Secularity is constituted through specific conceptions of agency and pain

Evidence

I suggested in the previous chapter that the secular is best approached indirectly. So I explored some ways in which the notion of myth was used through several centuries to shape knowledges, behaviors, and sensibilities we call secular. In this chapter I explore it through the concept of agency, especially agency connected to pain. Why agency? Because the secular depends on particular conceptions of action and passion. Why pain? For two reasons: First, because in the sense of passion, pain is associated with religious subjectivity and often regarded as inimical to reason; second, because in the sense of suffering it is thought of as a human condition that secular agency must eliminate universally. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 326

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad frames his analytic route into the secular: through agency and pain rather than directly defining belief or religion.
• XREF: This indirect route mirrors how Asad elsewhere insists the secular must be examined via its exclusions — parallel to Cooper’s claim that ‘neutral’ frameworks smuggle in substantive commitments. — connects to: Enlightenment culture reproduces faith’s detached self-pain as unhappy consciousness. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 804