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For now I just want to note some important links which led me today to a sort of epiphany around the word 'gentileza'.
And then wanting to say to all of my children, "Hey kids! this is the very best thing I have found so far!"
After Durkheim by Robert Bellah on the SSRC Blog - The Immanent Frame.
Keynote Lecture at the Secular Imaginaries Conference, Audio.
Templeton Prize Winner Charles Taylor (2007), Video.
Acceptance Speech (from video, my transcription):
Thank you, very much Dr. Templeton and a distinguished members of this panel here for your remarks and, I have to say I once more feel the sense of being overwhelmed that I experienced when I first heard about my receiving this prize which, I didn't even have an idea that I could be a possible candidate for but I can see I understand now the thinking behind the judges and the people in the foundation. And I really very very deeply honoured by this I feel such a sense of being overwhelmed and maybe very humble about this that I I sometimes have trouble seeing myself in these glowing descriptions but I certainly think that I've tried to do that, what has been described here is something that I've tried to do.
and let me just try to describle very quickly how I've been trying. You know we talk here about spiritual discovery I think and that being put in analogy to scientific discovery in chemistry and physics and so on. I think it's partly, it may be better to say in part spiritual re-discovery because there is a tremendous capacity in human life to forget, things that we somehow deep down knew and of course a lot of great philosophers Plato has you know talked about this extensively and in a sense another 20th century philosopher Hiedegger speaks of forgetfulness of being I think there is a kind of forgetfulness that we fall into and in particular there are a set of forgettings that are very very central to the modern world. In a sense the modern world and what we call the secular world, has led among other things to people wanting to forget certain answers to the questions of life. I mean there has been a rebellion in certain areas against religion in my own home society in Quebec there was a tremendous rebellion in the 1960s on a great rejection by many people of the Catholic faith and the church and so on and that hasn't happened everwhere but things like that have happened elsewhere, so certain answers have been totally rejected.
But what is really dangerous I think is to forget the questions. In a certain sense what I have been trying to say is something like this, human beings whether they admit it or not live in a space of questions, very very deep questions like what is the meaning of my life, what is a higher mode of life and a lower mode of life, what is really worthwhile, what is the basis of the dignity that I am trying to define for myself, a a hunger to be really on the side of the good and the right as against the side of ... I mean put in popular terms to be part of the solution not part of the problem in human life and I can mention others. These are very deep hungers or searches or questions that people are asking all the time, and the the basic thesis that I've been operating on and it could sound very crazy and wrong to some people but I really think it's a true is that everybody exists in the space of questions whether they recognize it or not, that is, they may not think that they've been posing and solving the question of the meaning of life but in being a human being that has to get to you at some level and you have to be living an answer to that whether you recognize that or ... or not.
And I think one of the really important ah rules of human science is to bring this out and to bring out very often the inarticulate answers that people are living and try to and that's why we need another understanding of reason its not simply ... moving deductively through an argument, it's also being able to give voice and articulate some of these very deep lived positions by people and to bring them out to the surface and I mean why do this? well, I could say you know Socrates come here and tell me again tell us again the unexamined life isn't worth living, I think that's part of it but its also I think it's terribly damaging if we forget these questions because a lot of the things that happen in our world happen because people have answered them in a certain way.
You know I've even talked about this in the last few days a lot of the violence we see in our world today comes when young people are recruited to certain causes which makes them do really horrifying killings and what recruits them is some offer supposed offer of a real sense of meaning to their lives and that's what living perhaps in a state of ah unemployment, and there's no future and they don't see, they have no sense of dignity ... underminded and they get these answers, so they may not think of themselves as having answered the question but they have answered the question and of course in this case answered it in a terribly destructive and self destructive way but unless we see that they are working in that space of questions like all of us we won't know why they're doing it, we won't know what to do maybe to convince them to find another answer to this we just will be helpless so I
Socrates to my support here in pleading that these are important questions we have to bring them up but I think we need them actually to live in our world in a way that we can ultimately establish some kind of peace and comity and understanding with each other so although this is a kind of leap if you like of scientific faith to begin with that we have to understand humans on this level I really am very very convinced of it and I think it's my trying to put, bring this up and put it forward that I think is the great affinity that I have with the goals of the Templeton Foundation. I must say just one more thing that I've tremendously benefitted from work with others in various networks ah which have been discussing this because it is the kind of issue you can't solve within one single discipline you have to bring in people from a whole set of disciplines and I feel at this moment how tremdously I owe a lot of what I 'm able to say to a whole set of networks and of course right back
mentionner ma vie ao Quebec dans une famille entre deux solitudes cest ma vie ao Quebec toutes les grande questions que se son posees tres beaux age
which has given me a sense from a very young age of the importance of these questions so I feel a tremendous sense at this moment of debt to all the and to McGill and to all the ah groups and the movements and the networks that have made it possible for me to stand here today and give my thanks for this tremendous honour that you've done me. Thank you very much.
Acceptance Speech, Templeton document transcript:
Thank you very much, Dr. Templeton, and distinguished members of this panel here for your remarks. I have to say I feel once more the sense of being overwhelmed that I experienced when I first heard of receiving this Prize which I didn’t even know I could be a possible candidate for.
But I can see and I understand now the thinking behind the judges and the people in the Foundation and I’m very deeply honored by this. I feel such a sense of being overwhelmed and very humbled about this that I sometimes have trouble seeing myself in these glowing descriptions. But I certainly think that what has been described here is something that I’ve tried to do. Let me try to describe very quickly how I’ve been trying.
We talk here about spiritual discovery and that being put as an analogy to scientific discovery in chemistry, physics, and so on. I think it may be better to say, in part, spiritual rediscovery because there is a tremendous capacity in human life to forget things that we somehow deep down knew. And of course a lot of great philosophers from Plato on have talked about this extensively and, in a sense, the 20th century philosopher, Heidegger, speaks of forgetfulness of being. I think there is a kind of forgetfulness we fall into and in particular there are a set of forgettings that are very central to the modern world.
In a sense the modern world, and what we call the secular world, has led, among other things, to people wanting to forget certain answers to the questions of life. There has been a rebellion in certain areas against religion in my own home society in Québec, and a tremendous rebellion in the 1960s, and a great rejection by many people of the Catholic faith and the church. That hasn’t happened everywhere, but things like that have happened elsewhere.
So certain answers have been totally rejected. But what is really dangerous is to forget the questions. In a certain sense, what I’ve been trying to say is something like this. Human beings, whether they admit it or not, live in a space of questions, very deep questions. What is the meaning of life, what is a higher mode of life, a lower mode of life, what is really worthwhile, what is the basis of the dignity that I’m trying to define for myself, the hunger to be really on the side of the good and the right, in popular terms to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, and I can mention many others. These are deep hungers or searches or questions that people are asking all the time.
And the basic thesis that I have been offering on this could sound very crazy and wrong to some people, but I really think it’s the truth. Everybody exists in this space of questions whether they recognize it or not. They may not think they’ve been posing or solving the question of the meaning of life, but, being a human being, that has to get to you at some level and you have to be living an answer to that, whether you recognize that or not.
And I think one of the really important rules of human science is to bring this out and to bring out very often the inarticulate answers that people are living. That’s why we need another understanding of reason. It’s not simply moving deductively through an argument, it’s also being able to give voice and articulate some of these very deep-lived positions of people and bring them out to the surface. Why do this? I could say, ’Socrates, come here and tell us again the unexamined life isn’t worth living.’ I think that’s part of it, but also I think it’s terribly damaging if we forget these questions because a lot of the things that happen in our world have happened because people have answered them in a certain way.
I’ve talked about this in the last few days. A lot of the violence we see in our world today comes when young people are recruited to certain causes which make them do really horrifying killings. And what recruits them is some offer, some supposed offer, of a real sense of meaning to their lives. They may be living in a stage of unemployment or they see no future or they have no sense of dignity, and they get these answers. They may not think of themselves as having answered a question but they have answered a question and of course in this case answered it in a terribly destructive and self-destructive way.
But unless we see that they’re working in that space of questions, like all of us, we won’t know why they’re doing it, we won’t know what to do to maybe convince them to find another answer to this. We just will be helpless. I don’t really call Socrates to my support here, in pleading that these are important questions, but we have to bring them up, we need actually to live in our world in a way that we can ultimately establish some way of peace and comity and understanding with each other.
Although this is a kind of leap, if you like, of scientific faith to begin with, that we have to understand humans on this level, I really am very convinced of it. It’s my trying to bring this up and put it forward that I think is the great affinity that I have with the goals of the Templeton Foundation.
I must say just one more thing. I have tremendously benefited from work with others in various networks which have been discussing this, because this is the kind of issue you can’t solve within one single discipline. You have to bring in people from a whole set of disciplines. I feel at this moment how tremendously I owe a lot of what I am able to say to a whole set of networks.
And of course, et, Michel Rutin l’a mentionné, c’est ma vie au Québec, dans une famille un peu double, un peu entre deux solitudes. C’est ma vie au Québec dans toutes les grandes questions qui se sont posées à nous. C’est ça qui a alimenté, dès le très bas âge which has given me a sense from a very young age of a sense of importance of these questions. So I feel a tremendous debt to McGill and to all the groups and the movements and the networks that have made it possible for me to stand here today and give my thanks for this tremendous honor that you’ve done me. Thank you very much.
Acceptance Speech, prepared version:
I want to say first how deeply honoured I am to be chosen for the Templeton Prize. I believe that the goal Sir John Templeton has chosen is of the greatest contemporary importance and relevance: we have somehow to break down the barriers between our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study (what the Germans gather in the term “Wissenschaft”) on one hand, and the domain of spirit, on the other.
This has been one of the driving goals of my own intellectual work, and to have it recognized as such fills me with an unstable mixture of joy and humility.
Sir John has seen, I believe, that the barriers between science and spirituality are not only ungrounded, but are also crippling. They impede crucial further insight. This case has been eloquently argued by the physicists, biologists and cosmologists who have been awarded the prize in recent years. But I feel that now a further step is being taken. The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both; but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual, and that in my case, the attempt to break down these barriers is being recognized and honoured.
The deafness of many philosophers, social scientists and historians to the spiritual dimension can be remarkable. And this is the more damaging in that it affects the culture of the media and of educated public opinion in general. I take a striking case, a statement, not admittedly by a social scientist, but by a Nobel Laureate cosmologist, Steven Weinberg. I take it, because I find that it is often repeated in the media and in informal argument. Weinberg said (I quote from memory): “there are good people who do good things, and bad people who do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
On one level, it is astonishing that anyone who lived through a good part of the twentieth century could say something like this. What are we to make of those noble, well-intentioned Bolsheviks, Marxist materialist atheists to a man (and occasional woman), who ended up building one of the most oppressive and murderous brace of regimes in human history? When people quote this phrase to me, or some equivalent, and I enter this objection, they often reply, “but Communism was a religion,” a reply which shifts the goal-posts and upsets the argument.
But it’s worth pondering for a minute what lies behind this move. The “Weinberg principle,” if I might use this term, is being made tautologically true, because any set of beliefs which can induce decent people, who would never kill for personal gain, to murder for the cause, is being defined as “religion.” “Religion” is being defined as the murderously irrational.
Pretty sloppy thinking. But it is also crippling. What the speaker is really expressing is something like this: the terrible violence of the twentieth century has nothing to do with right-thinking, rational, enlightened people like me. The argument is then joined on the other side by certain believers who point out that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., were all enemies of religion, and feel that good Christians like me have no part in such horrors. This conveniently forgets the Crusades, the Inquisition, and much else.
Both sides need to be wrenched out of their complacent dream, and see that no-one, just in virtue of having the right beliefs, is immune from being recruited to group violence: from the temptation to target another group which is made responsible for all our ills, from the illusion of our own purity which comes from our readiness to combat this evil force with all our might. We urgently need to understand what makes whole groups of people ready to be swept up into this kind of project.
But in fact, we have only a very imperfect grasp on this. Some of our most insightful scholars, like René Girard, or Sudhir Kakar, have studied it. Great writers, like Dostoevsky, have cast great light on it, but it remains still mysterious. What is equally imperfectly understood is the way in which charismatic spiritual leadership, of a Gandhi, a Mandela, a Tutu, can bring people back from the brink.
But without this kind of spiritual initiative, the best intentioned efforts to put human history on a new, and more humane footing, have often turned this history into a slaughter bench, in Hegel’s memorable phrase. It is a sobering thought that Robespierre, in the first discussions on the new revolutionary constitution for France, voted against the death penalty. Yet the path to this peaceable republic, which would spare the lives of even its worst criminals, somehow led through the nightmare of the Terror.
We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence, and following the authors I mentioned above, this cannot be a reductive sociobiological one, but must take full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion. But we don’t even begin to see where we have to look as long as we accept the complacent myth that people like us (enlightened secularists, or believers) are not part of the problem. We will pay a high price if we allow this kind of muddled thinking to prevail.
I’ve taken this example, of group violence and its supposed explanations, because it is so obviously raises urgent questions in our world. But the barriers between our social sciences and the spiritual dimension of life are crippling in a whole host of other ways as well. I have recently been working on the issue of what we mean in describing our present civilization in the West as “secular.” For a long time, in mainstream sociology this development was taken as unproblematic and inevitable. Certain of the features of modernity: economic development, urbanization, rising mobility, higher educational levels, were seen as inevitably bringing about a decline in religious belief and practice. This was the famous “secularization thesis.” For a long time, this view dominated thinking in social science and history. More recent events have shaken this conviction, even among mainstream scholars.
But well before this revision occurred, a minority of scholars were already turning the theory inside out. In particular, David Martin in his epochal, General Theory of Secularization. The main thrust of this work, and of others who have followed, is that secularization theory was not just factually wrong. It also misconceived the whole process.
It was indeed, true that the various facets of modernization destabilized older, traditional forms of religious life; but new forms were always being re-invented, and some of these took on tremendous importance. David Martin has traced the development of new congregational forms through Methodism, and various waves of revival in the United States, through the birth of Pentecostal forms about a century ago, which are now spreading with great speed in all parts of the globe. Equally far-reaching changes have occurred in Catholic Churches in many parts of the world.
Breaking out of the old intellectual mould opens up a whole new field of great importance: What are the new forms of religion which are developing in the West? And what relation do they have to those which are growing elsewhere, in Asia, Africa, Latin America? This is part of what I am trying to study in my work, drawing on the pioneering analyses of David Martin, on the writings of Robert Bellah, and on the recent work of younger sociologists, like José Casanova and Hans Joas.
Some of these forms, like those in which religion or confessionality becomes the basis of a quasi-nationalist political mobilization, have obviously assumed immense, even threatening proportions in our day. We urgently need to understand their dynamic, their benefits and dangers, an area that the old framework of secularization theory hid from sight. In this domain too, John Templeton’s insight turns out to be valid, a blindness to the spiritual dimension of human life makes us incapable of exploring issues which are vital to our lives. Or to turn it around and state the positive: bringing the spiritual back in opens domains in which important and even exciting discoveries become possible.
I am happy to be engaged in this work, among a number of others: the sociologists I mentioned above, and some philosophers, like Alasdair MacIntyre. I sense in this Prize awarded to me a recognition not only of my work but of this collective effort. This awakens powerful, if somewhat confused emotions: joy, pride, and a sense of inadequacy mingle together. But above all I feel the great satisfaction of knowing that this whole area of work will acquire a higher saliency through the award of this Prize; and I feel the most heartfelt gratitude to Sir John and to the Templeton Foundation.
Down.
For now I just want to note some important links which led me today to a sort of epiphany around the word 'gentileza'.And then wanting to say to all of my children, "Hey kids! this is the very best thing I have found so far!"
After Durkheim by Robert Bellah on the SSRC Blog - The Immanent Frame.
Keynote Lecture at the Secular Imaginaries Conference, Audio.
Templeton Prize Winner Charles Taylor (2007), Video.
Acceptance Speech (from video, my transcription):
Thank you, very much Dr. Templeton and a distinguished members of this panel here for your remarks and, I have to say I once more feel the sense of being overwhelmed that I experienced when I first heard about my receiving this prize which, I didn't even have an idea that I could be a possible candidate for but I can see I understand now the thinking behind the judges and the people in the foundation. And I really very very deeply honoured by this I feel such a sense of being overwhelmed and maybe very humble about this that I I sometimes have trouble seeing myself in these glowing descriptions but I certainly think that I've tried to do that, what has been described here is something that I've tried to do.
and let me just try to describle very quickly how I've been trying. You know we talk here about spiritual discovery I think and that being put in analogy to scientific discovery in chemistry and physics and so on. I think it's partly, it may be better to say in part spiritual re-discovery because there is a tremendous capacity in human life to forget, things that we somehow deep down knew and of course a lot of great philosophers Plato has you know talked about this extensively and in a sense another 20th century philosopher Hiedegger speaks of forgetfulness of being I think there is a kind of forgetfulness that we fall into and in particular there are a set of forgettings that are very very central to the modern world. In a sense the modern world and what we call the secular world, has led among other things to people wanting to forget certain answers to the questions of life. I mean there has been a rebellion in certain areas against religion in my own home society in Quebec there was a tremendous rebellion in the 1960s on a great rejection by many people of the Catholic faith and the church and so on and that hasn't happened everwhere but things like that have happened elsewhere, so certain answers have been totally rejected.
But what is really dangerous I think is to forget the questions. In a certain sense what I have been trying to say is something like this, human beings whether they admit it or not live in a space of questions, very very deep questions like what is the meaning of my life, what is a higher mode of life and a lower mode of life, what is really worthwhile, what is the basis of the dignity that I am trying to define for myself, a a hunger to be really on the side of the good and the right as against the side of ... I mean put in popular terms to be part of the solution not part of the problem in human life and I can mention others. These are very deep hungers or searches or questions that people are asking all the time, and the the basic thesis that I've been operating on and it could sound very crazy and wrong to some people but I really think it's a true is that everybody exists in the space of questions whether they recognize it or not, that is, they may not think that they've been posing and solving the question of the meaning of life but in being a human being that has to get to you at some level and you have to be living an answer to that whether you recognize that or ... or not.
And I think one of the really important ah rules of human science is to bring this out and to bring out very often the inarticulate answers that people are living and try to and that's why we need another understanding of reason its not simply ... moving deductively through an argument, it's also being able to give voice and articulate some of these very deep lived positions by people and to bring them out to the surface and I mean why do this? well, I could say you know Socrates come here and tell me again tell us again the unexamined life isn't worth living, I think that's part of it but its also I think it's terribly damaging if we forget these questions because a lot of the things that happen in our world happen because people have answered them in a certain way.
You know I've even talked about this in the last few days a lot of the violence we see in our world today comes when young people are recruited to certain causes which makes them do really horrifying killings and what recruits them is some offer supposed offer of a real sense of meaning to their lives and that's what living perhaps in a state of ah unemployment, and there's no future and they don't see, they have no sense of dignity ... underminded and they get these answers, so they may not think of themselves as having answered the question but they have answered the question and of course in this case answered it in a terribly destructive and self destructive way but unless we see that they are working in that space of questions like all of us we won't know why they're doing it, we won't know what to do maybe to convince them to find another answer to this we just will be helpless so I
Socrates to my support here in pleading that these are important questions we have to bring them up but I think we need them actually to live in our world in a way that we can ultimately establish some kind of peace and comity and understanding with each other so although this is a kind of leap if you like of scientific faith to begin with that we have to understand humans on this level I really am very very convinced of it and I think it's my trying to put, bring this up and put it forward that I think is the great affinity that I have with the goals of the Templeton Foundation. I must say just one more thing that I've tremendously benefitted from work with others in various networks ah which have been discussing this because it is the kind of issue you can't solve within one single discipline you have to bring in people from a whole set of disciplines and I feel at this moment how tremdously I owe a lot of what I 'm able to say to a whole set of networks and of course right back
mentionner ma vie ao Quebec dans une famille entre deux solitudes cest ma vie ao Quebec toutes les grande questions que se son posees tres beaux age
which has given me a sense from a very young age of the importance of these questions so I feel a tremendous sense at this moment of debt to all the and to McGill and to all the ah groups and the movements and the networks that have made it possible for me to stand here today and give my thanks for this tremendous honour that you've done me. Thank you very much.
Acceptance Speech, Templeton document transcript:
Thank you very much, Dr. Templeton, and distinguished members of this panel here for your remarks. I have to say I feel once more the sense of being overwhelmed that I experienced when I first heard of receiving this Prize which I didn’t even know I could be a possible candidate for.
But I can see and I understand now the thinking behind the judges and the people in the Foundation and I’m very deeply honored by this. I feel such a sense of being overwhelmed and very humbled about this that I sometimes have trouble seeing myself in these glowing descriptions. But I certainly think that what has been described here is something that I’ve tried to do. Let me try to describe very quickly how I’ve been trying.
We talk here about spiritual discovery and that being put as an analogy to scientific discovery in chemistry, physics, and so on. I think it may be better to say, in part, spiritual rediscovery because there is a tremendous capacity in human life to forget things that we somehow deep down knew. And of course a lot of great philosophers from Plato on have talked about this extensively and, in a sense, the 20th century philosopher, Heidegger, speaks of forgetfulness of being. I think there is a kind of forgetfulness we fall into and in particular there are a set of forgettings that are very central to the modern world.
In a sense the modern world, and what we call the secular world, has led, among other things, to people wanting to forget certain answers to the questions of life. There has been a rebellion in certain areas against religion in my own home society in Québec, and a tremendous rebellion in the 1960s, and a great rejection by many people of the Catholic faith and the church. That hasn’t happened everywhere, but things like that have happened elsewhere.
So certain answers have been totally rejected. But what is really dangerous is to forget the questions. In a certain sense, what I’ve been trying to say is something like this. Human beings, whether they admit it or not, live in a space of questions, very deep questions. What is the meaning of life, what is a higher mode of life, a lower mode of life, what is really worthwhile, what is the basis of the dignity that I’m trying to define for myself, the hunger to be really on the side of the good and the right, in popular terms to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, and I can mention many others. These are deep hungers or searches or questions that people are asking all the time.
And the basic thesis that I have been offering on this could sound very crazy and wrong to some people, but I really think it’s the truth. Everybody exists in this space of questions whether they recognize it or not. They may not think they’ve been posing or solving the question of the meaning of life, but, being a human being, that has to get to you at some level and you have to be living an answer to that, whether you recognize that or not.
And I think one of the really important rules of human science is to bring this out and to bring out very often the inarticulate answers that people are living. That’s why we need another understanding of reason. It’s not simply moving deductively through an argument, it’s also being able to give voice and articulate some of these very deep-lived positions of people and bring them out to the surface. Why do this? I could say, ’Socrates, come here and tell us again the unexamined life isn’t worth living.’ I think that’s part of it, but also I think it’s terribly damaging if we forget these questions because a lot of the things that happen in our world have happened because people have answered them in a certain way.
I’ve talked about this in the last few days. A lot of the violence we see in our world today comes when young people are recruited to certain causes which make them do really horrifying killings. And what recruits them is some offer, some supposed offer, of a real sense of meaning to their lives. They may be living in a stage of unemployment or they see no future or they have no sense of dignity, and they get these answers. They may not think of themselves as having answered a question but they have answered a question and of course in this case answered it in a terribly destructive and self-destructive way.
But unless we see that they’re working in that space of questions, like all of us, we won’t know why they’re doing it, we won’t know what to do to maybe convince them to find another answer to this. We just will be helpless. I don’t really call Socrates to my support here, in pleading that these are important questions, but we have to bring them up, we need actually to live in our world in a way that we can ultimately establish some way of peace and comity and understanding with each other.
Although this is a kind of leap, if you like, of scientific faith to begin with, that we have to understand humans on this level, I really am very convinced of it. It’s my trying to bring this up and put it forward that I think is the great affinity that I have with the goals of the Templeton Foundation.
I must say just one more thing. I have tremendously benefited from work with others in various networks which have been discussing this, because this is the kind of issue you can’t solve within one single discipline. You have to bring in people from a whole set of disciplines. I feel at this moment how tremendously I owe a lot of what I am able to say to a whole set of networks.
And of course, et, Michel Rutin l’a mentionné, c’est ma vie au Québec, dans une famille un peu double, un peu entre deux solitudes. C’est ma vie au Québec dans toutes les grandes questions qui se sont posées à nous. C’est ça qui a alimenté, dès le très bas âge which has given me a sense from a very young age of a sense of importance of these questions. So I feel a tremendous debt to McGill and to all the groups and the movements and the networks that have made it possible for me to stand here today and give my thanks for this tremendous honor that you’ve done me. Thank you very much.
Acceptance Speech, prepared version:
I want to say first how deeply honoured I am to be chosen for the Templeton Prize. I believe that the goal Sir John Templeton has chosen is of the greatest contemporary importance and relevance: we have somehow to break down the barriers between our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study (what the Germans gather in the term “Wissenschaft”) on one hand, and the domain of spirit, on the other.
This has been one of the driving goals of my own intellectual work, and to have it recognized as such fills me with an unstable mixture of joy and humility.
Sir John has seen, I believe, that the barriers between science and spirituality are not only ungrounded, but are also crippling. They impede crucial further insight. This case has been eloquently argued by the physicists, biologists and cosmologists who have been awarded the prize in recent years. But I feel that now a further step is being taken. The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both; but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual, and that in my case, the attempt to break down these barriers is being recognized and honoured.
The deafness of many philosophers, social scientists and historians to the spiritual dimension can be remarkable. And this is the more damaging in that it affects the culture of the media and of educated public opinion in general. I take a striking case, a statement, not admittedly by a social scientist, but by a Nobel Laureate cosmologist, Steven Weinberg. I take it, because I find that it is often repeated in the media and in informal argument. Weinberg said (I quote from memory): “there are good people who do good things, and bad people who do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
On one level, it is astonishing that anyone who lived through a good part of the twentieth century could say something like this. What are we to make of those noble, well-intentioned Bolsheviks, Marxist materialist atheists to a man (and occasional woman), who ended up building one of the most oppressive and murderous brace of regimes in human history? When people quote this phrase to me, or some equivalent, and I enter this objection, they often reply, “but Communism was a religion,” a reply which shifts the goal-posts and upsets the argument.
But it’s worth pondering for a minute what lies behind this move. The “Weinberg principle,” if I might use this term, is being made tautologically true, because any set of beliefs which can induce decent people, who would never kill for personal gain, to murder for the cause, is being defined as “religion.” “Religion” is being defined as the murderously irrational.
Pretty sloppy thinking. But it is also crippling. What the speaker is really expressing is something like this: the terrible violence of the twentieth century has nothing to do with right-thinking, rational, enlightened people like me. The argument is then joined on the other side by certain believers who point out that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., were all enemies of religion, and feel that good Christians like me have no part in such horrors. This conveniently forgets the Crusades, the Inquisition, and much else.
Both sides need to be wrenched out of their complacent dream, and see that no-one, just in virtue of having the right beliefs, is immune from being recruited to group violence: from the temptation to target another group which is made responsible for all our ills, from the illusion of our own purity which comes from our readiness to combat this evil force with all our might. We urgently need to understand what makes whole groups of people ready to be swept up into this kind of project.
But in fact, we have only a very imperfect grasp on this. Some of our most insightful scholars, like René Girard, or Sudhir Kakar, have studied it. Great writers, like Dostoevsky, have cast great light on it, but it remains still mysterious. What is equally imperfectly understood is the way in which charismatic spiritual leadership, of a Gandhi, a Mandela, a Tutu, can bring people back from the brink.
But without this kind of spiritual initiative, the best intentioned efforts to put human history on a new, and more humane footing, have often turned this history into a slaughter bench, in Hegel’s memorable phrase. It is a sobering thought that Robespierre, in the first discussions on the new revolutionary constitution for France, voted against the death penalty. Yet the path to this peaceable republic, which would spare the lives of even its worst criminals, somehow led through the nightmare of the Terror.
We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence, and following the authors I mentioned above, this cannot be a reductive sociobiological one, but must take full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion. But we don’t even begin to see where we have to look as long as we accept the complacent myth that people like us (enlightened secularists, or believers) are not part of the problem. We will pay a high price if we allow this kind of muddled thinking to prevail.
I’ve taken this example, of group violence and its supposed explanations, because it is so obviously raises urgent questions in our world. But the barriers between our social sciences and the spiritual dimension of life are crippling in a whole host of other ways as well. I have recently been working on the issue of what we mean in describing our present civilization in the West as “secular.” For a long time, in mainstream sociology this development was taken as unproblematic and inevitable. Certain of the features of modernity: economic development, urbanization, rising mobility, higher educational levels, were seen as inevitably bringing about a decline in religious belief and practice. This was the famous “secularization thesis.” For a long time, this view dominated thinking in social science and history. More recent events have shaken this conviction, even among mainstream scholars.
But well before this revision occurred, a minority of scholars were already turning the theory inside out. In particular, David Martin in his epochal, General Theory of Secularization. The main thrust of this work, and of others who have followed, is that secularization theory was not just factually wrong. It also misconceived the whole process.
It was indeed, true that the various facets of modernization destabilized older, traditional forms of religious life; but new forms were always being re-invented, and some of these took on tremendous importance. David Martin has traced the development of new congregational forms through Methodism, and various waves of revival in the United States, through the birth of Pentecostal forms about a century ago, which are now spreading with great speed in all parts of the globe. Equally far-reaching changes have occurred in Catholic Churches in many parts of the world.
Breaking out of the old intellectual mould opens up a whole new field of great importance: What are the new forms of religion which are developing in the West? And what relation do they have to those which are growing elsewhere, in Asia, Africa, Latin America? This is part of what I am trying to study in my work, drawing on the pioneering analyses of David Martin, on the writings of Robert Bellah, and on the recent work of younger sociologists, like José Casanova and Hans Joas.
Some of these forms, like those in which religion or confessionality becomes the basis of a quasi-nationalist political mobilization, have obviously assumed immense, even threatening proportions in our day. We urgently need to understand their dynamic, their benefits and dangers, an area that the old framework of secularization theory hid from sight. In this domain too, John Templeton’s insight turns out to be valid, a blindness to the spiritual dimension of human life makes us incapable of exploring issues which are vital to our lives. Or to turn it around and state the positive: bringing the spiritual back in opens domains in which important and even exciting discoveries become possible.
I am happy to be engaged in this work, among a number of others: the sociologists I mentioned above, and some philosophers, like Alasdair MacIntyre. I sense in this Prize awarded to me a recognition not only of my work but of this collective effort. This awakens powerful, if somewhat confused emotions: joy, pride, and a sense of inadequacy mingle together. But above all I feel the great satisfaction of knowing that this whole area of work will acquire a higher saliency through the award of this Prize; and I feel the most heartfelt gratitude to Sir John and to the Templeton Foundation.
Down.
