Against normal academic practice, this article begins with a nubby joke, for the good of reason. It goes: ‘What is the difference between a Pilot and God?’ In reply it claims: ‘God doesn’t go around thinking He’s [sic] a pilot’. Whilst teasing pilots may on occasion be funny, it is less easy to tease the second categorical Ultimatum in an extraordinary comparison! The humour rests in an artfully forced, instantly appreciated mistake (absurdum) and transgression of ‘culturally cogent’ (Lombaard 2016:2) assumptions, connections, norms and values, in a testy fashion about philosophical relatives and absolutes.

No doubt ridiculously attributed, the joke tricks us into confrontation with endangerment of sanity, sin against the category and the uproarious result of disobedience. The joke works seamlessly in more than some social circumstances for its versatile applicability to pilots, doctors and philosophical relativist ‘pots’, calling realist ‘kettles …’. Even in the jocular sense, the category is a weighty weapon of reasoning, culture, science and society. Asking, ‘how weighty?’, is the task of this small musing. Thus to begin, by noting that the fleet-footed appreciation of the joke (in some contexts) demonstrates how a number of ontological, epistemological, semantic and social relations are assumed and referenced in common reception.

Merely from commonality, it does not stretch imagination too far, for us to understand that categories are conceptual building blocks in culturally and analytically cogent chains of reason, definition sentences in science and so on. However, the proving thereof eludes capture.

Returning to the jocular experience, more than the clear semantic and other social links proposed by the joking, is a thin veiled assumption of realism, grounding our humorous and categorical effect. For our purposes, the joke instructs the quest for a broad working definition. We may read ‘category’ to mean:

An assumption, type, concept or distinction which acts as a link in a set of conceptual (perhaps ontological, but certainly moral and scientific) relations, capable by their constitution of producing a sustainable chain of reason between definitions, theories, sciences and meta-theory, which they protect as quasi (minimal and falsifiable) arbiter, from numerous possible mistakes, contraventions, transgressions and confusions, endangering reason thus contextually understood.

In minority dissent from Van der Merwe’s convinced relativist majority claim (2016:1)¹, it is taken here that a principled realism has come into social theory (Bhaskar [1979] 1998:25–43; cf. Schreiber 2015:4), where ‘the sense of problem has now shifted from ideas to reality itself’ (Luhmann 2012:5).² In this analysis, categories and classes of things arise in the world, which are differentiated in differentiation to other classes of things and they should never be confused or conflated (Kant 2014:68–69)!

In the post-secular chain of reason and social theory, however, categorical placement is more slippery. Notably, therefore, there is common consensus that extra caution should be taken in appreciating a ‘real’ difference between absolute ontological ‘apples’, relative discursive ‘science of apples’ or relatively absolute ‘Apple Brand’. In short, we need a clear view of real differences and relationships between ontology and epistemology. Alternatively, the results for methodology, clearer thinking and future construct of social categories could be disastrous (Kant 2014:1). Consequently, categorical investigations continue to be helpful and liberating (Bhaskar 1980; Bhaskar & Hartwig 2012b) in elucidating Lombaard’s religious quest and Van der Merwe’s (2016) phenomenology.³

Whilst appreciating that things basic to knowledge, like logical connections in discourse exist, they serve as categories (if at all) differently from others present in further degrees of relativity, for instance, in constructs like ‘post-secularism’, other ‘patterns’ (Bateson 1979:16, 17, 20, 22; Bateson & Bateson 1987:8) and ‘tropes’ (De Man 1978:1, 17–19, 23–29). Nevertheless, realist assumptions include that categories exist ontologically; extend into epistemology; are practical in society, even when practically silly in semantic, creative and spontaneous play (for some, and there with limits controversially), because (wisely) not every distinction we make is a category; neither an epistemology nor is fetishable in any universe (Brown 1969:1). Consequently, in constructing a post-secular category or relational category (Bhaskar [1979] 1998:41; cf. Schreiber 2015:4) of use to Lombaard’s ‘religious’, beyond naturalist constraint,⁴ a great deal of subtlety and ambiguity must be allowed to emerge into the social realism begged.

As indicated in this post-secular context, identifying the analytically available mistake or the offended rule of difference or misunderstood similarity in; ontology, concept or distinction, upholding the relationship between those oft doubted ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ social products (in post-secular and Lombaard 2014a, 2015d, 2016), is hard-pressed. Nevertheless, it is argued here that a relational analysis (that accommodates and hosts contradiction in transcendental relationships) from as far-a-field Systems theory, critical realism and post-analytic philosophy, serves well. Here, these sources are garnered to compose some ‘minority report’.⁵ Value chains and chains of reason converge on the humble category, as Lombaard (2016:1) begs for his ‘greater realism’ (2015d:1), signalling a more balanced response to the extreme relativist and suspicious hegemony of previous learning.

Furthermore, it is argued that a philosophical attitude of relational realism is adequate for Lombaard’s category, post-secular discourse generally, investigation of trends suiting secular versus religious debate in sociology of religion, and to some benefit of contemporary spirituality studies.

Where post-secular debate seems uncertain and suspicious about placing categorical status to social reality, one suspects it exceeds reasons of healthy scepticism, because it soon evidences a ‘theoretically helpless embarrassment’ (Luhmann 2012:12), ‘irrealism’ (Bhaskar 2002b:33, 2010:xxvi, 77) and ‘suspicion’ (Lombaard 2016:1). In diagnosis, the impasse inhabiting secular-religious relations in social theory is largely the heir to classical realist and mentalist closure of categories (and facets of being) and ideology of dichotomous opposition.⁶ This, exacerbated by deconstructive closure on categories, in some similarity (and much dissimilarity, for some) has come into Systems debate on operational closure (Brown 1969; Bryant 2011:138–146; Luhmann 1990:7).

Patently visible in post-secular closure ‘plague’ (Unger 1987:55), for instance, Beyers’ (2014) categorical realism and social scepticism has it, not only the ‘religious’ (p. 3) but also Augustine’s ‘transcendent-immanent’ (p. 4), Durkheim’s ‘sacred-profane’ (p. 5), Berger’s ‘subjective-objective’, ‘appearance-disappearance’ (p. 7) and Habermas’ ‘reason-faith’ (p. 10) are of a relative nature and therefore fail categorical status. So, whilst obviously apples and bricks plainly indicate different classes of ontology or categorical things, constructs, dualisms and opposing claims in post-secular debate do not.

This version of things not only acknowledges a ‘difference’ but also ‘winters’ it into categorical isolationism. In which case, post-secular discourse (its relational categories, distinctions and values) is left bereft of a chain of reason. In similar theoretical stalemate, we face the challenge that the religious term or distinction (God forbid a category?, for Chaves) exists in a discourse where no claim to universalised secularism or religionism (Chaves 1994:750) is known to succeed and is exactly (in paraphrase) ‘Why secularism qua thesis, failed’. Whilst post-secularism is rightly no friend of rampant universalism, the lesson to be gleaned from secularism is that without a clear category, argument is limited in some way. Whilst that Agenda sought the marginalisation of religion,⁷ it found itself unable to offer a cohesive definition to isolate, nor marginalise.

Ultimately, Chaves believes the secularist argument failed to differentiate, universalise or cohere in any sense approaching a category. In pursuit of some structural realism, however, he immediately (not originally) adopts a power analysis. Even so, this but proves there can be no categorical winners except regionally and therefore uncertainly. Nevertheless, the relational dimension is obvious to the argument and to the post-secular extent (in caveat) that categorical identities and possible virtues are important for any ontological, ethical, existential, reflexive or spiritual transformation of society (Bhaskar 1993:223–366, 2012:127–129; cf. Schreiber 2015:3).⁸

Rather, in post-secular minority reply the analytic and conceptual unity of (nevertheless faceted) being and knowing picks up a ‘joined up’ (Benedikter & Molz 2012:29–74; Bhaskar 2010) resonance, in challenge to isolation hegemony. Therefore, this reply more than experimentally (among so many engagements and inter-sectional multi-disciplinary kisses that make paradigm⁹) proposes a cogent chain of reason at ontological, epistemological, ethical, semantic levels of interest and analytic necessity. Wherein contemporary discourse, a post-secular architecture of knowledge encroaches upon unity of science, being and ethics (Bateson 1979; Cat [2009] 2013; Kant 2014; Luhmann 2012:9; Merton 2003:3¹⁰), it proceeds in the midst of ‘ambiguous’ (Van der Merwe 2016:1; Van Ness 1996:4) divergences and confluences in plurality or multi-complexity of social content (reason enough, to request some categorical surety?).

The relativist point made (if we agree that relativism disputes only one thing, namely representation of reality), Bhaskar’s ([1979] 1998) (critical) categorical realism asserts that assuming the reality of categories does not exclude differing types of necessity and endurance for those categories that exist in open societies, emerging nature and expanding cosmos. Presence of differing categorical types does not exclude a justifiable connection in chains of reason, nor constitute a ‘mistake’ (Bhaskar [1979] 1998:36–38; Kant 2014:69–79), but constitutes ontological emphasis. For this reason, Bhaskar proposes, ontological or not, social categories exhibit relative endurance and deserve the categorical appellation.

It is therefore clear to Smith and Medlin (1981) that the classical reading on categories is a poor servant of complex discourses and realities, because it is unable to ‘handle all concepts’ (p. 26), excludes ‘disjunctive concepts’ and ‘unclear cases’ (p. 29). This is of notable pertinence to post-secular debate ‘unclear’ as it is about whether one concept is a sub-set of another – as might indicate the case between secular, religious, mystical and spiritual categories. Whatever the case, in order to negotiate socially categorical being, we must challenge Western classical and mentalist assumptions that being and knowing are closed to each other They are firstly ontologically inseparable, and that they are conceptually distinct, does not challenge the point. The post-secular analytic wing is set to challenge theory itself.

As Lombaard (2016:3) comments on religion, in what is clearly a realistic assessment, it never really disappeared and is ‘everywhere’. One is free to consider that when a social expression of being fails to disappear generally, any proposal that the theoretical representation of the category should dissolve is delusional. Especially so in the blatant visibility of religious bells, books, candles, practice and the lived experience of religious spirituality, R/religious communities, et cetera. We may participate or not, are present or not, but do not hold that on these grounds alone that the Religious is not. Absence is not always a clear categorical case. Consequently, many assumptions linking false chains of reason or hegemonic agendas require ‘unmasking’ (Beyers 2014:5).

By invoking the category, Lombaard (2016:1–2) obviously not only invites controversy (is thus ‘mired’) but also arguably evidences a slow embrace of realist assumptions, remote to his 2014a writing.¹¹ Nevertheless, even if a confirmed postmodern mentalist there, Lombaard is not spared Tanney’s (2007) analytical challenge. Unravelling and re-connecting assumptions in post-secular context neatly places a deserved emphasis on the relational aspects of a category.

Upon these grounds, the Systems ‘approach’ recommends itself eloquently (if boastfully) for all social and epistemic systems (e.g. Bausch 2001; Bhaskar 2010; Bryant 2011; Jackson 2003; Luhmann 1990, 2012; Winder 2004). It readily participates in the discourse on social realism and takes note of subtleties formally under positivist taboo. Commenting on closure, Bryant (2011:149) notes, that whilst categorical closures of distinctive natural types exist, any form of distinction relies on the existence of at least two pre-existing relationships: The first, a democratic relationship with other systems and the second, a transcendent relationship with environment. Furthermore, Bryant (2011:158–159) has it that natural systems accommodate contradictory elements and much more so in social systems. Therefore, social differences are contextualised by a transcendent and democratic ‘unity of entities’. Consequently ‘dissenting’ (Van Ness 1996:12) or contradictory entities are not irreconcilably alien nor to be excluded. It begs the suggestion that such a system of entities and categories is ‘unified’ in the emergence by a bigger category that is likely, over time.

Consequently, from naturalist metaphor (if permitted) and there with provisions (Bevir 2001:14; Bhaskar 2010:1–7; Bhaskar & Lawson 1998:3, 6–7, 53, 82–83; Lombaard 2014a:1), neither apparent contradictions in reports, nor in social expressions, nor ambiguity, nor Lombaard’s use of the (2016:3) ‘or not’ qualifier, is anomalous. Furthermore, nor do these deny categorical self-standing, for they exceed content. In possible challenge to Lombaard (2016), Bryant’s democratic insistence in relational ontology bares consideration. Here, the secular and religious stand only in virtue of the democratic relationship between them as objects in discourse and messy, unpredictable society.

If we are to discern (one doubts) a ‘suspicious’ treatment of the secular in Lombaard (2016:2–4), Bryant’s sub-categorical accommodation suggests that so-called ‘secular’ systems are inextricably, dualistically and dialectically involved with the ‘religious’, at many levels of agreement or dissent. The insight tempers unmitigated flights of epistemological or institutionalised autonomy or exclusivity. Though visible, traditional separation of secular or religious institutions does not taboo the more practical post-secular amalgamation of secular or religious transgression in their spaces nor the spaces of everyday life, not always a comforting thought.

In analytic consequence, when one category is chosen or elevated above the others of informative partnerships, it becomes a painted lily, or ‘epistemic fallacy’ (Audi 1998:324) to ‘haunt’ us (Luhmann 1990:25; cf. Bryant 2011:158; Slote 2013:210; cf. Schreiber 2015:7) with its implied partners in contradiction. Is Lombaard’s ‘religious’ to haunt post-secularism and its capital with the ‘secular’?

The corrective that Systems debate may claim, (keeping ontological priority in environment) is that what distinctions ‘do’, is to uphold a relationship by way of distinction. Real distinctions, therefore, uphold relational fabric in reality, theory, practice and philosophical discernment. Discursive (semantic) distinctions uphold the epistemological relations of discourse, even when ambiguously used. Discursive accommodation seems to suggest that the religious, mystical and spiritual furnish each other with their distinctions, however, so held. These terms may not displace each other at whim because they share in the discursive environment democratically and transcendentally. Lombaard, in his (2016:5) concluding ‘humble-mumble’, acknowledges the point.

Democracy and contradiction accepted, Audi (1998:249–279) and Rolston (1996:387–413) seem to suggest (with differences) that both secular and religious are interrelated ‘cultures’ and ‘justified belief systems’ because they have categories addressing necessity and deliver analytic propositions and in some cases a priori effect. These allow for synthetic reasoning in practical life, even though they may be ambiguous about ultimate differentials. As chains of reason or reasonable faith (if ever separable), these cultures are able to critique and deliver explanation of the other, precisely because they inform (reveal) each other, as categorical family. Consequently we may not, as Van Ness (1996:6) notes, expect pristine distinctions between ‘salvific’ and or ‘flourishing’ paradigms. Dualism in this sense, seems neither to hold theological nor philosophical water. (It would be a very bad Christian theology that conceived of salvation without its existential good and no ethical philosophy would pose none.) In fairness that accepted, this does not relieve much spirituality debate as to the precise relationship between mysticism, spirituality and religion nor the fact that all participants, academic and social are free to change their minds, as we do and must.

A previously hinted ‘reason’ for our inability to settle religious as ‘opposed’ to secular priorities is because these are co-equal subcategories of something grander. Also these categories are extremely likely by Bryant’s account (where hierarchies are minimal, if not flat), to accommodate elements or features belonging more classically in the other. Content it seems is not the reductive mark of categorical existence. The presence of secular religion makes the point, even when we do not know its sense. Perhaps this is why Lombaard’s (2016:3) religious claim to be sometimes ‘or not’ is not necessarily a self-contradiction, nor a mistake. It is enough to indicate that relationships between categories and subcategories, questions of ‘which are which?’, are not easy to identify in post-secular social space.

Where we are mistaken in our prosecution for relief, Bhaskar suggests, is in paying too little categorical thought to the role of transcendence. Especially valuable on this matter, Bhaskar’s contribution to the philosophical transactional analysis of transcendent acts, may assist in grounding Lombaard’s (2016:3) ‘capital’. Whilst it is true that capital directly provides a larger pragmatic social category to stand cogently as metaphor and analysis, it seems to beg the inclusive question: ‘On what ground-state, virtue or trait such capital comes to have effect that is not only religious?’ As Bhaskar (2002a:12, 2002c:iv; Bhaskar & Hartwig 2012a, 2012b) has it, transcendence is a necessary condition for all transformations and mundane transactions and these are never exclusively religious.

However, what lies behind transcendental acts is a transcendental consciousness whose reflexive intervention is able to comment and formulate discourse on religious capital. In emphasis, thus ‘whose’ receptivity, empathic (Slote 2013; cf. Schreiber 2015) discernment and inner experience (Merton 2003:1–15) is open for business, religious or not. If we need an ontological category for an ontological argument, one might consider transcendence (Bhaskar 2002a:10, 178–179, 181, 2002b:ix–xi, 2002c:ix–xi, xxxii–xxxiv, 67–171; 2012:xiv–xxv, 145–148) and the role of virtue (Parker 2010:215–226). For this reason, one might find it less than satisfactory that the religious should count itself privileged to deny transcendent or spiritual capital (Lombaard 2015d, 2016:3) in the secular nor should it pompously ‘appear’ as the only conceptual respondent for categorical prosecution, in the grander debate.

Not without reason, we can on ontological grounds target Taylor’s (2007:542–557; cf. Beyers 2014:5) untenable and preposterous claim that (even the point made) ‘the immanent frame’ (of secular reference) permits no ‘immanent transcendence’. In response, many (Kee 2002:25, 27–28; Beyers 2014:8) find themselves dumbfounded and Bhaskar (as noted) would go to a refinement of war to demonstrate the fallacy.

Just as Lombaard’s (2016:5) religious future ‘is not without God’, so Bhaskar’s alternate text is not without ‘transcendence’, ‘self-realization’ in ‘non-duality’, ‘freedom’, ‘creativity’, ‘love’ and ‘non-reductive discourses on God’ (2002a:181–188; 2002b; Bhaskar & Hartwig 2012a:145–164). For both thinkers conceivably, we are enveloped in reality (mystery), placed where ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ categories must meet ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ differentials, presumably meeting at some absolute (Bhaskar 2002c:xii, xxxii–xxxiv, 2012b:xiv, xxv)?

It is perhaps in the context of transcendence as virtue that the transpersonal boundary (of a Categorical ‘I’) is most meaningful. Whilst transcendence supports a primary categorical distinction to transgress, it is in the very act of transgression that confirms both the boundary and transition. Boundaries are perhaps better understood as ‘trans-boundaries’ or ‘relations’ that not only mediate categorical transaction, knowledge, production, reproduction and transformation (Bhaskar 2002a:12, 2002c:iv) in spirituality, mysticism and religion, but also secular reality.

In society, Lombaard (2016:4) suggests, the religious may or may not be seen as such. Nevertheless, in reception of Lombaard, one believes (hermeneutically) the religious category is social capital or presumed cultural loss (Lombaard 2016:2) by its presence or absence, respectively. Plainly at many levels, our psychological, epistemological, social relations (proximity even in invisibility) and identification with categories are pertinent. Nevertheless, it is emphatically Lombaard’s (2016:1) categorical point that even in absconditus these categories do not dissolve. The realist assumption remains on grounds of philosophical faith (at least). Bhaskar ([1979] 1998:28; Archer 1998:190) is well received for noting, therefore, that ontological categories in their social presence attract relational pronouns, predicates, roles and consequences. ‘Society’ is an unpredictable but not a totally unreliable expression of being and relationships.

An ‘appearance’ or ‘moments’ (Lombaard 2016:1) of social interaction may assist in unhaunting a conceptual ontology from static text or textual fallacy. By which text of being, existence informs us alethically (Bhaskar [1975] 2008:xi, 1993:101–102, 214; 2002a:202–203, 1993:101–102, 214), analytically and critically. Notwithstanding doubts about the momentariness, contingency, arbitrariness of relations so derived or formulated, Bryant and Luhmann (Bryant 2001:149) agree that ‘flashes’ of information do happen under both naturally and less socially ‘unlikely’ conditions. Thus, for multiple (even if a minority) analytical thinkers, a displacement of pure theory or pure construct vindicates a truer picture of life that is ontologically excessive of sociological trends (not that these are unimportant, in the realm of knowledge).

The momentary perspective on distinctions, however, casts doubt as to any weight they may hold beyond their epistemological value. For good ethical and democratic reasons, they should perhaps not carry more. However, we all know of instances whence a distinctive flash reveals ‘a universe’ (Brown 1969:1) or ‘self-realization’ (Bhaskar 2002c:xviii), ‘ground-states’ (Bhaskar 2002c:14), ‘suchness’ (Bhaskar 2002a:ix–xi), ‘revelations’ and ‘satori’ (Merton 2003:7, 9) or a lover, in the categorically undeniable reality of encounter. In short a mitigated social realism sense upholds the reality of such encounter. Notions about relatively secular or religious social states of affairs are not categorically uninformative. However, importantly for the category is the distinction between their structure and apparent events (Bhaskar 2010:3, 9) – they are linked and minimally necessary to each other in processes. From the perspective of structural realism we may reflect that though distinct, categories serve as something approaching ground-states in consciousness, as passive virtues and traits that participate in a unified experience of ontology and epistemology, namely an interaction between capacity and social presence.

No doubt as many assume, there is an inevitable psychological relation to categories like institutions, policies, cultural items, movements and so on. The category is something on which, to make up our mind, in widely accepted commonality, vastly different from now discredited sociological ‘apartheid ruled’ (Mayson 2006:8) determinism. To this point, even though legislation has a social effect, we cannot attribute that effect without considering private motivations, pay-offs, liberation movements and the like. Neither sociological nor legal coercion (Unger 1987:49–54) is a clear case. They may be found religiously, and ethically objectionable, even when ‘visibly’ obeyed (Bhaskar [1979] 1998: 37–48; 1989:80; Slote 2013; cf. Schreiber 2015:5–6). In sub-verse, some ways of ‘presenting’ knowledge and self may significantly ‘absent’ majorly accepted norms, and sometimes by way of absconding.

Nevertheless, social and scientific transformation of categorical content is well known. Elderly categories change in theoretical content and newer ones emerge into the relational space between ontology and epistemology, begging some explanation of society and progress in science.¹²

If we take Lombaard’s word that his religious quest somewhat exceeds the mentalism and deconstructionism of suspicion he targets, ultimately we are confronted with assumptions and analytic cost of social realism, replete with slippery, relational or relative states of affairs that nevertheless are ‘taken’ as real, because we common people experience them thus, in a post-secular, post-analytic, as opposed to a ‘post-truth’ age.

In a common sense view, Lombaard’s religious category is synthetic (‘compound’ for Van der Merwe 2016:3) and is placed in an inferred chain of reason and meaning which takes for granted, numerous capital assumptions of ontological weight, like causative agents, a category of transaction and (presuming) some sort of social agreement (dare one say Constitution) to be transacted. May we presume like Tanney ([2007] 2015:1) that the causal power of the mental and ontological facets of being joins in some unity in-and-of social transaction, agreement, possible contradiction, receptivity and transcendence?

Here as Audi (1998) notes, (in possible understatement) even when not directly self-evident, categories are legitimately ‘indirectly’ to be inferred for the sake of a ‘commonsense view’ (p. 5). Whilst generalisations (p. 6) are not ‘foundational’ (p. 111), they are a ‘way’ of grounding (p. 6), enough to assume analytic ‘truth’ (p. 111) linking ‘causal justification’ and ‘epistemological grounding’. Consequently, categories continue instrumental casting in analytic memory (as learning wheels of a more dynamic process of epistemic mobility) and have ‘a certain minimal strength’ (p. 317). Importantly, such information ‘is a structure … anchored both internally and externally to the world’ (p. 324), in agreement with Brown. Thus, any quest for contemporary categorical realism depends on ontological and epistemological balance to say the least of unity or reason, religious or not.

As South Africans know of social categories when imposed, they change relations – intellectual, social and economic – to put people at torturous disadvantage and at other times or places, not. Nevertheless, the instrumental imposition of social categories based on identity politics (Unger 1987:50), challenges natural intimacies and is thus, far from innocent (Klaasen 2016:1–3). So deployed, by a chain of ‘reason’, categories are alternately the source of atrocity, cruel jokes, permissive playfulness, silly rhymes, alternative marketing, terrorism and so on. There is a ‘line’. Such categorical imposition is indeed for learning in a range of attitudes, not for imposing mechanistically, unless playfully, ethically, lovingly and only sometimes legislatively. Whilst it is obvious that all these ingredients of social and political life, mediate categorical understanding, continuously tests our Constitutional chain of reason and so on, it is the realist point that. Categories take their reference from and contribute to the text of cultural intelligence or lack. Including variations encountered, subverted, nevertheless read, felt, tasted and experienced, beyond one textual hegemony, into life and ontological reality.

Penultimately, one may pose the question: Where would existence and culture ‘be’ sans an appreciation of categories; practically, ontologically, valuatively, politically, or placed humorously by sleight of tongue, yet ubiquitously understood as imposing a valid social warning? How carefully we place categories is the critical, philosophical and moral point of interest that binds concern for philosophy, post-secularism and liberation! Refusing them is something of a lesser option, unless all conversation, love, knowledge, humour and post-secular discourse is reducible to madness, deficit or incapacity.