Even when a secular love is maintained in the best possible way, it remains dangerous, since you are attached to someone or something that cannot be secured. The one whom you love can die and the world you seek to maintain can fall apart. Augustine recognizes that this exposure to loss is an essential part of why we care. Because everything we do and everything we love can come to an end, we are bound to care (curare) and be concerned. What we do and what we love are not given facts but something that must be sustained, so there is always a question of whether to hold on or let go, uphold or abandon what we do. This finitude—our finitude and the finitude of what we love—is internal to the motivational force of secular faith. Part of what compels us to keep faith with what we love is our apprehension that the relation can be lost and thereby requires our fidelity.
To make the dynamic of secular faith concrete, let me begin with the example of my writing the book you are now reading. In undertaking this project, the necessary uncertainty of secular faith is a condition for my relation to a future in which you will read what I write. I cannot be certain that my words will ever reach you, and if they do arrive I cannot be certain of how you will receive them. I can only trust that you will understand what I mean to say. Furthermore, as I write these words, the necessary uncertainty is a condition even for my own experience. I cannot be certain of what will happen to me before I get to the end of this sentence; I can only take it on faith that I will be able to remember the thread of my argument, that my heart will keep beating, and that there will be a continuous supply of oxygen to my brain. If this matters to me, it is because I have an existential commitment to the project of leading my life. In writing this book, I am not only concerned to survive long enough to finish the book and take part in its reception; I am also committed to a philosophical project that can succeed or fail. The project inspires me to carry on and to regard it as important that the book be understood. Yet, in holding myself to a standard of success, I leave myself open to failure. The book may be rejected or misunderstood, and it may not even live up to my own conception of what the book ought to be. This possibility of failure is intrinsic to the motivational force that sustains my commitment to writing the book. The motivational force depends on my belief in the significance of what I have to say, but it also depends on my belief that I can fail. The belief that I can fail is part of what motivates me to try to succeed, to keep my attention on what I am doing, to improve my arguments and formulations.
The dynamic of secular faith does not come to an end when I have attained what I strive for. The threefold dynamic continues to be at work in the very fulfillment of living, working, and loving. Returning to my example of a love relationship, let us assume an ideal scenario in which I love you and you love me and we are blissfully happy together. Even in this consummation of love, the dynamic of secular faith is at work. In loving you, I cannot know how our relationship will transform me—how it may open new depths in my life or shatter my conception of who I am. Part of what it means that I love you is that you are not identical to me and that I cannot control what you will do to me. This exposure to what I cannot know gives me the possibility of trusting you and remaining open to the unexpected, but it also leaves me open to agony and grief. This is the necessary uncertainty of our love. For the same reason, our happiness together depends on keeping faith with one another. Nothing can prove that being together is the best thing we can do with our lives; we have to believe that it is and act on the basis of that faith. This is the existential commitment of our love. Moreover, to sustain our commitment we have to believe not only in the value of our love but also in its precariousness. We have to believe that our love can fail: that it is not given once and for all, but that we must care for it. This risk of failure is intrinsic to the motivational force of our love.
My examples so far have focused either on individual aspirations or on intimate relationships of love. The dynamic of secular faith, however, is also expressed in collective endeavors. For example, if we are engaged in a project of creating greater social justice, we share an existential commitment to a set of principles and a form of practice that the principles demand. We believe in certain values and in the importance of upholding them through contestation and struggle. This existential commitment is subject to the necessary uncertainty of secular faith. We cannot be certain that our collective project will hold together and the consequences of our actions are not given in advance. This necessary uncertainty puts the project at risk—it may not succeed and it may fall apart through internal dissent or external conflict. Yet the risk is also part of the motivational force that sustains our commitment to the project. We devote ourselves to social justice because it is not given as a fact but requires our efforts for its continued existence. This dynamic of faith does not come to an end when we have achieved the social justice for which we strive, since social justice is a form of life that always has to be sustained. To be committed to social justice is to be committed to a project that lasts for as long as there are social relations.
The dynamic of secular faith thus accounts for the possibility of ongoing commitments—whether to individual aspirations, love relations, or collective endeavors. These are secular forms of faith because they are devoted to projects that are bound by time.
What is the difference, then, between secular and religious forms of faith? In his book Dynamics of Faith, the modern theologian Paul Tillich provides a distinction that is illuminating for my argument. Tillich defines faith as having “an ultimate concern.”10 You have faith (an ultimate concern) if you are devoted to someone or something as an end in itself, being willing—if the situation so requires—to sacrifice other interests and passions for the sake of what you believe in or hold to be most valuable. In this sense, both secular and religious persons have faith. The crucial difference, however, is that the ultimate concern of the religious is a state of being that would eliminate all concern. While religious faith is exposed to doubt and uncertainty, its goal is to reach a state in which “the element of distance is overcome and with it uncertainty, doubt, courage and risk.”11 The aim of religious striving is to attain a complete security, where one no longer has to rely on an uncertain faith and can let go of all concern. “There is no faith,” Tillich emphasizes, “in the quiet vision of God. But there is infinite concern about the possibility of reaching such a quiet vision.”12 Following the same logic, Augustine maintains that faith is only provisional and will be replaced by certainty in the presence of God.13 When we attain salvation we shall know rather than believe and possess rather than hope. Salvation will put an end to all care (finis curae). To be saved in the religious sense is no longer to care.
We can thus describe religious and secular faith as two different motivational structures. If I am motivated by religious faith, the goal of my striving is to rest in peace. I may never achieve such peace, but if my desire were fulfilled I would be free from all care. My ultimate concern is to have no concern.
In contrast, if I am motivated by secular faith, being concerned is part of what I strive for. Even if my desire were absolutely fulfilled—even if I lived in the midst of an achieved social justice, blissfully happy with my beloved, and with my work flourishing—I would still be concerned, since everything I care about must be sustained over time and will be lost. Moreover, the risk of loss is part of why I care, why it matters to me what happens, and why I am compelled to remain faithful.
II
From Augustine’s religious perspective, secular faith is based on the most deplorable and misguided form of love. Cupiditas—the love of a finite being or a finite form of life as an end in itself—is for Augustine the “wrong” kind of love, since it makes us dependent on what we can lose. While this kind of love may inspire fidelity, it may just as well lead to destructive emotions. Being devoted to a political cause, we may feel rage or despair if the cause is defeated. Likewise, in loving another human being we may become vengeful or
crushed if we are abandoned by the one we love. Our fidelity and love may turn into fear and hate, feeding aggression against what we perceive as threatening. This is why Augustine condemns cupiditas as the root of all evil and all sin. In loving what we can lose, we are liable both to be hurt and to hurt others.14
Augustine here identifies a problem that was most deeply understood by the Greek and Roman Stoics, with whom we began to acquaint ourselves in the previous chapter. The Stoics argued that the deepest cause of our vulnerability is not the fact that our bodies are frail, that accidents may befall us, or that other people may betray us. Rather, what makes us vulnerable is our belief that these things matter and define who we are. By attaching ourselves to things we cannot finally control—e.g., the fate of our loved ones or our political community—we risk being shattered by what happens. We become dependent on what we can lose and thereby open to grievances or grief.
In contrast, the aim of Stoicism is to make us independent of everything that may upset us. This requires that we stop believing in the value of anything that can make us suffer. If something is taken away from us, we will not feel bereaved because we are not attached to anything that can be lost. And if someone violates us, we will not be angry or retaliate because we are not attached to any part of ourselves that is vulnerable to harm. Through the practice of detachment, we will maintain peace of mind regardless of what happens. The goal of Stoicism is literally apathy (apatheia): the freedom from all passions, since passions hold us hostage to a world that is beyond our control.
Such a Stoic solution is rejected as an illusion by Augustine.15 As he emphasizes, we cannot transform ourselves into self-sufficient and independent beings. We are essentially dependent and passionate creatures. We cannot retreat into a state free from need and desire, since we have to reach outside ourselves for support to sustain our own existence.
The solution, then, cannot be to extinguish our desire or withdraw our love. The decisive factor is rather who or what we love. “Love,” Augustine advises, “but be careful what you love.”16 If you love someone who is finite, you will come to grief. At best, such love is interrupted by death or separation. At worst, it leads to violent upheavals and painful betrayals. According to Augustine, you should therefore convert your love for finite beings (cupiditas) into a love of God’s eternal presence (caritas). When you love yourself or extend your love to others, you should not be attached to their finite existence but love God through them. This is the meaning of the Christian imperative to love your neighbor as yourself. As Augustine explains, the imperative does not mean that you should love your neighbor for his or her own sake. On the contrary, it means that you should neither love yourself nor your neighbors in their own right. Neither your own self nor your neighbors have any value in themselves, but only by belonging to the eternity of God.
Hence, Augustine underlines that you should not enjoy (frui) anything in this life as an end in itself. Rather, you should use (uti) what you love as a means for devotion to the eternity of God.17 If you have a friend, a spouse, or a child, you should not love them for their own sake: you should use them as a means for the end of loving God. Through this conversion of your love, you will no longer depend on other finite beings but only on God. If your friend becomes your enemy, you can still love him and forgive even his most atrocious deeds, since you are not attached to his particular existence or his particular deeds but are using him as an occasion to love God. Similarly, if your spouse betrays you, you will not be angry or devastated, since you love God through her and this love cannot be affected by anything she does. Finally, if your child dies you will not mourn, since you only love your child insofar as he or she already belongs to the eternity of God.
Augustine and the Stoics present different methods for achieving the same religious goal: to be absolved from loss, attaining peace of mind. The difference is that Augustine does not think such a religious fulfillment can be achieved in this life. As long as we are part of a historical world, we can be misled to love this life for its own sake and we must continually be concerned about our salvation, which depends on the grace of God.
Salvation itself, however, is understood as the end of all care. Salvation would be to attain a state where all striving has come to an end, all action has come to rest, and all desire has been stilled. Augustine takes it for granted that we all strive toward such peace, whether we know it or not. Even those of us who devote ourselves to a life in this world are actually longing to repose in the peace—the quies—of God’s eternal being. “Our heart is restless till it finds rest in Thee,” as Augustine famously remarks in his Confessions.18
The ultimate aim of our lives would thus be to rest in peace. This assumption is the common denominator for all religious ideals of eternity. They would have us think that fulfillment—the highest state of being—consists in being liberated from care. Even though one always has to take care, the religious goal is to be free from all concern. Our attachments to finite life are thus devalued as restrictions that prevent us from attaining salvation. As long as we are attached to a finite life—including our own—we can never be relieved from concern. Depending on what happens, we may be moved to pain or enjoyment, hope or despair. For the one who embraces a religious ideal of eternity, such vulnerability may be recognized as a necessary evil on the way to salvation. But it cannot be seen as part of the good itself.
The most instructive example is the Buddhist notion of nirvana. To attain nirvana is emphatically described as being invulnerable. In nirvana, you are untouched by any concerns and safe from all possible harm. You do not worry about anything, since you have attained a state of perfect rest and absolute permanence. In Buddhism, such a state is the only one that counts as truly “satisfactory.” All other forms of experience are deemed to be fundamentally “unsatisfactory.” The key term here is dukkha, which is often rendered as “suffering” but more exactly translated as “unsatisfactoriness.” The Buddhist claim is that all experiences of finite life—including our most extraordinary experiences of well-being and bliss—are unsatisfactory, since they are impermanent. Even when they last for a long time, we can lose them at any moment. This is why Buddhism advocates detachment from everything that is impermanent. To be attached to finite life is to put yourself at risk, to expose yourself to being hurt by what happens. In contrast, Buddhism holds that you should detach yourself and aspire to rest in the peace of nirvana.19
By subscribing to the value of absolute permanence, Buddhism devalues everything that is impermanent. The mere fact that something is not eternal is enough for it to be unsatisfactory and unworthy of our devotion. However, when one removes everything that is impermanent—when one removes everything that comes into being and passes away—one is literally left with nothing. In nirvana, there is no death but also no birth, no unrest but also no activity, no aging but also no growth, no distress but also no passion. Nothing can ever disturb the peace, which also means that nothing can ever happen.
The apparent paradox of nirvana haunts all religious conceptions of eternity. Absolute fullness is inseparable from absolute emptiness and absolute presence is inseparable from absolute absence. My argument is that we should reject the idea that such a state of being is a goal worth striving for. A religious redemption from loss—whether through an immanent detachment or a transcendent eternity—is not a solution to any of our problems. Rather than making our dreams come true, it would obliterate who we are. To be invulnerable to grief is not to be consummated; it is to be deprived of the capacity to care. And to rest in peace is not to be fulfilled: it is to be dead.
This is a therapeutic argument. I am asking us to let go of a way of thinking that leads to a dead end, to recognize that the peace of eternity only resides in the grave. Rather than try to become invulnerable, we should learn to see that vulnerability is part of the good that we seek. Thereby we can learn to see that our finitude—and the finitude of what we love—i
s not in itself a restriction. Our bonds to finite life are not only what constrain us but also what sustain us, opening us to the world and to others. This therapy will not exempt you from the risks of being committed to a finite life. You cannot bear life on your own, and those on whom you depend can end up shattering your life. Moreover, since your own powers are finite they may become depleted and make life unbearable. These are real dangers. But they are not reasons to try to transcend finitude altogether. They are reasons to take our mutual dependence seriously and develop better ways of living together.
The recognition of mutual dependence requires secular faith. It requires that you keep faith with others even though there are no guarantees. And it requires that you keep faith with what you love even though it makes you vulnerable to loss. This is difficult. All the dangers Augustine identified in loving what can be lost are actual possibilities. Your love may lead to anger when there is harm, grief when there is death, despair when hope is crushed. But the same vulnerability is also what makes you receptive to the world, to yourself, and to others. You cannot shut down your sense of uncertainty and risk without also shutting down your capacity to feel joy, connection, and love. Only by acknowledging the importance of something beyond your control—that is: only through vulnerability—can you be moved by what happens. The precious quality of joy is inseparable from a sense of its precariousness, and the value of connecting to another person would not be felt without the risk of disconnection.
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