An Historical Exposé of Western Culture: Part II
This is the second of at least a three part survey of Western thought.
The Modern Age
The Modern Age properly begins with the liberating ideas of the Renaissance, and finds development in the Enlightenment, reaches its climax with the Industrial Revolution, and ultimately becomes a victim of the World Wars and their chilling aftermath. The fundamental project of the Modern era from its very start was the establishment of man as Man. It sought to free man from the tyranny of a corrupt religion and his enslavement to faith, and it utilized any means necessary to promote this new liberty. The art work began to be more human again, and their portrayals became less demeaning of human beings and more exalting in the depictions of man. Michelangelo’s David, stands tall, powerful, proud and confident as he faces his world and is the epitome of Renaissance thought. Humanism became the new religion (even in its Christian context) and power and freedom became the new virtues. The world was ready and rightly so to be out from under an enslaving Church that fleeced the masses of their necessities in order to luxuriously indulge in everything they forbid.
While there were many forces at work in the human liberation movement, none were as powerful as Reason. Man standing on his own to feet could share the light of Truth as he relied on his knowledge. Knowledge could dispel the twisted distortions and superstitions that the Church used to rape and steal from its flock. This is not to suggest that all humanism was anti-Christian, or even anti-Church, but it always sought to elevate man from the frail, sinful, pitiful creature that he was labeled as. In fact many rationalists sought to validate the central tenants of their religion, namely that there is a good and perfect God. There was nothing revolutionary about claiming the existence of God. Many had done so before, but most had done it on the basis of faith, and none had stood so boldly in their own reason as Descartes.
As man’s ability to think was exercised, he became greater through the discoveries of exploration and the scientific revolution. Much of his discoveries the old régimes built on faith futily resisted because what man’s new found knowledge showed him was how enslaved he was to their manipulation, control, and lies. The more knowledge man had the more abilities and freedoms they afforded and by the time of the Enlightenment, the adolescence of Modernity, it took on a secondary goal of killing the need for faith or God altogether. In its undiluted form it despised faith and its stooping effect on man. It still wanted its ethics, but on its own foundation of reason. The works of Immanuel Kant are the magnum opus of Modern Philosophy. The Enlightenment also sought political freedoms for man and inspired revolutions that reshaped maps on multiple continents. The Enlighteners new that they had not fully arrived, but felt strongly that they were only a few steps from the top.
The Industrial Revolution was the final actualization of the Modern Project, if we take into account the legal reforms such as labor laws to be a part of the tidal wave. Factories, assembly lines, and a host of other efficiencies added material comforts to the political, educational, and religious freedoms that had come before. Man had arrived. He had discovered Absolute Truth independent of religion, created new liberties for himself from both religious and secular tyrants, and was now self sufficient in new technologies that further removed his need to depend on God or anything other than himself. Transportation, health, agriculture, and eventually sex became invincible to the evils that plagued them since the beginning of time. Once man discovered Truth through his own abilities he became Man, and then he applied his knowledge to every possible arena he could think of in order to expand his horizons and he forgot God in the process because he had no need of God.
By the time the Modern Era was coming to a head, Nietzsche’s madman could not have been more right when he ran into the market place and cried out “God is dead!” Modernity at the close of the nineteenth century had accomplished it two main objectives the establishment of man as Man and the death of God… or so we thought.
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