This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“If it does not absolutely transform his existence for him, then the individual is not relating himself to an eternal happiness; if there is something he is not willing to give up for its sake, then he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness.”

The first principle of democratic socialism is that we measure our wealth—both individual and collective—in terms of socially available free time. Our free time depends on social and institutional forms because it does not concern a mere quantity of time. Rather, our quantity of free time is inseparable from the quality of our free time, which requ

The exploitation of workers is necessary under capitalism, since only the extraction of surplus value can generate any form of social wealth. Even if we developed our technologies to the point where we could provide the necessary means for everyone to lead their lives—with only a small amount of social labor required to operate the technologies—we

our freedom is possible only through our mutual recognition of one another as essentially social, historical, material, and finite living beings.

There is, however, one thing that a secular form of life never will be able to promise: an eternal life or an eternal state of being.

My point, however, is that if you care for our form of life as an end in itself, you are acting on the basis of secular faith, even if you claim to be religious. Religious faith can entail obedience to moral norms, but it cannot recognize that the ultimate purpose of what we do—the ultimate reason it matters how we treat one another and the Earth—i

A religious faith in eternity cannot add anything to the dignity and pathos of mourning; it can only subtract from the mourning by diminishing the sense of loss. This is not to say that avowedly religious people do not mourn. But insofar as they do mourn, their mourning is animated by a secular faith in the irreplaceable value of a finite life rath

If I am Abraham and maintain my secular faith, I believe that Isaac’s life is priceless—I am devoted to his well-being as an end in itself—but I also believe that his life can be lost. Indeed, it is only by acknowledging and being responsive to Isaac’s finitude that I can care for him.

There are two traditional ways of addressing this material death and the anxiety it may provoke. The first is to argue that we have an immortal soul that is separate from the decomposing matter of our bodies. Even though our bodies perish, we do not really die but ascend to a higher existence, independent of any body or endowed with an incorruptibl