The history of philosophy is usually divided into three epochs, the classical, the medieval and the modern, the modern having many sub-divisions. The 19th century philosopher Hegel had little respect for medieval philosophy, a not unusual attitude among philosophers of the modern era. The glory of the classical period had been replaced by a society whose intellectual elite devoted their energies to investigating questions that were almost meaningless. The socio-political culture in Europe until the renaissance allowed for little genuine inquiry it is widely felt among today’s intellectuals. Hegel described how he would, figuratively, put on seven league boots to get from the end of the classical period to the publication of Descartes’ “Discourse on Method” which invented the modern scientific method and ushered in the era of modern philosophy.
Now, within Soviet society, to question the dogmas of Marx and Lenin would have been foolhardy to say the least. Some genuine philosophical thought did, in fact, emerge from the Soviet empire. In general, however, any academic philosophy that took place within Soviet society took place within very rigid socio-cultural constraints. Most academic philosophers today would regard medieval philosophy in a similar light. It was not quite bogus philosophy but it was occurring within very narrow socio-cultural constraints. Of course medieval philosophy occurred within genuine socio-cultural limits rather than the synthetic socio-cultural limits which the Soviet dictatorship created.
An important point to note here is that all philosophy and, indeed, all human activity occurs within a socio-cultural context of some sort or other. And no culture is without its blind-spots and at least some intrinsic dishonesty.
One prime example of my own experience of this was when studying the far right political philosopher Robert Nozick. Nozick argues for libertarian anarchy. Taxation of any kind amounts to forced labour, slavery, and therefore is immoral in principle. However this would create a situation of complete chaos and lawlessness. Infrastructure requires funding. Nozick’s response is to argue for a “night-watchman” state: minimal taxation to create law and order. But the question as to exactly how much infrastructure is required to bring this about has no easy answer. So we don’t like forced labour but we tolerate just a little. How little? My tutor agreed that this was a fundamental and glaring flaw in Nozick’s argument and that the main reason that Nozick was taken seriously in academic circles was because of corporate funding designed to create a libertarian right political climate.
An acquaintance of mine who is a professional academic with a background in philosophy once remarked that to me that myself and my wife Jane were the only religious believers he knew. In what sort of strange sub-culture does he exist I thought to myself.
In general within the western academic philosophy community to profess religious beliefs is unacceptable. Atheism is almost an unquestionable dogma among humanities academics, at least in my experience of universities in Ireland and Britain and reading the literature in general.
Descartes’ philosophy was to a large extent endorsed by the (Catholic) Church partly because the Cartesian Mind, distinct from the body, had strong parallels with the Christian soul. Descartes’ mind, understood within the context of science and philosophy, was very similar to the concept of the soul that exists within the discipline of theology.
Modern philosophy tends to seek a materialistic explanation of the phenomenon of mind and this within the context of a reality-as-a-whole that is entirely a material phenomenon. As a post graduate student I produced a thesis that argued that this involved a naive conception of the material. While atoms can meaningfully be understood as very small discrete objects with length, breadth, height and weight within the context of the theoretical understanding of inanimate macroscopic objects, fluids and solids, this model of what atoms actually are is worthless at the actual level of the atom, of the atomic nucleus, at the level of the cosmological and at the level of the psychological. An important point here is that the level of science required for my analysis would be much like the British “A” level standard, nothing very high-brow. But the point also is not that my (poor me) thesis did not influence the unfolding of western philosophical and religious thought. It is that the concept of free rational inquiry is largely a myth.
For instance a major part of 20th century philosophy involved the study of language. Some of the major thinkers of the recent era felt that this area was of prime importance and thus channeled the direction of academic research.
A popular field of philosophical investigation these days involves the study of how such things as university faculty office politics and academic fashion trends create what is perceived as truth. Whether it be deliberate propaganda or otherwise there can be an element of the absurd and the perverse in the creation of perceived truth. There is always some socio-cultural constraints within which human activity occurs and the defects of another culture, distant in either time or space, are always more obvious, more glaring, that those under our own noses.
The idea that we are spiritual beings in a spiritual universe sits very well with much of modern science but a naive conception of the physical, the material, permeates the humanities academic sub-culture. Of course a position of atheism is a possible interpretation of, and extrapolation from, the findings of modern science. Forms of materialistic world-views are, of course, a possible interpretation of the fundamentals of modern physics. However within the context that modern philosophy operates materialism and atheism seem certain; to argue against these positions is absurd unless one is to argue for a separate spiritual and supernatural dimension independent to the same material universe of the atheists, itself a dubious thesis. Modern physics tends to validate religiosity in a loose sense rather than theism in a rigorous sense.
Much of the “New Age” literature in the shops today lacks philosophical rigor and some is sheer poppycock. However western society is at present undergoing a paradigm shift and mainstream academia is largely clinging to a discredited world-view that has been superceded by new discoveries in science. Could it be that the entire academic community is utterly unaware of these blind-spots?
Robert Nozick’s fundamentally flawed argument, the libertarian far right approach to politics and economics, is on the curriculum in a vast number of universities despite its obvious flaws - because of corporate bribery. Whatever the actual reasons mainstream academic philosophy tends to produce propaganda for atheism and crass materialism. In a very real sense it argues for the unexamined life on the basis that there is little to actually examine. To the religious believer the religious quest is central. This would have been so for Socrates. The mainstream intellectual establishment dismisses such endeavors as bogus.
While medieval society might well have been intellectually stifling in a narrow religious sense it seems to me that there is at least just a little of an analogous intellectual tyranny in modern western high culture in the opposite direction.
Brendan Burke MA(Phil) 30th September 2006
Cork unitarian Church