Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Schizophrenie der modernen Welt: Widerspruch zwischen Realität und Selbstverständniss

Kurzinhalt: Its schizophrenia consists of the dissociation between its reality and its self-understanding; the problem is more than terminological. The inability to articulate the sources of the modern self leads toward a deeper confusion

Textausschnitt: 75a We live not so much in a secular world as in a world from which the divine has withdrawn behind a veil. Mystery is still present-indeed, it is constitutive of the horizon within which our finite rationality continues to operate. There would be no painstaking collaborative unfolding of science, nor a persevering commitment to the defense of human dignity, if there were not embedded within such movements the sense of contact with a depth of endless fascination. To behold the increments of scientific discovery or the finite character of all political achievements as all there is is to rob them of their sustaining momentum. They are of value in themselves, but not because they are all that we have. It is because they are all that we have now. By remaining faithful to their exigences, we are drawn toward a more expansive horizon whose presence can scarcely be glimpsed from where we are now. This is the vitality of life that was so important to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, for it was not life as such that drew them, but the growth of the soul toward an indefinable fulfillment that life itself seemed to promise. Our paradigmatic modern endeavors of rational inquiry and individual dignity occupy the most prominent role because they are the most visible medium through which that enlargement of the soul takes place today. There are, of course, many other such vehicles in human life, from the intimacy of love to the ecstasy of faith, that follow the same path. It is merely that science and rights are the most publicly authoritative expressions of our sustaining momentum. (Fs)

76a The problem is that our commentary on this dynamic has involved a departure from the modern secular self-understanding. While the modern world may have found a variety of vehicles through which the intuitive participation in transcendent Being can take place, that realization cannot become transparent to modern self-consciousness itself. We fail to recognize the extent to which our most apparently secular pursuits are profoundly constituted by the horizon of transcendent mystery. As a consequence, we are perpetually in search of an interpretation of ourselves, but persistently failing in the task of identifying who we are. Despite a proliferation of philosophical perspectives, none of them seem capable of capturing what we are about, although none of them fail completely to hit on some of the relevant dimensions. The result is the peculiar character of the modern world, which Charles Taylor has described as split between powerful moral sources of inspiration and a powerful incapacity to adequately articulate them.1 Without the language of transcendent revelation, the modern world is unperceiving of its own deepest resonances. Its schizophrenia consists of the dissociation between its reality and its self-understanding. (Fs)

76b The disorientation of the modern world is generated by the disconnection between its transcendent commitments and its studiously mundane frame of reference. There is nothing unstable about an implicitly transcendent orientation as such. It is only when its character is misunderstood and mistaken for a utilitarian construction that confusion occurs. Then we encounter the perennial modern misconceptions about the nature of science and rights. Frustration and irritation arise from the failure to convince the incomprehending that such pursuits are not adequately captured by any calculus of immanent benefits. They are self-justifying orientations that, even if they rendered nothing in return, would still be deserving of our utmost support as the noblest attainments of which we are capable. But the problem is more than terminological. The inability to articulate the sources of the modern self leads toward a deeper confusion. Absent a transcendent frame of reference, we are not simply without a "sacred canopy"; we become incapable of distinguishing between the immanent and transcendent dimensions of what we do. The differentiation collapses, and the mundane reality is made to bear the mystery of it all. An implicity present transcendent dimension is not problematic so long as its character is understood. It is when the inner tension is forgotten that we are launched on a path of distortion in which the investigation of nature or the protection of rights are pressed to yield an illumination higher than that of which they are capable. (Fs)