Contemporary Ideas: Modernity and Its Crisis PDF

CONTEMPORARY IDEAS* The culture of modernity and its crisis *See the original text: by Mariano Fazio (ch.1 of the book Grandes interrogantes del siglo XX, José Carlos Martín de la Hoz (ed.), Rialp, Madrid, 2022. The text is for the exclusive use of students. The footnotes or comments are from one of...

CONTEMPORARY IDEAS* The culture of modernity and its crisis *See the original text: by Mariano Fazio (ch.1 of the book Grandes interrogantes del siglo XX, José Carlos Martín de la Hoz (ed.), Rialp, Madrid, 2022. The text is for the exclusive use of students. The footnotes or comments are from one of the teachers of "Man and the Modern World" course. STARTING POINT AND APPROACH TO THE ISSUE Secularisation comes from the This text is a brief and schematic review of “contemporary ideas”, the ideas of the last three centuries, from the point of view of the process of secularisation . Latin "saeculum"(it means “century” in worldly time), and refers to the realm of the "temporal" or "historical", here understood as distinct from the timeless or eternal (the divine atemporal realm). In this context, "the process of secularisation" is a set of changes in Western culture in which the presence and influence of (Christian) religion on people and public or private institutions were diminishing. CONTENTS 1. Modernity and secularization 2. The absolutisation of the relative 3. The crisis of the culture of Modernity 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • Modernity is often identified with a process of secularisation. If the identification were to end there, we would have a bipartite vision of Western history, where a Christian Middle Ages and a secularised Modernity would be opposed. • But neither the Middle Ages are completely Christian, nor is Modernity completely secularised. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • Is Modernity more Christian than the Middle Ages? Only as far as the relationship between the natural and the supernatural order is concerned: there is a gradual overcome of clericalism of many medieval social and political structures, which confuses these two spheres, identifying political power with spiritual power. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • The " natural order" refers to human nature or potentialities by using (free) reason and intelligence. The personal maturing and fulfillment stands out on the bodily, psychic and spiritual-personal-social levels. • The " supernatural order" refers to the order of graces (help) by God to people through his loving providence: either the sacraments (of the Church), or the multifold of personal aids which complete their moral and spiritual life. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • The two orders form a unity in the Christian person (or in the religious person in general). The supernatural order presupposes and fulfills the natural order since God only helps man if he cooperates freely, i.e. if he really wants to receive this help. • For example, seen from the natural order, any person, whether a believer or not, can be fair and good. Starting from basic human conditions (virtues or good moral habits), God can take the person to his/her plenitude by giving him/her graces to live the fullness of Charity (he infuses the person with theological or supernatural virtues, he grants her/him operative or intellectual graces). 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION From the 16th century onwards: Christian and non-clerical vision of man rediscovers the value of human nature: according to this anthropology proper to Christian humanism, of Thomistic origin (medieval), the order of God’s help/grace does not detract from the value of nature, since, as St Thomas [Aquinas] says, divine right, which comes from grace, does not detract from human right, which comes from reason. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • Even if we identify Modernity with secularisation, we must underline the presence of a first version of secularisation understood as declericalisation*, as a distinction between the natural and the supernatural order, as an awareness of the relative autonomy of the worldly affairs. • Examples of this declericalisation are the doctrines of the second Spanish scholasticism —in particular, the School of Salamanca founded by Francisco de Vitoria—, the moderate liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century, or the affirmations in favour of secularity in the documents of the Second Vatican Council , and more specifically in Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae. (Social Doctrine of the Church) 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • If these declericalising trends runs through the whole arc of Modernity, there is a second version of secularisation, which we could define as the affirmation of the absolute autonomy of man, which leads to a closure with regard to transcendence , and which configures a certain Modernity in opposition to the Christian vision of man and history. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • IN this sense, the Middle Ages, in comparison with the Modernity, appear as a Christian period, deeply permeated by the transcendent sense of life. Faced with questions about the meaning of human existence, the Middle Ages were a sensible period, a time offering meaning: the surrounding culture provided answers to questions about the origin and final destiny of man on earth. Today, on the other hand, after centuries of reaffirmation of the absolute autonomy of the human being, answers to the why are lacking in many sectors of society. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • Modernity, therefore, presents itself as ambivalent: on the one hand, there is a more Christian Modernity compared to the Middle Ages insofar as there is a more mature awareness of the harmonious relationship between the natural and supernatural orders; on the other hand there is a Modernity closed to transcendence, with pretensions to a self-explanation of the ultimate meaning of human existence which ended, after the adoption of a Promethean attitude in the 19th and 20th centuries, in contemporary nihilism. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • AS a verification of this ambivalence, take, for example, the Renaissance. The 15th and 16th centuries were the period of the rediscovery of classical antiquity, i.e., of a vision of man prior to Christian revelation. Some authors, took the values of classical culture in opposition to Christianity, which were presented as the expression of a Gothic and obscurantist period. At the same time, however, the Renaissance took the form of a revival of authentically Christian life, a return to the origins of the Gospel: as well as editing the Greek and Roman texts with new philological criteria, the first careful editions of the Fathers of the Church , considered the best testimonies of a life faithful to the spirit of Christ, also appeared. 1. MODERNITY AND SECULARIZATION • We can also observe this duplicity in the plastic arts in Renaissance: pagan themes and a new sensibility invade the new styles, but also the materials of the Roman ruins and the new techniques are put at the service of religious art oriented ad maiorem Dei gloriam . • If Machiavelli is a typical representative of the Renaissance, so too, and with equal force, is Saint Thomas More. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE • During the modern era there is a crisis of faith that manifests itself in the demystification and rationalisation of the world, in the growing loss of any sense of transcendence beyond the visible and the tangible. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE • The crisis of faith is not the disappearance of the religious sense. It disappears faith in a personal and transcendent God, but the religious sense inherent in the human spirit finds other centre, which are absolutised: earthly elements are sacralised, which will provide the basis for substitute religions. • Examples: Enlightenment reason, Romantic sentiment, or the absolute "Ego" of German idealism. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE • All different theoretical constructions of secularised Modernity have in common the fact that they are founded on an important element that would constitute the central part of human existence. An important but relative element, which is absolutised: reason, feelings, freedom, belonging to a cultural community, economy, science. • Thought important, none of these elements, on its own, can provide a complete explanation of the world and of history. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE • All different theoretical constructions of secularised Modernity have in common the fact that they are founded on an important element that would constitute the central part of human existence. An important but relative element, which is absolutised: reason, feelings, freedom, belonging to a cultural community, economy, science. • Thought important, none of these elements, on its own, can provide a complete explanation of the world and of history. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism b) Ideological thought 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE Immanuel Kant tried to define this new state of culture. In his essay entitled What is the Enlightenment, Kant answers the rhetorical question as follows: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his state of minority, which he must impute to himself. The inability to use one's own intellect without the guidance of another. This minority is imputable to oneself, if the cause of it does not depend on the defect of intelligence, but on the lack of decision and courage to make use of one's own intelligence without being guided by others. Sapere aude, have the courage to use your own intelligence! This is the motto of the Enlightenment”. a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE As is clear from Kantian definition, the theoretical key of the Enlightenment is constituted by reason, an inexhaustible force, which will lead to the knowledge of the unfathomable mysteries of nature. On the other hand, faith in the capacity of reason will manifest itself in another key concept for understanding the Enlightenment: the notion of progress. The intellectual of this period considered that the extension of the Enlightenment would lead to a more humane, more prudent and more comfortable life. a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE This optimistic and progressive view of history is closely related to another characteristic of Enlightenment reason: the rejection of tradition. Any social or spiritual phenomenon that cannot be explained by human reason is, for the Enlightenment, a myth or superstition. Anti-traditionalism is embodied in the rejection of revealed religion —especially Catholicism in Europe— and in the theoretical construction of deism, i.e. a religion without mysteries, tailored to reason, for which it is sufficient to affirm the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and the future life as the entire content of religion. a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE Although one cannot deny the many merits of eighteenth-century thought, such as having created an environment conducive to scientific development or having forced believers to purify their faith of any superstition or merely human traditions, there is no doubt that the Enlightenment created a colder, less habitable world, because man is not only rationality. The Enlightenment tried to understand everything. Very soon other intellectuals would say that the Enlightenment had understood nothing. Romanticism tried to recover the forgotten worlds of the Enlightenment: the world of mystery, of popular tradition, of the passions of the heart. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism But Enlightenment and Romanticism are not completely opposed philosophical-cultural movements. They share a common ideological matrix: the autonomy of man. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE Romanticism replaces reason with feeling, but it is an unregulated feeling, which tends towards infinity, which must taste everything, savour everything, without setting limits to its own desires. In this perspective, we still live in romanticism today. a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism Romanticism continues the secularising trend of the Enlightenment. The difference lies in the values that are now placed at the centre of man's attention. It is no longer scientific reason, but love, art, life and suffering that take the place of the Absolute. In this sense, Romanticism presents itself in its radical ambiguity: moving away from the cold rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment, it apparently opens the doors to the supernatural. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism In Romaticism, feelings, mystery, cultural particularities and tradition were once again given a place in philosophical speculation. The anti-Enlightenment reaction opened the door to irrationalism, which would give rise to intellectual currents that would end up opposing, in the following centuries, a transcendent conception of the human person. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE a) The matrices of Modernity: Enlightenment and Romanticism 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought These two matrices of contemporary culture —Enlightenment and Romanticism— are the basis of the ideologies that have marked the last two centuries of the previous millennium (XIX, XX). Ideologies occupy an emblematic place in the process of secularisation in the strong sense, and in particular in this mechanism of absolutisation of the relative. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought Liberalism (or Capitalism), Nationalism, Socialism (or Marxism) and Positivism are the four most influential ideologies. Freedom, nation, economic class, science are central notions for a comprehensive understanding of human nature. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought Manchesterian liberalism, identifying freedom with the laws of the market, built a comfortable mansion, an English-style home. But most people were left outside: it is the world of the poor people, described masterfully by Dickens. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought Nationalisms… or the identification of man with his belonging to a particular nation, ethnic group, race or culture robs the human person of one of his most essential properties: his interpersonal openness. Man becomes more man, becomes more worthy, to the extent that he communicates or enters into communion with others. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought The extreme example of anthropological reductionism, of closure to transcendence and the sacralisation of the human is represented by Marxism. Homo oeconomicus, after the critique of religious alienation, is transformed into a god. Marx could well affirm with Feuerbach: "Homo homini Deus" (man is a God for man), this is the supreme practical principle, the decisive transformation of history. Unfortunately, the divinisation of Marxist man leads to living not in the heavenly mansions, but in the various Gulag Archipelagos of recent history. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought Positivism is the legitimate heir of 18th century enlightened reason. The world is presented as perfectly explicable if we stick to the facts, leaving aside all metaphysical or theological explanations. Experimental sciences have the last word on the world. Positivist reading of science goes beyond science itself, as a total explanation of man's destiny. And it takes (scientifical) progress of humanity as a rational faith in a happy and just future for all which clearly manifests the element of religious substitution that all ideology carries with it. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought The absolutisation of the relative, the axis of ideological thought, entails an optimistic vision of the future of humanity. Ideologies, as substitute religions, are also secularised eschatologies , i.e. they promise the happiness of the heavenly paradise, but on this earth. Not in the transcendent hereafter but in the intramundane hereafter [within the world]. 2. THE ABSOLUTISATION OF THE RELATIVE b) Ideological thought If we let the laws of the market work spontaneously, we will have a happy world where well-being will reign; if my culture or race or nation triumphs, history will enter a higher stage; if we make the communist revolution, eliminating private property, we will reach the communist paradise without classes; if we cultivate the sciences, all disease will be defeated, all mystery will be unravelled. Nineteenthcentury positivist optimism led Swinburne to sing in 1871: "Glory to man on high; for man is lord of all things". 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • Modernity led to a war on a scale never seen in history. Logically, the year 1919 marked the apex of an increasingly acute awareness of the crisis of culture, which had been brewing since the end of the 19th century. The historian of ideas, accustomed to living with very different interpretations of cultural processes, was surprised to find that, around the end of the Great War, intellectuals were almost unanimous in affirming that there was a crisis. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • There is unanimity in noting the cultural crisis, but diversiity in interpreting its causes. See this three possible answers: • 1) The one given by ideological thinking: according to some authors, to solve the crisis it is necessary to push ideologies to the bottom. This is how we find the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. (And consumerism, transhumanism…). • 2) Based on the idea of the meaninglessness of human existence and settled into a comfortable relativism: we must abandon the pretension of knowing the truth. A pretension which, according to this perspective, has been the cause of the disasters of war. Leads to Postmodern Liquid Society. • 3) Looking for new meaning, thinking open to transcendence in different ways. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • We skip now the problem of totalitarianisms etc. (1) and go to relativism (2) and the other perspectives (3). 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • Contemporary relativism has two facets. • A) From a more existential perspective, it takes the form of a crisis of meaning: many people do not know what the ultimate meaning of human existence is. • B) From a more theoretical point of view, relativism takes the form of a kind of radical skepticism towards the possibility of knowing the truth. Deepest one. Goes hand by hand with nihilism, irrationalism and antimetaphysical standpoints. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • The radical result of contemporary relativism can be explained by the cultural atmosphere created by the so-called "masters of suspicion". Indeed, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud conceive the human subject not as something original and real, but as a necessary derivation of irrational forces that lie behind every human manifestation. In the face of every phenomenon, it is necessary to discover "what lies behind it". 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • The human person is an effect of a set of economicsocial phenomena (Marx), pulsional phenomena (Freud) and in the broad sense of resentment (Nietzsche). • This thinkers consider man is not an original starting point but the fruit of becoming. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • The loss of the real consistency of the person is the paradoxical conclusion of the alleged attribution of absolute autonomy to the human creature. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • Freud's statement about the humiliation of Western man's narcissism is well known: if Copernicus' heliocentric theory represented cosmological humiliation, Darwin was the standard-bearer of biological humiliation, while Freud himself was the representative of psychological humiliation. Man is not his own master, but is dependent on impulses from the unconscious. And human action is determined by the libido or sexual instinct. Social institutions put a brake on the full development of the libido, generating neurosis. • Freudian psychoanalysis and its influence will be present in the social movements of the 20th century, despite the discredit in which many of the conclusions of Freudian psychology find themselves today. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • The cultural environment generated by relativism and the perspective of absolute autonomy of man has been the breeding ground for a new generation of ideologies. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • Old hedonism is again part of our cultural environment. The dissociation between sexuality and procreation is at the root of the sexual revolution, which has many social implications. • Radical feminism, gender ideology, which deny a true human nature, and puts the construction of one's own identity in the hands of the autonomous decision of the individual. The loss of the notion of human nature and the forgetting of the unique dignity of each person have also given rise to the ideologies of deep ecology, where man is only one element and, in particular, the most harmful to the ecosystem, and transhumanism, which aims to surpass human nature through technological development. 3. THE CRISIS OF THE CULTURE OF MODERNITY • 3) Thinkers researching for transcendent (religious) meaning. • Conversions of some Western intellectuals to Catholicism or other Christian denominations (T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton,]. Maritain, G. Marcel, N. Berdiaeff, E. Waugh, S. Undset, etc.). • Some philosophical currents didn’t accept positivism, idealism or materialism. These are mainly spiritualism (Bergson); personalism (Mounier, Guardini, Wojtyla), the philosophy of action (Blondel), neothomism (Maritain, Gilson, Fabro); others proposed "philosophies of values" as attempts to contain the social and spiritual decomposition after the Great War (M. Scheler, N. Hartmann).