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After the Future

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Brooks on ‘A Secular Age’

Brooks's column this morning tries to summarize Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. There's nothing particularly striking in it to quote, but if you're not familiar with the book, the column…

Brooks's column this morning tries to summarize Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. There's nothing particularly striking in it to quote, but if you're not familiar with the book, the column will give you an overview of its concerns, which are the concerns of this blog. The basic question for the book, Taylor says, is "Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy but even inescapable?"

I think the answer to that question is complex, and Taylor's grappling with it is an honest and interesting response, which is as a believer, a Catholic, to embrace the pluralism at the same time as to rigorously pursue his own faith commitment. What other sane choice is there? Faith, most particularly the Christian faith, is most itself when it eschews a Constantinian project, which isn't to say that it hasn't an obligation to evangelize, which I think is done for most of us in our deeds in how we live rather than in aggressive public professions. 

But I think it's also done by engaging with the spirit of the times and by reading the signs  of the times, and so along those lines I wanted to say a word about John Milbank Radical Orthodoxy. I bring him up because I started reading his dialog book with Slavoj Zizek entitle The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? 

Taylor, Millbank, and Zizek are not for everybody, and the focus of this blog is not to become a forum for technical discussions of philosophy or theology, but I sense a shift in the zeitgeist and while only a minuscule percentage of educated people could spend more than thirty minutes reading any of these books without giving up in frustration, I think it's important to point to and try to understand what they are doing: Challenging the presuppositions of modernity and hypermodernity and creating a space for believers to become essential voices in shaping the thought and imagination of the global fusion culture that is now emerging. The Western tradition is this Christian tradition. It isn't the whole story, but it's a critical part of it. 

Milbank's project to retrieve a tradition of Christian thought that uses Plato, and the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Iamblichus,  and moves through the early church fathers, particularly Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine, then through Aquinas, Eckhardt, Boehme, the Cambridge Platonists, Kierkegaard and the nouvelle theologie of de Lubac, Congar and other Catholic thinkers of the early 20th century is one I find very appealing in its broad outline. I am all for a post-Kantian, post-secular retrieval of serious, high-level metaphysics, and I don't think it's possible to do without this Christian tradition being an essential dialog partner.

And that's why the Millbank/Zizek book interests me. I'm not ready to talk about that yet, and when I do, I'm going to try to make it as accessible as possible to lay readers. But I'm convinced what they are doing is worth understanding and knowing about. 

Comments

17 responses

  1. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    I’ve read that one of Taylor’s. If ever a man needed an editor, or perhaps a small army of editors. . .
    I like Millbank’s project. Can’t stomach Zizek, though, so will be grateful for your efforts in transposition.
    I’ll sound my usual note: without a vital art seeking out new signs and forms valid for our time, all the nouvelle philosophy and theology in the world won’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. The Times (I think it was the NYTimes) ran a piece a while back about the end of “Christian” literature. Of course they weren’t talking about “Christian literature” the publishing category, which is very much alive — if congenitally unwell. They meant real literature that took Christianity, or any spiritual tradition, seriously and gave it meaningful treatment. We’ve gone from James Joyce to Dan Brown. The point was well taken. Taylor is tuned into this, but I don’t know about Millbank and Zizek.

    Reply
  2. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Good stuff–I look forward to more. If you say MONSTROSITY is worth your time it I may dig that PDF out of my old laptop.
    With Jonathan, I think that art is going to be crucial, poets being the unacknowledged legislators and all that. Good art is able to prod consciousness in the direction of that art’s own philosophical convictions. That doesn’t need to be the conscious intention of the artist, but rather it’s a feature of What Art Is; the better the art, the more fully that feature is realized.
    Artists should understand (or misunderstand) philosophy well enough to know that their commitments, even those that are tacitly accepted from the prevailing ideology, inform their work, and the audience’s experience.
    This may be the missing link between, on one hand the sort of Neoplatonic praxis inducing the second naivete, and on the other hand, most folks’ lack of desire for or inclination toward such an endeavor.
    The work-of-art-as-talisman.

    Reply
  3. JP Avatar
    JP

    “I’ll sound my usual note: without a vital art seeking out new signs and forms valid for our time, all the nouvelle philosophy and theology in the world won’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.”
    Well the risk of new signs and forms is extremely low for the forseeable future. I’m not worried about anything meaningful happening in this category for the next 30 years, at least.
    It’s Winter after all and I’m not seeing Spring on the horizon.

    Reply
  4. JP Avatar
    JP

    “Challenging the presuppositions of modernity and hypermodernity and creating a space for believers to become essential voices in shaping the thought and imagination of the global fusion culture that is now emerging.”
    I’m not seeing a “global fusion culture” either.
    Modernity only gets you so far. It exhausts itself when it reaches it’s limits because at that point it no longer really has anything to do or anywhere to go.

    Reply
  5. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    It may be that there are no Christian writers or artists, but are there any great writers or artists? There are more or less interesting artists, but none working now who are great because nobody can write about great themes un-ironically. Greatness is in short supply everywhere, I think, because the culture does not nourish it. That was my point a few posts ago about broken trellises. But if greatness is to be retrieved, it will come out of the development of rich new social imaginary that creates a fertile context for the growth of great souls.
    And whether it takes thirty years or more, there is work that needs to be done now, and this is why Milbank and the RO project interests me. Taylor’s story of secularism is more phenomenological. It is what it is, and we have to celebrate what’s good about it and critique what’s bad. Milbank is more interested to trace back to where it “went wrong”, and to tell the story of the world of our experience becoming flattened, unidimensional, and disenchanted. Their account begs the questions why a Duns Scotus was possible and why before reformations and scientific revolutions it came to shape the subsequent dominant univocal (non-participatory, disembedded) social imaginary. I’d argue that Scotus didn’t make a mistake; he was simply honestly articulating his understanding of the world that made sense to him in a way that the old realism with its Neoplatonic metaphysics and epistemology no longer did.
    But why did it make sense and then not? Were the old realists simply delusional? I don’t think so. I think that the early nominalism and the rejection of a participatory epistemology is the result of cognitive capacities atrophying or falling asleep in the collective soul. But because something has fallen asleep does not mean it cannot be revived.
    Anyway, the RO tracing the genealogy back to Scotus has value because I think it shows us a way back to what needs to be recovered in second naiveté, which is the idea of ‘methexis’ in which the incarnate world is suspended and dependent on its participation in the multidimensional, unfathomable depths of the mind of God.
    This is for me not a hard move to make on the head level, but I still live in a world that is flat and unidimensional in my day-to-day experience of it. But I suspect that in the same way that perspective and three dimensional imagination became a commonplace in the late 1400s, some similar shift will take place from a flat, unidimensional world into one that is multidimensional.
    My guess is that it will be supported by ideas (discoveries, revelations) in theoretical physics filtering down into the social imaginary that combines with thinking and artistic work that flips us from a flat to unflat. The pieces are already lying all around waiting for someone to assemble them. It remains for some contemporary Augustine or Aquinas–or maybe someone with greater power of imagination than those two–to effect the integration and to flip us into a new/old way of seeing the world. And then perhaps great new creative work becomes possible.
    In a flat world cleverness is possible, but greatness is not. In a multidimensional world, there is room for great souls to stretch not just on the horizontal but also to heights and the depths currently inaccessible to us.
    As far as Zizek goes, you can only dance with those who want to. At least he wants to. Let’s see where it leads.

    Reply
  6. JP Avatar
    JP

    “My guess is that it will be supported by ideas (discoveries, revelations) in theoretical physics filtering down into the social imaginary that combines with thinking and artistic work that flips us from a flat to unflat.”
    If you’re looking to theoretical physics, you’re looking in the wrong place.
    I mean string theory and Calabi-Yau manifolds are interesting to think about, but theoretical physics is just a blank canvas. And yes, distance is irrelevant to certain types of matter interacting.
    The only thing that I’ve gotten out of science lately is that one aspect of how we experience God could be as a non-local chaotic attractor. Which tells me precisely *nothing* about what new art and new music and new poetry will appear.
    However, if you want another Duns Scotus, you need an entirely new framework. He only came on the scene 300 years after the launch of the High Middle Ages in conjunction Cluniac system.
    So, there you have an example of needing 300 years of human development. That’s not a “cycle”, that’s an example of how *long* it can take to get someone as great as Duns Scotus.
    Timelessness takes time.
    Sometimes a lot of time.
    See human evolution for details.
    It might be a good idea dig through the ruins of Byzantium to see what was left there. There have to be lots of pieces to work with.
    And the new will arise when the appropriate ground exists.
    So the best question might be “what ground is required to develop a new mode”?
    At this point, I can’t even tell you what soil is required.

    Reply
  7. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    JP,
    Sure, any new development is going to take centuries to reach its zenith. But you had another observation earlier: modernity has run its course, philosophically, aesthetically, spiritually.
    We can start working now, even and especially if there’s disagreement about what we’re actually building.

    Reply
  8. JP Avatar
    JP

    At this point, we don’t even seem to have a minimally functioning monastic system that we can use that has any connection whatsoever with the current culture.
    We know *that* can help, as long as it’s up and running.
    However, it would have to be reconstituted and relaunched. There’s currently no framework for it, at least in the United States, we just have various Catholic/Lutheran monasteries.
    The only monastic system I know of that’s currently expanding is the one in the Russian Orthodox church.
    I only know of *one* person from college who became a Catholic monk.

    Reply
  9. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Well, if youre expecting it to come from the Catholic or Orthodox churches, yeah– it might take a century or five. As far as the American scene goes, that is. I dont know how much contact youve had with the Orthodox in the US, but the pathologies in that communion make the RCC look well-adjusted.

    Reply
  10. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    Patrick, I get what you’re saying about deep structural problems in the RC and Orthodox Churches. I especially agree about the Orthodox. But to what exactly are these churches or any other ancient, traditional body supposed to be “adjusting”? The word reminds me phonetically, if not etymologically, of “aggiornamento.” Jack somewhere has a great post about what Vatican II’s aggiornamento did to the RC’s ability to act as a counter-cultural force. It’s an open question whether adjustment is something one should want. It depends of course on what we mean by adjustment, or by that wonderful Italian word that does not seem patient of translation (“modernization” has always struck me as woefully harsh corporate-speak). When does it cross a line into resignation and surrender?
    I actually think the Catholic Church is not so decrepit. Everyone’s personal experience is different. I happen to know a good number of intelligent, educated, energetic young Catholics who seem about as well adjusted to modern life as any sane person ought to be. I have a great deal of optimism about the Church they will eventually usher into the world, but it will be another twenty years or so before these people come into real power, in the Church or elsewhere.

    Reply
  11. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    Augustine’s line about the church’s being “a whore, but our mother” sums it up pretty well for me. She’s a tough old bird, with wanton inclinations, too often an eye-rolling embarrassment, but also just there as this force of life with enormous staying power. I think that the preeminent form of Christianity in the year 3000 will be in some way or another descended institutionally from the RC church we know today. (I hope more C than R.)It will sooner or later fold in the other confessions which will become increasingly irrelevant as the historical geographical raison d’être for many of these confessions withers.
    The RC church has the infrastructure best adapted to global Christianity, and will, I hope, become more lowercase ‘c’ catholic, faithful preserver and proclaimer of the kerygma, but not so obsessed about the head trip, as if faith were simply some kind of loyalty oath to the papal flag.
    The institution is important but it’s important not as an end in itself, but as providing a framework that creates a space for something important to happen. It’s important if you love opera that there is a Metropolitan Opera in NYC and in other cities, because they provide an institutional framework for the celebration the greatness in the operatic tradition and also for new creations that advance that tradition. But the important thing isn’t the building or its management, but what it celebrates in its performances.
    Analogously, the church isn’t the management, but what it celebrates, and it’s important that it be celebrated, that the show go on, no matter ill the performers or how poor their performance. There is always something in that alone that you can work with. But the tradition of thought and artistic expression is where the creative life is. And that’s in a down cycle right now for reasons I wrote about in the comment above–insofar as the church has surrendered to flatness, greatness is impossible for it as it is for everyone else.
    A hundred years from now nobody will be singing the “contemporary” hymns one typically hears in local parishes these days. They are mostly really awful. But I think Jonathan is right. There are positive signs on the local level in many places. There is life, there is goodness, there is truth every where. Beauty, maybe not so much.

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  12. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Jonathan,
    Forgive the ugly language, but I’m using “well-adjusted” as an antonym for “socially retarded” or “autism spectrum.” I agree with your and Jack’s points with respect to Vatican II. Aesthetics and theology should not necessarily conform to the spirit of the age; I simply think that we’re unlikely to get anything great from individuals who can’t seem to live and relate to real people in the contemporary context.
    Jack,
    Your vision for the Church is an attractive one, but as you know it’s a far cry from the status quo. Having no real “roots” there, I would feel fraudulent participating in the RCC while simultaneously objecting to a few of its “infallibly” defined dogmas (specifically the nature of the episcopate and the strange and incoherent appeal to natural law in a postlapsarian cosmos).

    Reply
  13. JP Avatar
    JP

    “Well, if you’re expecting it to come from the Catholic or Orthodox churches, yeah– it might take a century or five. As far as the American scene goes, that is.”
    I’m not expecting anything to come from anywhere at this point. I was only noting that monastic systems worked in the past and that there isn’t much left there. In any event, I’m not seeing much of a impulse toward monasticism.
    I’m not Roman Catholic, however the mainline protestant denominations (which I am) seem to be continuing to shrink and appear to be heading toward the same place as the Shakers, although for different reasons. It’s pretty strange to watch.
    I don’t know what you need to actually get anywhere in the first place.
    Roman Catholicism seems to be serviceable, in any event. Any by that I mean that it’s not going to vanish and it seems to be baseline functional, even if it’s not making any progress anywhere at the moment.
    As an institution, if I had to guess, I would guess that it will continue to slowly decline until sort of significant reform is made.
    Generic “non-denominational” churches will continue to be born and die, but they seem to have a pretty low upper limit as to what they can actually accomplish with respect to culture.
    Natural law works as long as it is applied correctly in the proper sphere and as long as it’s not used beyond where it’s actually useful.

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  14. JP Avatar
    JP

    What I’m thinking is more in line with some of Letter XIX: The Sun, from Unknown Friend’s Meditations. I think he definitely got some of that right in that section.
    Don’t know if this helps, but then I’m not sure if anyone here other than Jack has actually read it.

    Reply
  15. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    I read it a few years ago at Jack’s recommendation. I loved it then, and of course it remains an incredibly beautiful work.
    If you’ll excuse my crude paraphrase, I think you’re referring to the idea of Christianity having rebirth as its essence, and that essence in turn inspiring various Renaissances throughout history (and ad infinitum). From my point of view, that’s undeniable.
    Again I want to emphasize that I find a wealth of value, truth and beauty in the Meditations. Having said that, I do object to Unknown Friend’s hermeneutic, which, as far as I can tell is the theological equivalent of what the Dead Kennedys called “Zen Fascism,” a totalitarian enterprise advanced under a banner bearing the happy-face.

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  16. JP Avatar
    JP

    I don’t really worry much about his hermeneutic.
    I was thinking more along the lines of the need for the rebirth to come from above, so to speak. While avoiding what he referred to as sunstroke (I think). Rigging it from below with what you have really doesn’t work.
    Meaning that an actual renaissance can’t really be forcibly engineered. Well, I suppose that it theoretically could, but the odds would be that of winning the lottery.

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  17. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    In that Letter he’s talking about renaissance as an aspect of resurrection. Which is brilliant and I don’t really understand. He also talks there about scholasticism’s relationship to late medieval mysticism in a way that is brilliant but don’t fully agree with. Most of that book falls, for me, under the category of “brilliant/don’t really understand.” That’s not saying much, though — or saying too much to be useful — since for me that category includes such diverse works as A Thousand Plateaus and Phantastes.

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