Religion in the Era of Postsecularism

Uchenna Okeja

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429805370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Exploring the viability of new perspectives on secularisation and the idea of postsecularism, this book reflects on their relevance when considered in the context of different societies within and outside the West.

The topic of secularisation has been recently reconsidered by prominent theorists, such as Jürgen Habermas, Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, and José Casanova. Offering a comparative critique of postsecularism, the contributors extend the discourse on postsecularism to include non-Western experiences, providing comprehensive perspectives on the role of religion in the public sphere and considering the validity of the concept of postsecularism. Drawn from a variety of disciplines, the contributors articulate a coherent analysis of the role of religion in the public sphere from a perspective that engages in the envisaged dialogue.

This insightful book will be important for those researching secularism and postsecularism, especially from a non-Western perspective, and it will also be of interest to scholars working on politics and religion in general, political philosophy, and African studies.

1 The aporias of global democracy

Neera Chandhoke

Introduction

Though cosmopolitanism has been around since the times of the Stoics and the Cynics, arguments for global democracy have, arguably, added a new string to its philosophical bow. Building on basic commitments of the philosophy to the primacy of the individual, equal moral status, and common membership of a global political community, global democrats believe that each person has the irreducible right to certain goods. If the good, in this case democracy, is of such importance that human beings will be diminished unless they are granted access to the good, other members of the global community have an obligation to ensure justice to their fellow beings. One of the ways in which this can be done is by reforming, consolidating, and fortifying global institutions, universalising the practices of democracy, and building support for human rights. This form of reasoning goes by the name of global democracy.¹

Though the rise of right-wing populists across the world have arguably diminished the role that cosmopolitanism and more precisely global democracy have to play in organising the world on the principles of justice, this essay takes up the theme to make a point that remains relevant today. Western philosophers hardly ever take the postcolonial world into account when they theorise for the human condition, but perhaps this part of the world has something to teach the West. They should do so, because most of them are bewildered by the rise of politicised religious identities in Europe. Perhaps they can learn from our part of the world how to deal with these forms of politics that lead to racism on the one hand and civic strife on the other. There is more to democracy than just institutional design; the world has to respect minority rights and practise tolerance towards other forms of beliefs. These are integral parts of the project of global democracy.

Various related arguments have been put forth to defend the project. The fundamental assumption of some of the arguments for global democracy is that a new constitutional and institutional framework for a post–Cold War and globalised world might just help in resolving problems created by unfettered globalisation. It just might assure security in the face of global threats to life, liberties, and environmental decay, prioritise, assure, and deliver justice and human rights, and create a more humane world in which individuals can recover agency and realise themselves as people who possess equal political worth. In a world where marginal groups struggle for dignity against great odds, and where institutionally disadvantaged groups yearn for justice, yet another philosophy that addresses the frailties of the human condition is attractive. In many parts of the world, states have lapsed on their commitment to secure these goods to their citizens; global institutions may well rectify these serious failures.

At the same time, postcolonial critics of global democracy have outlined a number of faults in the project. For one, the argument aims to globalise democracy in a world that is stamped by huge inequalities of wealth and power between the north and the global south. Theorists replay the same problem that was identified with formal democratic theories: that equalitarians blissfully ignore background inequalities of wealth and various forms of power. The institutionalisation of formal democracy in the context of deep and enduring inequalities is bound to reproduce these inequalities. Two, the source of current inequalities between the West and the rest can be found in Europe’s dark history of colonialism, and neocolonialism that reproduces the ravages of colonialism. This is disregarded. Three, critics allege that cosmopolitanism seeks to push a quintessentially Western liberal agenda on the global south, that the Anglo-American world has not hesitated to use armed force to do so, and that these efforts easily slide into new forms of empire.² Four, the philosophy that underpins the project, cosmopolitanism, is, it is argued, excessively Eurocentric. Even as John Hobson accepts that David Held’s theory of cosmopolitan democracy stands outside liberal triumphalism, and even as he applauds Held’s defence against charges of Eurocentrism, he suggests that Held’s framework universalises a particular Western conception of liberty and equality, a conception that is derived purely from the Western historical experience.

That Held believes passionately that his theory of the good is inherently universal and will genuinely benefit all peoples is not at stake. Rather, I want to point out that his theory exhibits that most seductive property which Eurocentrism offers its believers: that Western provincialism does not simply ‘masquerade as the universal’ because it truly is the universal.³

Given the overwhelmingly Eurocentric assumptions that overlay cosmopolitan democracy, it is not surprising that largely the critique of global democracy and its philosophical foundation, cosmopolitanism, comes from postcolonial theorists from the global south.

These objections are not inconsequential and they have serious implications for the democracy dimension of global democracy. Can a world that is stamped by institutionalised inequality between the north and the global south ever realise democracy? But there is another critique of global democracy that I wish to outline in this essay. The philosophy of cosmopolitanism presumes equal political worth and presumably equal voice. But in the literature on the theme voices from the global south (with the exception of critiques) are largely missing. Also missing are insights from knowledge systems from this part of the world, even though these systems, forged as they are for plural and divided societies, might contribute to the formulation on global democracy. In addition, these systems might just help Europe out of its current predicaments. How cosmopolitan then is the cosmopolitanism of democracy beyond borders?

There are of course some virtues in the project. For those of us who live and work in the global south, the philosophy of cosmopolitanism can, perhaps, mediate excesses of a hyper-nationalism that truncates individual liberties, narrows mental horizons, imprisons collective consciousness into categories of frightening insularity, and diminishes obligations to people easily dismissed as the unknown and the unknowable, and to whom we owe nothing. As democrats we might well await the institutionalisation of cosmopolitanism democracy, even if we might not do so with bated breaths. It is for this very reason that I critically engage with the philosophical presumptions of global democracy. I do not seek to demolish theories coming to us from the West; others have done this with far more competence and panache. Nor do I seek to push a ‘me too’ agenda which demands that the Western canon be expanded to include knowledge systems from the global south; this does not help at the project of constituting a more cosmopolitan vision by moderating lessons of European political history and philosophising, for instance.⁴ What I wish to suggest is that our current political predicaments demand a pooling of energies and a coming together of intellectual and political voices. Whether these voices come from the north or from the global south, they should be of equal value, and command equal political status. This is what the philosophical project of cosmopolitanism demands. Nothing less. But it is precisely voices from the global south that are not even heard, let alone heeded. In other quarters this can be called epistemic inequality. How cosmopolitan is then the cosmopolitanism of democracy beyond borders?

The question must be asked. Today we, across the globe, live in frighteningly blinkered worlds. Time-tested projects of living together have simply broken down. We have to rethink this project, or rather approaches to the project of living together, together. We, whether we live in India or in Italy, confront common dilemmas of how to perceive what is known as the ‘other’. In order to think through this dilemma in common, we need to reach out to other sites of theory production, and see whether we can together think out the issues that bedevil accepted notions of recognition, redistribution, and voice. In particular, the argument holds, if conventional notions of secularism as a way of holding people together have broken down it may be time to rethink the project in the light of other historical experiences – say, that of India. We may need to go ‘beyond secularism’, not to dismiss it but to recast it in new mould and strengthen it. In the process we may well succeed in realising the universal and inclusive presumptions of cosmopolitanism. In essence, if the project of ‘democracy beyond borders’ has to gain credence, it has to take seriously the historical experiences and philosophies of the world beyond Europe. It has to expand beyond Eurocentrism to engage with other philosophies and histories, and to mediate its own admittedly Eurocentric preoccupations. Conversely we who live and work in the global south have to sift out what is valuable in Enlightenment philosophies of equality, freedom, and justice. We have to, to put it bluntly, listen to each other. The right to equal political voice can perhaps be then realised. Epistemic inequality might then be mitigated somewhat. Cosmopolitanism might then have a chance of being realised.

The test of whether the philosophy of cosmopolitanism that underlines the project of global democracy ‘democracy beyond borders’, at least as it stands now, is whether it can deal with a rather intractable dilemma that troubles political imaginations and generates anxieties across major parts of the globe. How can people who hold different belief systems coexist in political community, whether national or international? I suggest in this essay that there is an irresolvable dilemma that lies at the heart of the reworked philosophy of global democracy. This dilemma is elaborated in the first section of this essay. The concluding section suggests that the universal precepts of cosmopolitanism and cultural particularities are fated to live together in the same space in some degree of tension, with the universal striving to hegemonise other cultural meaning systems, and cultural communities resisting attempts to hammer them into a community that, in the last instance, subscribes to the dominance of one set of governing principles. How do we reconcile this dilemma?

In zeroing in on this dilemma, I presume that the brief of political theory (or at least one sort of political theory) is to address, understand, and clarify political dilemmas that dodge our collective lives. I doubt if these dilemmas can ever be resolved; we can only try to manage the shortfalls of these dilemmas; we can only try to contain the undesirable after-effects of living amidst paradoxes. This is perhaps natural for the world of politics we inhabit is shot through with discrepancies and irreconcilable paradoxes. Attempts to bring either neatness into explanation or prescription into understandings of contradictory practices can prove flawed, for politics does not lend itself to neat ordering of principles. To impose coherence upon processes that are necessarily untidy and incoherent is to prevent understanding of how untidy and incoherent politics can be. At best, political theory can help us to understand that we are fated to live amidst contradictions. How can we best live amidst these contradictions? This is the dilemma.

The irresolvable dilemma of global democracy

The project of global democracy has to be institutionalised in the context of pluralism. But these conceptions do not exist in isolation from each other; they coexist and interact with other conceptions. Both in the national and in the global space this coexistence and interaction are shot through with tensions. Some tensions arise out of incompatibility between different conceptions of the good, and some out of incomprehension. How can a global society, which is our constituency for democracy, deal with this tension? How do we negotiate religious pluralism and build into our democratic principles respect for, particularly, non-dominant religious groups?

By the end of the twentieth century, Western political theory came to recognise the significance of cultural and more specifically minority identities resulting in a proliferation of literature on the desirability or otherwise of minority rights. Yet till today, the problem of containment of these identities lies at the heart of democratic theory. People have a right to their identities and there is a duty to recognise these identities as long as the political pact of Western political theory – individual rights, autonomy, rationality, and secularism – is not under threat. Certainly in changed social contexts Western political theory has subjected each of these norms to meticulous scrutiny. Yet, I argue ahead, whereas the norms of rights and secularism are indispensable building blocks of any society that seeks to institutionalise the preconditions of well-being for its people, in a global world constituted by democracy there is no reason why only a set of interpretations, which take their cue from the political pact, albeit in different ways, should govern these and other norms. At the least the concept of equal political worth, which is so dear to Western political philosophy, should apply to knowledge systems and norms from other parts of the world. That Western theorists have to struggle to reconcile ‘particularistic’ cultural identities with their own preferred system of ‘universal’ norms is manifest in a number of works.

For example, acutely conscious that his eight principles of cosmopolitanism are open to the charge of Eurocentrism,⁵ David Held rhetorically asks whether it is unwise to construct a political philosophy that depends upon overarching principles in a world of plurality. “In a world marked by a diversity of value orientations, on what grounds, if any, can we suppose that all groups or parties could be argumentatively convinced about fundamental ethical and political principles?”⁶ Cosmopolitan philosophy does not deny the reality and the ethical relevance of living in a world of diverse values and identities, is his response to the question. How could it do so? asks Held once again rhetorically.

Since the philosophy of cosmopolitanism cannot assume that unanimity is available on practical and political questions, it seeks general and universal understanding on a wide spectrum of ethical issues concerning the broad conditions of life.

I take cosmopolitanism ultimately to denote the ethical and political space occupied by the eight principles. Cosmopolitanism lays down the universal or regulative principles which delimit and govern the range of diversity and difference that ought to be found in public life.⁷

The meaning of these eight principles, he accepts, will differ in different social contexts. Presumably these interpretations cannot stray too far from the core of the principles.

The privileging of universal principles over culturally di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 The aporias of global democracy
• 2 Religion’s public sphere: postsecularism and the world society
• 3 Beyond legislative postsecularism in the West: custom and constitution in an African context
• 4 To be secular and neutral: the challenge of religion in South Africa
• 5 Religion, culture and secularism: beyond the Western paradigm
• 6 Superstition and modernity: the conflict thesis, secularization thesis, and anti-Catholicism
• 7 Religion and the postsecular: reflections on the Indian experience
• 8 “God reloaded”: the Pentecostal political transgression and Africa’s non-secularity
• Index