Early-modern secularity arose from fear, not from reason’s triumph

Evidence

In a striking sentence Benjamin observes that even “The religious man of the baroque era clings so tightly to the world because of the feeling that he is being driven along a cataract with it.” Thus Benjamin presents the emerging salience of the secular world in early modernity not by assuming the triumph of “common sense,” or by invoking criteria acceptable to his secular readers for determining what is worthy of belief. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 316

Categorization

• XREF: Counter to Whig/Enlightenment narratives one finds in standard secularization accounts; connects to later critiques of secularism as linear rational progress.