Secular relativism rules out reclassifying forced belief abandonment as cruelty.
Evidence
This wider category of torture or cruelty could in theory be applied to the anguish and mental suffering experienced by people in societies obliged to give up their beliefs and act “humanly” (in the sense understood by Euro-Americans). But by a curious paradox it is a secular relativism that prevents such an application of the category. For that anguish is seen as the consequence of a passionate investment in the truth of beliefs that guide behavior. The modern skeptical posture, in contrast, regards such passionate conviction to be “uncivilized”—a perpetual source of danger to others and of pain to oneself. Beliefs should either have no direct connection to the way one lives, or be held so lightly that they can easily be changed. Otherwise secularism as a political arrangement cannot work very well. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 564
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely dense inversion: the relativism that should recognize diverse suffering instead delegitimizes passionate conviction itself, making secularism depend on trivialized belief. Resists one-sentence summary and repays rereading.
- SEED: Essay angle: the torture of conscience — how liberal secularism treats forced abandonment of deeply held beliefs as a gift rather than violence, and what framing accomplishes.
- XREF: Connects directly to my notes on the modern skepticism/posture of belief and the earlier Asad chapter material on the reform of belief in secular modernity. Also parallels Said’s critique of Western assumptions about Muslim subjectivity.
Related
- Secularism requires believers to hold their beliefs lightly or detached from conduct (similarity 0.86)
- Secularism’s essence is not protecting freedoms from religious tyranny (similarity 0.81)
- Secularism is a legal-moral arrangement, not the liberating opposite of religious tyranny (similarity 0.80)