History 8303

Secularization and Modern Intellectual History

 

Samuel Moyn

Professor of History

611 Fayerweather

4-3009

s.moyn@columbia.edu

 

Tuesdays, 9-11 a.m.

Fayerweather 311

 

Office Hours:

Thursdays, 9-11 a.m.

 

Description

 

Everyone is writing about Òthe secularÓ today, for better or worse, to understand it or to unmask it or to defend it. This course connects the theme to the study of modern intellectual history, with emphasis on Europe but some glances to America and elsewhere. We will examine, the experience of secularization for modern intellectuals, theories of secularization produced by them, and ask whether secularization is something that happens in their theoretical activity itself. The hope is that on this basis we will be able to return to contemporary debates in an interesting way. Students are expected to do weekly posts, a book report, and a short (15 page) analytical final paper.

 

Books Available for Purchase and On Reserve

 

You are not expected to buy these books; you may read them on reserve.

 

Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (Blackwell)

Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (Cambridge)

Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World (Princeton)

Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton)

Ian Hunter, Rival Enlightenments (Cambridge)

Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment (Chicago)

Vincent Pecora, Secularization and Cultural Criticism (Chicago)

Olivier Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam (Columbia)

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago)

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard)

Mark C. Taylor, After God (Chicago)

Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity (Cambridge)

 

All other materials (with asterisks) to be provided as PDFs.

 

Books available for reports are listed below, week by week.

 

Schedule of Meetings and Readings

 

  1. Jan. 22: Introduction

 

Critical Moments

 

  1. Jan. 29: Enlightenment and Idealism

 

*Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment, chaps. 1, 12, 24, 37, 38

Hunter, Rival Enlightenments, intro., chaps. 1-2, 5-6 (or all)

 

Report:                  Silvia Berti, ÒAt the Roots of UnbeliefÓ

                                           Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds., Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment

Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested

J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1

Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible

David Sorkin, The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought

 

  1. Feb. 5: The ÒSecularization of the MindÓ in the Nineteenth Century

 

Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, chaps. 6-10

*Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian, chaps. 5, 9, 10

*Tamsin Shaw, NietzscheÕs Political Skepticism, chap. 2

 

Report:                 Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement

                            Timothy Larsen, Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England

                                           A.N. Wilson, GodÕs Funeral

                                           Pamela Walker, Pulling the DevilÕs Kingdom Down (on the Salvation Army)

                                                         S.C. Williams, Religious Belief and Popular Culture

 

  1. Feb. 12: French Social Thought and Postreligious Reincorporation

 

Wernick, Auguste Comte

*Michael Behrent, ÒThe Mystical Body of SocietyÓ

*Emile Durkheim, ÒIndividualism and the IntellectualsÓ

Optional: Pecora, Secularization, chap. 3

 

               Report:                  Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens

 

  1. Feb. 19: British and American Literature

 

Pecora, Secularization

*Tracy Fessenden, Culture and Redemption, chaps. 1, 4

 

Report:                 Tracy Fessenden, ÒÕThe SecularÕ as Opposed to What?,Ó New Literary History 38.4 (Autumn 2007)

                                           Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

James Wood, The Broken Estate

Theordore Ziolkowski, Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief

 

Interlude: Contending Models of Secularization

 

  1. Feb. 26: Politics, Will, and Miracles (to be rescheduled later in the day or week)

 

*Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, passage on miracles

Schmitt, Political Theology

*Samuel Moyn, ÒHannah Arendt on the SecularÓ

 

Report:                  Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age

Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other

Jan-Werner Mžller, A Dangerous Mind (on SchmittÕs respondents)

 

  1. March 4: Gauchet

 

Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World

*Claude Lefort, ÒPermanence of the Theologico-Political?Ó

 

               Report:                 Steve Bruce, God Is Dead: Secularization in the West

                                                         —, Politics and Religion

 

  1. March 11: Taylor

 

Taylor, A Secular Age, some excerpting

 

               Report:                 Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God

 

Twentieth-Century History and the Fate of Religion

 

  1. March 25: The Strange Case of the Occult

 

Owen, The Place of Enchantment

          *Thomas Laqueur, ÒWhy the Margins MatterÓ

 

Report:                  John Warne Monroe, Laboratories of Faith (French occult)

                                           Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul (German occult)

 

  1. April 1: ÒPolitical ReligionÓ and ÒSecular ReligionÓ

 

Gentile, Politics as Religion

 

Report:                 Raymond Aron, ÒThe Future of the Secular ReligionsÓ

Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers

—, Sacred Causes

Erich Voegelin, The Political Religions

 

  1. April 8: Recent Collapse

 

Brown, The Death of Christian Britain

*Brown, ÒThe Secularisation Decade: What the 1960s Have Done to the Study of Religious HistoryÓ

*Yves Lambert, ÒNew Christianity: Indifference and Diffused SpiritualityÓ

*Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, chaps. 1, 8

 

Report:                 Philip Jenkins, GodÕs Continent

                                           Hugh McLeod, ed., The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular

RenŽ RŽmond, Religion and Society in Modern Europe

Mark Ruff, Wayward Flock (Germany)

 

The View from the Outside and the Present

 

  1. April 15: Postcolonialism and Religion

 

*Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, intro., chaps. 1, 6

*Gil Anidjar, ÒSecularismÓ

 

Track One (Islam):

Roy, Secularism

*Joan Scott, Politics of the Veil, chap. 3

 

Track Two (Buddhism)

*Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of the World Religions, intro., chap. 4

*James W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness, selection

 

Report:                 Leora Auslander, ÒBavarian Crucifixes and French Headscarves: Religious Signs and the Postmodern European State,Ó Cultural Dynamics, 12, 3 (2000): 283-309

Ian Buruma, Death in Amsterdam

                                           Charles Hirschkind and David Scott, eds., The Powers of the Secular Modern

James Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution

Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony

A.D. Needham, ed., The Crisis of Secularism in India

Martha Nussbaum, The Clash WIthin

Nermeen Sheikh, ed., The Present as History (Asad and Anidjar interviewed)

 

Contemporary Alternatives

 

  1. April 22: JŸrgen Habermas

 

*Habermas, ÒFaith and ReasonÓ

*--, ÒReligion in the Public SphereÓ

*— and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization

 

Report:                  William Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist

John Gray, Black Mass

Elizabeth Hurd, The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

Hans Joas, Do We Need Religion?

 

  1. April 29: Postmodern Political Theology

 

*Jacques Derrida, ÒFaith and ReasonÓ

Taylor, After God

 

Report:                  Hent de Vries, ed., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World

                                           —, Religion: Beyond a Concept

                                           John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory

                            Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo, The Future of Religion

                                           SSRC Blog on the Secular: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/