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Simile for the Devil: Paradise Regained and the Secularization of Satan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2021
Abstract
A central, secularizing plot of John Milton's Paradise Regained is the dissolution of Satan. As the Son passes from scriptural figure to reality, Satan is gradually reduced from mythological character to metaphor. While both the demythologization of evil and the explanation of religious concepts as metaphor have long histories as central examples of secularization and of the liberalization of religion, theorists from the political-theological right (e.g., Carl Schmitt) and postsecularist left (e.g., Talal Asad) have called attention to the analogies that can be drawn between apparently secular concepts and stories and earlier, religious doctrines and myths, claiming that such analogies call into question the legitimacy and distinctiveness of the secular. Against those critiques, I argue that secularization stories can be distinguished from religious narrative, albeit not for their naturalism, their liberalism, their rationalism, or other doctrinal content. Rather, they force us to face their own constructed, literary qualities.
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