Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 7 Secularization and the Problem of Legitimation

p 157. Berger indicates his intention to use the crisis of theology in Protestantism as an indicator of a worldwide crisis in theology. I quote "If the drama of the modern era is the decline of religion, then Protestantism can aptly be described as its dress rehearsal"

p 166 Berger claims that "the dominance of neo-orthodoxy appears as a more or less "accidental" interruption of the over-all precess of secularization, the "accident", of course being the political cataclysms that brought to an end the first liberal era."

Thesis thought: Refer to this chapter when writing about the context for SA. It will help you properly contextualization the details.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 6 Secularization and the Problem of Plausibility

Thesis Thoughts: Bergers work is both an explanation of the crisis of meaning as well as an expression of it.

p 127 Berger cites secularization as the cause of a "crisis of credibility" in modern religious definitions of reality. How does this compare to other competing theory's on man's feelings of meaninglessness and hopelessness in regards to finding a stable definition of reality? Existentialism will have different roots from the process of secularization except that both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard reacted specifically against Christianity albeit in different directions. My sense is that French atheistic existentialism represented by Sartre and Camus came to have the dominate place in american's consciousness as defining existentialism. However, Rossinow shows how important christian existentialism was. So the question is: is existentialism an outgrowth of secularization? My sense is yes. The specific problems of existentialism were: "self-identity, free will, and the justification of values" (Solomon, From Rationalization to Existentialism, p 245). Secularization and loss of cosmological significance for humans lead to these problems as traditional religion no longer provided the answers. But there is also a political context: the emergence of Communism and Marxism as modes of organization of both politics and personality. Maslow had no such expertise with these doctrines. His thought concerned the psyche first, and society and culture second.

p 127 Berger continues on to say that the man in the street "is confronted with a wide-variety of religious and other reality-defining agencies that compete for his allegiance...in other words, the phenomenon called "pluralism" is a social-structural correlate of the secularization of consciousness". I anticipated this: Maslow's theory of Self-actualization is such a reality defining agency.

p 130 Berger makes the argument that there is a "tendency toward secularization of the political order that goes hand and hand with industrialization...and that there is the further global tendency toward the movement of the state away from religious institutions" My immediate reaction in the present is that this assertion is not quite adequate. There was a counter-revolution in Iran that brought religious fundamentalists to power in 1979, as well as the presidency of George W. Bush who rode a wave of evangelical fervor to office in 2000 and 2004. Religion seems to have remained active if not resurgent in the political sphere longer than many intellectuals of Berger's outlook assessed. What does this mean for the theory of secularization? One point of view is that these events represent only a temporary counter-reaction to the process of secularization, that in fact, secularization proceeds the way Berger describes, essentially pushing religion out of the sphere of politics. If a long enough timeline is assumed, religion will be phased out of political life. An alternative viewpoint is that the theory of secularization is fundamentally flawed in that it misapprehends the scope and nature of the problem of plausibility. Namely, plausibility has proved to be less of a impediment towards faith for large masses of people. At the time Berger and Rieff, were writing, the Christian West found itself in the midst of a great crisis of meaning, which found partial resolution in the widespread reassertion of traditional belief systems at least in America and Latin America. Europe, however, continued to moving toward a more secular orientation in terms of its political outlook with the except of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in England, Denmark, and France.

It remains to be seen which view turns into reality, if one allows usage of such a word. However, it is fair to say that intellectuals in the 1960 overestimated the decline of traditional belief systems in favor of alternative modes of organizing personality and reality. One suspects the fundamental issue turns on the dialectic theory of history as promulgated by Hegel and Marx and employed heavily by the 1960s generation of academics. To this point, the materialist theory holds that religion would cease to have an dominating effect on the masses once economic conditions brought about the rise of socialism and eventually communism. In other words, based on this theoretical point of view, the step toward the abolition of religion would seem a short one. Man's attachment to religion has perhaps remained more dispersed and interwoven within the cultural fabric of society. While industrialization moved forward the rationalization of the everyday world, including religion, it seems to not hold that this increasing rationalism lead to wudespread un-belief. Faith has a staying power that remains unaccounted for in man's need for meaning.

p 132 Berger describes the process of secularization as moving from the economic sphere to the political sphere. He highlights that the state ceases to perform religious legitimations under this new economic and political arrangement. He then makes the point again that the key to secularization is the process of rationalization that is unleashed by economic and cultural modernization. He then continues on to make the point that "private religiosity" is alive and well in sphere outside the economic and poltical, meaning limited social contexts and the family. His point is that religion no longer performs its classical function of binding everyone to a common reality. Can Maslow's appeal be traced to the emergence of such private religiosities?

p 134, Berger emphasizes again the tenuous nature of religion's plausibility structure in the modern world. I believe he goes too far.

p 145. Berger uses the analogy of religion as a company competing in the marketplace for believes. Interesting. He continues to elaborate on the ties between religious pluralism and its relationship to a market of competing religions.

P 152. "On the level of theorizing, this phenomenon srves to explain the current linkage of theology with the conceptual machineries of existentialism and psychologism. THese conceptual machineries are ,indeed, "empirically adequate" to teh extent that they accurately reflect the "location" of religion in contemporary consciousness, which they merely serves to legitimate theoretically" Interesting. Reread this page. He continues on to discuss how the Freudian unconscious may be analyzed in terms of sociological analysis

p 153 Great context quote: " These problems together constitute the "crisis of theology" and the " crisis of the church" in contemporary society"

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 5 The process of Secularization

p 107 Berger defines secularization as: "The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols" My emphasis. When did this process begin? What caused it to begin? Who are the chief intellectual architects of secularization? He goes on to mention several historical moments: (1) the separation between church and state, (2) the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority (3) the decline of religious contents in the arts, philosophy, and literature (4) the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular perspective of the world. Each of these moments are associated with specific thinkers that need investigate and can be referenced to build the contextualization I seek.

p 108 Berger mentions that there is a secularization of consciousness - existentialism and Maslow's work would fit directly into this process. How does this compare with the idea of historicity? I should be on the lookout for an overstatement of the case for secularization as Christianity is alive and well in the present. That then may be one of the hallmarks of scholarship on secularization in the 1960s: that it overemphasized the death of God and the decline of Christianity in America and Europe. This would be worth discussing in the thesis.

p 109 Berger argues that the "original "carrier" of secularization is teh modern economic process, that is, the dynamic of industrial capitalism" This is important, but my concern is the secondary effects that this process has on religion, psychology, and philosophy.

p 110 Berger highlights one of the main features of his argument: "We are interested however in the question of the extent to which the western religious tradition amy have carries the seeds of secularization within itself".

p 113 Berger maintains that the roots of secularization began in the old testament, predating Protestantism. He then continues on to make the point that the Ancient cultures such as Israelites were cosmological in nature. Here then is Abzug's argument in Cosmos Crumbling: the cosmos began to crumble in Antebellum reform America. So by the time Maslow had come onto the scene had this process completed? I would maintain that the disenchantment of the world was arrested in intellectual terms: Heidegger left room for religion in his philosophy, Maslow sought to establish a secular yet sacred connection to the world, Levinas argues for the presence of the Other having a divine injunction, Santer makes room for god as well

Thesis thoughts: On page 123 Berger mentions in regards to the disintegration of the Catholic universe, the secularizing potential inherent in the social formation of the church was released. This potential came from the division of the world into sacred and profane realms. When the sacred realm began to dissolve a secular, profane structure was there to fill the void. So then, what parts of the cosmos were disintegrating during the 1950s and 1960s? How is this reflected in Maslow's thought and writing? Berger has the advantage of a relatively stable constellation of alternatives to Catholicism in the West. The eruption in the 1960s psychological theorizing and thinking largely replaced religious thinking. The dialectic of history swung wildly in the religious realm, oscillating between Neo-Orthodox interpretations of Christianity, Catholic Modernism (Vatican II - Masses in the Vernacular), Radical humanism (existentialism), a turn to toward Eastern religious traditions, expansion of religious cultism(?), and the birth of modern movement of psychotherapies (psychoanalysis, Attachment theory, object relations theory, Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysis, Client-Centered Therapy - Rogers, see Persuasion and Healing). Religion had properly entered into a phase of modernist pluralism of religious thought and experimentation. How can I make this context come alive in intellectual bio of maslow? I plan to look cosmos crumbling to see how abzug constructed his argument in a biographical form. One things is clear: there was a widely felt crisis of meaning, the expression of which came in many forms: existentialism, Neo-Orthodox christianity, a resurgent biblical literalism in the 70s (find source), therapeutic experimentation, drug related experiences designed to chemically bring enlightenment, etc. The arc of the crisis then is an eruption of social discontent not with economic conditions, but with internal states of being.

124 Berger expresses the view of man intellectuals of the 1960s in regards to religion: "Probably for the first time in history the religious legitimations of the world have lost their plausibility not only for a few intellectuals and other marginal individuals but for broad masses of entire societies" This is to some extent overstatement give the religious revivialism that was the reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s (get sources). He then turns on page 125 to the question of the meaning of life being asked by broad groups of individuals, both normal and exceptional. I need to focus on Maslow biographical details and examine where he experienced crisis. Milton theorizes that Maslow suffered from a depression and anomy. Is this in fact true? I guess there is a further question of why did Maslow not experience the crisis of anomy and anxiety that so many others reported? If he didn't that would be remarkable for someone in his field. That he was in psychoanalysis would seem to indicate that he was searching for some sort of salvation or healing. Am I to assume that his psychotherapy worked in the manner in which Freud hoped it would: to strengthen the individual ego against the demands of society as well as to assist the individual in working through conflicts from childhood.

In a broad sense Maslow sought to create a psychology to fill the void left by religion. He embodied this seeking in both his personal and professional life, seeking to create harmony between his personal and professional life. He had the advantage of teh relative freedom of thought and work afforded to he as an independent academic. He shared Freud's hope that a science of the psyche or soul would replace religion. His excitement over the prospect of such a creation animated his life, giving it purpose and meaning. He never lived to see the reaction against the excesses of the 60s (Find sources)

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 4 Religion and Alienation

This chapter is escaping me. My efforts to penetrate its meaning have been unsuccessful. I will know attempt to understand the central points by writing about the areas of my confusion.

p85-87 discusses alienation. Keep in mind the context in which this is being written.

p85. Berger discusses the strangeness of the internalization of both one's social identity and other's being. This contains a parallel thought with Santer's Psychotheology of Everyday Life in which he discusses the strangeness of both the Other and the internal alienness inherent in living. I quote: "What makes the Other other is not his or her spatial exteriority with respect to my being but the fact that he or she is strange, is a stranger, and not only to me but also to him-or herself, is the bear of an inner alterity, an enigmatic density of desire calling for response beyond any rule-governed reciprocity..." The strangeness of the other according to Santer's reading of Freud derives from the strangeness inherent in having an unconscious that desires and wants, that pays no heed to the rules governing the social world, that is raw feeling without regard for the other. In Berger's conceptualization the unconscious is absent. The strangeness of ourselves and other derives from an "internal confrontation between socialized and non-socialized components of self, reiterating within consciousness itself the external confrontation between society and the individual."

In Berger's conceptualization there is no unconscious per se, but there is a non-socialized component of the self. Earlier in Sacred Canopy Berger discusses how the "individual becomes that which he is addressed by others". But it seems then that there is a part of the the individual which cannot be addressed by the social world or others in that world. There seems to be some surplus of selfhood which then remains out of reach: this is what Berger continues on to refer to as alienation. He goes onto to say that "alienation is the process whereby the dialectical relationship between the individual and his world is lost to consciousness. The individual "forgets" that this world was and continues to be co-produced by him." What are the implications of this? This is an interesting form of subjectivity where three parts of consciousness exist: (1) the part produced by the individual (2) the part produced by socialization (3) the leftover part of consciousness that is beyond socialization.

Berger continues on to define three features of alienation: (1) it is a phenomenon of consciousness, specifically false consciousness. False consciousness is defined as experiencing social relations as value relations between things (wikipedia). Berger states that on p 86 "man can never actually become a thinglike facticity - he can only apprehend himself as such, by falsifying his own experience." (2) "consciousness develops...from an alienated state to what is, at best, a possibility of de-alienation." (3) alienation is different from anomy in that alienation "serves to maintain its nomic structures with particular efficacy, precisely because it seemingly immunizes them against the innumerable contingencies of the human enterprise of world-building"

So the individual starts out in an alienated state and can only move to a state of de-alienation. How does this occur? Presumably when the individual "remembers" or sees that his consciousness and the social world is produced by him during the process of externalization. The individual must pull back the degree of objectivation prior to internalization and recall his participation, his agency in world creation. So what role does religion or the sacred play in this process? Berger doesn't give much of an answer except to say that these instances are rare.

Berger's work is emerging as a contextualizing piece of scholarship that is describing the deconstruction of religion. His thought represents the modernist view of religion in the 1960s. He views religion as a "projection of human meanings into the empty vastness of the universe - a projection, to be sure, which comes back as an alien reality to haunt its producers" p 100. This haunting occurs because it leads to a state of false consciousness whereby the religious realm is associated with a facticity, an status as a real other world that lies beyond this one. He continues on to make the point that this other realm is not available for empirical investigation and an attitude of methodological atheism must be assumed.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 3 The problem of Theodicy (day 4)

Berger comments on individuality in relation to theodicy: "Every nomos entails a transcendence of individuality and this, ipso facto, implies a theodicy. Every nomos confronts the individual as a meaningful reality the comprehends him and all his experiences.." How does this apply to peak experience and self-actualization?

Thought: Can modern psychotherapy be thought of as a theodicy? As a way of explaining suffering to the sufferer? It is true that psychotherapy seeks both to explain and alleviate suffering or evil. It aims to remove the intrinsic shame carried by most individuals, which is the cause of so much suffering. As opposed to taking action that should lead to guilt, individuals find themselves guilty without reason. This fact highlights one aspect of the irrationality of emotion as opposed to rational emotional response like anger against a perceived slight.

p 60 Berger makes comments on the nature of individuality and its association with collectivities - this is useful in the sense of presenting an alternative vision of individuality.

p 64 Berger discusses mysticism and the annihilation of the self: to what extent does this apply to peak experiences? In PE is there a loss of self? And how is this connected to Theodicy?

p 79 Berger makes some very interesting remarks on the decline of christianity and its relation to revolution. This fits in with Freud's revolution of the psyche that continued on through maslow. The last 3 paragraphs will serve as excellent context. There are good Camus quotes as well. I should explicate the context Berger mentions further as it is the direct context out of which psychotherapy emerges.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 2 Religion and World Maintenance (day 3)

p 43. Berger states that "Other legitimating conceptualizations, such as those of modern psychology, have taken the place of religion." Interesting. Berger is saying that psychology is the integrating force of marginal situations in modern times as opposed to religion. He then continues on to discuss the confrontation with death as the most important radical marginal situation. This then comports with Santer's idea of death driven singularity. Berger then makes mention of mariginal situations as "ecstasy" or stepping outside reality as commonly defined. This then would be similar to the peak experience Maslow describes

p 45 Berger introduces the idea of a plausibility structure: a social "base" for its continuing existence as a world that is real to actual human beings.

p 47. "The less firm the plausibility structure becomes, the more acute will be the need for world-maintaining legitimations." As the Christian plausibility structure loosens in the 1950s then the Neo-Orthodox christian thinkers emerge. Humanistic psychology then would also be a counter-legitimation challenges the christian interpretation and looking to establish a themselves as a social base.

p51 The last paragraph of the chapter is fascinating. He reiterates the definition of religion as "the establishment, through human activity , of an all-embracing sacred order, that is, of a sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos."

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 5 The Process of Secularization (Day 6)

p 107 Berger defines secularization as: "The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols" My emphasis. When did this process begin? What caused it to begin? Who are the chief intellectual architects of secularization? He goes on to mention several historical moments: (1) the separation between church and state, (2) the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority (3) the decline of religious contents in the arts, philosophy, and literature (4) the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular perspective of the world. Each of these moments are associated with specific thinkers that need investigation and can be referenced to build the contextualization I seek.

p 108 Berger mentions that there is a secularization of consciousness - existentialism and Maslow's work would fit directly into this process. How does this compare with the idea of historicity? I should be on the lookout for an overstatement of the case for secularization as Christianity is alive and well in the present. That then may be one of the hallmarks of scholarship on secularization in the 1960s: that it overemphasized the death of God and the decline of Christianity in America and Europe. This would be worth discussing in the thesis.

p 109 Berger argues that the "original "carrier" of secularization is the modern economic process, that is, the dynamic of industrial capitalism" This is important, but my concern is the secondary effects that this process has on religion, psychology, and philosophy.

p 110 Berger highlights one of the main features of his argument: "We are interested however in the question of the extent to which the Western religious tradition may have carried the seeds of secularization within itself".

p 113 Berger maintains that the roots of secularization began in the old testament, predating Protestantism. He then continues on to make the point that the Ancient cultures such as Israelites were cosmological in nature. Here then is Abzug's argument in Cosmos Crumbling: the cosmos began to crumble in Antebellum reform America. So by the time Maslow had come onto the scene had this process completed? I would maintain that the disenchantment of the world was arrested in intellectual terms: Heidegger left room for religion in his philosophy, Maslow sought to establish a secular yet sacred connection to the world, Levinas argued for the presence of the Other having a divine injunction, Santer makes room for God as well.

Thesis thoughts: On page 123 Berger mentions in regards to the disintegration of the Catholic universe, the secularizing potential inherent in the social formation of the church was released. This potential came from the division of the world into sacred and profane realms. When the sacred realm began to dissolve a secular, profane structure was there to fill the void. So then, what parts of the cosmos were disintegrating during the 1950s and 1960s? How is this reflected in Maslow's thought and writing? Berger has the advantage of a relatively stable constellation of alternatives to Catholicism in the West. The eruption in the 1960s psychological theorizing and thinking largely replaced religious thinking. The dialectic of history swung wildly in the religious realm, oscillating between Neo-Orthodox interpretations of Christianity, Catholic Modernism (Vatican II - Masses in the Vernacular), Radical humanism (existentialism), a turn to toward Eastern religious traditions, expansion of religious cultism(?), and the birth of modern movement of psychotherapies (psychoanalysis, Attachment theory, object relations theory, Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysis, Client-Centered Therapy - Rogers, see Persuasion and Healing). Religion had properly entered into a phase of modernist pluralism of religious thought and experimentation. How can I make this context come alive in intellectual bio of maslow? I plan to look cosmos crumbling to see how abzug constructed his argument in a biographical form. One things is clear: there was a widely felt crisis of meaning, the expression of which came in many forms: existentialism, Neo-Orthodox christianity, a resurgent biblical literalism in the 70s (find source), therapeutic experimentation, drug related experiences designed to chemically bring enlightenment, etc. The arc of the crisis then is an eruption of social discontent not with economic conditions, but with internal states of being.

124 Berger expresses the view of many intellectuals of the 1960s in regards to religion: "Probably for the first time in history the religious legitimations of the world have lost their plausibility not only for a few intellectuals and other marginal individuals but for broad masses of entire societies" This is to some extent overstatement given the religious revivialism that was the reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s (get sources). He then turns on page 125 to the question of the meaning of life being asked by broad groups of individuals, both normal and exceptional. I need to focus on Maslow's biographical details and examine where he experienced crisis. Milton theorizes that Maslow suffered from a depression and anomy. Is this in fact true? I guess there is a further question of why did Maslow not experience the crisis of anomy and anxiety that so many others reported? If he didn't that would be remarkable for someone in his field. That he was in psychoanalysis would seem to indicate that he was searching for some sort of salvation or healing. Am I to assume that his psychotherapy worked in the manner in which Freud hoped it would: to strengthen the individual ego against the demands of society as well as to assist the individual in working through conflicts from childhood.

In a broad sense Maslow sought to create a psychology to fill the void left by religion. He embodied this seeking in both his personal and professional life, attempting to create harmony between his personal and professional life. He had the advantage of teh relative freedom of thought and work afforded to he as an independent academic. He shared Freud's hope that a science of the psyche or soul would replace religion. His excitement over the prospect of such a creation animated his life, giving it purpose and meaning. He never lived to see the reaction against the excesses of the 60s (Find sources).