The move to victimhood

Consider, for example, two very different ways to account for evil. If we’re going to affirm ordinary life, then that needs to translate into some affirmation of the goodness of embodied, material life. But if we’re going to talk about the goodness of ordinary life, we also need some account of what goes — or has gone — wrong, some account of evil and brokenness. Taylor is interested in the significant cultural shifts in how we talk about this — from talking about sin to talking about sickness. These are two very different hermeneutics, two different ways of construing our current condition: the “spiritual” versus the “therapeutic.” “What was formerly sin is often now seen as sickness” (p. 618). The moral is transferred to a therapeutic register; in doing so we move from responsibility to victimhood.—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 106–7