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blue bits. red rocks.
Friday 4 December 2009

I think there are two senses of secularization that are important. One, I think it’s very important to acknowledge the moral and political breakthrough of liberalism against the kings, because when you provide that space for rights and liberties across the board, especially if it’s broad in its empathy and imagination—all-inclusive in that sense—that is a breakthrough. At the same time, it’s clear that the Weberian thesis about the disenchantment of the world resulting in fewer cognitive commitments to God-talk—that’s not true. It was never true in the United States, but it’s certainly not true around the world now. So we’ve got to hold onto the liberal political-moral breakthrough and try to make the breakthrough on the economic level, in terms of democratizing, but also acknowledge that Durkheim was actually more right than Weber. Durkheim talked in The Elementary Forms—think about page 431—he says, there’s something eternal: individual worship and faith. And if you shift from God-talk, you end up worshipping the market or its accompaniments and accoutrements. You can end up worshipping a lot of things. It’s Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. You are going to treasure something. What is it? Is it Kurtz and the ivory? That’s Conrad, 1899, the critique of idolatry. Christians like myself say you must forever be vigilant in critiques of idolatry. Why? Because idolatry is shot through all of us. But you’re going to treasure something. If you treasure something that pulls you out of yourself and makes you love more and sacrifice for justice, that’s going to be better than the next Lexus that you get. There’s no escape from the fiduciary dimension of being human. Cornel West

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