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The Challenge of Sustainability: A Voegelinian Analysis

Democracy
Environmental Policy
Political Psychology
Religion
Climate Change
Richard Douglas
Goldsmiths University London
Richard Douglas
Goldsmiths University London

Abstract

This Paper draws on the thought of Eric Voegelin to examine reasons for the mismatch between political rhetoric and practical action with regard to climate change. It interprets debate on sustainability with reference to Voegelin’s analysis of modernity as being defined by radical immanentisation, in which key concepts of religious thought are secularised. In Voegelin’s analysis, modernity has been defined by a secularised eschatology, and in this way modern politics dominated by versions of historicism. For Voegelin, modern political movements have characteristically constituted themselves in the form of political religions, in the extent to which they have based themselves around momentum towards an imagined future utopian state - the “true and only heaven”. Within this framework it can be argued that the idea of sustainability, premised on a recognition of intrinsic limits to technological power, not only casts doubt on a vision of a utopian future, but undermines what is effectively a modern myth of immortality. The title refers not only to the challenge which sustainability poses to dominant political ideologies, but also the challenge it itself faces, in being arrayed against convictions of quasi-religious force. Using this framework allows for fruitful connections to be made between political theory and psychological research on denialism. Notably, Terror Management Theory (TMT) suggests that environmentalism triggers subconscious anxiety about mortality, helping to explain resistance to it on an individual level. This paper explores the possibilities for Voegelinian analysis and TMT to inform each other, in suggesting that political resistance to acting on the principles of sustainability is grounded in its undermining a faith which provides compensations for mortality in a secular age. It suggests that what sustainability uncovers is not just an environmental or political, but a philosophical crisis; and that this is the ground on which a solution must be sought.