Secular moral categories are internally unstable because measure and excess conflict

Evidence

Together, these four points aim at underscoring the unstable character of a central category deployed in modern, secular society. The instability relates, in brief, to the fact that the ideas of torture, cruelty, inhumanity, and degrading treatment are intended to measure what are often incommensurable standards of behavior. Perhaps most important, the idea of measured behavior is subverted by ideas of excess that come from other secular discourses. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 489

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general claim from earlier chapters that secularism’s categories are unstable and internally conflicted rather than neutral, universal frameworks.