenomena. SECULAR allowed fresh insight into the confluence between different theoretical traditions such as socialism, Catholic political thought and modern sociology. Tracing these schools to their seat in the 19th Century, SECULAR has created contact points and analyses equally valuable to historians of modern Europe, philosophers and social scientists alike.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The main output of this project consists in 1 monograph on Emile Durkheim (Göttingen: Wallstein 2021), 3 research articles: on Donoso Cortés and Carl Schmitt (forthcoming), on the idea of social complexity in the 19th Century (forthcoming), on the Jewish emigre scholar Albert Salomon (forthcoming); these are complemented by a string of smaller articles.

Monograph
- Soziologie und Geschichtsphilosophie. Die Repräsentation historischer Wirklichkeit bei Emile Durkheim. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2021

Peer-Reviewed Journal Article
- Donoso Cortés and Political Theology. In: The Review of Politics (currently in revise and resubmit)

Research Article (in Collected Volumes)
- Soziale Komplexität im 19. Jahrhundert – Abenteuer eines Begriffs von Rousseau zu Spencer. In: M. Lutz-Bachmann, H. Schwalbe (Hrsg.): Komplexität in Wissenschaft, Kultur und Gesellschaft. Freiburg: Alber 2022 (forthcoming 8/2022)

- Albert Salomons Ideengeschichte der Freiheit. In: H.-P. Müller, B. Thériault, C. Marty (Hrsg.), Kulturkritik im Namen der Freiheit. (forthcoming 11/2022)

Survey Articles / Philosophical Dictionaries
- Joseph de Maistre, Betrachtungen über Frankreich (1796). In: M. Kühnlein (ed.), Werke der Geschichtsphilosophie. DeGruyter 2022 (forthcoming)
- Karl Löwith, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen (1949). In: M. Kühnlein (ed.), Werke der Geschichtsphilosophie. DeGruyter 2022 (forthcoming)
- Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1892. In: G. Hartung (ed.), Simmel-Handbuch. Leben - Werk - Wirkung, J.B. Metzler 2021
- Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 1905/1907. In: G. Hartung (ed.), Simmel-Handbuch. Leben - Werk - Wirkung, J.B. Metzler 2021

Work in Progress
Review: Ephraim Podoksik, Georg Simmel and German Culture, Cambridge 2021 (invited review: Historische Zeitschrift)
Talks/Conference presentations
1. Colloquium of Modern History, FU Berlin “The Idea of Secularization in the 19th Century: Between Socialism and the Counter-Enlightenment” (Nov 2020)
2. Manchester Workshop in Political Theory (Mancept), University of Manchester
“Authoritarianism in 19th C Traditionalist Political Philosophy” (August 2021)
3. The Common Good, European Society for the History of Political Thought Conference, University of Helsinki (August 2022)
“Proudhon and Donoso Cortés on the Good in Society”

Please see the technical report for a narrative description of the work performed per work package.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

I plan on further pursuing the work on SECULAR and continue to publish its research output. A major impact of SECULAR is that it opened up historical discourse to theoretical knowledge and mediated new perspectives across different intellectual traditions. This will contribute to better understanding social divisions, and also further our understanding of social conflicts in the context of the so-called religious/secular divide.

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