Draft only for discussion – Not to be quoted, shared or published online without consent
Comments welcome at arkadiusz.gornisiewicz@uj.edu.pl
Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz
The Jagiellonian University, Kraków
(De)legitimizing modernity? On the uses of the secularization thesis in
Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Carl Schmitt
1.
My paper will try to address what I believe is the foreground of the problem suggested by
the workshop’s organizers. It seems that no serious discussion of the intricate relatedness of
theology, modernity, and social sciences could avoid the problem that reveals its most
conspicuous presence, namely, the secularization thesis.
My aim here is to argue that there exists an interesting connection between the use of the
secularization thesis and the problem of legitimacy of modernity. The names appearing in the
title of my talk have not been picked up at random; the reason behind taking into account
Löwith, Blumenberg and Schmitt, though these thinkers seem to differ significantly, is that they
all engaged in a very intricate and illuminating exchange of ideas on the notion of secularization
and the meaning of modernity.
Let me explain at the very outset what is meant here by the notion of legitimacy of
modernity, or rather by the notion of the problem of legitimacy of modernity. The question
about the legitimacy of modernity is being posed here with regard to the relation of Christianity
and modernity. The so called secularization thesis is one of the most hotly debated attempts at an
understanding of this relation, and what I claim here is that accepting or rejecting it can be
viewed as the key factor contributing towards justification or disapproval of modernity’s claim to
be legitimate. The concepts provided by the three thinkers in question, that is Karl Löwith’s
classical formulation of the secularization thesis, Hans Blumenberg’s polemical rejection of it,
and Carl Schmitt’s rejoinder to the latter, will serve here as model statements on the relation
between Christianity and modernity. In order to illustrate my point I will present a brief outline
of the debate on the consequences of the secularization thesis, and then proceed to elucidate in
what way their distinct approaches towards this theorem correspond with their assessment of
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modernity’s legitimacy or illegitimacy. I am limiting here to discussing three books, that is
Löwith’s Meaning in History, Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of Modernity, and Carl
Schmitt’s Political Theology II, which I must admit is scarcely a limitation.
2.
First of all, let us take a glance at Karl Löwith’s secularization thesis which is widely
regarded as its classical formulation. It avers that the modern historical consciousness could be
basically understood as the result of secularization of Christianity. The key element in Western
historical consciousness is accorded by Löwith to the predominance of the eschatological motif,
which can be identified in the original Biblical prophets as well as in the modern ones, such as
Hegel or Marx. In other words, without having recourse to eschatology – both in its primeval and
secularized forms – we are unable to understand one of the most important features of modernity,
namely, its historical dynamic and historical restlessness.
The importance of the Biblical religion for modern mind (and by this term Löwith
understands the common eschatological heritage of Judaism and Christianity) can be really
appreciated if one takes into account the profound difference between Greek and Biblical
understanding of the relation between God (gods), world, and man. For Greeks – and here we
have to leave all ‘buts’ aside – world constitutes a firm order known as kosmos, in which man
finds his not all that important place. The world is usually not created, eternal, and even those
philosophers – like Plato – who claim it to be created, they do it in a way that recognizes
necessities or limitations prior to the creation, which at the same time excludes the idea of an
omnipotent God creating world out of nothing. The Greek model of understanding history has
much to do with their vision of cosmos and mankind since they take their bearings not on a
eschatological belief in transcendent personal God, but rather on cosmos-related law of coming
into existence and perishing away of all beings. They know their lot in advance since every man
must finally submit to the fate or necessity, ananke, that governs all cosmic reality. According to
this view reality is confined within eternal returns, which do not give much hope for coming into
being anything that is radically new or previously unknown. Löwith shows that the cyclical
conception of time is present both in great Greek historians and philosophers (Herodot,
Thucydides, Polybius, Plato).
Löwith’s views may be summarized briefly as follows: We would not ask the questions
about the meaning of history if this meaning was revealed by the very historical occurrences, but,
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on the other hand, we could proclaim history to be nonsense only after it has failed to conform to
our expectations. These expectations towards history has been established by the Hebrew and
Christian thinking that brought the question about the ultimate meaning of history into existence.
Since for Jews and Christians history is primarily a history of salvation, the Biblical concept of
history is progressive and linear, and it overcomes the ancient reverence for fate and fortuna.
Löwith claims that the Biblical concept of history is futuristic. Why? Because it is directed
towards the final goal which is salvation: In the Hebrew and Christian view of history the past is
a promise to the future(…) the interpretation of the past becomes a prophecy in reverse,
demonstrating the past as a meaningful ‘preparation’ for the future. The Church fathers
developed theology of history that underlined such transcendent and salvation-oriented themes as
creation of the world, incarnation or Judgment Day, whereas modernity progressively replaced it
with philosophy of history, which still operates within a horizon of future, with this crucial
exception that the goal of history is no longer claimed to be transcendent or other-worldly but
immanent or inner-worldly. By presenting the turning points in the process of secularization
Löwith tries to convince us that were it not for Jewish and Christian faith, the modern concept of
progress would have barely occupied the central place of the modern historical consciousness.
Carl Schmitt expressed his general approval of Löwith’s view on the origin of
progressive thinking and especially agreed with his claim that the pagan world is essentially
unable to develop any kind of genuine historical thinking. In turn, the main difference between
them does not relate to any details of the historical narration on secularization, but rather the
relation between Christianity and history. While Löwith’s thesis focuses on the birth of modern
historical consciousness, Schmitt’s concept of secularization applies primarily to the political and
juristic field. In oft-quoted phrase from Political Theology Schmitt says that All significant
theological concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.
According to Schmitt it is crucial to understand not only the historical transmission of theology
into political theory, but also the structural similarity that connects one with the another (for
example, an analogy between God and the omnipotent lawgiver, miracle and the state of
exception). It is also worth noticing that this structural similarity extends much beyond, since
the metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what
the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization. The
determination of such an identity is the sociology of the concept of sovereignty. Accordingly,
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XVII century theism corresponds with absolute monarchy, while deism – with its rejection of an
active God’s involvement with the human affairs – relates to the modern state, which has its
origins in the Enlightenment rationalism and rejects the very possibility of the exceptional
situation as it denies the very possibility of miracles.
2.
In his monumental book The Legitimacy of Modernity Hans Blumenberg takes on the
secularization thesis by claiming that it is seriously flawed and develops his own position that
aims to account for the emergence of the modern idea of progress. He claims that the so called
secularization thesis has become increasingly influential and widely accepted. Blumenberg has
launched a multilayered attack on the concept of secularization, especially as proposed by
Löwith, whose approach he takes as an exemplary; here we will underline some of the most
characteristic elements of his criticism. First of all, he doubts whether what comes under the term
of secularization can be historically proven. His skepticism is based on the fact that the theories
of secularization usually establish an unambiguous relation between what they claim to be
original or primordial historical source and what has become secularized. Secularization thesis
presupposes the existence of uncorrupted substance which in turn becomes alienated from the
original and its function, though it still preserves something that allows us to claim that the latter
is derived from the former (i.e, the Marxist Kingdom of freedom as a secularized version of the
Kingdom of Heaven). Blumenberg’s rejection of the category of historical substances is based on
the belief that it is impossible to preserve an identity of content through vast periods of times, as
well as to claim absolute rights to ownership of ideas (i.e., the concept of Providence is crucial
for Christianity, but it cannot claim its ownership since it is of Stoical origin).
Blumenberg reconsiders the concept of progress and argues that there are striking
obstacles that should have prevented the emergence of the idea of progress out of the Christian
eschatology. Firstly, the future projected by the idea of progress is the product of the immanent
historical development and has little in common with a vision of Messianic intervention in
history. Secondly, if hope is claimed to be the common denominator between the eschatological
expectations of Christianity and that of secular idea of progress, then it is also inaccurate since
the Christian position towards the final things was characterized rather not by hope but fear for
much part of its history. He proposes his own account of the birth of the concept of progress, and
modernity in general. In looking for its historical origins he pays attention not so much to the
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early modernity, but to the late Middle Ages. In his view the key for the birth of modernity is the
emergence of voluntarism and nominalism associated with the doctrines of John Duns Scotus
and Willliam Ockham. By bringing to the central place the issue of God’s omnipotence and free
will, they succeeded in undermining the scholastic philosophy which was based on the effort to
reconcile faith and reason. Voluntarism and nominalism in this way shattered the belief in the
cosmic order which has been defended by the scholastic Aristotelianism. Given the absolute and
unbound God’s power to create and annihilate everything what He pleases, the finite world
becomes completely contingent and no longer can be viewed as the realization of the perennial
pattern (as in the case of Plato’s Timaeus). According to Blumenberg, with the embracing of
voluntarism and nominalism Middle Ages arrived at a sort of theological and historical “dead
end”. Now there are basically two possibilities: one is to crave for salvation which ultimately has
less to do with human doings than with God’s grace which cannot be put under man’s scrutiny;
another possibility is to venture beyond this point by trying to create an environment that would
lend support to man’s uneasy position. To follow the second path is to embark on an existential
project that Blumenberg describes with the term self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung), which by no
means could be identified with the Hobbesian notion of self-preservation (Selbsterhaltung). His
conclusion is that the emergence of the concept of progress is due to the medieval theological
and philosophical crisis, it is in fact a response to the claims of theological absolutism and it
cannot be seen as a result of secularization of Christian eschatology. For Blumenberg it is no
coincidence that there exists connection between late medieval nominalism and early modern
atomism: the process of materialization of nature is correlated with theological absolutism
because man deprived by God’s hiddenness of metaphysical guarantees for the world (…)
constructs for himself a counterworld (Gegenwelt) of elementary rationality and manipulability.
However, the question remains: Why the empirical notion of progress, which
Blumenberg conceives as an limited and “local” was overstretched and eventually became part
of modern philosophy of history and served to answer the question about the historical process in
general? Blumenberg has his own intriguing answer to this appropriation of the notion of
progress. In order to explain this process he introduces the concept of “relocation” or
“reoccupation” (Umbesetzung). This concept is very similar – although Blumenberg never
acknowledges this – to the concept of the pseudomorposis in Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of
the West. The very term is derived from geology and applied to explain historical phenomena. It
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describes the process when water washes out the content of rock-stratum and then something else
– a material that is of foreign origin – fill up the empty spaces: Thus there arise distorted forms,
crystals whose inner structure contradicts their external shape, stones of one kind presenting the
appearance of stones of another kind.
By the term "historical pseudomorphosis" I propose to designate those cases in which an
older alien Culture lies so massively over the land that a young Culture, born in this land,
cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to
develop fully its ownself-consciousness. Blumenberg’s concept of relocation serves exactly the
same end. He claims that the new culture or new contents of modernity, especially the idea of
progress, have been forced to perform the old function within a system of problems that was not
his own, but inherited from the Middle Ages. The idea of progress was forced to answer the
questions about the meaning of history and became part of modern philosophies of history, but
those questions were not the original questions of modernity. They were inherited and the idea of
progress simply filled up the empty spaces left by the theological absolutism. The idea of
progress is the new content filling up the old empty rock-stratum and it is forced to perform
function that is alien to its origin.
3.
Now we can see that in Blumenberg’s alternative picture of the birth of modernity there
is no place for secularization thesis. We have arrived at a point that reveals the major
discrepancies between the three thinkers in question. Löwith’s secularization thesis may be used
to undermine the legitimacy of modernity because it reveals modernity’s Christian origins and
anti-Christian consequences. In response Blumenberg examines the secularization thesis and
comes to a conclusion that it is a category of historical injustice. When he criticizes
secularization thesis and proposes his alternative view on the origins of modern idea of progress,
he is at the same time disarming secularization as a scientific tool that may be used to undermine
the legitimacy of the modern age. It would not be presumptuous to claim that his criticism of
secularization thesis is conducive towards his major task known as the defense of modernity’s
legitimacy.
But if modernity is most of all defined in terms of self-assertion and autonomy, if it really
embarked on a completely new path of emancipation from the tradition, then the question arises
why Blumenberg poses the very question about its legitimacy. Where is the tribunal before
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which one could provide such a justification? That’s the serious and profound question asked by
Carl Schmitt in his postscript to Political Theology II.
Schmitt develops his polemical statement by shedding light on the notion of legitimacy.
He reminds us that the word legitimacy was understood for centuries as the monopoly for the
legitimation of dynasties. In other words, it was a justification of continuity, tradition,
upbringing and heritage. Blumenberg completely reverses this meaning because in his project
modernity’s legitimacy seems to be simply grounded in a justification issuing from the novelty,
from the very fact that modernity constitutes break with the tradition. Thus Schmitt accuses
Blumenberg of having confused the legitimacy (rechtmassig) and legality (gesetzmassig); and
legality since the French Revolution was regarded to be a new mode of legitimacy because it was
a message from the goddess of Reason, from the new opposed to the old. Now it seems that we
can justly claim that for Schmitt there is no legitimacy without some kind of historical
continuation. Secularization would be then in certain sense a category of legitimation since it
creates historical identity and still grants us access to the theological depths. At this point we also
begin to grasp the difference between Löwith’s and Schmitt’s understanding of Christianity.
Löwith perceives Christianity as an essentially eschatological religion which above is concerned
with salvation and not with historical process. Schmitt, on the contrary, conceives Christianity
above all as a great civilization, as an awe-inspiring edifice of the Holy Roman Empire, thus he
pays much more attention to historical continuity. Taking care of it reveals itself to be a major
task since it holds back the forces of Antichrist and in this way delays the end of the world. The
concept of translatio imperii and of the Restrainer (Aufhalter, katechon) are very closely linked
and provide the common ground for coming together of eschatology and historical effectiveness:
The belief that a restrainer holds back the end of the world provides the only bridge between the
notion of an eschatological paralysis of all human events and a tremendous historical monolith
like that of the Christian empire of great Germanic kings.
Schmitt’s disagreement with Blumenberg runs very deep indeed. In Schmitt’s view the
most threatening aspect of Blumenberg’s project can be labeled as an attempt at detheologization
of modernity. It is striking that Schmitt interprets Blumenberg’s project as a scientific attempt at
a closure of political theology reminding us about a completely different – because based on
intra-theological and not scientific arguments – attempt made thirty years earlier by Erik
Peterson. Modernity in Blumenberg’s view becomes detheolgized because it aims to exclude
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theology both in its pure and secularized forms, and in this way it threatens something which is
of highest importance for Schmitt.
Blumenberg also claims that modernity is the second after St. Augustine – and this time
successful – attempt at overcoming Gnosticism. For this reason, in the light of Schmitt’s thesis of
correspondence between the metaphysical picture of an epoch and its political structure,
modernity as an emancipation from theology must at the same time be a depolarization of the
political sphere. In other words, it undermines the political which – as we all know – Schmitt
defines as being driven by the distinction between friend and enemy. The theological root of the
political is either the Manichean enmity between God and Devil or Gnostic enmity between God
of creation and God of salvation. For Schmitt’s concept of the political is theologically grounded
and ultimately concerns the very nature of God. That is why Schmitt in his late treatise engages
in his own Christological speculation: he does it in order to theologically support his concept of
the political. In the final analysis, what proves to be at stake in the debate on secularization is the
political itself.
If theology is no longer taken into account, any discussion about the legitimacy of
modernity seems to lose its ground. The very impossibility of raising the question regarding the
legitimacy of modernity becomes apparent. According to Schmitt by eliminating theology even
in the form of secularization or relocations modernity would become totally enclosed and no
longer susceptible of having to justify its claims and positions. The alleged autism or selfconcealment of modernity would be then brought to its completion.
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