I thought I would take this comparative lull to comment on the issues raised in the article on "the post-modern".
First, the modern age has always been characterized by a strongly "deviant" side, a fascination with the occult somehow vying with "rationalism". The Renaissance was rife with alchemists and magicians. Freemasonry, with its claim to preserve Egyptian wisdom and occultism, enrolled many prominent people. Newton himself was as proud of his commentary on the Book of Revelations as he was of the Principia Mathematica. In our own day, Jungian theories have provided a basis for indulging in occult practices without taking a position on their substantial basis. Technocracy and bohemianism were both integral to our conception of the Modern. Mondrian, perhaps the most modern of early abstractionists, with his grids and primary colors, was actually trying to create a universal "language" of spirituality, inspired by his interest in Theosophy.
What differentiates modernity more than anything is the way in which traditional cultures were disrupted, sometimes by intellectual sources, moreso by inexorable historical forces: the rise of industry; the urbanization of the countryside; the increasing migration of persons; the burgeoning knowledge of other places, times, and peoples, increasing sensitivity to custom and disagreement; the rising prestige and cultural authority of the sciences; and other things along these lines. Suddenly, identity and role became choices, because one no longer took for granted a social world that was settled, or assumed that the traditions into which one was born were sound. One could remain traditional, but the interior character of it differed, for it was now a choice, and one frequently realized what one was giving up, or the arguments that could be made against.
The modern world, then, is one where traditional culture is deeply problematic, and increasingly peripheral to the main thrust of the culture, which is experimental, eclectic, and sometimes grotesque in its failure to respect the integrity of traditions.
From that perspective, the so- called "post- modern" is little more than a loss of confidence in the two main strands of modernity, technocracy and bohemianism. Technocracy has betrayed our trust by gravitating towards totalitarianism. Bohemia has seemed too littered with burn- outs and ne'er do wells to offer much to those burdened with keeping the world going.
The response to the "post- modern" situation has been varied, but mainly breaks down into two streams: the first attempts to carry through a sort of Liberationist project by completing the corrosion of cultural authority, and thus allowing a politics of personal fulfillment to come to the fore (usually with revisionist Marxist overtones). The second seeks to reinvigorate sources of cultural authority by pointing to the well-springs of modern civilization, among them ancient philosophy and Christianity, and showing how we got to such things as science and democracy because of themes drawn from tradition, and how we might have gotten to far away from the sources, like Plato and the Bible....... |
