In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus
linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more
sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and
power. While existing works of secular intellectual history,
especially Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on
rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers
an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes,
Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to
reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past.
From Descartes's last work Les Passions de l'Ame (1649) to Baron
d'Holbach's System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment
demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with
crucial implications for our current 'postsecular' and
'postliberal' moment. Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of
Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the
secular, identifying a distinctively secular-yet impassioned-form
of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet's racial
profile in Voltaire's Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example,
functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in
line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of
anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people's
sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a
nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist,
Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan
ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the
Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.
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