ABSTRACT
‘One-eyed giants’ lack wisdom: they consider non-scientific modes of rationality retrograde.
Exceptions: For Lebret development is cultural and spiritual as well as economic and political. Gandhi favours ‘production by the masses’ over mass-production. Secularism (reducing all value to earthly ones) is bad but secularization (taking earthly values as decisive) is good.
Non-instrumental treatment derives development goals from within latent dynamisms in religion. Instrumental treatment treats tradition as means to ‘modernity’.
The ‘coefficient of secular commitment’ describes the varying religious rationales for working in history. Religions should reinforce secular commitment by linking morality to ultimate meanings.
Authentic development summons persons and societies to ‘make history while witnessing to transcendence’.
