Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Moderne, Post-Moderne, Christentum: Schwierigkeit der Sprache; keine äußeren Entitäten

Kurzinhalt: They are not objective realities outside of us; rather, we are part of the reality that extends into them; if "postmodern" means anything, it signals the collapse of modern self-assurance

Textausschnitt: 111a PART OF OUR DIFFICULTY in conceiving the relationship between Christianity and modernity is the metaphorical nature of language. It is virtually impossible to avoid the impression we are discussing two external entities from a perspective outside of both of them. Our linguistic habits are overwhelmingly derived from a world of objects, and it is difficult to resist their extension into all other realms of discourse. A conscious effort must be made to remind ourselves that there are no such things as "modernity" or "Christianity." They are not objective realities outside of us; rather, we are part of the reality that extends into them. Far from having a vantage point outside of them, we would have no meaning at all, except for what has emerged within them. Modernity is not a world, but the limits of the perspective in which we find ourselves. It is as far as we are presently able to apprehend ourselves and our place in the order of reality. As such, it constitutes a world without being identical with it. The crucial consideration is whether modernity is the limit or is itself subsumable within a larger perspective. Has modernity surpassed Christianity, or is the Christian differentiation the horizon in which modernity has become possible? (Fs) (notabene)

111b On the answer to this question turns the meaning of the third millennium. Is the event no more than a residue of a common Christian past, or does it recall us to the ineluctable Christian limits of differentiation in the present? Do we live within a modern or a postmodern world, or has it been our fate to forget about the source of the world that still defines us? They are intriguing questions, made all the more so by our arrival at a moment of diminished certainty as to where we are going. If "postmodern" means anything, it signals the collapse of modern self-assurance. But how can we reconceive a link with the vanished Christian past? Does Christianity not itself suffer from the same sense of historical obsolescence as any public symbolism? Modernity began on the presumption of the supersession of the Christian civilization that preceded it. Can we seriously consider rethinking the link between Christianity and civilization at a time when the only public consensus is the acknowledgment of fragmentation? In particular, how is it possible for Christianity, which has accommodated to its role within the modern world, to reconfigure itself as the sustaining horizon of that world? (Fs) (notabene)

112a The burden of this essay is to suggest the far-reaching reorientation of our self-understanding that is required in order to grapple with the challenge of our time. If we wish to do more than bemoan the crisis of meaning, we must be prepared to move away from the externalist metaphor of knowing and admit we are immersed in lines of meaning before we even begin to reflect. Besides the objectivity of the investigation of objects, there is also the reality of the investigator and the world in which he takes his bearings. The latter is constituted by meaning before the inquiry ever begins, and the possibilities of inquiry are very much structured by the differentiations already achieved by that constitutive illumination. Unlike the objects indifferently lying in wait for our encounter and analysis, the boundary constituted by meaning marks the limit of our self-understanding. It can be elaborated, but not easily extended. There is no perspective beyond what has historically been differentiated and appropriated as the working framework of our thinking. Heidegger worked tirelessly to call attention to the opening within which thinking occurs. The differentiations that make thinking about objects possible are not themselves produced by thinking. Only the illumination of Being establishes that space in a not readily surpassable way. The modern world, which began in the self-confidence that it could dispense with such constitutive illuminations, has seen the collapse of its horizon of meaning cast serious doubt about the viability of its indifference. We are compelled to wonder if modernity does not simply presuppose a revelatory opening from which it has become disconnected. (Fs) (notabene)