1995 Special Issue

The definition of secularism as the separation of church and statehas gained currency and has become more or less universallyaccepted, probably because of its tameness. It confines the secularizingprocesses to the political and economic realms. Although it couldbe extended to cover what is commonly called the realm of "publiclife," it never goes beyond that. The term suggests that processes ofsecularization are explicit and quite identifiable, and that an individual'sprivate life (i.e., dreams and nightmares, tastes and aestheticsensibilities) can be hermetically sealed off and thus remain free ofthe ravages of secularism.One glance at life in the modern West demonstrates the fallacy ofthis assumption. The state, far from staying out of the realm of publiclife, has penetrated deeper and deeper and into to the farthest comersof our private lives. The corporations and pleasure industries haveinfiltrated our dreams, have shaped our images of ourselves, and havecontrolled the very direction of our libidos.Like most, or probably all, world outlooks, secularism revolvesaround three elements: God, humanity, and nature (nature is hereafterreferred to as "nature-matter" in order to emphasize the philosophicaldimension of the concept and to dispel the romantic aura that hassurrounded it and weakened its analytical and explanatory power).The attitude of God-is He transcendent or immanent; is He abovenature and humanity and history or immanent in (namely reducibleto) them-is what defines the status of a human being in the universeand hisher relationship to nature-matter.Secularism declares that it is immaterial whether or not God exists,for He has very little to do with the formulation of our epistemological,ethical, aesthetic, and signifying systems. If God exists, Hetakes two extreme forms: a) He could be too transcendent and removedfrom humanity and nature, indifferent to human suffering, orb) He could be seen as completely immanent in both humanity andnature (or in either) and as having no existence separate from them.This view, which is the more common of the two, is known as immanence.Immanence implies that a) the world as given has within it allthat is necessary for its full understanding and utilization, and b) thatthe human mind is so equipped that it could acquire all of the knowledgenecessary for a full understanding of, and dominance over,nature. If nature is autonomous and self-sufficient, then so is thehuman mind. This duality (or dualism) produced two orientationswithin the same secular outlook: ...