The modern period has never been especially devoted to reason as such; the notion that it ever was is merely one of its ‘originary’ myths. The true essence of modernity is a particular conception of what it is to be free, as I have said [in chap. 2]; and the Enlightenment language of an ‘age of reason’ was always really just a way of placing a frame around that idea of freedom, so as to portray it as the rational autonomy and moral independence that lay beyond the intellectual infancy of ‘irrational’ belief. But we are anything but rationalists now, so we no longer need cling to the pretense that reason was ever our paramount concern; we are today more likely to be committed to ‘my truth’ than to any notion of truth in general, no matter where that might lead. The myth of ‘enlightenment’ served well to liberate us from any antique notions of divine or natural law that might place unwelcome constraints upon our wills; but it has discharged its part and lingers on now only as a kind of habit of rhetoric. And now that the rationalist moment has largely passed, the modern faith in human liberation has become, if anything, more robust and more militant. Freedom for us today is something transcendent even of reason, and we no longer really feel that we must justify our liberties by recourse to some prior standard of responsible rationality. Freedom–conceived as the perfect, unconstrained spontaneity of individual will–is its own justification, its own highest standard, its own unquestionable truth. It is true, admittedly, that the modern understanding of freedom was for a time still bound to some concept of nature: many Enlightenment and Romantic narratives of human liberation concerned the rescue of an aboriginal human essence from the laws, creeds, customs, and institutions that suppressed it. Ultimately, though, even the idea of an invariable human nature came to seem something arbitrary and extrinsic, an intolerable limitation imposed upon a still more original, inward, pure, and indeterminate freedom of the will. We no longer seek so much to liberate human nature from the bondage of social convention as to liberate the individual from all conventions, especially those regarding what is natural.”
–David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian revolution and its fashionable enemies (New Haven, Connecticut:Yale University Press, 2009), 104-105. [Hat Tip: SPIW]
My second favorite living theologian
There couldn’t be a better example of “liberating individuals from all conventions, especially those regarding what is natural” then same-sex marriage.
Ah, yes. Another take on the development of postmodern nihilism. Not the first narrative of such, nor do I expect it to be the last. It’s not clear from the quote where the author is going with all this. Given the title of the book, it’s also not clear that my local postmodern library will have a copy that I can check out. Sad.
“To be entirely modern (which very few of us are) is to believe in. . . . [i]the[/i] nothing–or, better, in nothingness as such” (20-21). Etc.
I believe Hart is wrong about the Enlightenment. It is not the Enlightenment that is divorced from reason, it is postmodernism (which rejects the Enlightenment) that is divorced from reason.
David Lyon’s book [b]Postmodernity[/b] (1994) has some useful clear definitions: Postmodernism involves the abandonment of scientific foundationialism (the belief that science is based on observable facts), as well as all of the primary beliefs of the Enlightenment, accompanied by the dismissal of the knowledge base of the past, a shift in emphasis to what is local rather than universal, and a preference for [i]eikona[/i] over [i]logos[/i]. Postmodernity is concerned with the social change that is presumed to be caused by new technologies, globalization, and consumerism.
From the quote given by Dr. Harmon, Hart seems to be projecting present-day outlooks and attitudes onto the past, which is to impute postmodern thinking to the very Enlightenment that postmodernism emphatically rejects.
…that’s ‘foundationalism’ — forgot to check the spelling.
A stock distinction with which Hart is of course perfectly familiar, but for which he himself has little if patience. No, it was [i]the Enlightenment itself[/i] that was “never . . . especially devoted to reason as such”, whatever it may have claimed to the contrary. Its more fundamental commitment was really to an impoverished conception of freedom and the freedom of the will, a conception that made its “originary” appearance (I’m guessing he would say) in late medieval nominalism. The true “age of reason” was that of the Church Fathers.
“little if any”. Sorry.
New Pilgrim, I think that the relationship between post-modernity and modernism is a bit more complicated than how lyon explains. I suspect David Harvey offers a more coherent view, that argues that speed and the compression of time and space as one of the main descriptors of post-modernism.
[blockquote]Steve Perisho wrote:
A stock distinction with which Hart is of course perfectly familiar, but for which he himself has little if [any] patience. No, it was the Enlightenment itself that was “never . . . especially devoted to reason as suchâ€, whatever it may have claimed to the contrary. Its more fundamental commitment was really to an impoverished conception of freedom and the freedom of the will, a conception that made its “originary†appearance (I’m guessing he would say) in late medieval nominalism. The true “age of reason†was that of the Church Fathers.[/blockquote]
Whether or not the Enlightenment was “especially devoted to reason as such” (it mostly claimed to have been built on the rationalist thought of the 17th century) it should certainly never be confused with nihilism. Ideology–that most enduring product of the Enlightenment–is invariably based upon some secularized (and thus flawed) conception of human nature, not upon absolute free will. Consider the examples: Marxism, Fascism, Liberal Constitutional Democracy, Environmentalism–can anyone deny that these derive from a fixed idea of what defines human nature (economics, race, civic duty, man’s place in the biosphere) rather than man’s absolute freedom to choose? Can anyone deny that they each impose some set of restraints upon the individual will? For that reason, there is a very real distinction between nihilism (the ultimate triumph of the free will) and the Enlightenment that produced modern ideology–even if Hart doesn’t have the patience to recognize it.
[blockquote]John Wilkins wrote:
…I think that the relationship between post-modernity and modernism is a bit more complicated than how lyon explains. I suspect David Harvey offers a more coherent view, that argues that speed and the compression of time and space as one of the main descriptors of post-modernism.[/blockquote]
Lyon’s book was to hand, but is certainly not the last word on the subject. As for the attributes of postmodernity you mention, they obviously relate to the social change thought to be caused by new technologies, but your statement isn’t clear on why Harvey is more coherent than Lyon. (Perhaps, we’re talking wave [i]vs.[/i] particle?)
I recommend Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” as a careful examination of the underlying assumptions operating beneath and within our sense of the self, since about 1500. In particular, Taylor posits “subtraction” of the “irrational” elements of our thinking as the dominant mode of modernists arriving at what is irreducibly true about human affairs. If we strip out all that is based on religious myths, we get to what is really rationally true about humans. Subtraction, in this sense, is however guided as much by other extrinsic factors, many of which could be considered to be irrational on other grounds. The desire to be personally authentic allows a person to hold wildly dissonant views on rationality and belief. Thus, new agers operate quite well in secular settings that are completely at odds with their sense of who they are as spritual persons. To this extent, the so called freedom of the self is maintained, but at the cost of any meaningful rationality. (And usually at the cost of customizing one’s religious beleiefs to suit themselves, again, in order to be “authentic.)” Since so many others are doing the same thing, who is to question another who seems so, well, authentic in terms of themselves?