Trying to Understand

Summary:This past semester, I took an English class called “Seminar in Literature: Revolutionary Fiction.” The class was a survey of literary pieces that shared the “revolutionary” theme, whether they were actually about war or not. More specifically, the course was about the group of philosophies that have become to be known as “Theory.” These philosophies have in common the rejection of the Socratic and Platonic concept of the “ideal.”
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To make it short and simple, they reject transcendent truth. If it doesn’t exist in the here-and-now experience, then it doesn’t exist, or it is at least not worth thinking about. You can just imagine what these theories do to the concept of God. The philosophers range from Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire, Diderot, and Montesquieu to the subjectivist theorists like Foucault and Barthes. In between lies the likes of Marx and Engels, and Sigmund Freud.

As we studied the theory of Michel Foucault, who questioned the existence of all truth, even the truth of our individual existence, I couldn’t help but wonder how philosophy ever got to this point.

We begin with the assumption that the fullness of truth lies in the Catholic faith. If you do not share that assumption with me, then the rest of this may not make much sense, but let me know your thoughts on it anyway. The first step away from reality was the Protestant Reformation. Now, I will freely admit that the Reformation happened in response to some very real abuses. However, it is also true that in many ways it overreacted against these abuses and, as often happens in history, took on abuses of an opposite nature. The Reformation sacrificed the teaching authority of the Church, to which Jesus promised the Holy Spirit’s guidance to all truth. In its stead, the Reformation placed the belief that each individual believer was blessed with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and should interpret scripture for herself. This led historically to such disparate theological views that many people began to wonder if theological truth was possible to know at all.

With the anchor that the Church provided as the arbiter of truth gone, it wasn’t a very large step to lose God as the anchor of truth as well. The Renaissance began this journey, with its focus on human creativity and inspiration often devoid of any connection to God. However, the Enlightenment completed the journey. The Enlightenment philosophers were by and large atheists. What is important here is that up to this point in history, the “starting point” for exploring truth was always God. Truth came form God, and our exploration of truth led us to God. Without God, our attempt to explore truth really does become arbitrary, since truth then has no source and no destination. Enlightenment philosophers acknowledged this fact, and concluded that the anchor point for truth could be anything a scholar wished it to be. These philosophers chose humanity as their anchor to truth. If the anchor for truth is arbitrary, it does not take much of a cognitive shift to conclude that there is no real anchor for truth. Modernism and post-modernism refuted many of the ideals of the Enlightenment, but they also took the Enlightenment's fundamental assumption to its logical conclusion.

Each step along the way of this journey shares some common characteristics with its counterparts. Each step was a reaction against perceived errors and abuses of its predecessor. Each step, in seeking to correct these errors, overreacted in some way and sacrificed some logical beliefs and truths. However, each step also struck on beliefs that are true, or at least useful in the pursuit of truth.

My summer project is to explore each of these steps so that we can try to understand how our culture's views of truth changed, and how we can effectively argue against the errors inherent in our cultural conceptions of truth. It should be fun.



In the love of Christ,

Brother Thomas