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.
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.
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.
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
Achard, Saint Victor,. 2013. L'unité de Dieu et la pluralité
des créatures = De unitate Dei et pluralitate creaturarum. Caen: Presses
universitaires de Caen.
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.
