The issue I would like to raise relates mainly to the third objective. Whether or not one agrees with the notion of an internally cohesive concept of secularism—and whether or not one agrees that this concept is more limited than we have come to think it is—one might still ask if secularism should assert itself through a lexical ordering like the one envisioned by Bilgrami. Will a prioritization of political ideals seem fair to members of a secular society, and, perhaps more importantly, does it capture the challenges that face the kind of democracies we currently characterize as governed by secularism? My suspicion is that the answer is no as long as we don’t supplement the theory of secularism with a more robust account of what Bilgrami refers to as “political sociology” and the “democratization of communities.” Although Bilgrami is right to suggest that these domains of research are central to the politics of secularism, I suspect that they lead us in a different direction than the one anticipated by his argument. Rather than securing the normative foundation for the lexical ordering of political ideals, the domains identified by Bilgrami encourage us to supplement his emphasis on justification and reason-giving with something else: a cultivation and affirmation of the plurality that subsists within experience itself.

Elsewhere I have suggested that the best way to consider the politics of secularism is by examining it in relation to cases such as the Danish cartoon controversy. Bilgrami favors a similar approach, using the Salman Rushdie case to illustrate why a secular society committed to the ideal of free speech should not censor books like the Satanic Verses, even if it means exposing some but not all religions to the threat, not to mention harm, of blasphemy. If I understand Bilgrami correctly, the argument for this ordering is that secularism is best defined as a political doctrine, which doesn’t seek to undermine practices of belief and faith, but nonetheless must take an adversarial stance vis-à-vis religion in the realm of the polity (what others might call the “public”). It is, Bilgrami suggests, part of secularism’s conceptual nature to put its own ideals first in the polity. Moreover, since the ideals in question are embedded in the reasons that justify secularism (more about that later), the ideals are in an important sense always already shared by the various members of the polity. For a person who accepts secularism, it would quite possibly be inconsistent to cherish its conceptual meaning and, upon further reflection, not think that its political ideals should be prioritized in the case of a conflict between secularism and a religious practice.

On my reading of it, the Danish cartoon controversy challenges this argument in a number of important ways. Most obvious perhaps is that although the controversy initially was characterized by a plurality of expressions and identities, it gradually grew into a stark opposition between two parties, each of which did not contest the right to free speech, but nonetheless interpreted it in radically different ways. The cartoon controversy suggests in other words that a lexical ordering like the one envisioned by Bilgrami does not always or necessarily generate the kind of normative consistency his conceptualization of secularism hopes to achieve. Quite simply, there might be too many ways of interpreting the right to free speech to make the ordering seem compelling, not to mention legitimate, to all the affected parties. This point was evident in the Danish cartoon controversy: whereas the majority of ethnic Danes did not see an inconsistency between their privileged position and the right to ridicule a religious minority, the majority of Muslims claimed the exact opposite in their defense of the need for censoring expressions of blasphemy.

Unless we are satisfied with secularism being a form of decisionism, or another name for majority rule, the challenge thus seems to be one of supplementing the lexical ordering of political ideals with a fuller account of how communities and individuals might open themselves up to contestation, and how such opening in turn might inform the way they change and develop over time (and how even their conception of secularism might change over time). Acknowledging this challenge, Bilgrami points to two sets of resources: (a) a focus on “internal reasons” understood as reasons that can motivate an overlapping consensus without disavowing the “moral psychologies” of individuals or communities; and (b) a reading of Hegel that focuses in particular on the “idea that Reason…does its work in a human subject by bringing about changes of value via deliberation on her part to overcome internal conflicts among values.”

While both resources enrich our conception of secularism, I wonder whether they answer the challenges that face the kind of societies we currently think of as governed by that concept. First of all, it is not obvious that an overlapping consensus will emerge from exploiting the conflicts and tensions that characterize the internal reasons motivating an individual’s or group’s commitment to the political ideals associated with secularism. As the Danish cartoon controversy suggests, there may be contextual forces that foreclose such exploitation, and/or there may be too much of a gap between the various internal reasons that underpin how different constituents motivate their commitment to ideals such as free speech. At the same time, it is not clear what the Hegelian conception of history and subjectivity accomplishes in terms of including a plurality of viewpoints, especially since Bilgrami acknowledges that we have no reason to believe that it necessarily leads to an overlapping consensus among internal reasons. The idea here seems to be that the Hegelian conception of history and subjectivity, rather than simply being a philosophical argument, also is an “evaluative stance,” which in the case of secularism takes up the values of “humanism” and “inclusiveness.” But this begs the question: Why reserve humanism and inclusiveness for secularism? Why, in the name of both religious and secular pluralism, insist on a set of values that invoke a sameness as general and as abstract as the “human”? Does such an appeal not run the risk of either disavowing the conditions of possibility for acting politically, representing a doctrine which is both empty and apolitical, or being so contentious that it undermines its own invitation to deliberation across the differences within any given society?

I raise these questions, not to suggest that one should avoid taking a stance, but to suggest that to take a stance with regard to pluralism means something else. Whether one sees oneself as a secularist or as a believer—whether one proceeds in a philosophical or an activist mode—to take a stance with regard to pluralism is to channel the plurality that subsists within all experiences, and to enable its shining-forth even more powerfully than if one did not take a stance. The pluralist’s stance, we might say, is to immerse oneself in a plurality that includes the “one” as well as the “many.”

To illustrate what I mean by this, consider here an alternative dialectic based on what Merleau-Ponty calls the “tolerance of the incomplete,” which he develops by suggesting that the “accomplished work is…not the work which exists in itself like a thing, but the work which reaches its viewer and invites him to take up the gesture which created it.” While the dialectic invoked here speaks to Bilgrami’s interest in political sociology and democratization of communities, it changes our approach because it has a different starting-point than the one envisioned by Bilgrami: rather than beginning with the issue of how to order political ideals, Merleau-Ponty’s dialectic begins in the midst of lived experience, where perceptions, judgments, and ideals have not yet reached the threshold of conceptual clarity, and where experience itself is so open-ended that it appears as a plurality of possibilities and outcomes. “Tolerance of the incomplete” is a way of maintaining this experience of plurality, affirming the incompleteness of one’s own expressions in order to allow for other expressions to emerge. The idea is to “take up the gesture,” and to engage it pluralistically without believing that it ever can or should be completed, or subjected to lexical ordering.

There are both theoretical and pragmatic reasons to consider this dialectical approach to the politics of secularism. Most attractively, the approach replaces the invocation of abstract universals such as “humanism” with an avowedly political approach to reason-giving, leading to what we might call “sensorial reasoning.” Sensorial reasoning gives reasons that resonate with the context to which they apply, and that stress the plurality of experience itself.” Pragmatically, the dialectic approach envisioned by Merleau-Ponty alerts us to the importance of maintaining the inherent plurality in all experiences, and to develop ways of seeing and feeling that augment this sense of inherent plurality. In this regard, as I argue elsewhere, the Danish cartoon controversy has some unsung heroes: a subset of cartoonists who turned the invitation to ridicule a religious minority into a reason to challenge their sponsor (i.e., the editors of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten). Several of the cartoons made fun of the idea of mocking Mohammad rather than yield to it, and they even explored the reasons why one would want to encourage such mockery in the context of nationalism, ignorance, and xenophobia. Taking a pluralistic stance, bracketing the need for a lexical ordering of political ideals, these cartoonists were thus among the few who saw the controversy as a reason to rethink secularism rather than insist on its unchanging requirements. That is why, in my view, they ably represent the prospect of a new politics of tolerance and citizenship in the 21^st century.

I conclude by noting that a new politics of tolerance and citizenship may not sit easily with secularism as it is defined by Bilgrami. Does this mean that the outcome is not a form of secularism? The answer to this question will vary, depending on whether one thinks that secularism is less cohesive as a concept than Bilgrami argues it is, or whether one thinks that we have moved into an age of post-secularism.

An earlier version of this essay was delivered at a panel on Akeel Bilgrami’s paper organized by the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University’s School of Communication, October 21, 2011.—ed.

In her provocative essay posted on this blog, Elizabeth Hurd encourages us to probe these questions. She argues that Taylor “dismisses modes of belief/unbelief that come from within Western experience yet operate outside of and often in tension with the Christian categories that animate his extraordinarily rich analysis.” Moreover, she speculates whether “the field of immanence [can] be ‘experience-far’? Can it also hold mystery, and, if so, would this open interesting possibilities?”

I want to pick up on this line of inquiry because it seems critical to what we make of the immanent frame. My hunch is that immanence does not necessarily lead to the “exclusive humanism” of which Taylor is so critical. My hunch is also that by questioning this connection we may (1) see some of Taylor’s own blind spots and (2) create a new frame of experience irreducible to dichotomies of belief and unbelief, naïveté and reflexivity, interior and exterior.

To make this argument, we would have to engage the long history of immanence. From Lucretius’ naturalism over issues of evil in late medieval philosophy to the gay science of Nietzsche, immanence has been a challenge to both atheists and believers. It identifies a surprising agreement among them: while atheists and believers disagree on whether or not to affirm the source of enchantment, they agree that the source itself lies beyond this world. Unsatisfied with how this agreement squeezes out an affirmation of this world, radical immanence takes a third position, fusing enchantment with a worldly orientation to religion and politics.

The fusion finds its boldest expression in the work of Spinoza. Situated at the junction of Judaism and Christianity, Spinoza launched what not only his contemporaries but also subsequent critics thought was a scandalous critique. The critique probes the historicity, legitimacy, and authority of religion. Spinoza’s project in that sense parallels Taylor’s: both reveal a change in the conditions of belief, both investigate the causes of this change, and both aim to make belief more legitimate, more democratic.

Surprisingly, then, Spinoza doesn’t play a prominent role in A Secular Age. On the few occasions that his work does appear, Taylor focuses on the depreciation of religious experience, aligning Spinoza with a movement that resists the enchanted qualities of lived experience. For example, Spinoza’s attempt to write off historical religion as “a pandering to popular fears and illusions” leads to seeing “awe-inspiring acts and experiences of ordinary people…in a derogatory light.” Likewise, by “following a path opened by Spinoza,” we may realize that “our attachment to rational freedom…shows us how we ought to behave.” Finally, the impersonal bent of Spinoza’s God made it possible to “rise above and beyond our particular, narrow, biased view of things, to a view from everywhere, or for everyman, the analogue of the ‘view from nowhere’ which natural science strives to occupy.” On the whole, then, Spinoza seems the perfect candidate for the kind of exclusive humanism that organizes the immanent frame.

Is this really how we should understand Spinoza? A posting on this blog cannot answer this question conclusively. But take the case of prophecy. Skeptical of how individuals might communicate with an otherworldly agent, Spinoza does indeed show how prophecy historically has been used to instill fear in the multitude. And yet this is not all there is to the discussion. For rather than disregarding prophecy tout court, Spinoza makes two additional moves: first, that prophecy relies on imaginative powers; and second, that the authority of prophecy is a moral one. Both moves emphasize the cultural, historical, and affective circumstances of prophetic utterances. Moreover, they downplay prophecies as explanations of natural phenomena while recognizing how prophets are able to inspire new encounters with the world. Spinoza, in order words, does not disregard awe-inspiring experiences, nor does he try to establish the possibility of rational freedom independently of lived experience. Rather, he places both within a broader context in which some—but not all—experiences affirm the enchanted quality of life. A subset of these affirmative experiences might be religious.

If this is the case, we do not have to see Spinoza as a proponent of exclusive humanism. Indeed, a radical immanence like Spinoza’s seems very much at odds with a privileging of the human (whether we understand this privileging in existentialistic or rationalistic terms). It does so because the alignment of God with nature, expressed in the doctrine Deus sive Natura, points to an ontology of connections and crossings rather than separations and domestications. As the impersonal God expresses its power through nature, modes of being emerge as animated flows of embodied material. Some of these modes may be characterized as uniquely human. But the majority will entail a combination of things, humans, and animals. In that sense we may approach the field of immanence in terms of assemblages for whom there are no absolute distinctions between interior and exterior, inside and outside.

But again, this does not mean that there is no space for belief. Here it might be helpful to invoke the work of Deleuze. A follower of Spinoza, Deleuze insists on the need for belief: as he says in his study of cinema, we “need to believe in this world.” For our purposes, the phrase “this world” might be the most significant one. Anticipating Taylor’s analysis, Deleuze identifies a break between the world as it is and the world as we see it, a break that has made us detached viewers of our own lives. (We find here a similar claim to what Taylor calls the “buffered self”.) But rather than turning to a transcendent agent of fullness, Deleuze proposes a transformation of belief as such. This transformation targets what we see and hear within concrete assemblages, reckoning the flows and depths of immanence. To believe in this world is in that sense to perpetuate life, to affirm its cracks and dissonances as sites of undisclosed potentiality. It is, we might say, an immanent enchantment.

I detail these aspects of immanence because they point to a constellation of the immanent frame that differs from the one we get from Taylor’s discussion of exclusive humanism. That is, the field of immanence does not necessarily entail a “victory for darkness” (A Secular Age, p. 376), nor does it simply oppose all modes of religion. Instead, it tries to locate sources of enchantment within this world so that apparent modes of suffering and injustice can be fought at the level of lived experience. This struggle entails faith, belief, and enchantment—in part because no one can master the field of immanence completely, and in part because the registers of faith, belief, and enchantment inspire new perspectives on and encounters with the world. Without engaging this richer account of immanence more affirmatively, Taylor may risk losing an important ally in the struggle for a better world.