It is the emergence of “the secular” in this sense that makes possible the emergence of an “exclusive humanism” — a radically new39 option in the marketplace of beliefs, a vision of life in which anything beyond the immanent is eclipsed. “For the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true” (Secular Age, p. 18).
