A Philosopher’s Specious Argument That Religion Must Be Eliminated for Democracy to Thrive

March 7 2019

In his recent book This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, the literary critic and philosopher Martin Hägglund offers a utopian vision of democratic socialism in which citizens will have not only material comfort but the time to enjoy it. In his review, James Chappel notes that Hägglund “does not do the work to show how [such a vision] might plausibly be on the horizon, or ask how it might be possible in a globalized economy.” But he objects more strenuously to the book’s main argument: that until people abandon religion—which takes focus away from humanity in this world and toward the supernal—democracy cannot reach perfection. Chappel writes:

The most obvious objection to Hägglund’s thesis is simply that religious people care about the world, and other people, all of the time. . . . His response is that when they do so, they are not in fact acting religiously but are, despite their own self-perception, honoring the secular faith that is at the heart of the human condition. . . .

Religious believers claim, [however], that their care for the finite world is enlivened and awakened by their sense that the world is not dead matter, but rather emanates from the divine. Hägglund considers this to be impossible, but he does not directly explain why. . . He believes that you can either love the world in its finitude, or you can love the eternal creator, but you cannot possibly do both, and one could not possibly enrich the other. . . .

The problem is that, for a book so concerned with theology, Hägglund does not really have a theory of religion. He does not, in other words, have a theory to explain why so many people, today and historically, have devoted themselves to (what he sees as) transparently false understandings of the universe.

Read more at Boston Review

More about: Democracy, Religion & Holidays, Religion and politics, Socialism

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023