Secularism was a term introduced by
George Jacob Holyoake. His idea was that it is pointless to be
concerned about the supernatural world—either to affirm or deny
it—when the natural world, which no sane person doubts, calls out
to be ameliorated. John Stuart Mill, whom Holyoake notes in his
memoir (chap. cx), approved it “as a useful departure from the
theologic thought of the day, ever obstructive of secular
improvement.”
Understood as such, how could anyone
doubt the sanity of secularism, its huge influence over the past
century and a half, or that it will survive? We are still driven by
secularism, i.e., by our well-being in this life and not by the
search for the ultimate purpose of this world or ourselves.
But is secularism sufficient? In my
view, it isn’t. Probably the most concise way I can put this is to
say that some otherworldly craziness is also needed. Since I cannot
hope to justify this here, I offer two vignettes for support.
The first concerns the wisest of men,
Socrates. We all know him as the father of rationalism. What is not
so well known is Socrates’ faith in his supernatural daimon, whose
commands he implicitly obeyed—even when they brought his life into
jeopardy and even though they were issued without a reason. In my
view, Socrates’ rationalism would not have been possible without
his daimon.
Consider, too, the success of
secularism itself. Surely one key element was the moral fervor of men
like Holyoake and Mill, most dramatically shown in Mill’s daimonic
outburst against H.L. Mansel in 1865. The problem is that the fervor
is running down. It is the supernaturalists who now seem to have it.
Present-day secularism is not so much a sterile ideology as a tired
and all-too-worldly one.
David Berman, Ph.D., is an associate
professor of philosophy and a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. His
publications include A History of Atheism in Britain, George
Berkeley: Idealism and the Man, and an edition of Schopenhauer’s
World as Will and Idea. His main academic interest is in what he
calls “ psychological philosophy.”
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