SECULARIZATION: HOW TO READ MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY?

In this era, secularization processes are rapidly receding. Conservative and far-right political movements appeal to the defense of religion as one of the cornerstones of their ideology.  These positions increasingly interfere with scientific development and attack freedom of research and expression.

Although secularization as the autonomy of civil society and the state of the church was a foundation of modernity, it was always incomplete. It was not a question of eliminating religion, but rather of giving it another role, as in the thinking of Kant and Hegel. This situation persists and is evident in the so-called theological turn in contemporary philosophy, as in Derrida and in writings on Christianity, including those by Zizek and Badiou. Political theology is the order of the day. Marramao clearly describes the inadequacy of secularization in the West, both in its origins and today. (Marramao 1989) (Marramao, Cielo y tierra. Genealogía de la secularización 1998)

Habermas also addresses the issue in the same vein, highlighting the role that religion plays in moral education and cultural identity, despite secularizing efforts. (Habermas 2002) One of the rare countertrends to the crisis of secularization is found in theological currents that advocate a deeper separation between church and state and, above all, do not understand Christianity as a religion. Thus, Penttinen speaks of a radical secularization, based on the abandonment of metaphysical conceptions, criticizing the approaches of traditional religion. (Penttinen 2024)

To this context we must add the crisis of Western philosophy and the deterioration of its ability to respond to the urgent situations facing humanity. On the one hand, there are those philosophies that revolve around themselves, unable to advance and account for new phenomena, as is the case with processual theories and postmodernity; on the other hand, the banality of thinking spreads under the guise of profound thoughts, the best example of which is found in flat ontologies. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994) (Harman 2018)

To find a path of philosophical reflection away from trends, dialogue with other philosophies is a viable alternative. Thus, one can engage in dialogue with ancient Amerindian philosophies, taking care to avoid exotic or New Age biases; with Zen Buddhism from the perspective of McLeod's comparative philosophy; and with the philosophy of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, in the style of Agamben's works. (Rojas 2023) (McLeod 2017) (Agamben 1998) (Nishida 2016)

In this work, I focus on the reading of medieval philosophy and the challenges it poses. Those philosophers and theologians who approach the question seriously, without submitting to orthodoxy or ecclesiastical power, find it extremely difficult to think because they start from a revealed truth, considered to be totally certain, and despite this, or rather, subjecting themselves to this truth, they use all the instruments of reason to understand the religious phenomenon. It is these thinkers who interest me.

How should we proceed if we want to make a secular reading of medieval theology and philosophy? What dangers should we avoid? How can we construct an immanent approach that nevertheless recognizes the transcendent sphere? Let us start with this last question: it is not enough to eliminate the reference to God and the sacred order, because the entire philosophical system of an author of this period is built on the assumption of faith and revealed truth.

The adoption of an approach focused on secularization, which is the starting point here, leads to the emergence of those dualities that are inherent in the process of worldliness, which detach the earthly aspects from the sacred order, to retain the latter and construct a field of immanence.

birth, the term secularization appears marked by an antithetical scheme: that regular-secular dualism which already contains within itself, albeit only virtually, the modern metamorphosis of the "Pauline pairs" heavenly/earthly, contemplative/active, spiritual/worldly. (Marramao, Cielo y tierra. Genealogía de la secularización 1998, 20)

It would seem that secularization results in an earthly and active world, explained exclusively by its internal and intrinsic components, leaving aside the celestial, the contemplative, and the spiritual. However, this approach is insufficient, because the aspects we leave aside enter philosophies through other channels and end up appealing to what they sought to avoid. If Kant expels God, the soul, and the world from pure reason, it is only to find them through practical reason, a conceptual movement that is also repeated in Jean-Luc Marion.

Adequate secularization must explain, from its worldly perspective, the celestial, the contemplative, and the spiritual; it is obliged to account for the meaning of these phenomena and, in this way, integrate them correctly into the immanent system that is constructed. This will truly be a key approach to reading medieval philosophy in a worldly and contemporary way.

It must be recognized that the series of conceptual elaborations are not mere ideological exercises that conceal contingent reality. On the contrary, medieval theologies and philosophies deal with very real problems, albeit in their own way, with their methods and hermeneutical procedures aimed at better understanding truths already taken as certain.

The great challenge lies in identifying the mundane issues underlying theological discourse; that is, asking ourselves what they are actually talking about and how they are doing so. Theology is a particular way of interpreting the world, and a secular approach does not mean that it should be discarded, but rather that we should understand what it is saying about the world and only then decide whether its claims are valid and true.

To begin this journey, the first guide leads to a radical change in the structure of these theories: where the sphere of the transcendent and the divine is placed, we place the world or symbolic forms, in Cassirer's sense. (Cassirer 2024)

For now, this is the starting point, and we have thus established that theology is talking about the symbolic worlds that societies and individuals place outside ourselves and often see as something that opposes and subjugates us, as in the case of artificial intelligence.

We cannot ask this introductory guide to provide us with all the interpretations of the different medieval systems of thought; on the contrary, it is there to frame the debates and allow the transition from theological discourse in contemporary philosophy, in a worldly key. We will avoid entering into theological debates as if understanding them were the purpose of our study. We will refrain from confronting them with dogma or revealed truth and consider them solely as statements about social reality and the discourses and representations we make about it.

The next step consists of studying authors on specific topics and, through close reading, reading them from a mundane perspective and opening them up to discover within them rich elucidations on questions fundamental to contemporary life. In some cases, it will even be necessary to return to the old commentary on texts as an instrument of analysis, allowing for a faithful reconstruction of their thought in those cases where simple quotation proves insufficient. 

Let us take three examples where this type of approach to medieval philosophy proves fruitful: participation and universals in Maximus the Confessor, Achard of Saint Victor and the question of inherence; and Eriugena in his treatment of immanence. (S. V. Achard 2001) (S. V. Achard 2013) (Maximus the Confessor 2009) (Maximus 2014) (Eriugena 2015)

 

In the thinking of Achard de Saint Victor, there is a profound articulation, a relationship of inherence and coherence in his terms, between form, distinction, existence, essence, reason, and truth, which shows the set of ontological and cognitive relationships between the transcendent and immanent fields, in secular terms, between the sphere of symbolic forms and mundane reality. A fundamental principle of correspondence between the two planes emerges from his thinking, requiring that what be found in one must also be in the other, and what is in the other introduces a distinction in the first; that is, the dialectic between the two spheres. Thus, the title of his main work is The Unity and Plurality of God and the Unity and Plurality of Creatures, because if we find both unity and plurality in creatures, these must also be found in God; and, in this sense, God must be plural, and his essence is Trinitarian. (S. V. Achard 2013) (S. V. Achard 2001)

The conceptual elaborations of Maximus the Confessor clarify at least two fundamental issues: participation in its true and profound dimension, as constitutive of salvation projects, and not as an external and superimposed element. Based on this assertion, democracy should be rethought, as it is essentially participatory, or, in other words, participation is inherent to democracy and is not an attribute that we must add to certain policies or programs.

As for universals, Maximus the Confessor allows us to formulate this question in all its complexity: differences within reality must be maintained, because otherwise everything would be reduced to a monism of indiscernible substances. In turn, the process of differentiation within reality cannot hide the existence of equal or similar phenomena, and the constitution of universals as a requirement of reality itself. (Maximus the Confessor 2009)

Finally, Eriugena's reflections serve to deepen the themes of immanence and its relationship with the transcendent; in contemporary terms, as Badiou affirms, even adopting a strictly immanentist point of view, one cannot deny the existence of spheres where these objects that escape the purely empirical exist, such as mathematical universals or questions relating to good and truth. Eriugena unfolds the immanent system in all its phases and expresses the dialectic between creator and creature in each of its moments; in addition to sustaining the immanence of God in creatures at the same time as his radical difference. (Eriugena 2015) (Badiou 2022)

The West effectively begins in the Byzantine era, with the fusion of Christianity and empire. The philosophical concepts used for theoretical reflection come from this historical moment and continue to the present day, mediated by the interpretation and use made by modernity, which invents its own origin without recognizing where it comes from.

The proposed readings of some medieval theologians and philosophers are guided by a new secularization, which, instead of concealing sources, explicitly acknowledges them and takes the utmost care not to simply transfer transcendent or sacred content to enlightening theories of phenomena such as participation, universals, and immanence, among others.

These interpretations also aim to renew philosophical language and debates and manage to escape the postmodern traps or the new vulgar realisms that are now proliferating. Of course, as noted above, this is only one component of the necessary transfiguration of contemporary philosophy.

Although a methodology will need to be developed for the new secular reading of medieval philosophy and contemporary political theologies, an epistemological orientation can be formulated to serve as a foundation: the secular perspective is oriented toward the construction of an immanent system; however, all transcendent aspects must be adequately explained and not discarded in order to discover the image of the world they conceal.

Bibliography

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Achard, Saint Victor:. 2001. Works. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications.

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford : Stanford University Press.

Badiou, Alain. 2022. The inmanence of Truths. London: Bloombsbury.

Cassirer, Ernst. 2024. La filosofía de las formas simbólicas. México: FCE.

Deleuze, Gilles, et Féliz Guattari. 1994. Mil mesetas . Madrid: Pre-Textos.

Eriúgena, Juan Escoto. 2015. Sobre la división de la naturaleza (De divisione naturae). Libro I y II. Villa María, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Villa María.

Habermas, Jürgen. 2002. Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity. Édité par Eduardo Mendieta. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Harman, Graham. 2018. Object-Oriented Ontology. A New Theory of Everything. London: Pelican Books.

Marramao, Giacomo. 1998. Cielo y tierra. Genealogía de la secularización. Barcelona: Paidós.

—. 1989. Poder y secularización: Las categorías del tiempo. Barcelona: Península.

Maximus the Confessor. 2009. Ambigua to Thomas. Turnhout: Brepols.

Maximus, Confessor. 2014. On difficulties in the church fathers: The ambigua . Harvard: Harvard University Press.

McLeod, Alexis. 2017. Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Nishida, Kitaro. 2016. «La lógica del lugar.» Dans La filosofía japonesa en sus textos, de Heisig, Kasulis, Maraldo et Bouso, 673-694. Barcelona: Herder.

Penttinen, Alpo. 2024. A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Rojas, Carlos. 2023. Ontología Amerindia. Quito: UIDE.