The loss of transcendence and the effort to achieve security in the world

Abstract

The "world view" influences the basic determination of man to the extent that all phenomena and events, all scientific problematizations and socio-cultural processes and, not least, human existence itself are networked into a coordinating system which is enmeshed in the "here present" or in the "otherworldly". Knowing one’s enmeshment in the otherworldly offers to man the possibility to experience in a specific manner the dangers and the risks of human existence and not to take the world as the only reality. Christianity demythologized the world and with the Biblical creative injunction addressed to man to subjugate the Earth it contributed to progress as a path of discovering and controlling the world. However, regardless of the nature of security within the world, progress is immanently prone to risk ("the remaining risk"). The loss of the otherworldly in modern society, on the one hand, contributes to the growing attenuation of endangerment of life but, on the other, man is becoming more and more insecure despite the enormous efforts devoted to security. This can ultimately lead to a point where "progress" is experienced as a power which endangers security and which needs to be curtailed.