So we are on part 2 of my look at epistemology. To understand where we are now in western thought and to be able to take a fresh look at what Christianity has to say about how we know, we must first take a brief look at the history of thought in the west. It is not my intention to give an exhaustive look at the past 500 years of epistemological thought so I will be giving a broad generalized look at the flow of western thought. So if their is anyone out their who is a Philosophy PHD or even worse a second year philosophy undergrad, understand that this will be a generalization not a precise thesis!
There are 3 general stages of thought that have made up western thought, pre modern, modern, and post modern. I know very little about pre modern thought so I want to look at the shape of modern and post modern thought.
Most scholars would place the beginning of the modern era during the time of the great philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes was a French philosopher during the early 1600′s. In the face of heightened skepticism Descartes set out to form a basis for certain knowledge. (correction) Descartes’ pursuit of philisophical certainty was motivated by his desire to carry the certainty found in mathmatics into the realm of philosophy. In his pursuit of an unquestionable basis for knowledge he came to the famous conclusion “I think therefore I am.” Though we can doubt most everything, Descartes came to the conclusion that we cannot doubt our own existence because even in our doubts there is someone doing the doubting. There are 2 key things that came out of Descartes that played a key role in forming western thought. The first key thing is the pursuit of certainty. This is key in understanding western thought post Descartes. After Descarte the focus of modern thought was the pursuit of certain knowledge. What was important were the things we can know with certainty. The second important thing that came out of Descartes was the focus on the “I” as the source of knowledge. I think therefore I am. This is important because the easiest way to summarize modern thought would be the pursuit of concrete certain knowledge and the centrality of man as the focus of our knowledge. Throughout modern thought there were 2 main streams of thought. The first stream was what is called rationalism. Rationalists believed that human reason was the primary source of knowledge so they focused on reason and logic as the means to obtaining knowledge. The second camp was what is called empiricism. The empiricists believed that knowledge obtained through the senses was the primary source of human knowledge. The best way I can distinguish the 2 would be that the empiricists would fall more in the realm of scientific knowledge while the rationalists would fall more in the realm of philosophic knowledge. As the modern era took shape western society began to place an emphasis on what can be rationally proven and empirically verifiable. In other words, does it make sense and can we test it. Because of the huge influence modern thought had on western society, people began to be more and more skeptical of things such as revelation, and God. The shift that occurred was a shift from “I know because God spoke” to “I know because I see it and understand it.” Needless to say the Christian approach to scripture, knowledge, and theology was greatly influenced by post enlightenment modern thought. But I will talk more about this influence in a later post.
Well, as modern thought progressed, western society progressed. With no need for God or revelation, western thought pushed ahead creating a new “man centered” age of progress and knowledge. Everything seemed to progress quite well till the late 1800′s when a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche came along and messed everything up. Nietzsche was an atheist philosopher that began to deconstruct the base assumptions that modern philosophers had functioned on all these years. Nietzsche believed that since their is no God then their is no ultimate purpose to reality. Nietzsche was influenced by Charles Darwin with his theory of evolution. What Nietzsche taught was that since we are just part of a line of species continuing to evolve we cannot trust our own knowledge, so instead we are left to the fight for power and survival of the fittest. Up till Nietzsche most thinkers held Man as the center of reality and sought to create a human utopia. But with Nietzsche man is just an animal (though the most fully evolved animal). Ultimately we no longer should talk about truth and meaning, but instead we should pursue power and the evolution of the species. It was Nietzsche that coined the idea of the “Death of God.” Basically he claimed that the need for the idea of God is gone and now we are free to take power as man and rule our future. Here are a couple of quotes from Nietzsche that capture his understanding of the meaning of life and the death of god.
“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.” Nietzsche ‘Antichrist’
“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.After the old god has been assassinated, I am ready to rule the world.“ Nietzsche
Even though Nietzsche was very anti Christian (one of his more popular works was called “Anti-Christ”) I really like Nietzsche thinking. In my opinion he brought man centered atheistic philosophy to it’s proper conclusion. If their is no God how can we talk about good, right and wrong, or even meaning? Their can’t be right and wrong if their isn’t purpose and their can’t be purpose if their isn’t a purposer behind everything. Also if their is no rational mind behind creation how can we assume that creation is rational? If we are a product of mindless random chance how can we trust our minds? I would not trust an ape’s conclusion on reality. So how do we know that we will be like apes to the next species that would evolve out of humanity?
Anyway in light of Nietzsche’s work, a group of philosophers began coming up with an answer to the dark nihilism of Nietzsche. These philosophers came up with a philosophy called existentialism. The 2 primary thinkers in existentialism is Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The existentialists recognized the idea that since their is no God their is no overarching purpose to reality. But what they proposed was that their are purposers in creation and those purposers are us. So what they taught was that we had to create meaning and purpose for ourselves. Truth was no longer an objective reality that needed to be found through reason and science, but instead truth was a subjective reality that needed to be created by the individual. On the heals of Camus and Sartre came the Post modernists. Post modern philosophy at it’s core is built upon deconstruction. You will not find a lot of positive assertions within post modern writing, what you will find is many negative assertions critiquing earlier modern thought. Their are many streams of post modernity that influence many different fields of thought, but the current conversation is around the post modern influence on epistemology. In essence post moderns are epistemological skeptics. They question our ability to know anything with certainty. They propose that instead of talking about truth in absolute terms we need to speak of personal or societal truth. I like to say that post modern thought is Nietzschian nihilism with a smile. Nihilism would say that truth is unknowable so we are all wrong, so then the strong should impose their will on the weak and dictate their false “truth”. Post modernity would say that truth is unknowable so lets just say we are all right and live and let live.
You will hear many talk about the fact that we now live in a post modern culture. I would say in some ways we are and in other ways we are not. Very few people actually accept or function within the epistemological framework of the radical post modern philosophers. Also post modernity is like a rebellious child that is still living within modernity’s home. Some would say that postmodernity is not post modern but the continuation of modernity. I would say that as a whole we are more epistemologically post modern when it comes to areas such as theology and morality, but we are still very epistemologically modern when it comes to areas such as science and math. Which would still leave us very much modernist because many modernist philosophers were very skeptical about our ability to know truth in the realms of theology and morality. I say this because their is a growing movement of Christian thinkers that like to quote post modern philosophers such as Derida and Foucault and then claim that our current society functions within their thinking. The danger is that many are influenced to begin ministering in a manner to engage the thoughts of some dead french philosophers that many current philosophers have rejected as being too radical. But this is just a side note.
Anyway what I wanted us to see is that the way we approach knowing has been shaped by a long progression of thought. Whether the primacy of knowledge is placed on science, reason, the will, or our own personal experience, we all approach the question of “how we know?’ with a lot of presuppositions that are not solid nor universally accepted.
There is one thing that I want to point out as I close this post. No matter what stream of epistemology you chose they all have one thing in common, man is the center of reality. Whether it is “I think therefore I am” or “I am the source of truth”, truth and the knowledge of truth is centered in man. It is interesting because even though this epistemological project began some time in the 1600′s it very closely resembles an ancient story I remember reading. It is a story of the creation of humanity in which a man and a woman were in a garden left with a choice. Either trust their creator and rely on Him as their source of knowledge and truth or eat some fruit so that they may poses this knowledge apart from God. As the story goes, the man and woman decided that they wanted to be the absolute rule of truth and turned from God so that they may “rule the world”.
Just something to think about.
