Postmodern culture generally — and postmodern Christian culture in particular — is profoundly disillusioned with the capacity of the mind’s reasoning ability as a force for the good. The Enlightenment (against which postmodernism is a reaction) was a period in history characterized by an unbridled optimism concerning human reason. Caught up in the enthusiasm over the new philosophy spawned by the work of René Descartes and the explosive progress in the sciences, Enlightenment thinkers were tempted to conclude that if only the world would think and reason properly, we would find our way into a utopian kind of existence.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Baruch Spinoza’s vision for philosophy and science done well. In his treatise On the Improvement of the Understanding, he explains that philosophy and science done well would enable him “to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.” Not a bad goal.
But the increasing knowledge characteristic of the rise of the “new science” and Cartesian philosophy did not culminate in continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. Instead, as postmodernists never tire of reminding us, it gave us Hiroshima. Of course, it gave us much that is good too. But to the postmodern mind, the rise of science and the accumulation of knowledge is now recognizable as being subject to the whims of human management and mismanagement. Increased knowledge is no guarantee of a better world. To live in a postmodern culture is to be alive to the failure of reason and knowledge to live up to their Enlightenment expectations.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Baruch Spinoza’s vision for philosophy and science done well. In his treatise On the Improvement of the Understanding, he explains that philosophy and science done well would enable him “to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.” Not a bad goal.
But the increasing knowledge characteristic of the rise of the “new science” and Cartesian philosophy did not culminate in continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. Instead, as postmodernists never tire of reminding us, it gave us Hiroshima. Of course, it gave us much that is good too. But to the postmodern mind, the rise of science and the accumulation of knowledge is now recognizable as being subject to the whims of human management and mismanagement. Increased knowledge is no guarantee of a better world. To live in a postmodern culture is to be alive to the failure of reason and knowledge to live up to their Enlightenment expectations.
- Gregg A. Ten Elshof, I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment