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Social Theory and the Sacred: a Response to John Milbank

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Social Theory and the Sacred: a Response to John Milbank ___________________________________ ___________________________________ Social Theory and the Sacred: A Response to John Milbank Hans Joas — University of Berlin / University of Chicago In the middle of the 1960s, Talcott Parsons — theology to be the master discourse of the future. undoubtedly the world's most important sociologist He repudiates the claims of sociology to present an in the first decades after the Second World War and adequate view of reality and thus to define a place at that time at the peak of his influence and even for the sacred, and tries to get beyond what he reputation — took part in a debate about the calls the `false humility' of theologians today. The relationship between theology and sociology. His social sciences, according to Milbank, are bound to contribution, later published in a volume called a project of secular reason — without being able to America and the Future of Theology,1 was a fervent self-reflectively understand what the historical plea for the significance of sociology in front of a conditions for the constitution of this seemingly theological audience. But not everybody in this self-evident notion and sphere of the `secular' were. audience seems to have accepted his arguments. “Once, there was no `secular'”3 is the forceful The theological commentator at the debate, Oliver opening sentence of his book. Not only sociology, Read Whitley, made it abundantly clear in his but also liberal political philosophy, political response that the wedding of the two disciplines economy, Hegelian and Marxist philosophy of which Parsons had suggested should not take place history, and postmodern philosophy and cultural immediately. Its announcement should at least be studies — they all become the object of Milbank's postponed until certain matters of vital importance mostly devastating critiques; they all seem to suffer for the marriage would have been cleared up. He from the same birth defect and to be doomed to emphasized that if we assume that one of the perish in view of the revitalized theology or the crucial conditions of a happy marriage lies in the revitalized Catholic thinking which Milbank so equal chances of the partners to talk to each other, powerfully propagates and which he intends to then the marriage Parsons had proposed would develop into the `ultimate' social science (p. 6). probably not be successful. The dialogue between This is certainly a highly provocative thesis, and the partners could, under Parsons's conditions, only a discussion of it is a challenge — not only because be “a conversation in which the social sciences of the enormous breadth of Milbank's scholarship speak and theology listens, afterwards hastening to and the sweeping claims he constantly makes, but adapt its views to what the social sciences have also because his argument touches the self- stated”.2 Theology thus would be a mostly `passive' understanding of theologians and of all those or `dependent' partner and not a `fully participating sociologists who are not willing to completely equal colleague'. compartmentalize their religious and their scientific John Milbank's writings, particularly his bril- identities. Judging from the number of sociological liant book Theology and Social Theory, does not reviews, however, there don't seem to be many who offer us the perspective of a happy marriage either. have taken Milbank's challenge seriously, and Frustrated and even outraged by a world in which if Milbank's very polemical tone in his all-out attack not sociology, then certainly the sciences or at least on sociology as such has certainly not motivated `secular reason' have the say, he does not put much sociologists to deal with his work. In theology, on effort into an attempt to carefully delineate the the other hand, the book has been called “perhaps possibilities and the limits of communication and the most brilliant, ambitious — and yet questionable cooperation between theology and the social — work to have emerged in English theology since 4 sciences. Instead, he turns the tables and declares the Second World War” — by the same reviewer, _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 7 (2000)4, p. 233 ___________________________________ ___________________________________ incidentally, who warns the readers of Milbank's other intellectuals of their time. “In one form or “sophisticated fundamentalism”5. Another reviewer another, with the possible exception of Alexis de speaks of an “imposing book of Blumenbergian Tocqueville, Vilfredo Pareto, and William James, proportions”6, and I have no doubt that one can the thesis of secularization was shared by all indeed place the book in one league with works by founding fathers from Karl Marx to John Stuart Hans Blumenberg, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair Mill, from Auguste Comte to Herbert Spencer, MacIntyre — authors Milbank often mentions — from E. B. Tylor to James Frazer, from Ferdinand but also with books by Karl Löwith and Max Tönnies to Georg Simmel, from Émile Durkheim to Scheler, authors who are conspicuously absent Max Weber, from Wilhelm Wundt to Sigmund from Milbank's work. I mention Löwith because Freud, from Lester Ward to William G. Sumner, one could claim that Milbank's insistence on the from Robert Park to George H. Mead. Indeed, the fact that many concepts and intellectual approaches consensus was such that not only did the theory of modernity can be traced back to a process of remain uncontested, but apparently it was not even secularization is much closer to Löwith's attack on necessary to test it, since everybody took it for than to Blumenberg's defence of the “legitimacy of granted.”7 In most cases, this premise was the basis the modern age”; and I mention Scheler because he for the ideas these authors had about the possible had a missionary zeal similar to Milbank's to finally functions of religion, and it definitely makes sense formulate in appropriate philosophical ways what to examine how basic theoretical assumptions of the Christian idea of love is all about. But to take sociology and its whole conceptual apparatus up Milbank's challenge does not mean to surrender depend on this untenable assumption. And to his conclusions. I will have to be selective in my untenable this assumption is. For a long time, cases critique because of the almost encyclopedic range of enduring religious vitality have been interpreted of Milbank's text, but I will try to demonstrate in as exceptional, as deviating from the normal course six steps why I think his argument is deeply and of modernization — so that Poland and Ireland seriously flawed. Milbank, I will show, distorts the might have escaped the forces propelling sociological views of religion and ignores large secularization because of the fusion of religion with parts of the sociological heritage that would be the struggles for national and cultural independence relevant for his questions. He thus misses the there. The most spectacular case has, of course, opportunity to build on an important type of been the United States — but here again the knowledge and opens the door for a sociologically religious life has been seen as part of American uninformed radical rhetoric, making it more exceptionalism in general. Yet there is a growing difficult to enter into a fruitful dialogue between consensus in the sociology of religion that the theologians and social scientists — whether they are American case has to be taken more seriously. If believers or not. Such a dialogue, however, which the currently prevailing explanation of continuing does not have to lead to a marriage of the American religious vitality is correct — the disciplines, could be an important prototype for hypothesis namely that it is mostly religious reasonable communication about differing ultimate pluralism and the strict separation of Church and value commitments in the modern world. State which keep politically disgruntled believers in 8 Let me start with a point about which Milbank the religious `sector' of a society — then and I probably are in agreement. It is undoubtedly secularization should no longer be considered one true that the founding fathers of sociology mostly of the components of modernization, but only a assumed that a process of secularization is a contingent process due to some extent to European corollary of the process of modernization and they traditions of territorial church monopoly and the shared this often unstated assumption with many fusion of political and ecclesiastical interests. representatives of other academic disciplines and _______________________________________________________________________________________ Ethical Perspectives 7 (2000)4, p. 234 ___________________________________ ___________________________________ The more recent `modernization' of parts of the evaluation to which I will return shortly), but above world whose cultures are not based on the Judeo- all when he seems to assume that an analysis of the Christian tradition has given additional strength to institutionalization of the `secular' somehow the assumption that perhaps continental Europe, not shatters its claims to validity. Though Milbank calls America, is the exception. In view of the current his own endeavour `archeological', I would say that resurgence of religion in large parts of the world the appropriate term for it would be `genealogical' Peter Berger now even speaks of the “de- — in the sense in which Nietzsche and Foucault 9 secularization of the world.”
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