Lesson 1: Secularism
Monolithic culture vs. melting pot (pluralistic).
Pre-christian culture = paganism; Post-Christian culture = secularism.
Secularism: Humanism, existentialism, positivism (pragmatism), hedonism, pluralism (relativism).
*ism - philosophize something.
Secularism from Saeculum (world as in this time). Mundus (world as in this space).
Versus Christianity: Eternity. God: Beyond time & space. Creatures = Sub specie Aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity).
hic et nunc: The here and the now. Observed everywhere in the media, commercials. Epicureanism/hedonism (eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die) vs. Jesus' "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven".
Shakespeare's:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
The secular worldview denies that which is transcendent and eternal.
Lesson 2 Existentialism
Mentioned (those who could translate technical philosophy into popular culture):
Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness.
Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Existentialism: anti-system. Its accent is on human existence
Not metaphysics, nothing abstract.
Formally began in 19th century:
Christian/Theistic: Kierkegaard
(Focus of this lesson) Atheistic: Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Martin Heidegger.
Impacted America after WWII (Holocaust).
Buchenwald, Auschwitz, etc. (Holocaust concentration camps)
Related to Sartre's Nausea: Man in the final analysis is a useless passion. (Philosophy of despair) Took form in Greenwich Village: Beat Generation (Beatnik Movement): Communication of their ideas through modern arts. Also influenced filmmakers: Ingmar Bergman, Antonioni, Fellini, etc., Broadway's "theater of the absurd" (Waiting for Godot = God, the absence of God, man has reached the point of irrationality that even human speech is no longer intelligible, life is meaningless).
Not a symphony but cacophony.
Religious movement embracing existentialism: Zen Buddhism, the first penetration in Western culture from oriental religions. Not pure Buddhism, but existential variety of Buddhism.
Traditional thoughts:
Sartre: "Existence precedes essence".
Alexander Pope: "The proper study of mankind is man". ~ An Essay on Man
Essence comes from individual, not from a universal group.
Very important book: Irrational Man by William Barrett
“When mankind no longer lives spontaneously turned toward God or the super-sensible world—when, to echo the words of Yeats, The ladder is gone by which we would climb to a higher reality—the artist too must stand face to face with a flat and inexplicable world. This shows itself even in the formal structures of modern art. Where the movement of the spirit is no longer vertical but only horizontal, the climactic elements in art are in general leveled out, flattened.” ~ Barrett
Related to Cubism (eg. Picasso's arts): Bizarre but it is a compression and flattening of life to a horizontal level. Not objective.
Kierkegaard: "Truth is subjectivity". Accent on the personal: self help, I rather than we.
Popular terms:
1. Nothingness: Found in Nietzsche (Father of Nihilism-das nicht). The only meaning is what you determine for yourself, only your preference. No reason for human existence (from nothing to nothing).
Thus, Sartre's Being and Nothingness.
2. Despair & dread: Camus: The only serious question to investigate is the question of suicide.
Films end not in the good guys winning, but destruction. The movie Rocky I restored the traditional values. Also, Chariots of Fire (1981).
3. Angst (anxiety): Not specific fears, but undefined, unsettling. Martin Heidegger's works (eg. Sein und Zeit/Being and Time). SeinBeing: to be. Heidegger used "dasein: da- present/here or there -> being here/there, a man's life is defined by his finite boundaries, not in the theater of eternity. Here's where you're at. The reason we have angst, care/concern (Versorgung), is the experience of geworfenheit (Thrownness): To be thrown. Man has been thrown into an impersonal universe, nobody's home. Carve out your own existence. Man understands this, but afraid to talk about it. Related to Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, etc.
4. Freedom & Authority: No norms to follow, free to do your own thing. Nietzsche condemned 19th century people for "a herd morality" (safe, conventional, expected). Nietzsche's solution: superman, a new kind of hero, dialectical courage (contradictory courage) - The supreme virtual of the existential hero. Life is meaningless, nevertheless, choose not to follow conventional means. Sweeping result through USA: youth revolution, revolt against authority, etc. Acknowledging rebellious choice will end in total annihilation but I do it anyway.
Modern art and film have been major mediums for ideas of existentialism.
Back to secularism. No eternal value. Quenching human spirit.
Lesson 3: Humanism
Originated from Protagoras' motto: homo mensura: man the measure (of all things) man is ultimately autonomous => anthropocentric.
In the early days, humanism = theistic humanism: man-centered, but was aware of God - for only religious experience.
Climax to the great debate between Erasmus (prince of Renaissance Humanist) vs. Luther (won the debate).
Erasmus: ad fonte = to the source (fountain/spring) => responsible for Textus Receptus (Greek New Testament) => King James version.
Though remained a Roman Catholic, Erasmus wrote Satires to criticize the Roman Church.
Soon Liberalism came and religious humanism allied with it.
Liberalism = naturalism = extracts all things supernatural - starting with the great debate on the incarnation of Christ.
Emil Brunner (Neo-Orthodox): Liberalism is unbelief, in his Mediator book.
=> Social Gospel
Humanism values:
1. Compassion
2. Service to mankind
3. Honesty
4. Industry & hard work
5. Freedom & democracy
All 5 points above are viewed as valuable in religion for the Humanism of the 19th century.
Modern humanism = more militant: against Christianity.
John Dewey: Religion hinders evolutionary progress of man. Humanism cures it by efforts of man in technology and chiefly education => progressive.
Thus, the break between virtuous values and the foundation in God's characters, when humanism merely borrowed (stole) the values from Christianity.
Francis Schaeffer: humanism has both feet planted in midair. (no foundation)
Humanism = intellectually untenable; but emotionally very very attractive.
Humanism = preferences rather than principles.
Everyone to their own preferences => Statism
Sproul: "The principle vehicle for the dissemination of humanist philosophy is the Public School System." Christians after a long time, began to wake up and realize the vast difference between what their children learn from home and that which they get in the Public School education (completely different sets of philosophy).
Lesson 4: Pragmatism
Ideology born of U.S.
Harvey Cox's "The Secular City" vs. Augustine's City of God: pragmatism as American life.
What Works.
Pragmatism: Theory of Truth (which truth works?)
Practicality: Test for Truth; We must be always in practice, practical. But not pragmatic.
A club in Harvard - Metaphysical club: William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (along with John Dewey who's not part of the club):
"We can't know ultimate truth, therefore..."
-James wrote "The Varieties of Religious Experience", over God's existence.
-Dewey was accused of Subjectivism, since he disdained epistemology.
Pragmatism focuses on short term solutions.
FDR, president who made the first 100 days of presidency famous. Passed many legislation. Yankee Ingenuity: American style problem solving.
Truth is the cash value of the idea - William James.
Conflict between what is right vs. what is expedient.
Lesson 5: Positivism
Began in the 19th Century.
August Comte: The Dominance of scientific knowledge.
3 Stages of social maturity:
1. Infantile stage: theological meaning
2. Metaphysical stage: Abstract thinking, philosophical reasoning.
3. Scientific stage: Maturity reached.
Only believe in the world of Phenomena. Not beyond/metaphysics.
Comte: Nothing is absolute except the fact that everything is relative.
Comte tried to establish a religion: Religion of Humanity/Positivist Temple.
Thomas Huxley responded: Comte simply gave Catholicism minus Christianity. Religion without God.
Positivism -> Logical Positivism -> Analytical Philosophy.
Logical Positivism: Started in the 1920s, in the Vienna Circle. Nothing is meaningful unless it can be falsified or verified, empirically.
But can the verification principle itself be verified empirically?
Positivism divorces science from the whole realm of truth.