The Serpent in the Square:

Moral secularization and the crisis of nihilism

Submitted in the requirements for the

Master of Arts
in
European and Mediterranean Studies
by
Jeremy T. Bold

April 18, 2011

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Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
Sylvia Maier, my department advisor, for always backing me up even while going down
a road that I myself could barely understand at times.
Tamsin Shaw, my second reader, for inspiring me to write on secularization by turning
me on to Max Weber and Charles Taylor and Nietzsches views on secularization.
Isham Christie, Richard Hoberg, Hunter Gordon, Bruce Ringstrom, Joshua James
Killfoil, Jack Russell Weinstein, my fellow philosophers, for taking me seriously by
criticizing me at every turn.
Felicity Palma, Adam Cardais, Christopher Coats, Jennifer Carden, Erika Harris,
Stephanie Newell, a few of my fellow Europeanists, for enduring the brunt of my
babbling about nihilism in more than a few academic discussions.
Tyler Bold, my brother, for tolerating the remainder of my ramblings on Nietzsche, even
in the middle of casual conversation.
Thomas and Royann Bold, my parents, for raising and releasing me to pursue my
dreams, which have materialized in stranger subjects than any of us could have
imagined.
and, of course,
Friederich Nietzsche, the philosopher, you know

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Table of Contents
Preface
I. Introduction: after secularization, an impending moral crisis?
II. Revising the concept of secularization
III. Secular ethical conflicts: a case study in religious toleration
IV. Nihilism as a crisis in modern, secular ethics
V. Conclusions: Possibilities for ethics after nihilism

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Preface
Who was it that ran through the square of secular Europe last night, carrying but a lantern
and demanding the resting place of God? And was he really looking for God, or rather
some form of understanding for a way to believe in ethics in this our secular age
something which to this day has remained a secret? Its been a long time coming since
Nietzsches parable of the madman who answered the riddle of Gods disappearance:
We have killed him - you and I...God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed
him. And in the wake of this symbolic event for secularization, Nietzsche believed the
crisis of morality posed by nihilism would follow.
Even though the term has origins prior to Nietzsche, nihilism has appeared to be used
more often to invoke fear or disgust a kind of philosophical boogeyman for modernity
than truly understood and grappled with. Yet it seems clear that, as the term was applied
by Nietzsche, he believed it to be not just the outcome of the death of God but the
inheritance of secular European moral thought. Whether Nietzsche himself completely
understood the crisis he was implying for moral thought after secularization remains
unclear, since the bulk of his work on it seems to appear in his unpublished notebooks.
So the ultimate implications of secularization seem to have remained fairly hidden since
Nietzsches death. Yet, in view of re-examinations on the nature of moral secularization,
in particular the rejection of the traditional subtraction story by Charles Taylor, I believe
we may have use to suggest them again here. I shall attempt to suggest how this new
concept of secularization as an evolution in moral thought changes our understanding and
expectations regarding the advent of nihilism, but also suggest how this hiding serpent of
nihilism has come to manifest itself in some of the major tensions for ethical thought in a
the public square of secular Europe.
Nietzsche had begun to wrestle with this in his work on the revaluation of values, in
particular attempting to understand the future for an ethics of creativity after the
secularizing developments of Christianity which brought about the death of God; and
though Taylor does not explicitly approach his subject from this perspective of concern
with nihilism, we can clearly see his own offer of a genealogy of secularization and ethics
of authenticity in a secular age as following in Nietzsches footsteps. Thus, the
development of nihilism should be seen as an attempt to confront the new conditions of
morality after secularization. Does the arrival of this moral crisis signify a decline and
loss in the capacity for moral thought? Or can it rather be seen as a sign of vigor and
health in moral thought? Though neither Nietzsche or Taylor proposed any completely
coherent ethical system which could overcome nihilism, I believe we can at look to them
for orientations on how to confront some fundamental tensions of moral secularization.
One cannot hope to answer all these questions in one Masters thesis, though my hope is
that we can at least make a decent start of it.

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I.
Introduction: after secularization, an impending moral crisis?
To begin engaging with this question of the problems of moral secularization, lets
discuss one particular example of persistent confrontations between religion even in a
secular society. Laffaire du foulard the headscarf affair has become one of the most
well known challenges to the ethical justifications for the French system of lacit, their
unique model for maintaining political and social secularism. While I would not suggest
that the French state was attempting here to set some ethical precedent regarding the
limits of freedom of religious expression, though it has clearly encountered challenges
both domestically among religious and nonreligious citizens and internationally among
traditional allies in the secular West. One question many have asked is, why did the
headscarf affair, which began as a local debate over a few Muslim girls who had turned
up wearing of a traditional headscarf to public schools, eventually turn into a national
debate on the nature of lacit by the Stasi Commission and a law which had to ban
ostentatious religious symbols in public schools in 2004 in order? It is controversial
precisely because it represents a new move and one whose justification is still up for
grabs.
In part, this question of why is different from a question of how. It is less a question of
social and political factors and actors than it is about the conceptual perspective from
which we all view the process of secularization. The headscarf affair is one of several
recent events that have symbolically reintroduced the issue of religion into the European
public sphere, which include other events such as a ban on the building of minarets in
Switzerland and a proclamation of a failure of multiculturalism for integrating religious
minorities in Germany. Significant contingents of critique of the French states action for
maintaining secularism have emerged both domestically and abroad. In part, these events
also demonstrate academic revisions to the long-standing conceptions of secularization,
most notably in the sociological secularization thesis. Presumed that modernization
would bring a decline in and disappearance of religion, this broad cultural conception of
secularization was generally understood to be a subtraction story. This has neither
occurred as expected in the West nor can it be hurried into oblivion without upsetting the
principle of religious tolerance. And yet its tacit assumption turns out to actually justify
such conflicts over religion as invasions and attempts to reintroduce religion to the
secular public sphere. The secularization of Europe has appeared to set it apart as an
exception in the modern world rather than the rule, and many have begun to experience
this sense of contingency as a crisis for the future of secularism. If we cannot expect that
religion is going to simply disappear, how can the secular state provide an ethical
justification for such a limitation on religious expression? Have we begun to realize that
the arbitration of religious toleration is actually an arbitrary set of standards, which has
no ethical justification?
I dont mean to focus too heavily on the French case here, though it will come up again
later. But this and other examples give us reason to approach a certain question in moral
philosophy, one that I think impinges on many other case examples of secular-religious
conflict in the modern West. My study began as a more radical question: does European
secularism have a future? By this, I meant to address the question of whether moral
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secularization had introduced a pathological situation for ethics, the kind that Nietzsche
predicted as nihilism in Christianity and post-Christian Europe. In some ways, it was a
kind of tired question of simple crisis and impending collapse that is common today. Yet
a new perspective on how secularization affects morality can be offered here, based to a
large extent on Charles Taylors analysis in A Secular Age. It reinvigorates and
reformulates the question by asking: how does a new concept of secularization change
how we think about the moral crisis of nihilism? What I have attempted to argue here is
that secularization does not imperil morality to nihilism as an ethical collapse; rather,
nihilism can be a new mode of moral engagement with the ethical pluralism of a secular
age.
Why bother resurrecting the idea nihilism?
This practice of diagnosing attitudes rather than facts, examining assumptions and
principles rather than variables, is what places my inquiry in the field of moral
philosophy. In a way, Im forced to confront things from the philosophical realm,
because nihilism has been so understudied that it can hardly be quantified in political and
social terms. The term, first applied to characterize the idealist philosophy of Johann
Gottlieb Fichte (Gillespie 65), has come to be a common touchstone in contemporary
philosophical problems, though it is often applied reductively and far-ranging from the
world of ethics. (cf. Rosen, Lowith) The term still gets its strongest and most wellknown expression from Friederich Nietzsche, who applied the term in 1880 though his
analysis of it was never complete. Martin Heidegger drew somewhat on this concept,
(Pratt) and Gianni Vattimo has attempted to reintroduce it as well, (Vattimo) though
neither of these represent a real attempt to grasp Nietzsches own vision of nihilism.
Nietzsche used the term to characterize what appeared to be a pessimistic metaethical
position in modern Europe in reaction to the death of God, and which his ethical principle
of the will to power would aim to overcome. In the work The Will to Power: An attempt
at a revaluation of all values, which he was attempting to complete before his death in
1900, he claimed that European nihilism would come to dominate the history of Europe
for the next 200 years. (The Will to Power 3 [hereafter WP]) This work was left
incomplete at his death, yet it seems clear that it was in some ways a culmination of much
of his earlier work on modern ethics in the wake of European secularization. Bernard
Reginster has done the most thorough examination of the concept today, doing the work
of describing it as a real psychological condition. Moreover, he has done the most to
propose uses nihilism as principle of organization for Nietzsches philosophy not a
certain philosophical doctrine, but a particular problem or crisis (Affirmation 4) which
he is attempting to respond to. Yet I still wish to reserve the idea of Nietzsche a kind of
perfect nihilist (in the term from Will to Power) or perhaps a post-nihilist in the sense
of one who has gone through the crisis of nihilism and come out on the other side
(somewhat) intact I understand that this speaks against certain material conditions like
the fact that Nietzsche went crazy, but Im still willing to contend that he had at least the
basic ideas which would be necessary to find a way through that crisis.
But still, why resurrect an idea, especially one as intellectually abused and apparently
corrupted as nihilism? Well, personally, if philosophy has taught me anything it is that
ideas never really die they just go out of style for a while. True, the term is more than
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often invoked without nuance, in most cases used as a form of ad hominem and in most
cases directed toward people or philosophies which people vehemently disagree with. In
many ways it appears to be the intellectual boogeyman of modern philosophy, one that
everyone seems to recognize as dangerous, but never really agreeing upon how exactly it
will come about and who is the paradigm examples of it. I dont know if there is any
hope for the term to be used in philosophical discourse with any legitimacy or nuance
that can capture its real ethical underpinnings. But I think this is partially the reason that
I have decided to bring it back up here it is my attempt to redeem the concept which I
think has real utility in characterizing the problem of pessimism which comes with
secularization, something that Nietzsche believed would only grow worse as
secularization progressed without adequately dealing with the proverbial death of God.
This would in turn give a bit more legitimacy to Nietzsches oeuvre (if not also to help us
eventually to come to terms with or overcome it). Perhaps it will never be applied
correctly in political debate or public discourse, but I can at least hope that a better
understanding of it will mean that it is invoked less in an incorrect and intellectually
insulting way.
Taylors account of secularization
I would like focus here on a particular concept of secularization, provided by Charles
Taylor in A Secular Age [hereafter ASA] and other supporting works. In doing so, I
accept the logic by which Taylor himself chooses not to range too broadly in this
literature, namely that he is providing a different account of secularization. Perhaps a
better study would do a rigorous and thorough evaluation of all accounts of secularization
other than Taylors as well (viz. Asad); however, I do not do this because I want to know
how Taylors paradigmatic account could influence our conception of nihilism. This is
not in measuring the extent of the secularization of public spaces as marked by the
political separation of church and state, for instance; (ASA 3) nor is it a measurement of
the decline in religious faith within Western society, marked by polls showing decline in
belief in God or decreasing church or synagogue attendance in the West. (ASA 3) Rather,
Taylors account of Western secularization attempts to understand what are the [new]
conditions of belief (ASA 3) of the secular society. He wants to answer the question of
what makes it possible for secular and nonreligious lifestyles to be really possible today,
when they were generally not just 500 years ago. He is especially concerned about these
conditions in the sense that they mean a religious worldview is merely optional,
suggesting that it is even a sad story. But most importantly, Taylor wishes to come to
terms with what the secular means not simply in terms of datum but a new and broadly
acknowledged attitude and worldview.
Now, there are at least a few case examples in which these terms that suggest
incompatibility of a secular worldview toward religion is just wrong, namely Western
nations like the United States and Poland. But more to the point, residents of both of
these countries recognize that the affirmation of any religious faith is considered a
generally available option. To put it clearly, the conditions of belief in a secular society,
as Taylor suggests, do not contain expectations that beliefs must conform to a particular
metaphysical norm. This account of secularity has a significantly Weberian character,
which Taylor himself recognizes: in a sense, Max Weber may be considered the
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progenitor of such socio-philosophical analyses for religion, wherein one looks for social
factors to explain social and political phenomena. Taylor draws from and builds on
Webers theory of secularization to a great extent, conceiving of it as a broad intellectual
shift toward rationalization by which such conditions of belief are altered and the world
is disenchanted. (ASA 156) This process is as much an alteration of scientific or
philosophical thinking as it is for religious thought (an idea Ill expand on later as the
potential for secularized religion). It is something rather like a development one might
even go so far as to say evolution in human thought, and one which has significant
implications for moral thought as well.
The point of this focus on Weber is to get us to think of modernity and secularism as
something different than a mere subtraction story. (ASA 26) Taylor is emphatic on this
point. Many sociological accounts of the secularization thesis (now widely debunked)
are dangerous for this because they just aim to account for the nature of secularization by
a change in public opinion or a data shift for people attending church. This account of
the development of secularization is too simplistic for addressing the complexity of
secularism, especially to explain the change that Taylor wants to deal with as even the
possibility for nonreligious experience. For Taylors broad historical narrative of
secularization from the year 1500 to 2000 is an attempt to account for more than a
demographic shift: the question remains, how is a non-theistic ethical system (e.g. secular
humanism) possible as a common option in 2000 where it could not exist in any
significant way in 1500? Taylor believes
We have undergone a change in our condition, involving both an alteration of the
structures we live within, and our way of imagining those structures. This is
something we all share, regardless of our differences in outlook. (ASA 594)
Accordingly, most sociological accounts of secularism will only touch the surface of the
kind of question that Taylor wants to answer in What does it mean to call our age
secular? (Varieties 1)
The philosophical subtraction stories of secularization
Newer sociological accounts of secularization have helped to challenge this subtraction
story notion. (cf. Bruce) But this problem of thinking that secularism is just business as
usual without the practice of religion or even that secularization represents some simple
release of the faculty of human reason from the shackles of dogma has deep roots. This
idea has been developed from formative accounts of our understanding of religion and
modernity, largely within the Enlightenment, in which the birth of modern Europe was
seen as emerging from and casting off the dead husk of Christianity. (cf. Marx, Freud)
When Weber talks of the world as disenchanted by secularization, he shows some of
his roots here. However, Weber stands slightly apart here in that he provides some of the
framework of understanding the development of a social imaginary, in which religious
ethics ultimately have a way of shaping the practical existence of people. Nietzsche also
has some of the same foundations, though I argue that he too begins to offer a more
complex account of the outcome of the death of God.

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This new account will also help us confront the perspective of secularization as a simple
narrative of loss, which has appeared in other major works on the subject such as Ernst
Wolfgang Bckenfrdes account of the origins of the liberal, secular state, which has a
strong resonance in German thought, most notably on Jurgen Habermas (On the
Relations Between the Secular Liberal State and Religion and Religion in the Public
Sphere). His perspective is captured most concretely thus:
The liberal secular state lives on premises that it cannot itself guarantee. On the
one hand, it can subsist only if the freedom it consents to its citizens is regulated
from within, inside the moral substance of individuals and of a homogeneous
society. On the other hand, it is not able to guarantee these forces of inner
regulation by itself without renouncing its liberalism. (Bckenfrde 45)
This perspective is the kind which is likely to perceive secularization as generating a
pathological situation for not only ethics but politics and culture.
Arguably, one can already see this pessimism present in less wary commentators on
secularism like Pope Benedict XVI, who has written on the inherent lack of roots in
secular politics and culture, that secularism amounts to a denial of its religious and
moral foundations, (Ratzinger and Pera 65) and that it has lead to a dictatorship of
relativism and eventually a crisis of cultures. (Benedict) There is certainly no shortage
of sympathizers with this position, as others have suggested that not only is European
secularism an exception in the world, Europe requires its Christian heritage in order for
the European tradition of political liberalism to survive (Williams) and that the secular
model eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. (Pabst) One
should even consider the doubt whether secular ethics are possible, still held in general
mistrust of atheists in America. There is a general assumption at the crux of all these
perspectives which is still rife within European thought, namely, that religion is the only
possible foundation for politics, culture and more fundamentally, morality.
Taylors account of secularization is not without opinion, either: while he lauds it for the
development of human rights, it is also tinged with a sense of concern. In particular, he
worries that the modern Western state rests constantly on the precipice of a slippery slope
toward illiberalism. He cites the strong political idea of Reform, in no small part
influenced by the spirit of the Protestant Reformation which also captured the Catholic
church of 1500. Reform, as Taylor puts it is a drive to make over the whole society to
higher standards, (ASA 63) and it encourages a certain belief:
the perfect [social or legal] code wouldnt need to be limited, that one could and
should enforce it without restriction. This has been one of the driving ideas
behind various totalitarian movements and regimes of our time. ASA 51
According to Taylor, Yielding to this temptation is what helped bring modern secularity,
in all its senses, into being, (ASA 51) Thus, Taylor infers some fairly general though
very troubling concerns about the secular social imaginary, and whether it might not be
pre-disposed to such totalitarianism. Taylors lectures on the nature of political
secularism, in which he has argued for a radical redefinition of secularism, are
especially concerned with this issue. This is not to suggest that Taylor is ultimately
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opposed to something like political secularism, but that certain expressed concerns
suggest a critical disposition toward its current character.
While Taylor claims to be neither of modernitys pure knockers or boosters, (The
Ethics of Authenticity 11 [hereafter EA]) in A Secular Age he seems to lean toward the
side of the knockers. He does not say explicitly that secularism is responsible for these
problems - nor do I think he would say that exactly - but much of what he seems to be
arguing for in terms of the need for a (spiritual/moral) fullness in a secular age cannot
be achieved by the worldview of secular humanism. In Sources of the Self (hereafter SS),
Taylor questions whether we may not be living beyond our moral means (517) in
continuing to uphold standards of justice and benevolence; he suggests this because, as
Taylor sees it, these standards of secular ethics in Europe have been largely informed by
the Christian notion and tradition of agape, the love of God for humanity because of their
inherent goodness. As Taylor hints at later in ASA, upholding some higher good as
justice and benevolence beyond the prospect of human flourishing could only make
sense in the context of belief in a higher power, the transcendent God of faith which
appears in most definitions of religion. (ASA 20) On this account, Taylor would
seemingly be pessimistic of any ethics proclaimed by a purely secular humanism on the
basis that these worldviews still essentially remain empty, flat, devoid of higher
purpose. (ASA 506) Thus, while he does not directly suggest that secularism is itself to
blame, he seems to leave the inference for us to make.
A brief note here on Taylors potential bias here. To phrase religion as somehow
endangered as Taylor does here significantly might potential bias in his study, yet it is a
bias which is I think is well-suited to a study of secularism and secularization. What
some may consider as evidence of his being backwards or an outsiders take on
secular society, actually provides a great chance to see back into what the secular
signifies for us. It should not be considered controversial to suggest that Western history
has been greatly informed by the tradition of Christianity, and thus I think we should
consider Taylors perspective as seriously as any other representative of the West despite
the bias we may think he has because he still claims to be in touch with that tradition. I
dont mean to make an oddity of Professor Taylor in this. It is no stretch to suggest that
Nietzsche possessed a similar outsider status, perhaps even localizable in his deeply
admitted and embedded Christian worldview, and probably that even saw himself as the
historical representation of the madman who decried the death of God in the Gay
Science. As in the story, these lazy academic contemporaries, who have long since
ceased believing in God, can not foresee the great consequences that the death of God
would have for their own beliefs and for the future of Western society. Accordingly, I
would suppose rather that we should pay him especially more attention simply because of
this perspective, however biased we might think it.
Nietzschean perspectives on secularization
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for us, an account of secularization based on
Nietzsches own views is highly underdeveloped, mostly concentrated in the work of
Tamsin Shaw. Her book, Nietzsches Political Skepticism, has investigated problems of
political theory with a view to Nietzsches perspective on secularization. However, much
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more notable for my project here is her essay on Moral Secularization and Decadence
which offers an interesting concept of moral secularization and the problems it poses for
Nietzsche. Generally speaking, Shaws position is an uncontroversial one based on the
Weberian idea of secularization as rationalization. Secularization involves subjecting
beliefs and values to rational scrutiny and rejecting those which purport to be justified not
by reasons but by some other authority, such as revelation or scripture. (154-5) Yet
when broadened to include the perspectives of Taylor and Weber on broad social
secularization, it produces a concept which is quite useful here for understanding the
development of nihilism out of moral secularization. Furthermore, the problems of
decadence and sentimentality which she suggests derive from this moral secularization
produces will be crucial for connecting up with the symptoms for the condition of
nihilism in the secular social imaginary.
Defining nihilism, defining Nietzsches project
Nihilism, as I will define it here, can be generally characterized by two forms, which is
basically inherent from Bernard Reginster: nihilism at any certain may represent either a
loss or disorientation of values of a community, suggesting a moral predicament in which
we do not know what values we ultimately ought to hold, or beyond this, a despair that
all values are ultimately baseless and unjustified, suggesting that it is impossible to posit
any values at all. Though the term does not appear in them, both perspectives are marked
by a sense of radical pessimism regarding ones values and the world, (WP 11) and it is
ultimately pessimism that is responsible for the condition of nihilism. (WP 11) As was
begun in The Birth of Tragedy (hereafter BT) we can already see how Nietzsches goal is
a satisfactory transcendence of Schopenhauers pessimism which he sees as an outcome
of atheism and secularization. Even though this work seems to do so in a way that
aspired to its own metaphysics of art and perhaps even an attempt to found a secular
religion, aspects of Nietzsches project which he would ultimately come to reject, BT still
represents a work with significant insight into his essential concern with pessimism.
This focus on the idea of nihilism as pessimism runs into not only some public confusion
but historical as well. Most people think of nihilism as the belief that life is meaningless
or that all values are baseless. (Pratt) This does have some relation to Nietzsches
statements about it, but its more likely to conjure image of some whiny fool in a blackturtleneck (no thanks to the Coen brothers The Big Lebowski here) or a mad, sociopathic
anarchist in makeup (cf. The Dark Knight). The point is, these are reductive
characterizations of a particular individual who just wants to use this philosophy as a
license to do whatever he/she wants; it is unfortunate that most of these characterizations
define the greater part of how people receive Nietzsches discussion of the subject. I
believe that Nietzsche aimed to understand it something much broader than this though,
as evidenced in his planned first book on the history of European nihilism, to be a
diagnosis of the decadent psychological and moral condition that threatened the health
and spirit of Europe. Going as far back to Turgenevs Fathers and Sons, this idea of
nihilism must be thought of as avoiding the caricatures weve received of the idea from
popular culture, something distinct and complex.

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Nietzschean nihilism can also be historically confused with some of its earlier forms,
which Nietzsche drew on for the name but which must be ultimately distinguished from
his concept. Based on this pre-history to Nietzschean nihilism, Michael Allen Gillespie
advances the thesis that, although Nietzsche is often seen as the major figurehead for the
concept of nihilism, Nietzsche himself developed a flawed interpretation of the concept.
This assertion works to Gillespies advantage in his book Nihilism Before Nietzsche, in
which he traces it from its first application to Fichte via Cartesianism, through the
Russian Nihilist movement until it gets to Nietzsche; yet the ultimate cause of nihilism
for Gillespie is not a product of reason, as Nietzsche suggests of the logical result of
Christian-moral worldview in pessimism, but of will. (Gillespie xxiii) This takes the
notion of nihilism, and Nietzsches concern with it as a problem of strength, from a
completely different direction and it influences how Gillespie utilizes Nietzsche in his
work here. He writes, In the first instance, nihilism for Nietzsche means Russian
nihilism...His use of the term, however, differs considerably from that of his Russian
predecessors in large part because he wrongly believed that the Russian nihilists were
Schopenhauerians. (Gillespie 178) It seems strange to say that Nietzsches notion of
nihilism is insufficient because, as Gillespie says, he actually got the idea wrong! While
I do not doubt Gillespies understanding of the idea of nihilism before it got to Nietzsche,
his account of nihilism suffers here because his project is decidedly different from
Nietzsches. This is not to contradict his assertion - Nietzsches notebooks from around
1880 state that the nihilists had Schopenhauer as their philosopher (Kuhn 11) rather it
is to say that Nietzsche clearly had begun his interpretation of the concept of nihilism
already from the context of his project to overcome Schopenhauerian pessimism. This
may make him wrong on nihilism in Gillespies account, but it should really just
encourage an alternative reading of nihilism in Nietzsches work.
Thus, I want restate the fact that the idea of pessimism is central to how we should
understand Nietzsches concerns with nihilism. The madmans declaration of the death
of God in the Gay Science was not simply a cause for celebration, but a rallying cry to
critique the Schopenhauerian pessimism which seemed to be its logical result. This
essential problem of pessimism suffuses and comes to define what one might see as his
core philosophical project: diagnosing and ultimately overcoming the deep and abiding
European condition of pessimism which would ultimately lead to nihilism. This issue of
revising this notion of pessimism will come up again a bit later, but as I have begun to
offer here, we are looking toward a new kind of nihilism as a non-resentful pessimism,
one which Nietzsche had often referred to as existing among the Greeks. Within this new
idea of secularization, this new nihilism may offer us new ways of coping with the
complex situation of modern ethics.

I made a claim in the previous section which is the subject of considerable debate,
namely that nihilism is one of Nietzsches core philosophical projects, perhaps the core
one. I do not intend to spend much time on this claim here, but I think it would be
ridiculous to assume either that it wasnt a consistent concern throughout Nietzsches
work or that it doesnt occupy any central importance for Nietzsche. The former
assumption might be based on the historical misunderstanding, like that of Gillespie
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which I discussed in the previous section, or the fact that when the concept of nihilism
does appear, it does not play a central role in his published work and only briefly does so
in his notes. (178) Despite the fact that the concept does not appear by name in much of
Nietzsches work, simply cannot stand up to the fact that nihilism is essentially defined
by the recurrent Nietzschean projects of coming to terms with the death of God,
overcoming Schopenhauerian pessimism and metaphysics, and the critique of both
Christian and general moral values. The overcoming of nihilism is definitively a
connecting point in all these issues and in my opinion it should be accorded a principal
position in understanding Nietzsches thought.
The extent to which Nietzsche is doing meta-ethical analysis has become a significant
point of debate among Nietzsche scholars: this debate is most broadly situated between
contentions of moral realism and moral antirealism. Moral realism, generally speaking,
assumes that moral value statements express propositions about the world which can be
either true or false, and more so that these propositions are true or false independent of
subjective opinion. Moral antirealism, on the other hand, has more than a few variants
which suggest at least that moral value statements are not propositions which are
objectively true or false: some of the most popular variants are relativism/determinism
(moral value statements do express propositions about the world but the propositions
truth or falsity are relative or determined according to the individual), (Shaw Nietzsche
95; cf. Leiter) or an error theory (moral value statements do express propositions about
the world but that there are no moral facts by which to determine truth or falsity). (Shaw
Nietzsche 90; cf. Hussain)
It is true that Nietzsche does actually seem to refer to himself as the first perfect nihilist
of Europe, though he also immediately says who, however, has even now lived through
the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself, (WP 3) which really
complicates the matter, as Nietzsche has tendency to do. This is a major problem,
especially as respects the incorporation of the concept of nihilism into this whole debate
on moral realism vs. antirealism. If we believe the claims of the nihilist - about the lack
of moral facts, the non-existence of a true world (WP 3) - then it seems we should
understand him as advancing a thesis of moral antirealism. However, though I think it
would require a much more detailed argument than I plan to give here, I would argue that
the meta-ethical issue, the question of whether nihilism is essentially correct about the
status of values, is actually irrelevant in this case; ultimately, Nietzsche appears to oppose
nihilism because it represents a problematic condition for Europe, that is, it inhibits the
actualization of the values he holds dear: the values of life, health, strength and
overcoming. And, interestingly enough, as Shaw suggests, The primary object of
Nietzsches concern, throughout the later writings, is the fate of mankind. (Nietzsche
109) The middle period of Nietzsches writings are apparently the best for interpreting
Nietzsche as a meta-ethical antirealist, which apparently suggest some radical change in
perspective or perhaps something like the Straussian interpretation of Nietzsche telling a
noble lie. Either way, it seems like a problem which the concept of nihilism should be
brought to bear on, which hitherto it has not really been a focus of debate, probably due
to the controversial nature of Nietzsches collection of notebooks in which nihilism is a
treated most specifically. However, as Ive said previously, one should consider that
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nihilism as an idea represents a very powerful synthesis of many of Nietzsches major

themes throughout his work.
Even though it may seem as though I am shirking my duties here, I do not intend to go
into an in-depth analysis of Nietzschean meta-ethics here; I will only say that I am
sympathetic to approaching Nietzsche from the moral realist perspective. If we want to
give Nietzsche the benefit of the doubt regarding nihilism, which I am inclined to do, we
should actively assert that he was a moral realist in this case since certain imperfect
formulations of nihilism appear to represent generally bad conditions for humanity and
pathological in the pursuit of making ethical claims. But even with that Ive still got real
qualms with basing our idea of nihilism purely on some notion of Nietzsches metaethics,
which Ill discuss in the next section.
Approaching nihilism: reasons to avoid metaethics
There is more than one approach to understanding and interpreting the idea of nihilism: I
will line out the metaethical and the moral psychological approaches here. To begin with
the former, the metaethical approach is probably the most common way to conceive of
nihilism: it is the belief or position that all values are baseless and, when applied
specifically to ethics, a standpoint which rejects the possibility of absolute moral or
ethical values. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, nihilism) Perhaps rightfully so,
this conception of nihilism is less likely to be utilized as a tool of understanding and more
often wielded like a weapon. As an intellectual invective and modern era boogeyman,
from Allan Bloom to The Big Lebowski, this emphasis on the metaethical approach to
nihilism (or metaphysical more broadly) has led it to be used and abused since before
Nietzsches time. Despite the fact that this is common starting ground, starting here may
only encourage us to first orient our conception of Nietzschean nihilism in the current
debate over Nietzsches metaethical views. I think this would be a mistake for several
methodological reasons which I will line out first. But also, I believe that if we begin
with this approach, then we risk being misled into the assumption that nihilism only
consists of an assertion, not really the logical historical development which Nietzsche
perceived it as. Nihilism may entail a certain metaethical standpoint, but the threat that
nihilism poses does not simply originate in this assertion of the baselessness of all values.
I shall suggest three methodological flaws in arguments which should emphasize why we
should avoid basing our conception of Nietzschean nihilism on Nietzsches metaethical
position. The arguments against these Nietzschean metaethicists are in their failures to
account for the following items: the inconsistent character of Nietzsches thought as a
whole, the critiques of rationality and truth that Nietzsche himself offers, and Nietzsches
central project of moral psychology around which most of his assertions seem to be
oriented. I will argue that these not only give us reason to set aside the metaethical issue
for the moment, but perhaps even a basis for critiquing the whole metaethical project.
Mostly, however, I aim to use this moment of critique as a lever for reorienting our
understanding of the origin of Nietzschean nihilism in moral psychology rather than any
metaethical arguments or assertions.

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Metaethics can be characterized as the attempt to understand the metaphysical,

epistemological, semantic, and psychological, presuppositions and commitments of moral
thought, talk, and practice. (SEP) In this field of study, there are various positions one
might hold about the ultimate foundations for ethical values or conceptions of ethical
claims, but the most clear opposition seems to consist in the positions of moral realism
vs. moral antirealism. Moral realism presumes that moral claims do purport to report
facts and are true if they get the facts right - thus, it might also be characterized as moral
objectivism in the sense that it believes there are objective foundations for moral values
which exist independent of the mind. On the opposite side stands moral antirealism,
which denies that the thesis that moral propertiesor facts, objects, relations, events,
etc. (whatever categories one is willing to countenance)exist mind-independently.
(SEP) Moral subjectivism or relativism are both relatively well-known positions within
the anti-realist camp.
A number of current studies of Nietzsche within Anglo-American philosophy have
focused on the question of Nietzsches metaethics which occupy both sides of the realist
and antirealist divide - Shaw provides an excellent overview of the main ones in
Nietzsches Political Skepticism, though most of them seem to avoid including the
concept of nihilism. In the end, there may turn out to be an interesting reason why they
do so. But it is clear that, as Shaw says, Nietzsches later writings contain a great deal
of speculation about meta-ethical questions, much of which points us in an antirealist
direction (80) and I suppose that this may explain why there is not only more
concentration on Nietzsche as a moral anti-realist but why there are more variations in the
anti-realist standpoints. This very situation suggests its own problems for converging on
any particular anti-realist reading of Nietzsche, much less any metaethical interpretation
more broadly. In some ways, this may stem from the general intractability of debates in
ethics in general, recently affirmed in Brian Leiters working paper on Moral Skepticism
and Moral Disagreement In Nietzsche - still, it seems difficult to use this as an argument
as any real leverage for a particular metaethical view.
I know it may seem to be not giving due consideration to the metaethical question by
limiting myself to a sketch of moral realism and antirealism generally and not taking time
to line out the distinct positions within those categories - though Shaw does this in great
detail. I can only suggest that it is because I find flaws not in the positions themselves,
but in their general methodology for interpreting Nietzsches metaethical thought which
avoids crucial questions. Let me proceed with the most apparent first: the problem of
inconsistency in Nietzsches thought.
Nietzsches issues with contradiction are widely known in the field of Nietzsche studies and they are examined heavily in a book by Wolfgaang Muller-Lauter: Nietzsche: his
philosophy of contradictions and the contradictions of his philosophy. In this respect, the
arguments of the meta-ethicists are based on a corpus of thought which is, to be most
generous, inconsistent. One could argue that this inconsistency is a result of accidental
contradictions, a lack of systematic thought; at best, the contradictions are characterized
as intentional ironies in which Nietzsche is satirizing positions. Yet the use of irony is
fraught with the problem of knowing which positions being advocated or lampooned,
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and, in the case of such a great satirist as Nietzsche, the line blurs very quickly.
So I believe that we can at least agree that reading Nietzsche tends to reveal that any
interpretation one offers will have to ignore or dismiss certain passages, and argue around
certain difficulties and inconsistencies in interpretation - such that it will be difficult to
say whether any interpretation ever seems to be a complete one. We could fight
incessantly over which passage is ironic and which sincere, whether the later texts are a
better or more representative version of his actual views, not to mention which texts are
to be rightfully included and sorted out within Nietzsches thought proper. In my
opinion, rather than sorting out the truth of any particular position for Nietzsche, it comes
to seem that these philosophers are busying themselves with sorting out their own views
against one another and not the actual views of Nietzsche himself. It is partially because
of this, then, that I am attempting to draw on and re-interpret Nietzsches concept of
nihilism not strictly as a metaethical position.
Moving to a deeper level, these arguments seem to draw on Nietzsche in order to
construct the best arguments for taking a particular metaethical standpoint; yet, in doing
so, they utterly fail to account for Nietzsches conception of rationality, which
problematizes the whole project of divining not just Nietzsches metaethics but
metaethics as a discipline. One issue of which Nietzsche is acutely aware and committed
to critiquing is the pretense of rationality at revealing truths about the world. If the
rational pursuit of history is an abuse in so far as it does not serve life - we require
history for life and action, not for the smug avoiding of life and action, or even to
whitewash a selfish life and cowardly, bad acts. Only so far as history serves life will we
serve it; but there is a degree of doing history and an estimation of it which brings with it
a withering and degenerating of life. (Hackett 7) - then we cannot claim reason to be
serving the truth of either Nietzsches thought or the situation. This theme also resonates
in On Truth and Lies In a Non-Moral Sense, in which rational concepts are metaphors
which in no way correspond to the original entities, and truths are illusions which we
have forgotten are illusions. How shall we not be troubled by the metaethicists rational
argumentation by which they claim to illustrate an actual case about either Nietzsches
view or what is the case regarding the foundations of ethical values? Rationality is an
abstraction which we use to illuminate a certain value, not a grasp at some thing-initself, for which these metaethicists seem to be looking long and hard.
In this way, Nietzsches critique of rationality is built on the critique of metaphysics
provided by Kant that can easily be applied to the metaethicists themselves: not only is it
highly speculative a priori thinking which limits any ability to assert truth or falsity of a
position, but the real purpose of rational argument to such a speculative realm seems
more dependent on the positions usefulness rather to any particular truth inherent in it.
There is much more to be investigated on this matter, and I will not wager my whole
argument upon it since it may turn out to be as intractable as the general metaethical
debate. However, it seems to me that these metaethicists have not fully dealt with this
methodological problem in drawing on Nietzsches metaethical speculations for their
arguments. If Nietzsches view of rationality and truth can only be characterized as
utilitarian or perhaps pragmatic at best, then the metaethicists who base their arguments
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on him shall have still more problems in proving their arguments. Furthermore, using
rational argumentation to establish a metaethical standpoint from which to justify our
values will turn out to conflict with the values Nietzsche finds crucial to overcoming
nihilism, which I will argue for in more detail at a later point.
The last flaw and most crucial lies in the metaethicists grasping at straws of Nietzsches
metaethical thought, when his central project lies in the realm of moral psychology namely his examination of the moral psychology of Christianity and modern Europe.
Based on my last argument, there may be something apt about the metaethicists
instrumental use of some aspects of Nietzsches thought to elaborate and support their
own views; still, it risks elevating what may be trivial and speculative assertions to
unnecessarily high status, and obscuring other projects which are more central to
Nietzsches thought. Nietzsches greater purpose, especially in the context of nihilism
under which the highest values have devalued themselves and we ourselves must
pursue a revaluation of all values, then it seems difficult to understand what a
discussion of metaethics will offer us. The matter seems to rest on the level of a
psychological problem. Furthermore, there is Nietzsches intense focus on critiquing
modern Europes ethical subjectivity in its conception of morality which consists
mostly of exposing the specifically Christian psychology which lies behind it. This idea
of nihilism as a concept for understanding modern ethical subjectivity would be ignored
by the focus on metaethics and provides further reason to ignore it, at least in the interest
of sorting out the priorities of Nietzsche studies in particular, and ethics more broadly.
Having given enough reasons to avoid basing the idea of Nietzschean nihilism on
Nietzsches metaethics, we can also generally infer that Nietzsche himself did not attempt
to explore it from this standpoint. The view of nihilism as a metaethical standpoint may
have something in common with pre-Nietzschean concepts of nihilism, like the original
rejections of Fichtes idealism by Jacobi or the ethical basis of the Russian Nihilist
anarchist movement, yet it seems that he was more interested in it as a psychological
development. One can interpret the origins of the term nihilism from apparently pure
metaethical statements as Gillespie does; yet it is our contention that nihilism develops
out of a certain condition of moral psychology which comes with secularization, and thus
is not merely to be considered reducible to its metaethical assertions.

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Nihilism and the secular social imaginary

We need not think that the presence of nihilism would only be present within the
conditions of secularism. It seems logical that we should find it here, especially insofar
as secularism inherently seems to be a condition of life after the death of God. This is
only to say that my project to present the condition of nihilism within the culture and
politics of European secularism is my specific project, but one could conceivably extend
the analysis of nihilism in what are arguably non-secular places. This is all to say, that
my interests at the moment are in studying the cultural and political thought of secular
Europe as a broad whole. I do not intend to draw on much in terms of European history
here, except insofar as illustrative examples might be needed to elaborate these concepts;
my study focuses on what we might call the cultural logic, the public spirit of secular
Europe.
This is one more reason that Charles Taylor has provided an incredibly rich and
interesting analysis of secularism: he is not attempting to quantify either the state of
secularism or even really the extent to which secularization has progressed in Europe, but
to clarify our own sense of what the secular itself means. In this effort, he has employed
an approach of his own formulation called the social imaginary, which I have adopted
here as well. As Taylor defines it, the social imaginary consists of the ways people
imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on
between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper
normative notions and images that underlie these expectations. (Modern Social
Imaginaries 23) This approach attempts to understand something like the self-identity of
a group, applied in Taylors case to the West, traditionally conceived as Europe, the
United States and Canada (as Taylor prefers, Latin Christendom). Of course, he does not
set out any specific territorial delimitations because his aim is to understand certain
common practices and ideas which need not be represented in every geographic area that
the West covers, but may be taken as a kind of representation of the West as an ideal type
with which the people in these areas might be identified.
This is the way in which, as I previously suggested, Taylors project has a significantly
Weberian character. The nature of the secular social imaginary have both been strongly
shaped by Webers original thesis on secularization from The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, and the idea of the social imaginary influenced by Webers thought
in general. Max Webers understanding of secularization as rationalization was a means
of explaining the broad cultural shift in the West toward rationalistic explanation, or
providing systematic and naturalistic reasons for an event rather than ascribing events
strictly to supernatural causes, that allowed for capitalism and science to flourish. In
many ways, Taylors project can be seen as a deeper investigation of Webers original
thesis on the disenchantment of the world, and Taylor directly marshals Webers
terminology in support of his narrative. Taylor recognizes the problem of conducting
this kind of broad gauge historical interpretation (ASA 156) which Webers thesis
might be accused of. He argues, [P]eople often object to Webers thesis that they cant
verify it in terms of clearly traceable correlations...But it is in the nature of this kind of
relation between spiritual outlook and economic and political performance that the
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influence may also be much more diffuse and indirect. (ASA 156) While this whole idea
of the presence of a social imaginary can seem a bit too abstract and unspecific, and
therefore unscientific, it represents an approach to understanding what are very broad
changes in European politics and culture from a high point of view. As secularism is so
often taken to characterize Europe and even the West as a whole, the social imaginary
may yet be the best concept by which we can understand this concept which has such
broad cultural and political implications.
For now, let us define the secular social imaginary, as conceived by Taylor, according to
a couple of key conditions. The outcome of European secularization may be best
characterized through the movement from a transcendental moral order, in which
morality justified by a transcendental/metaphysical realm toward an autonomous moral
order, in which moral values are determined according to the individual, with a wide
range of possible of values and justifications for those values. These are not the only
aspects at play in Taylors discussion of secularization, but as I said, they will be the
especially important conditions for understanding how European secularization has
cultivated the conditions for nihilism.
I hope that it is becoming much clearer now what I mean by defining nihilism more as a
kind of metaethical position which is informed by a particular moral psychological
condition. This should be contrasted with the idea of nihilism as a pure and simple metaethical theory about the standing of values, which I have already suggested does not
appreciate Nietzsches motivations for attempting to overcome it, and does not take into
account broad sense of it as a condition for European morality, not just attributable to one
or two strange individuals. This is why I suggest that nihilism threatens the whole mode
of European moral thought, because it is present throughout the secular social imaginary.
Notably, the construction of such an argument in itself is not enough to compel one to
nihilism. Although the illustration of a logically rigorous proof of nihilism might be
compelling enough for some readers, this is not really enough to bring the threat home.
Yet the question of whether we ultimately agree to this argument may not really be the
compelling point, and proposing reasons that we can ultimately be optimistic about the
outcome of secularization will fall flat here. For it is not so much that you or I somehow
decide not to become nihilists, or to avoid these conclusions by focusing on the positive
arguments for secularism, but that if there is any truth to the idea of a social imaginary
which acts according to a certain logic and this logic can be illustrated as nihilistic, then
the group may be driven to it despite what even our political or philosophical leaders may
have to say. Without taking into account the real reasons for pessimism, and without a
clear understanding of what European nihilism itself entails, we will have no idea what
road we are on and why it leads where it does. Moreover, it is the persistence of this
particular account of secularization which leads us to think of the development of
nihilism as an intolerable outcome. I am hoping that both the re-evaluation of
secularization by Taylor and my accompanying re-evaluation of nihilism will help to set
aside those radical fears.
Of course, I must admit, that this does sound deterministic. And, to be sure, there is a
great deal of the movement of our culture and society that is beyond our control, one that
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seems to follow a logic of its own. This is why I say it is not enough for us to claim to
protest either against secularization, or rather, the advent of nihilism, but actually to
understand what it means and what its ends are. I suppose if I have any hope of steering
us away from nihilism or the worst of its effects, then it may only be in clearly
conceiving what it is. But we might also consider an alternative to avoiding nihilism,
which I think Nietzsche already suggests and which may be not only an important part of
understanding what it means to overcome nihilism, but how to affirm secularization in
the wake of nihilistic pessimism. The idea relates all the way back to Nietzsches
appreciation of the Greeks in BT, and it lies in the question Nietzsche posed in his
Attempt at a Self-Criticism:
You will guess where the big question mark concerning the value of existence had
thus been raised. Is pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration,
weary and weak instincts - as it once was in India and now is, to all appearances,
among us, modern men and Europeans? Is there a pessimism of strength? BT
17
This final question is the part that signals pessimism (and nihilism) as something less
than a collapse, perhaps even an evolution and reinvigoration of morality. But obviously
it is this question that I must put aside to answer until the very end.

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II.
Revising the concept of secularization
Less revolution, more evolution
Even as sociological interpretations of the changes in the religious makeup of European
and Western society have been trending away from the traditional secularization thesis,
new conceptions of secularization have opened up. Charles Taylors A Secular Age
marks probably the most significant of these in years (though much less interesting
attempts appear to have been made, cf. Graeme Smiths A Short History of Secularism)
and specifically captures it his new interpretation as a rejection of the traditional
subtraction story of secularization which comes out of the Enlightenment. The
subtraction story approaches secularization as something of a revolutionary process, in
which religion is removed as the foundation for politics and society, or deeper therein and
more specific for our case here: morality. This reformulation of the concept of
secularization will not alter any oft-cited facts regarding secularization: e.g. general
decline in church attendance/affiliation broadly across Europe or successful sidelining of
the Catholic Church in its many political missions in Europe (like the push for a God
clause in the European Union). However, it will propose significant revisions to how we
interpret the causes for these events and what we can expect of the future of politics,
society and especially ethics in what Taylor calls our secular age.
There a number of specific questions which prompt this reformulation. One comes from
the empirical sociological studies surrounding rejections of the secularization thesis: how
has religion survived secularization? In a broader framework of the West, the United
States is constantly seen as an outlier in this sense of secularization and it makes for
difficulties in broadly characterizing the West as secular. Furthermore, the reappearance
of religion as a hotbed issue in European politics around the turn of this century has
suggested ideas that the world is actually now being desecularized. (cf. Berger,
Casanova) Another reason could be epistemological, namely how does faith survive
throughout the development of reason? Despite various resolutions to the fight between
reason and faith, this debate has been a persistent site of conflict over epistemological
sovereignty. Our particular question comes from moral philosophy and can be basically
summed up in one question: how do ethics survive apart from religion? Though the
question might sound harsh to our modern ears in the West accustomed as they are to
references to non-religious international doctrines of human rights or the social and
political commitments to freedom of conscience given the long history of the
intermingling of ethics and religion in Western philosophy, the question makes sense
historically. But as weve previously noted, even this question is tied up in a particular
view of secularizations effects on morality, namely the subtraction story. Rather than
retreading the paths of the many stories told from this perspective, which see
secularization as a revolutionary process against religion, however, this section will focus
on elaborating an alternate, evolutionary process of secularization. In doing so, it will
give us a new way to view the advent of nihilism prophesied by Nietzsche as the
inheritance of Europe after the death of God, but one which doesnt spell the end of
ethics and can point to ethical thought after nihilism.

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This history Im telling is incomplete it commences generally with the time of 1500
with an idea about the nature of religion and ethics already deeply ingrained, but which
may already be on the way to secularization more generally. Taylor himself argues
that one of the origins of secularization is in the influence of what Taylor calls the drive
to Reform around this time, characterized by a profound dissatisfaction with the
hierarchical equilibrium and a drive to make over the whole society to higher
standards which was peculiar to Latin Christendom as a whole. This theme can be seen
to influence the major reform movement of that time of the Protestant Reformation, but it
is perceptible in political and social developments both outside and inside the Catholic
Church around this time (cf. Fernandez-Armesto and Wilson). It is this placement of the
locus of the origins of secularization within religion itself that begins to distinguish
Taylors reformulation of secularization apart from pure subtraction.
Of course, this is not entirely a pioneering stance. As he openly acknowledges, Taylor
draws this from a kind of Weberian methodology regarding religion and the development
of secularization. Generally, the Weberian approach to the study of religion should be
distinguished from the typical Marxist approach of Webers time, in which the
developments in religion would have been perceived as a construction of false
consciousness by economic forces or at least largely influenced by the material
conditions of society. Webers approach can be characterized as assuming that the
religion itself has the primary influence on the development of the ethic of its followers.
However incisive the social influences, economically and politically determined,
may have been upon a religious ethic in a particular case, it receives its stamp
primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its
annunciation and its promise. (The Social Psychology of World Religions 270)
We presume that Taylor accepts this, especially in the sense that the religious beliefs
significantly characterize the worldview of a people, in both the naive understanding of
themselves and the world around them. Taylors project then aims to characterize
secularization as a fundamental shift...in naive understanding (ASA 30) of the West,
one which can understand the possibility for non-religious accounts of the world and, in
our case here, secular ethical thought. This naive understanding is part of what
characterizes the social imaginary for Taylor, and a shift in the naive understanding
signifies a shift in the social imaginary.
I agree with Taylor when he contends that, generally speaking, five hundred years ago it
was largely impossible to conceive of life outside of religion, which implies the
impossibility of ethics without religious foundations. This seems no longer to be the
case, but it is not immediately obvious how this shift is possible. Obviously, Taylor is
not arguing that this shift in the social imaginary of the West has forced all ethics to
become secular; rather, he aims to characterize secularization as some shift in the ethical
thought of our social imaginary which actually allows for the possibility of conceiving of
secular ethics. In this sense, there must be some change in expectations, though one that
allows for the possibility of secular ethics while not necessarily ruling out religiouslybased ethics. As we suggested before, we get this idea of secularization from Weber
generally, and more specifically, from Shaws article on moral secularization. According
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to Shaw, Secularization involves subjecting beliefs and values to rational scrutiny and
rejecting those which purport to be justified not by reasons but by some other authority,
such as revelation or scripture. (Nietzsche on Secularization and Moral Decadence
154-5)
Now, based on Taylors focus on this as a change in the social imaginary, I think we
should alter this definition slightly to suggest it largely as opening ethical beliefs and
values to rational scrutiny and defense, since I do not agree that it necessarily implies
rejecting those [ethical beliefs and values] which purport to be justified not by reasons
[but] by some other authority. (ASA 155) If we look to Webers expressions regarding
rationalization in Science as a Vocation, then we grasp that this does not imply
necessarily a greater knowledge or rational understanding of the world. As with Webers
example of the common persons lack of scientific understanding of the engine, peoples
rational understanding of the world does not necessarily improve with the process of
rationalization, just their expectation that things be rationally explicable, and we might
apply this same conception of rationalization to morality as well. There are plenty of
examples in which certain ethical beliefs or values may still be accepted on a provisional
basis, despite our ability to fully justify them by reason; yet there is an expectation that
ethics should be rationally justified or at least justifiable. In this sense the shift in ethical
thought of our social imaginary is creating a new framework for morality by which we
can understand both religious and nonreligious ethics.
This new and unique sense of secularization as rationalization has particular implications
for moral thought in general and should give us reason to reconsider associating the
disappearance of religion as essential to the process of secularization. That is to say, we
can now conceive of a notion of secularity as not simply being a social condition in
which religious faith is more difficult to find or conceive and more than just a moral
situation in which secular ethics are possible; rather, religions and ethics can go through
the process of secularization and come out on the other side as somewhat changed
entities, rather than presumably blocked off at the filter of natural reason. By this logic,
we can actually begin to conceive of an idea of secularized religions in the sense of
rationalized religions, i.e. religions which contain some amount of beliefs and practices
which are exposed to rational scrutiny or have developed the expectation that religious
beliefs carry an expectation for the individual to rationally examine their beliefs and
values. This is not to be confused with any idea of secular religion or those movements
based on secular ideas, theories and philosophies which have dogmatic and other
epithetic qualities of religions. To my knowledge, it is a wholly new idea of religions
which undergo a process of secularization themselves and it is something which appears
to be entirely consonant with Taylors statements about the idea that we all live in a
secular social imaginary, whether we are believers or nonbelievers; Taylor refers to it
as the passing of the earlier nave framework, and the rise of our reflective one.
(ASA 14) This qualification could be used to characterize the beliefs of most Christian
denominations today in contrast to pre-modern Christianity. Also, it can be applied to
understand not only how sects and denominations of Christianity have adapted to the
social and political conditions of secularism, as well explaining the response of those
fundamentalist sects which have explicitly rejected this development of secularization as
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rationalization in rejecting the expectation for rational examination and emphasizing pure
faith (more of this issue of fundamentalism as a response to secularization will come later
in section three). Thus, we can use it to characterize not just how secular ethics are
possible, but what is the nature of ethical thought in a secular age.
I understand the potential absurdity in suggesting such a notion of a secularized religion,
but it seems clear from Taylors reformulation of the concept that there is nothing about
the process which suggests that it necessarily implies an incompatibility with religion.
The original notion of the secular is, after all, an explicitly Christian notion referring to
the distinctions in time from human to divine. It is a way of contrasting the saeculum, the
temporal events of humanity on Earth, with the sacred realm, the eternal world of the
heavens in which God and angels and saved souls all exist. I somewhat prefer the
analogous contrast of Augustines City of Man and City of God, which were understood
to exist in a duality, one complementing the other. Secularization then, as Taylor
conceives it, is an alteration of this coexistence, which in the endcomes close to
wiping out the duality altogether. (265) Moreover, it suggests how this idea of
secularization as an evolutionary process will encourage us to reconsider our accepted
notions of not just morality but religion. The emphasis on the revolutionary perspective
for secularization has made it generally difficult for us to discern the origins of
modernity. What I aim to suggest here is not that there is no essential difference in the
world before and after secularization, but that while the development may have occurred
more slowly and unconsciously than we think, it has generated significantly different
moral orders that lead to this disjunction in moral thought from today to just five hundred
years ago.
Taylors project for understanding the modern social imaginary has origins in his project
from SS to uncover the sources of our modern moral identity. (Braman 25) This
project has much in common with the major work of Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, in
which he argues that lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of
morality. (2) Brian Braman explains this as the idea that
[W]e live under the false assumption that we hold in common shared
understanding of our common moral sources. But in fact we no longer share the
same understanding concerning our moral meanings and values. We have lost, as
he says, our comprehension because we no longer know the history of our moral
sources. (25)
The reason for pursuing this genealogy of modern moral identity is not simply better selfunderstanding, but to grasp whether the identity is a self-destructive one, which is itself
one of the major points at issue in the debate about modernity. (SS 504) This concern
about the ways in which modern morality may be unsustainable, self-undermining, or
pathological is something which brings us right up against the central concern of
Nietzschean nihilism as a collapse of morality. But at this point, we can understand that
there is some idea of a major shift having occurred in morality.
Near the end of ASA, Taylor makes some initial attempts to propose ways of avoiding a
pathological morality (the conditions of which I will have to discuss in the next section),
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and he advocates that our best bet to avoiding this pathological moral structure is in
reclaiming the Western heritage in the values of Christianity. Obviously, this proposal
is ripe for seeming like a serious affront to the perspective of non-Christian and nonreligious readers. But there is more than this reason to push back on this proposal,
namely that if there is a possibility for these shifts in both religion and morality, then it
opens up the question of what exactly we are aiming to return to. Nietzsche would seem
to immediately reject any idea that we can avoid the impending collapse of morality just
by retreating to religion, especially Christianity, especially since he claims that the ascetic
ideal of Christianity already consists of an attempt to stave off this crisis and really only
pushed our confrontation with it into the future, even escalating the gravity of the
confrontation. It seems a bit too easy for Taylor, a Christian, to suggest that people need
to reconnect with the Wests religious roots, especially if he is to continue advocating for
secularity as providing real alternatives to religious morality. So Im willing to side with
Nietzsche in part here. But the question is, how can we conceive of this moral evolution
in a way that can also avoid the pathological condition of nihilism which seems to render
moral thought impossible? To start, we need to reapply this idea that secularization is a
deep process which alters the structure of religion and morality itself, and in a way that
we do not simply advocate a return to religion, but offer a new order in which to
understand moral thought.
The problem consists in carrying this notion of a moral order based in divine moral laws
into the secular age, which has developed into a very different and perhaps even several
alternate structures for thinking about morality. Peter Gordon has pointed out some of
these qualms with Taylors proposals for reclaim the traditional transcendental sources of
Western morality:
If we are to take seriously Taylors premise that a change in the background has
brought forth new and unprecedented options for human life, including the life of
faith, then we should also consider the possibility that the great transformation
from the pre-modern religious world to our own world of immanent modernity
may also have changed our conception of the sacred itself. Gordon 672-3
This encourages us to look for ideas about secularization further back in history to the
Axial Age, the period of the rise of world religions which were often based in a
transcendental conception of the sacred. Gordons selection of Marcel Gauchet as an
excellent example of this provocative and intriguing thesis in The Disenchantment of the
World (which Taylor generally affirms in his contributed preface to the book) in which
Gauchet argues, the rise of transcendence fueled what Gauchet calls the religious exit
from religion, since it was the initial step by which humanity desacralized its
understanding of its own social and terrestrial condition and gained greater freedom over
its fate. (Gordon 672-3) Thus, the application and development of reason could be
understood as part of how Axial age religions have enriched themselves over time,
developing conceptual theodicies and other theological interpretations that attempt to
bridge the transcendental divinity with the human beings as their followers. With its
cultivation of the conscience as a rational faculty for self-examination, we could
characterize Christianity, with no malicious undertones, one of the original
secularized/secularizing religions, and avoid the idea of Europe as a secular exception
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in the world.
The reformulation of secularization that Ive been characterizing here is intended to begin
seeing secularization from this perspective of an evolutionary development. The idea
that the roots of European/Western secularization could be found within Christianity
itself a thesis that it seems both Nietzsche and Weber would support offers the
beginnings for dismissing an interpretation of secularization only as a subtraction story.
Furthermore, the central idea that the transcendental basis for morality provided the
structure by which secularization had to develop by requiring the examination of ethical
values by individual human reason should encourage us to see secularization not as
some revolutionary subtraction or rejection of religion, but as a long unconscious
development in human thought.
Still, I have been hinting about the crisis posed by nihilism for ethics in a secular age, and
one wonders how we can explain that if nihilisms appearance is due to a process that
was unavoidable. This problem arises for Taylor as well, since he does engage in some
critique of modern ethics and modern ethical subjectivity, but he seems reticent to explain
what the origin for such problems is. Unlike Nietzsche, Taylor tries to be a great thinker,
not a provocative one, and it would be blatantly incorrect to assume that he wants to lay
blame for the ethical problems of our secular age on secularization or radical secularists.
He is not a fundamentalist, though he is trying to encourage those traditional Catholics
and other religious believers like him who retain their religion in a secular world. And
though Nietzsche levels more vindictive claims about the origins of nihilism on
Christianity, it too is tempered with an acknowledgement of the great benefits which
Christian morality brought to mankind. Given this ambivalence toward the outcome of
moral secularization, how shall we understand the crisis that is posed by nihilism for
morality in a secular age?

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III.
Secular ethical conflicts: A case study in religious toleration
As an example to introduce this central problem, let us confront the ethical expectation
for religious tolerance, which has been a specific site of conflict over competing
interpretations of how to resolve moral thought in a secular age. It has generated
controversy in at least two ways: (1) the way in which this ethical demand for mutual
respect of different religious and non-religious worldviews has become a codified and
sentimentalized ethical principle, and (2) the way in which the pursuit of the necessary
political/social neutrality for religious toleration may have placed excessive restrictions
on particular religions, such that neutrality actually inhibits freedom of religious
expression. Both elements can be examined through the lens of what I mentioned earlier
in laffaire du foulard and the headscarf ban in French public schools, so lets take a
moment to examine the case in more detail before returning to the way it represents the
problematic conditions for ethics in a secular age.
Controversies within laicit: the headscarf ban
It is no news that the French model of political secularism, lacit, seems to be facing new
challenges, i.e. challenges not directly stemming from the Catholic Church. The very
need to pass the 2004 law banning religious symbols in public schools, prompted by the
actions of a number of Muslim girls wearing a headscarf to public school and
international scrutiny of the system of lacit to support this ban, often from
multiculturalist states like England and the United States; they seem to suggest that the
presumed justifications of this French form of political secularism is under threat from
both internal and external forces. Arguments on what the challenges are vary: it could
the unwillingness of French Muslims to separate their religious and political identities; or
perhaps it as, as the multicultural states point out, the hypocrisy of using a system of
religious neutrality to punish its unintegrated and unintegrating Muslim population. Has
Frances long history of immigration and the fact of pluralism finally caught up with it,
pushing lacit to its breaking point? In fact, neither of these characterizations of the
challenges to lacit gets to the root of the problem, because they do not come to terms
with why the debate has been so polarizing and the measures enacted so far offered so
little resolution to the question of the justification of lacit.
The term lacit was not introduced into French discourse until almost a century after the
French Revolution and not even enshrined in law until the 1905 Law of Separation and
the constitution of the fifth and current French Republic in 1958. John Bowen notes that
this can make it difficult to understand why the French are so adamant about it, or even
how they understand what they are talking about:
The difficulty with this notion [of lacit] is that there is no it. Not only has
there never been agreement on the role religion should play in public life...there is
no historical actor called lacit: only a series of debates, laws, and multiple
efforts to assert claims over public space. Bowen 33.
Despite this apparent historical absence of lacit, it remains as a founding myth of the
[original] French republic. (Gunn 422) While the specific instantiation of these laws
might be useful for understanding what it means to be laque, historians and politicians of
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France continually emphasize that the concept is one that contains a historical continuity
with the political philosophy of republicanism in first French republic. It is an idea that
aims to gather certain principles of the Republic in respect to religion, which involved not
merely the removal of religion from the realm of government but the establishment of a
new national identity based on the values of republicanism.
According to Cecil Laborde, lacit consists of three essential principles: neutrality,
autonomy, and community. Neutrality is understood as the separation of religion and
state, whereby the state refuses to recognize or establish a religion. This can essentially
be considered a commonality between the American case and the French. Autonomy and
community can be the more difficult to understand from the American perspective, since
they incorporate principles which extend beyond the ideal of tolerance and religious
neutrality. Autonomy is the aspect by which lacit consecrates the liberation of the
French citizen from religious dogma, something which the American citizen does not
necessarily share in common history. Citizenship consecrated the human capacity for
freedom its ability to shake off all obstacles to the expression of the autonomous
rational will. (Laborde 171) Yet even this aspect would be understood across the ocean
and in American culture. The final principle - community - is historically understood as
having simultaneously sought to reduce the pervasive and multifaceted influence of
Catholic norms on French society and to anchor the liberal, individualistic principles of
the revolution onto an alternative republican public culture. (Laborde 176) It is this last
aspect which has commonly caused people to think of lacit as the French state religion.
State schools during the Third Republic were often likened to secular churches
dedicated to the diffusion of the religion of the patrie. (Laborde 176) This is not to
presume that lacit has any religious tenets, but it marks the sense in which the schools
effectively became modes of ideological construction for the laque republican
community of France, a practice which is necessary to maintain the coherence of the
Republic even to this day. Though all of these aspects can be assumed under the concept
of lacit, it is notably the last aspect which may be most important for readers from the
Anglo-American tradition of secularism because it is the least amenable to liberal
thought. (Laborde 175) It is this aspect which draws the heat of these challenges to
lacit.
Internal and external challenges to lacit
The challenges to lacit appear to be based on something like the following form: a
difference of interpretation in the acceptable form of practice/public expression of
religion in secular society. Domestically, this is best represented by laffaire du foulard
or laffaire du voile: the appearance of headscarves being worn by students in the public
schools, which eventually resulted in the 2004 ban on ostentatious religious symbols in
all state-sponsored schools. However, this problem also radiates out into the perceived
failure of the Muslim population, especially those of the former colonies (including
Algeria), to successfully integrate into the French metropole. In its most extremist forms,
it suggests the question Is Islam compatible with lacit? or Can Islam be dissolved
into the Republic? On an international level, this problem is identified as the French
states unwillingness to acknowledge the fact of pluralism within its borders. This
criticism consists of the ignorance of the French state of the existence of new or unique
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religious elements within French society, which leads to the repression of the free
practice of certain forms of Islam. Well need to examine this idea of a fact of
pluralism which has apparently gone unnoticed by the French a bit more closely, but in
order to do so, well need to discuss each of the challenges a bit more in depth.
On an internal, domestic level, the challenge to lacit can, generally speaking, be traced
to the existence of a French Muslim population within the French metropole. Yet France
has a long history of international immigration, at least half a century of Muslim
immigration, and though the estimates of Muslims in France do show a historical
increase, it is unclear that this itself should create a necessary rift within French society.
France, overwhelmingly Catholic at the time of and for some time after the 1789
Revolution, has been accommodating religion in its society for centuries now, including a
the existence of a significant Jewish population as well. Since the French government
does not sponsor censuses based on religious belief, all are unofficial estimates but which
generally suggest a growth in the Muslim population now existing somewhere between 45 million. But, despite the threatening predictions that France will become a Muslim
country by 2020 by the xenophobic political party, le Front National, or the expressed
ideal among many Muslims that Islam represents a unified global community, we must
critique the notion that there is a unified French Muslim community. French Muslims are
clearly a diverse group: data shows them coming from many areas of the world, most
from once-French colonies. (Laurence and Vaisse 21) This diversity cannot be passed
over to simply suggest a major growth in one unified group which can be called the
Muslim community. Furthermore, there are many ways of being a Muslim: Jonathan
Laurence and Justin Vaisse remark that Religious observance varies with national origin
and ethnicity, (Laurence and Vaisse 87) and [i]n 2005, French adults of African or
Turkish origin, for example (potential Muslims, in sociologically defined terminology),
were not markedly more mosquegoing than French Catholics were church-going: 22
percent versus 18 percent of these groups, respectively said that they attended services
once a month. (Laurence and Vaisse 76) Furthermore, Tariq Ramadan notes six
difference tendencies of thought among contemporary Western Muslims. (Ramadan 2428) This is to critique the notion not only that Islam is a singular religion of mostly
Islamist elements, but also the idea that it cannot be compatible with French republican
values. People often argue that, just as there is no incompatibility of the French republic
with Christianity or Judaism, it would be ridiculous to assume that Islam cannot be
compatible as well. Even though the French Counsel on Muslim Religion determined the
headscarf as a general requirement for women, they also judged that their education was
more important than following this requirement. Le CFCM a rappel que le port du
foulard tait une prescription pour les femmes. En mme temps, il a estim que les jeunes
fille devaient se soumettre la loi, en jugeant que leurs tudes taient plus importantes
que le port du voile. (Terniersen 114) The argument is that incompatibility only exists
on certain points, namely the wearing of the headscarf, but another of which might
include the legalization of polygamy (though polygamy is hardly suggested to be an
absolute requirement in Islam). This may be true, but it aims to wipe away the challenge
as a simple policy dispute. Muslims inside and outside of France could not be whipped
up into such a stir if the problem was simply one fairly insignificant point like a policy

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dispute regarding the proper places for the wearing of the headscarf, which itself is not
recognized by all Muslims everywhere. Bowen explains:
The Quran only speaks of the need to erect a curtain (hijb) between women
and men and otherwise recommends modesty to keep from being molested by
men. It does not specifically prescribe being veiled in any particular form. 68-69
This diversity within the population of French Muslims suggests that while the presence
of Islam in France is a relatively recent phenomenon, there exists a long tradition of
French interaction with Islam and a half-century over which Muslim immigration has
occurred and from all many different countries. Thus, while the presence of Muslims
living in Fance is a fairly significant phenomenon in French history, it is not really recent
or significant enough to spark something like the headscarf affair. It is this idea of a
recent and significant event which must be taken into account in order to understand the
challenge to lacit perceived in the headscarf affair.
Thus, I must argue, contrary to the idea that the French are ignorant of some fact of
pluralism; in fact, it is precisely the new French awareness of the presence of Muslims
in their society that has further generated this challenge to lacit. Even in 1989, at the
origins of the headscarf affair, there was not widespread outcry or direct intervention by
state law. This all changed after the events of September 11, 2001. Where the
headscarf was once viewed as purely a mode of religious expression, it took on an
increased political significance after 9/11. In other words, Islam and the headscarf were
politicized. (Beydhoun 190) It is only after this major terrorist attack seeming to
emanate from the Muslim world and the Wests worries over Islamist political
movements in global politics that we get the outcry in the French media against growing
communitarianism in early 2002, the Stasi commission organized to evaluate the
headscarfs challenge to lacit in 2003, and the ban against religious symbols in schools
of 2004. Furthermore, the phenomenon of re-Islamization - increased religious
consciousness among younger generations [of Muslims] (Laurence and Vaisse 90) - has
been well documented in France. This may not translate into more frequent religious
practice, but it has produced a significant contingent of those who report that they feel
Muslim first and then French (34 percent of self-identified Muslim respondents by a U.S.
Department of State poll in 2005) and nearly as many, 33 percent, who feel both
identifications equally. (Laurence and Vaisse 75) This is a clear challenge to the
expressed ideals of the French state on both the issue of republicanism, which requires
French identity over all others, and moreover an identity which is laque. Thus, the
headscarf was perceived as an example of both the potential threat of islamism to French
Muslims. (In Why the French Dont Like Headscarves, John Bowen argues that the
headscarf also represents a threat of communitarianism and sexism, though for my
purposes here, these two threats among can be placed in a sub-category of the internal
challenges to lacit posed by and islamism in the population of French Muslims.) While
the French remain ignorant of the actual total Muslim population, they are clearly not
ignorant of its existence; it is only due to this high profile of a growing disaffection
among the French Muslim population that can account for the real eruption of a challenge
to lacit.

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The argument of the French states ignorance of a fact of pluralism largely comes from
the advocates of multiculturalist secularism - this general concern is practically present in
the form of secularism they advocate. Essentially, the ignorance of a fact of pluralism
parallels the criticism that certain applications of lacit such as the ban on religious
symbols entail the repression of free practice of religion. Thus, multiculturalist or AngloAmerican case of secularism, while not directly affected by the policies of lacit, also
represent a challenge to lacit.
Le monde anglo-saxon a manifest une
incomprehension face une decision qui paratrait inimaginable en Angleterre ou aux
tats-Unis. (Terniersen 127) In doing so, these advocates of multiculturalist secularism
pose their own interpretations of what are supposed to be international rights to freedom
of religion against those of the French. Consider just the example of a recent blog post
for the New York Times examining whether bans on headscarves and burkas in European
democracies by the American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. In her intial post, she
argued between two understandings of free exercise, both based on Anglo-American
philosophers (John Locke and Roger Williams); she did not even consider the
Rousseauian, republican tradition. In her follow-up post, she comments on lacit in the
following manner, the amount and type of separation that the French system mandates,
while understandable historically, looks unfair in the light of the principles I have
defended. (Beyond the Veil) There is no attempt to grasp an alternate set of principles
to be justified.
The understanding of the freedom of religion according to the advocate of multiculturalist
secularism is phrased in terms of two concepts: namely, state neutrality and freedom of
conscience/practice. In terms of Labordes three principles by which we analyzed lacit,
these concepts are intended to allow for the aspect of neutrality directly, the aspect of
autonomy indirectly, and directly oppose the aspect of community. State neutrality and
freedom of religion/conscience both represent the neutrality aspect of secularism insofar
as they intend to create an environment of political and religious tolerance. These
concepts both indirectly contribute to the autonomy of both the state and the individual
by allowing people to define their own political will and the will of the state, without
reference to justification by a religion or religious organization. However, as respects the
aspect of community in the philosophy of secularism, the multicultural secularist assumes
a necessary diversity among the population which is inviolable by the state - a fact of
pluralism is presumed to exist and cannot be changed even through the formation of the
state and a politically unified will of the people for that state. To do so would infringe
the concepts of state neutrality and freedom of conscience which allows the population to
define their own views of religion and state apart from the interference of politics. Thus,
the French attempts to construct a political community which interprets secularism
strictly along the lines of lacit is generally seen as breaking both of these boundaries;
hence, the argument that the French State is using lacit to combat the fact of
pluralism.
Yet this idea of a fact of pluralism is already too simplistic to serve as a satisfactory
critique. The French clearly do not believe that lacit infringes on the acceptance of
diverse lifestyles - in fact, they would argue that the construction of a unified conception
of secularism in lacit is precisely what ensures the freedom of religion, because
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everyone will know what constitutes its infringement. It is an overly simplistic

interpretation of lacit which sees it as incompatible with pluralism: identities are fluid
objects and do not necessarily conflict with each other, and it would need to be a much
more detailed argument to suggest that French identity somehow conflicts with all other
identities.
The problem with employing the fact of pluralism as the multiculturalist secularists do
here is that it is a charged concept, most often associated with the particular problematic
of John Rawls. (Laborde 179) Rawls was a political philosopher from the liberal
tradition and thus, any idea of the fact of pluralism already possesses a certain idea of
religion and a certain idea of the secular states relation to religion which is most
amenable to Anglo-American liberal thought. Notably, Laborde critiques her own
analysis of lacit with this very concern in mind, concerned that that it may cause us to
forget that the French public philosophy of republicanism operates in a different
conceptual world to that of Anglo-American liberal academia.(Laborde 179) There is
no simple fact of pluralism, least of all for France with its history multi-ethnic history.
Rather, the argument really concerns the interpretation of this community aspect of
secularism, the one in which lacits interpretation is least amenable to the frame of
liberal thought. As I phrased it earlier, the critique must be based on the unjustifiable
ideological construction of the French community by the state.
Lacits interpretation of the aspect of community demands the restriction of religion to
the private sphere and is one of the foundations of French republican values; the French
realize that the secular community did not and does not exist in a primordial form. In this
way, the French encounter the same challenge of justifying their particular justification
on a principle which is not naively believed, i.e. it has no absolute standing or one
interpretation. The argument must go something like, yes perhaps the principles of
French secularism require the intrusion of the state, but is this intrusion itself justifiable?
It is already fairly clear that this activity of the state is directly incompatible with
principles of an Anglo-American secularism which presumes no involvement by the state
in matters of religion, as well as the principles of any re-Islamized Muslims who presume
no division between sacred/secular. Yet these questions actually gets us closer to the real
heart of why these challenges to lacit exist today. It is a problem of the underlying
ethical justification for these political norms and the way in which people disagree on
these justifications.
Ethical justification and the aiming for codification
Part of the problem with the headscarf ban then is that it goes along with a traditional
assumption of tolerance. Jean Bethke Elshtain writes that
The standard version of the story [of the development of tolerance] goes
something like this: Mandated liberal toleration saved religion from its own
excesses and absolutist demands. By forcing a regime of toleration on religion,
liberalism in its constitutional forms demanded the religion act more tolerantly.
129.
This story may be true, to some extent, but especially in cases like France under the
system of lacit, religious toleration has placed certain demands upon a religion in that
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in order for religion to be tolerated it must be privatized. (130) The controversial ban
on wearing a traditional headscarf by Muslim girls in French state schools is a popular
example of this apparent requirement for religious privatization, which many in France
support as a legitimate expectation for maintaining the freedom of conscience of any
individual French citizen in the secular state. This idea of toleration risks having its
meaning reduced to the subjective spiritual well-being of religious practitioners, and
doesnt incorporate the crucial communal and public aspects of religion,
misunderstanding both religion itself and betraying the hope behind toleration itself. This
is a troubling feature of modernity...observed by Taylor over and over in his work.
(130)
The issue at stake here is an overly simplified notion of religious tolerance based on
certain principles of secularism, principles which Taylor believes speak of a
fetishization (Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism?) or sacralization
of the principles which does not belong in them properly. Despite the principle of
tolerance as a central feature of secularism, there is no one presumed definition of
tolerance, and therefore is no simple application of the rule of lacit which can dismiss
the wearing of headscarves in class by rote. Authentic tolerance is based on a
recognition of deep, not superficial, differences here gives way before an attempt to
normalize...in the name of a strong normativity...a view of equality that is taken as the
view of equality rather than as one among a number of competing views, a position that
Elshtain (and Taylor by extension) correctly assert would destroy plurality in the name
of equality. (133) This means that, despite the simplicity of citing a general rule about
privatization of religion which has traditionally come out of the development of lacit,
this rule is not enough to ensure that authentic religious tolerance is achieved.
I must admit, it is slightly unfair of me to select the French case of lacit and laffaire du
foulard to illustrate this problem in no small part because I might argue that the ban in
schools may be justifiable to some extent based on unique historical, social and political
aspects of the French republic itself. But it is also unfair to suggest that the band was
mostly driven by a fetishized concept of lacit without doing a thorough examination of
the case. However, focusing on the conflict over this issue is important for highlighting
the major anxieties and pitfalls of ethical justification in a secular age. It might be
understandable to expect, in a secular age when we have no transcendental measure of
justice to look to, that we should either attempt to legalistically codify the nature of lacit
so that we can avoid such conflicts in interpretation, or abandon the notion of a secular
justice to return to something which is absolute. And actually both of these reactions
capture something of the sentimental, nostalgic reaction that comes with nihilism as a
condition of moral psychology after secularization. It is this condition which supports the
idea that nihilism not just a simple metaethical statement, as you will recall, but as I argue
one which is prompted by the historical moment in which it develops.
To recap, the primary conditions of ethics in a secular age are not only the presence of
many options for justifying ethical values but the expectation of autonomous
responsibility for choosing among them and their justifications. Both of these answers
highlight the way in which these conditions prove not just problematic for ethics, but
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what appears to be a real crisis for ethics; namely, each answer is an attempt to dissolve
these fundamental tensions of ethics in a secular age by dismissing one of the conditions.
If we aim to codify morality, it certainly resolves the problem of moral disagreement, but
in doing so it reduces authentic moral values like toleration to positivistic codes of justice
without the larger attempt to engage with or justify the code itself. On the other option, if
we suggest the abandonment of the notion of any secular-type justice to return to some
traditionally-founded moral values in a particular religious or cultural worldview as is
advocated in radical right wing populist groups, resurgent not only in France but around
the continent and the West then we abandon the idea of religious tolerance altogether.
It is in these the most prominent approaches to resolving such ethical quandaries that
seems to signify a pathological nature at the heart of the modern moral identity, a
decadence which inherently infiltrates our idea of what is really going on toward a
development of moral nihilism. Yet I dont think this is true and I would argue that
Taylor already has begun to open up available paths for mediating these complex
tensions. But to understand how he does so adequately, we must provide a brief
reconstruction of how nihilism influences these contemporary moral issues.
As I have argued, Nietzsches concerns with Christian and modern European ethics
represent engagements with problems of ethics after Christianization and its subsequent
secularization, which culminates in his concern over the advent of nihilism in Europe.
Although it may seem like more philosophical grandstanding, the likes of which
Nietzsche performed throughout his oeuvre, I would like to suggest that this historical
moment represents a crisis for morality. Unfortunately, the appearance of this word so
commonly today has created an association more with fear and anxiety about instability
and it plays mostly into the hands of the doomsayers of some impending apocalyptic
collapse. Yet, once we have articulated this re-evaluation of secularization and its
implications for nihilism as its outcome, well find that it signifies a great turning point in
which the trend of future events regarding secularization will be defined and applied, and
how we relate to secularized ethics will be decided.

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IV.
Nihilism as a crisis in modern, secular ethics
The most important point of connection between Nietzsche and Taylor is the crisis faced
by morality in the modern world. This crisis is realized in one major sense as a concern
about the possibility for having moral values in the absence of a transcendental ideal
(such as Christian morality does). Yet this also points to a related concern, namely the
common modern idea that morality is merely a matter of obeying a code which can be
derived from ones moral values.
The crisis of moral thought
For Nietzsche, the crisis of morality in nihilism, moral categories and moral values might
be considered the most serious consequence of the death of God. While Nietzsche
does often focus on criticizing Christian moral values, his critique of morality may have
more to do with the attempts by moral theorists to retain traditional values that come out
of religion and are necessarily predicated upon belief in the Christian god. Most notably,
he criticized Kant for not following his unparalleled ability to reason to question the
existence of a transcendental moral law. Even Kant...was led to clip the wings of his
own spirit. Even Kant, whose reasoning power was second to none, stopped short of
questioning the moral law, ceased prematurely to think, and thus vitiated his moral
philosophy. (Kaufmann Death 20) This critique is extended to the moralists of
Nietzsches day in his critique of the English psychologists who attempt to provide a
naturalistic origin for the Judeo-Christian conception of morality. He directly targets
them in the first sentence of the first essay in On the Genealogy of Morality (hereafter
GM) (These English psychologists... (24)) for his critique of morality, They are rid of
the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian
morality. That is an English consistency. (Twilight of the Idols from Kaufmanns Basic
Writings of Nietzsche 515) The problem is to assume that there is somehow legitimacy
for the traditional Judeo-Christian morals without the force of a Judeo-Christian god
behind them.
This critique also plays an important role for Taylor. He focuses in on the Christian
concept of agape - love for ones neighbor - which has been inherited from the Christian
tradition in Europe and which secular Enlightenment humanism (ASA 372) has been
constantly refashioning while denying its essentially Christian origins. He writes, It
would be one thing to reject Christianity in the name of a real return to a pre-modern
exclusive humanism...But the main thrust of modern exclusive humanism has tried rather
to render immanent this capacity of beneficence, and this is very far from being a return
to ancient wisdom, adding that Nietzsche tirelessly made this point. (Taylor ASA 247)
Taylor also recognizes that the moral values of secular Enlightenment humanism, such as
Kants categorical imperative, are but a replacement for Christian agape. This marks a
major problem for secular humanisms values of purely immanent and natural human
betterment for Taylor, but is he really taking the same line of critique as Nietzsche? To a
certain and significant extent, it seems to me that he does. Take, for instance, this
passage:

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In order to better see the phenomena we want to explain [i.e. what it means to
live in a secular age], we should see religions relation to a beyond in three
dimensions. And the crucial one, that which makes its impact on our lives
understandable, is the one I have just been exploring: the sense that there is some
good higher than, beyond human flourishing. In the Christian case, we could
think of this as agape, the love which God has for us, and which we can partake of
through his power. In other words, a possibility of transformation is offered,
which takes us beyond merely human perfection. But of course, this notion of a
higher good as attainable by us could only make sense in the context of belief in a
higher power, the transcendent God of faith which appears in most definitions of
religion. But then thirdly, the Christian story of our potential transformation by
agape requires that we see our life as going beyond the bounds of its natural
scope between birth and death; our lives extend beyond this life. (ASA 20.)
[italics are my emphasis]
Without the force and nature of the Christian god behind it, it seems impossible to justify
such expectations of humanity, viz. that it would be possible, much less required, to
improve the human condition. This passage is only one of the most explicit expressions
of pessimism about the possibility of exclusive humanist values in ASA, but it extends
just as much to Taylors perspective on the feeling of malaise in modern life, The sense
that this life is empty, flat, devoid of higher purpose, (ASA 506) and perhaps even to his
pessimism in aesthetics (as respects our attempts to experience some substitute for
spiritual transcendence in music or art) and politics (as respects his concerns about the
tendencies of modern states toward Fascism or Communism). Our secular age, though it
attempts to maintain some traditional values, lacks the guiding power of the transcendent
God to frame and enforce those values.
Orienting ourselves to nihilism: disorientation and despair
The general problem with orienting ourselves to nihilism consists in grasping its apparent
contradictions. Reginster defines nihilism as the conviction that life is meaningless, or
not worth living, (Affirmation 8) a conviction that suggests both a deep engagement
with the need for moral values while rejecting the existence of any moral values present
which would be worth engaging. In Nietzsches language, nihilism is characterized by
the conditions in which the goal is lacking; the why? finds no answer (WP 2; cf. 55),
which is to say, not just lack of goals which could be justified by moral values but goals
the achievement of which is a necessary condition of the realization of those values. (23)
It is characterized by two states that generally help characterize the psychological
conditions which prompt the two sorts of morally nihilistic reactions we outlined in the
case study on toleration: disorientation and despair. There is a general sense that the
nihilist must fluctuate between these two states of moral psychology, and these states
represent similar ways that we might fluctuate between one or the other solution to the
problem of ethics in a secular age.
The first of these, disorientation, comes from the realization that our highest values are
not normatively objective. Nietzsches attempt to bring such a question to bear on
morality consists in the parable of the madman, who runs through the public square
confronting the people who no longer believed in God or claimed indifference to the
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question of his existence. As Reginster suggests, The death of God signifies the loss of
normative authority for our values. (Affirmation 44) Although Ive been rejecting the
notion of a simple subtraction story, I dont think this rules out the fact that secularization
represents a loss of normative authority; that seems true, at least in our own sense of
history from five hundred years ago. But the question of the subtraction story in general
has more to do with how we react to this loss, whether we experience it as a fundamental
lack and a complete and utter loss, not just of normative authority, but the possibility of
moral values as well. The nihilist may yet fluctuate to the other condition of despair, in
which the impossibility for realizing our highest values generates the broad ethical
dissatisfaction with the world in itself. This in some ways overcomes the problem that
disorientation poses in that it rejects the idea that there are objective values for guiding
us; still, it seems to do so only from the perspective of rejecting the pre-existence of
moral values in general.
In defining nihilism by these aspects of despair and disorientation, Reginster is actually
defining the tension that a nihilistic account of ethics would provide for. In fact, a
properly nihilistic account of ethics could not resolve into one of them without losing the
other. The point of this is to suggest that this tension experienced by the nihilist are not
states of the nihilist alone, but conditions which can be experienced in all ethical choices
in a secular age. If the nihilist resolves and commits entirely to any one of these aspects
in their confrontation with ethical values, then they are what Nietzsche would refer to as
its imperfect forms. A perfected form of nihilism must confront the deep morality that
occurs within nihilism, which finds it so necessary to reject the ideas of an objective
orientation or of pre-existing values. But in this, it does not render a lack of morality it
carries the capacity for morality with it and in doing so it must adjust to a
fundamentally new moral framework which comes out of the process of secularization.
In this sense, these characteristics of disorientation and despair are both psychological
conditions of moral thought after secularization and ways that the nihilist attempts to
respond to these conditions: they are attempts to cope with the crisis of morality that I
suggested before. Given this imperfection in the coping strategies of nihilism thus far
proposed, I argue that this form of nihilism has really just postponed the crisis, not
directly confronted it. Ive been hinting about confronting this question as central to the
crisis: can we remain moral in a world where there is no longer an ultimate justification
for morality based on the existence of God or some other divine authority? Lets move
on to understanding the possibilities of real coping strategies.
Coping with crisis
As I have already suggested, the psychological conditions of disorientation and despair
also stimulate attempts to cope with these conditions. They try to answer the crisis of
morality posed after secularization, but they merely postpone the arrival of the crisis by
avoiding the issue I suggested before: namely, understanding how morality has been
transformed by secularization. In the first section we have attempted to lay out how
morality has been transformed in a way that is developmental and not merely subtractive,
evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This is to point out the problems with what feel
like not only the most logical means of coping with moral secularization but the most
reductive formulations of moral nihilism. One of the most important of these has been
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discussed at length by both Taylor and Nietzsche, namely the issue of moral codification.
Lets examine it again for a moment.
As I mentioned before, the crisis of morality leads to another shared concern of Nietzsche
and Taylor: the tendency to codify moral values. For Taylor, this is one of the defining
aspects of the modern moral order, that we wish to layout and appeal to a long list of
moral codes that define what is right and wrong action. One of the ways in which this
first occurs in Christian history is with the elimination of anti-structure moments (viz.
Carnival, where society is turned upside down and, like a steam valve, traditional values
are reset) from an accepted part of European morality and politics.
The idea that a code need leave no space for the principle that contradicts it, that
there need be no limit to its enforcement, which is the spirit of totalitarianism, is
not just one of the consequences of the eclipse of anti-structure in
modernity...Yielding to this temptation is what helping bring modern secularity,
in all its senses, into being. ASA 50-51.
The movements of Reform, which introduced this motivation for the code, also
degenerate our moral values by turning them into just rules to be followed, rather than
values which we feel and to which we feel connected. One of his goals in ASA is to
encourage Christians to rediscover the spirit which is at the heart of Christianity, not just
to follow a moral code because it is there. This could apply equally well to Westerners as
a whole since Taylor believes Christian values are at the heart of the Western identity.
For Nietzsche, this subject appears as a more general concern, namely in his opposition to
herd mentality.
[T]he Superman which Nietzsche visualised was to be a man of Supreme selfmastery and self-discipline who continuously transcended himself in creating and
realising new values and who made no compromise in breaking away from
decadent old ones. (Mathur 61)
Now Id like to say that we can distinguish his concerns of slave moralities which are
life or world-denying and his concerns with a herd mentality. Slave morality is
problematic because it turns against the will to power in which it ultimately has an
interest, therefore it is inherently contradictory. But herd mentality implies other
problems. First off, such a mentality would not lead to people to recognize the situation
of nihilism that we must realize before it can be overcome. Secondly, the pursuit of
reinterpreting traditional in the new atheistic/secular context can be seen as a result of
this; people are too lazy to realize that the death of God should require a whole new sort
of values and morality. Last of all, it is this apathy which characterizes the passive
nihilist and the last man, who accepts the futility of human existence that seems to
come with the death of God. (Howe 20). This emphasis on the freedom of individuals
in the wake of Gods death can also suggest why the principle of authenticity...is taken
as the highest maxim of Nietzsches moral theory. (Schutte 105) We get a very clear
indication that appealing to a code, which one need not understand in order to follow and
is followed simply because it exists, is a problem not only of the decadent values of
Nietzsches time, but also something that must be overcome in order to cope with moral
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secularization.
Another of these coping strategies, which I do not have time to discuss here, is
what I would call ethical fundamentalism. Ethical fundamentalism rejects both the
despair and disorientation which derive from moral secularization by grasping
nostalgically at some pre-modern foundations for ethics. This is the kind of perspective
which manifests itself in not only sects of religious fundamentalism, which jar strongly
against the general conventions of modern moral thought; it is also a factor in the appeal
of radical right-wing populist political groups. Both of these movements are insurgent in
contemporary social and political life in part because they are attempts to deal with the
crisis of morality post-secularization, though they are forced to a conclusion which is
inconsistent with modern notions of ethics; their attempts to cope are really attempts to
avoid the crisis of morality. It speaks again of a certain ethical sentimentality to which
we are intensively exposed today, given not only our moment deep in the process of
secularization and therefore seemingly far from the simple and stable structure of a
transcendentally-based morality. Accordingly, these imperfect attempts to confront the
crisis of moral secularization by avoidance actually turn out to be the pathological
structures of dealing with modern ethical tensions, not nihilism itself.
So where are the non-pathological attempts to confront the crisis of morality? How can
nihilism which arises out of the moral anxieties of disorientation and despair provide
viable solutions for the crisis prompted by moral secularization? We can already see
some attempts in Nietzsche and Taylor and Id like to conclude with them here. I ask us
to take seriously and with nuance the notion of nihilism as an ethical pessimism and
something which can provide a really viable perspective on maintaining ethics even
without expecting ethical judgments to be justified by a transcendental order.

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V.
Conclusions: Possibilities for ethics after nihilism
Now that we have illustrated a strong argument for moral crisis as an outcome of
secularization, a particularly ripe situation for the imperfect responses that normally get
characterized as nihilist, I have started to propose ideas of how we can look for ethical
thought that is not pathological. That is to say, we may be able to begin to understand
what future there is for ethics in a secular age, and what way that a perfected Nietzschean
nihilism as an ethical pessimism might offer a real option for maintaining ethics. Ill go
most into detail on Taylors idea of an ethics of authenticity here, though Reginster has
also offered an idea of Nietzsches ethics of creativity which can reaffirm some of these
notions of ethics post-nihilism.
If I hesitate to call these specifically nihilist ethics, then it is a product of my own
ambivalence toward whether the term can be adequately resurrected for modern ethical
thought, especially given the long history of abuse in using the term. These ethics can be
roughly characterized by an acknowledgment and confrontation with the conditions of
nihilism in that they ultimately avoid an absolute or transcendent foundation for the
system of values, though they do not resemble anything like what we might traditionally
consider the ethical nihilist, such as the characters on display in movies like the German
nihilists of The Big Lebowski or the evil criminal the Joker from The Dark Knight: these
characters are, respectively, caricatures of nihilism as pure apathy and hedonism and
moral degenerate anarchism, both of which may be apt on the level of imperfect nihilism.
My hope is to characterize something like Nietzsches apparent notion of a perfected
nihilist, who is not reduced to either of these decadent modes of moral existence.
Demand and affirmation in modern ethical thought: a necessary balance
The ethic of authenticity is defined by its attempt to mediate the traditional,
transcendental expectations of morality deep commitment to ethical values which are to
be applied on a universal level with the modern ideal of autonomous freedom and
individual choice of ones own values. It aims to provide a method for achieving both
the guidance and purpose of morality while retaining the expectation that we choose our
moral beliefs and be responsible to the beliefs we hold. In this, the ethic of authenticity
has two aspects: the demand and the affirmation. This dualism is an attempt to provide a
modern concept of morality. As a particularly modern conception of morality, it aims to
overcome the criticism that morality has its source in self-negation, as correctly laid out
by Nietzsche in his claim that the Judeo-Christian ethic of benevolence is entirely
powered by guilt, bad conscience, and resentiment. (I think we should take care in
presuming this extreme claim to be Nietzsches true beliefs on the matter, which comes
to us largely from GM. Much has been discussed about the rather metaphorical intent
behind the Genealogys style, not to mention Nietzsches style in general, and we must
always question whether we are getting access to Nietzsches actual feelings on the
matter. Thus, I believe that we can temper the extremity of this assertion by the idea that
such an acerbic statement may be more importantly intended to shock us, the audience,
out of our prejudices about Christian morality, rather than providing a serious assertion
about the real or true origins of it.) Accordingly, it attempts to answer the same goal of
Nietzsche attempts to discover a set of moral beliefs which are themselves affirmative, as
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specifically seen in the concept of will to power.

To discuss the two aspects, lets begin with the demand. This is moralitys requirement
of adherence to a standard or norm, and by which the activity of any person(s) should be
guided. The standard or norm demands adherence because it cannot be perceived as
contingent or relative, otherwise it undermines (or at least begins to undermine) our sense
of its worth and of being worthy to guide our activity. The demand aspect of this ethical
system is an attempt to retain the traditional formulation of morality as a set of laws
which should not be deviated from, which have some greater moral requirements based
on this horizon in which the laws become intelligible and valuable to us. Taylor heavily
emphasizes the demand aspect in reaction to the boosters of modernity who might
emphasize the importance of freedom and choice itself over adherence to an important
standard or norm (or a whole set of norms). [T]his implicitly denies the existence of a
pre-existing horizon of significance, whereby some things are worthwhile and others less
so, and still others not at all, quite anterior to choice. (EA 38)
Such a perspective must eventually confront the problems presented by relativism and the
self-defeating problem in the value of choice itself: for one, we must be able to
rationalize the choices we make, otherwise the choices appear arbitrary, and we may find
ourselves unable to assert any choice at all, given that all choices seem equally
worthwhile or vacuous. The demand is an essential aspect of modern morality
specifically in the process of self-justification which occurs in individual moral decisionmaking as well as our conception of morality in general for explaining the source of a
moral values intelligibility.
Of course, as Taylor would note, it is this aspect of morality which Nietzsche appears to
despise in the extreme. For him, it often goes under the guise of slave morality, herd
morality, or just morality in general. However, we should note that it does appear as
though it is not the aspect in itself which he despises, but rather the assertion of it as the
principal source of morality. Whether it occurs in Judeo-Christian morality or Buddhism,
another religion which Nietzsche castigates for its nihilism, Nietzsches concern is over
the way in which this aspect of the demand is claimed to be or is drawn on as the sole
source for morality.
The affirmation is the source of the moral subjects adherence to the standard or norm: it
is by our choice that we follow the principle. This aspect is introduced via Nietzsches
critique of morality, and it is something that Taylor receives from him.
[T]here is simply something morally corrupting, even dangerous, in sustaining
the demand simply on the feeling of undischarged obligation, on
guilt...Nietzsches challenge is based on a deep insight. If morality can only be
powered negatively, where there can be no such thing as beneficence powered by
an affirmation of the recipient as a being of value, then pity is destructive to the
giver and degrading to the receiver, and the ethic of benevolence may indeed be
indefensible. (SS 516)

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It is on this basis that Nietzsche builds his rejection of pity within Judeo-Christian
morality, namely because it is self-negating and sustains itself from a pathological
resentiment. In order to achieve mutually beneficial moral activity, something which is
good to all the moral subjects involved, then the moral subject must be able to affirm the
standard or norm they undertake. It is on this aspect of affirmation that Reginster argues
for Nietzsches ethics of creativity speaking of it as a commitment to creativity
(Will to Power 51) and it arrives specifically out of Nietzsches critique of the pure
ascetic ideals.
Nietzsche is famous for his tirades against priestly, ascetic values which occur most
explicitly in GM; however, we should take care in presuming that this means Nietzsche
sides with the values and practices of the aristocratic class. Their leisure clearly afforded
them a kind of strength in the ability to follow whatever values they chose. However, we
cannot return to the kind of naive perspective in which aristocratic wealth and leisure was
perceived as self-justified, which can be just as stultifying as the self-negating morality.
This would also deny the great acclaim which Nietzsche lays at the feet of the priests
ingenuity - nobody elses intelligence stands a chance against the intelligence of priestly
revenge (GM i.7) - not to mention the significance which the ascetic ideal (the great
concept produced by the priests revenge and which has so greatly influenced
conceptions of morality) has for the development of man.
Except for the ascetic ideal: man, the animal man, had no meaning up to now.
His existence on earth had no purpose...something was missing, there was an
immense lacuna around man...The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering,
was the curse which has so far blanketed mankind - and the ascetic ideal offered
man a meaning! (GM iii.28)
The ascetic ideal actually offered a way of combating the absurdity of existence and the
first confrontation with nihilism. Despite the fact that it is precisely this great invention
of Judeo-Christian morality that Nietzsche critiques for leading to nihilism, it is a
significant development which is not merely undeniable but a crucial aspect of modern
morality, and, I would argue, not necessarily something that Nietzsche wants to get rid of.
If the demand is the negative side of morality, as both Nietzsche and Taylor seem to
suggest, then the aspect of affirmation is the positive side. These aspects are positive and
negative in respect to choice: demand is the feeling of a lack of choice, affirmation is the
assertion of it. (We could also reverse this polar characterization by talking of these
aspects in terms of feelings of worth: the affirmation is perceived as a somewhat lack of
worth in that the standard or norm only has worth in so far as we choose it, while the
demand side gets the more positive feeling due to its apparently objective, non-contingent
quality.) It is not crucial that we rest on either as essentially positive or negative, only
that we understand that the relation exists in a kind of balance. In fact, it seems
preferable that we understand them on equal grounding in order to avoid the kind of
miscalculation that goes too far in both of these philosophers accounts of morality.
Reginster argues that Nietzsches attempt to build up this famed notion of will to power
is an attempt to establish an ethics of creativity, one that is based largely on this
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affirmation side of modern ethics. He builds up an analysis of the will to power as a

second-order desire, which is to say, a desire for some first-order desire but which must
be fundamentally open and undefined in order to allow for the creative assertion of an
individual set of values in the first-order desires. But, recognizing the aspects of Taylors
examination of morality, we must recognize this need for a demand side of ethics.
Otherwise the will to power entails just a descriptive principle of moral psychology,
perhaps a prescriptive aesthetic principle, but not necessarily a prescriptive ethical
principle. So despite Nietzsches own attempts to build I argue that taking the will to
power as an ethical principle is an attempt to build an affirmative, autonomous ethics, and
in turn avoid the danger of an ethics poisoned by resentiment.
But as Taylor would note, it is not enough to emphasize the choice element of ethical
evaluation to grasp a proper ethics as such, much less one that is affirmative. If we solely
emphasize individual creativity and choice in ethics, we lose an essential reason for
which we make it an ethical value. Taylor writes of ethical thought:
Things take on an importance against a background of intelligibility...It follows
that one of the things we cant do, if we are to define ourselves significantly, is
suppress or deny the horizons against which things take on significance for us.
EA 37.
Tamsin Shaws own examinations of moral thought in the context of Nietzsche have also
suggested in that Valuing might be distinguished from mere preference, or desiring, by
its normative aspect. A positive evaluation implies not just desiring something but
finding it desirable....The capacity to value involves accepting a framework of norms for
feeling. (Secularization 156-7) Whether or not Nietzsche actually believed in such a
component of demand in ethics is difficult to discern exactly, but it is clearly Taylors
aim to reintroduce this aspect into the modern ethics of authenticity, while still leaving
the ultimate justification of this demand open to multiple metaphysical narratives of a
religious or secular nature.
Where Nietzsches narrative of eternal recurrence can be seen as a secular narrative
which is used to justify his own values, Taylors justifications come from his Christian
background. Nietzsches specific justification for his moral values are founded in this
narrative, but as he suggests, he does not simply want devotees and followers, which
would entail an abdication of the individual autonomy and only produce ripe
opportunities for building resentiment. While Nietzsche would suggest that certain kinds
of values are correct, he recognizes that the ultimate justification is up to the individual.
As in the case of Taylor, for example, his concept of morality and the basis for his moral
values ultimately comes from God and a concept of agape; but this does not mean it is the
one and only true way to justify these values. This would neither be an adequate state of
moral secularism nor a viable social and political form of secularism either, since it could
not recognize the authentic sense of religious toleration that Taylor implies is such a
difficulty in modern ethics.
Moral secularization and the development of ethical pessimism
These ethical systems, which aim to allow the autonomous justification of moral values,
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are what I would call forms of ethical pessimism, in the sense that they both demand
strong valuation balanced with the expectation that they cannot or should not be justified
on an absolute foundation. Theories of pessimism are well understood today, but they
make significant sense to be applied in the context of modernity and such perspectives of
modern ethics which come after the disenchantment with general modern optimism based
on notions of progress. Joshua Foa Dienstag argues:
Pessimism is a substitute for progress, but it is not a painless one. In suggesting
that we look at time and history differently, it asks us to alter radically our opinion
both of ourselves and of what we can expect from politics. It does not simply tell
us to expect less. It tells us, in fact, to expect nothing. (5)
This seems to suggest an altogether bad situation for ethics, but as I have already
suggested, only in the lack of establishing an absolute justification, in the sense of both
universal and terminal, for ethics. As Dienstag notes, If this sounds almost nonsensical
to the modern ear, perhaps it is because we have been told for so long that progress is the
rational thing to hope for. (192) The assertion of an ethics based from the perspective of
Nietzschean nihilism that we live in a state of continuous metaphysical and metaethical
decadence is based on the idea that the maintenance and strength of an ethical
pessimism which does not admit of metaphysical progress or some other absolute
justification for ethics is no reason to disengage modern ethics or ethical values as such.
Thus, I agree with Dienstags comparison of it to the quote from Becketts Westward
Ho!, All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail
again. Fail better.
Despite Nietzsches concerns with the influence of Judeo-Christian morality on modern
ethical thought, it is by Nietzsches own evaluation that morality seems to have held
virtuous results for humanity. They have contributed to the development of a will to truth
as a form of will to power, which enhanced the development of the human morality and
society and politics to the modern forms we know today. Judeo-Christian morality, with
its demands for strong ethical values, has served as a breeder of great examples among
humanity, virtuous and dedicated and engaged in the world. I think Nietzsche would
argue that this aspect of morality must not only be acknowledged by us today but also
retained for the future of humanity.
When Dienstag reports that The pessimist expects nothing thus he or she is more truly
open to every possibility as it presents itself, (40) it implies this openness to
metaphysical possibilities; nihilism can be reinterpreted as implying there is no absolute
foundation or justification for morality, but which implies not that there are no real
foundations or justifications at all, but we must be accepting of an ambiguous though
pluralistic situation of ethical justification where multiple narratives might be used to
justify our values, but none of which is final.
I think this idea of nihilism as a kind of ethical pessimism is a more adequate
confrontation with the implications of moral secularization. This is true because it does
not ultimately reject the process of moral secularization, which we have tried to show to
be an evolutionary development, and if not unavoidable, then at least an acceptable
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adaptation in moral thought. Furthermore, it allows us to really confront the general

outcome of moral secularization, with its metaphysical pluralism in a way with a better or
at least less pathological coping mechanism: it offers ethics with a transcendental-like
demand but an autonomous affirmation of values as necessary components for life in the
modern moral order. And perhaps we can use this perspective to steel ourselves to the
great ethical challenges that we currently face in Western politics and society, along with
those that await us in the future. We shouldnt see the confrontation of this crisis as the
impending collapse in our capacity for moral values, but rather a chance to take them
back.

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