Searching for a critique of modernity

Abstract

This article offers some comments on Hiro Saito's paper concerning the possibility of ‘spiritual sociology’. It considers: the extent to which spirituality and the study thereof are traditional or modern, and therefore compatible with sociology; how it may be possible to include spiritual sociology within sociology syllabi; and how spiritual sociology might build bridges between micro-sociology and macro-sociology.

Introduction

Can spiritual sociology be a starting point for a critique of modernisation? Since sociology is a defence of modernisation, how can it be used to overcome modernity? How to mobilise non-modern practices at the core of sociology? Hiro Saito (2025) proposes the importation of spiritual disciplines into sociology courses, claiming that the best sociologists develop their spirituality in a way that most other sociologists do not (yet) do, nor are likely to learn to do.

In place of a science with a capital S, a hegemonic Sociology, Saito (2025) is optimistic that time will bring about the development of a plurality of revolutionary scientific and spiritual perspectives emerging spontaneously from experience (see Figure 1 at Saito, 2025: 111).

An initial problem is that this plurality already exists. What are the disciplines of the social sciences, each with its subdisciplines, if not a scientific pluriverse referring to a pluriverse of institutions and social experiences?

This brief commentary on Saito's presentation of spiritual sociology begins by describing some contradictions in the argument. The second part lists some of the most positive aspects of his text. Finally, a conception of spiritual sociology based on sociological tradition is presented.

Some contradictions

Doubts that remain from reading Saito's text:

Is spirituality an activity parallel to sociology, or is it a property of the best sociology? Should sociology courses include a discipline of occult sciences, or should these be part of the curriculum transversally?

Is spiritual sociology a subdiscipline, or is it a paradigm of the social sciences adapted to the postmodern future?

How will the teaching of spirituality in sociology courses, and the recognition of the importance of ‘enlightenment’ in the best sociology, create a better world?

Will the sociology resulting from this new sociological consciousness be more scientific, closer to physics and psychology, or more spiritual, closer to Buddhism, the New Age and the daemon-inspired revolution?

The main thesis presented by Saito (2025: 111) in his Figure 1, entitled ‘A trajectory of spirit-in-action’, is intended to be an interpretation of the current state of modernity. Globalisation would be represented by ‘time 2’, by the collapse of the many traditional social worlds into a few dominant worlds, and a prospect of how modernity will end is represented by ‘time 3’, in which the defeat of globalisation and the unipolar world would translate into a multipolar world, as proposed by some in the BRICS countries. Is Saito's optimism based on the hope that the BRICS and new human generations will have a spiritual strategy to overcome modernity and capitalism?

Saito argues against colonialism and the reduction of spiritual opportunities imposed by modernisation. To this end, he marshals not only the natural sciences, but also other forms of wisdom, which he generally calls ‘spirituality’, in the hope of freeing sociology from the iron cage of modernity.

He does not propose to resume the project cherished by Marx and Parsons, among others, of elevating social philosophy to a full-fledged science (Nunes, 1973). This was a project abandoned in the post-War period by the process of professionalisation of the social sciences (Coser, 1956: 27–29). This reduced the sciences to technosciences (Schofield, 2018), sciences suitable for being exploited by their sponsors, such as the military-industrial complex.

One of the characteristics of modernity is the ability to mobilise its adversaries, including science, in its favour, by seduction and force. It did so by professionalising science, as it did with the movements for the abolition of capitalism, colonialism, hunger, war, totalitarianism, and so on.

Saito's argument is modern in three senses:

he hopes that the revolutionary spirit, like that of the spiritual sociologists, will succeed, where the proletarians failed, in transforming the world;

with Descartes, he separates mind and brain (Damásio, 1994), mission and instrument (Parsons, 1961), and social transformation and revolutionary plans (Marx, 1997);

he believes that an author to whom freedom to think has been granted (Kuhn, 2016), through a sociology degree, for example, is in a position to think freely. Is this not part of the modernity to be abolished?

Saito's positive contributions

In the conclusion of his text, Saito (2025: 114–115) writes:

Spiritual sociology … requires a new way of practicing sociology … learn[ing] ‘another way of being’ and ‘another form of relating’ capable of creating another world altogether.

Saito refers to a decolonised pluriverse, an ‘other possible world’ (Saito, 2025: 115). But how to defeat Trump and/or the Chinese Communist Party with spiritual sociology?

The changes being driven by the current imperial leadership do not bode well, neither for sociologists nor for decolonisation. So, why would you want to change the world now? Is it not rather a time of resistance and conservation (of nature and of social relations) to avoid the deepening of colonisation and the reduction of the influence of sociology? Saito (2025: 114) is optimistic:

[The] younger generation tends to be spiritually more mature than older generations because the former is born from the Spirit that has grown more enlightened than before.

What spirituality is Saito referring to? That of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Hindu fundamentalists who fight each other globally through confessional states?

Throughout the text, Saito offers some elements of sociology's reformation:

to mobilize nonmodern ontologies and epistemologies that transcend modernity from within (Saito, 2025: 105);

peacefully coexisting and even co-flourishing with the inhabitants of many different worlds (Saito, 2025: 106);

‘expand[ing] the scale of inquiry to the entire cosmos’, avoiding the ‘[mononaturalism that] still pervades sociology …’ while mobilizing a ‘resonance theory’. (Saito, 2025: 108)

The theory of resonance opposes vibratos to echoes, as action and structure. Experience spreads: it is centrifugal, and not just incorporated and centripetal (see Figure 1 at Saito, 2025: 111). Parsons’ cybernetic societies, made of black boxes, are translated by Saito into orchestras that resonate in halls, stadiums or outdoors, inspiring incorporated states of mind. The mechanical, material pole of social structures is subverted in Saito's argument as a mere echo of the biological existence of people within the environment. Hence his optimism:

Since Spirit is ever evolving … more microcosms choose to vibrate by resonating, not echoing, each other, i.e. they become awakened and enlightened. … While powerful echoes collapse many worlds into a few through anxiety, fear, greed, and other ‘negative vibrations’, resonances create the pluriverse, in which many worlds coexist and co-flourish, through love, kindness, compassion, and other ‘positive vibrations’ … Access to this ‘truth’ enables the transcendence of ‘this world’, and ‘the self’ [since] spiritual ways of being and knowing continued to be alive and well inside modern societies. (Saito, 2025: 110–112)

The internet and Artificial Intelligence that scare the older generations will come to be employed by their descendants to the benefit of humanity. Is this Saito's hope?

There will be ‘reservoirs of a nonmodern critique of modernity’, from where humanity can draw inspiration to revolutionise the world. We can put our hopes in the possibility that ‘daemon-inspired revolutionaries act to transform not only the self but also culture, nature, and social institutions. … [F]rom their spiritual sociological perspectives, social change in a “positive” direction is inevitable in the long run’ (Saito, 2025: 113–114).

The hypothesis of resonant pluriverses echoes the failure of globalisation, the international order centred on Anglo-Saxon culture. It supports the hope that the new generations will adopt a ‘positive’ spirit, leveraged ‘as a first step … [by] undergraduate and graduate education in sociology incorporat[ing] contemplative practice …’ (Saito, 2025: 114).

All this says nothing about the value of posthumanist dystopias (Harari, 2016), possibly being realised in the digital world (O'Neil, 2016; Pasquinelli, 2023; Zuboff, 2019).

Nor does it speak of the framework of individual and spiritual freedoms attacked by the BRICS-backed pluriverses, such as China, India and Russia, which seek to subjugate the USA and EU.

The interesting place of spiritual sociology

The distinction between modernity and tradition is itself modern, as is the distinction between sociology and anthropology. This division of the sciences is Cartesian; it is an axiom of the sciences. It separates intelligent actors – such as historians, jurists, sociologists, and other professionals, or bosses, presidents, and emperors, all of whom are theoretically free and endowed with their own willpower – from theoretically manipulable subjects, who exist at the mercy of the former.

Cartesianism presumes that there is a spirit (res cogitans) independent of matter (res extensa). There are to be modern wills residing in privileged brains which are independent of human bodies and nature. Traditionally, the spirit was humble and in accord with nature (Acosta, 2013). Only the sovereigns were arrogant and abusive.

Saito opposes modern forms of centralism, such as that of Science with a capital S, to the decentralisation of individual spiritual experiences. However, individualisation is as modern as the concentration of power. They work together. Social movements inspired by states of mind (Alberoni, 1989), which Weber accused of being traditional, work together with modern institutions.

The capitalist spirit described by Max Weber is rational and bureaucratic, disenchanted and mechanistic, effective and Kafkaesque. For Marx, the revolutionary spirit polarised two social classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He is referring to an ideal type of sociability observable in factories, which can, potentially, translate into social agitation in broader society.

Spiritual sociology is part of the sociological tradition. That it has not been organised into a subdiscipline is a question to be investigated. Is there any reason for the masking of spirituality and for its marginalisation? Spirituality is a dimension embedded in social life. Today, revolutionary spirituality continues to characterise both decentralising historical actors, such as the Zapatistas, those of Rojava, and the Arab Spring (El-Fattah, 2021), and also centralising ones, including the governments of states. The capitalist spirit described by Max Weber is rational and bureaucratic, disenchanted and mechanistic, effective and Kafkaesque. For Marx, the revolutionary spirit polarised two social classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He is referring to an ideal type of sociability observable in factories, which can, potentially, translate into social agitation in broader society. The revolutionary spirit, observed by Marx and Engels among the workers who lived on the threshold of survival, contrasts with the indifference of the bourgeoisie to the industrial destruction of lives, cities, and the planet. For Max Weber, the revolutionary spirit is traditional: it takes care of the present, of survival. The spirit of capitalism is modern and revolutionary (Alberoni, 1989). The revolutionary potential of Saito's spirituality is foreign to this tradition.

Revolution is no longer progress. It is now the adaptation of the Anthropocene to get out of the Cartesian labyrinth and make peace with Nature. What contribution will sociology make?

Changing curricula does not change schools. Changing schools does not change imperial missions that abuse the Earth and humanity. We must encourage denunciations of the fundamental immorality that established modernisation, wherever there is freedom to do so (Dores, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). And we must hope that, unlike the current resurgence of imperial arbitrariness, humanity's original fraternity will be strong enough to reclaim freedom and equality.