secularization

is not a feature unique to modern societies. Traditional, primitive, or tribal societies evidence as much variety of skepticism, materialism and religious fervor as any chosen segment of london.

Mary Douglas writes: 'Secularization is often treated as a modern trend. But the contrast of secular with religious has nothing whatsoever to do with the contrast of modern with traditional or primitive. The idea that primitive man is by nature deeply religious is nonsense. The truth is that all of the varieties of skepticism, materialism, and spiritual fervor are found in the range of tribal societies. They vary as much from one another on these lines as any chosen segment of London life'.

is nothing but stealing of the best tricks of modern society from pre-modern religious ideas.

Borrowing the old trick of early Christian polemicist, who accused the ancient Greeks of having secretly stolen their best ideas from the Bible, the secularization theorist located the unacknowledged paternity of the modern in originally religious ideas. ( 'legitimacy' 65 in Jay 1985 : 184)

is responsible for a shift in western man from a relation with an atemporal God and truth to a temporal relation between 'man and his descendants.' Which involved the pursuit of daily happiness and the encouraging of the accumulation of material wealth.

What Rorty told Balsleve in his letter is that what had prepared the West for the social progress was secularization. Secularization allowed the Western man to shift his relation with thte historical and atemporal being, that is, God, truth, to that of the temporal, that is, the one between 'man and his descendants.' This shift enabled Western societies to pursue daily happiness and encourage the accumulation of material wealth. By implication, Rorty seemed to suggest that the societies that did not go through such a secularization process, its members are still relating themselves to gods, spirits, or heroes in order to bear what is unbearable in everyday conditions such as poverty and inequality. In the latter case, there will always be a need for the dependence on a superhuman being and the presence of ascetic priests. By comparison and contrast, Rorty explicitly stated that modern Western societies signify 'a cultuer of hope,' whereas their Eastern counterparts signify a 'culture of endurance'

secularization, n.All

secularization