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AGE OF MODERNITY & ANXIETY: POST-MODERNISM IN THE 20TH & 21ST CENTURIES
Lecture Guide # 32
I. RELATED EVENTS = FAILURE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY –> POST-Modern Turn
A. EUROPE: TITANIC, 1912; WWI, 1914-18; “Spanish Flu” 1920 PHILOSOPHY IN 20 TH C; WW2 & Holocaust
B USA (Later): Loss of Vietnam (1974), Challenger, AIDS (failures of our technology)
II PHILOSOPHY & LINGUISTICS
A. LINGUISTICS: “It’s a matter of semantics”
1 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951), Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 1921 Nonvisible = “Nonsense words’
2 STRUCTURALISM IN PHILOSOPHY
a NO necessary connection between the “Word” and the “Thing”
b therefore, Language cannot communicate any real TRUTH
c Literary or Historical Texts = Politicized System of such Words-&-Things (i.e., propaganda)
d SO, Texts just mean whatever I WANT / Interpret them to mean (try this on a Post-moernist w/ a signed
contract!)
B. EXISTENTIALISM
1. SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-55): Danish Theologian
a. Forerunner of Nietzsche
b. “EXISTENCE” = HUMAN Freedom, Responsibility, Choice, Contemplation of DEATH, Anxiety
1) ACT responsibly & bravely
2) Tho unsure anything: Face UNCERTAINTY of Modern World
c. Attacked: Rationalism (dependence on reason), Determinism (science, Hegel, Marx)
2 INFLUENCE (with Nietzsche) ---> MODERN EXISTENTIALISM
a CHRISTIAN EXISTENTIALISM:
1) Christianity is Faith-based and, hence, IL-logical
a) No place for use of Reason
b) So, just make a "Leap-of-Faith” into the darkness and “hope”
2)
b SECULAR PHILOSOPHICAL
1) JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, Wrote: Nausea, No Exit, The Plague
a) MAN Possesses EXISTENCE which is Liberty
b) SARTRE’s Liberty is TRAGIC:
i) Liberty to say NO: “I can oppose anything”
ii) Liberalism’s Liberty was “I can do anything”
c) RECALL: Factor God out and you destroy your own values
2) ALBERT CAMUS (another similarly pessimistic French Existentialism)
III. RELIGION IN A POST-MODERN WORLD
A. KARL BARTH (1886-1968): ORTHODOXY without BELIEF
1 MAKE “LEAP OF FAITH” without COMPELLING REASONS
2 IMPOSSIBLE TO “KNOW” (He is thinking of Chicken Little Knowledge)
B. PAUL TILLICH: Shaking the Foundations, 1948
1. ANCIENT IMAGE OF “GOD IS DEAD” / PASSÉ
a. SUPREME BEING = ULTIMATE REALITY
b No “God” in any traditional sense
c Need to Give “New Content” to words like “GOD”
2. STRUGGLE TO MAKE A PLACE FOR “GOD” IN GOD-IS-DEAD WORLD
C. GENERAL “LOOSENING” OF ABSOLUTES IN RELIGIOUS WORLD
1. For GOOD (at least Christian world takes to each other now)
aWORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES, 1948: PROTESTANT ECUMENISM
b VATICAN II of Pope JOHN XXIII attempted “AGGIORNAMENTO” = “UP-TO-DATE-ment”
1) Pace in terram, 1963
2) CATHOLIC ECUMENISM
2. For EVIL: NO ABSOLUTES: MORAL (Personal) or ETHICAL (Social)
IV LOSS OF SCIENTIFIC ABSOLUTES IN POST-MODERN SECULAR WORLD
A. SCIENCE (& SCIENTIFIC ABSOLUTISM) UNDER ATTACK FROM WITHIN
1. KARL POPPER, 1950s:
a. Philosophy of Science & Epistemology, 1935, 1959 (Engl. ed.)
b. Attack Principle of VERIFIBILITY
1) Cannot say hypothesis is VERIFIED (All swans are white til you find one black one)
2) Only say "NOT FALSIFIED"
2. THOMAS KUHN, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962
a. Science & Scientists are NOT OBJECTIVE
b. Sciences changes because of PARADIGM SHIFTS, NOT due to FACTS
B. WESTERN ABSOLUTES
1. ANCIENT WORLD
a. ANCIENT RELIGIONS: JEWISH ETHICAL MONOTHEISM
b. ROME
c. CHRIST
2. MIDDLE AGES: HOLY MOTHER CHURCH
3. SCIENCE:
a EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE YIELDS FACT
b. ONLY SCIENTIFIC FACTS = TRUTH
c. Auguste Comte: POSITIVISM
