The Enlightenment

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

B. Immanuel Kant (1742-1804) 1. He was raised in a pietistic home 2. Read Hume who “woke him from his dogmatic slumbers” 3. An Answer to the Question: What is the Enlightenment?

a. “If it is now asked whether we at present live in an enlightened age, the answer is: No, but we do live in the age of enlightenment. As things are at present, we still have a long way to go before men as a whole can be in a position (or can even be put into a position) of using their own understanding confidently and well in religious matters, without outside guidance.”

b. “According to Kant the key Issue is “freedom”—freedom from the dogma of others.

4. “All knowledge begins with experience, but does not arise from experience.” He is both a rationalist and empiricist who is trying to gain a system that is consistent. He thinks nobody yet has done that. Hume had separated the subject and the object and this was unacceptable to Kant. a. a priori – knowledge which is absolutely independent of all

experience 2+2=4 b. a posteriori – empirical knowledge which is possible only

through experience 5. Kant’s epistemology was revolutionary (Copernican

revolution) for with him rather than the mind having to correspond to objects, objects correspond to our knowledge. a. the perceived order of the universe is only the order of the

observer’s mind

a. Sensation feeds our minds the “raw” material of the phenomena and then the a priori categories is how that material is processed, that is, how we think about the sense data.

6. There is the noumenal world and the phenomenal world. a. Noumena is the world we do not experience; you can

think about them, but you cannot know them. This is the metaphysical. The noumena is the thing in itself.

i. This involves all transcendent notions like God. b. Phenomena is the world we do experience. And

human knowledge is limited to the things as they appear.

7. Two types of judgments: a. Analytical: the property of the predicate is

contained in the subject. (a rainy day is a wet day) i. necessary statement

b. Synthetic: the predicate says something about the subject which is not already contained in the notion of the subject. (Tuesday was a wet day)

c. The first does not extend our knowledge it only helps us order it.

d. The second increases our knowledge, but it must be verified in our world of experience.

8. A synthetic a priori proposition was knowledge that one had apart from experience like mathematics.

9. There are two pure forms of sensibility (by which he means intuition) which are in the mind a priori. (Pure and a priori are interchangeable, they are the transcendental aesthetic) a. These two pure forms are: Space and Time.

They exist in the mind without a real object of the senses. This would have been against Newton’s view. Space and Time for Kant are subjective in that they are categories of the mind which are placed on the external world.

i. Space is not something inherent in the object itself; it structures all our outer representations

ii. Time structures all our inner representations iii. Because of this, the mind conditions everything

it think about according to these innate categories.

10. Transcendental (innate categories) a. 12 categories

i. Four groups of three (a) Quality (kind) (b) Causal (cause and effect) (c) Quantity (number) (d) Relation (Modality (unity/diversity)

11. Sense of Autonomy a. Grace is no longer necessary as revelation is no longer

around

b. Ideal was to be influenced only by nothing but one’s one moral will

c. “Freedom [is not] something actual in ourselves and in human nature” but only something “we must presuppose.” “Only an idea of reason whose objective reality is in itself questionable.”

i. The lower story is what we know, the upper story is what we can’t help believing

FreedomThe Autonomous Self

NatureThe Newtonian World Machine

12. Kant’s Ethics – Deontological a. Hypothetical imperative: You must do this if

you want that. In other words, this ethic teaches that you do what you must to get what you want. If you do this, then you get that.

b. Categorical Imperative: You must do this or that because it is objectively necessary. “Act as it the maxim of your actions were to become through your will a natural law.”

i. Kant realized that everybody wanted to be the exception, but that will not work.

C. Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) 1. The Father of Modern Theology or

Religious Modernism a. The question is: “How should man know God

or is it possible?” 2. His life

a. Father a reformed pastor in Breslau (Poland)

b. He was entrusted to a Moravian upbringing and in 1783 he and his sister and brother joined a Moravian boarding school at Niesky. His mother died a few weeks after his entry to the school. His father was a chaplain in the Prussian army, which prevented him from ever hearing from his father or seeing him again. So at 15 he was without parents.

3. There is no doubt that the Brethren’s warm-hearted devotion to Jesus influenced him for the rest of his life a. Reformers taught that God could be known through biblical

revelation b. The philosophical approach tried the way of natural

theology c. Schleiemacher tried to steer between the two. d. Everything is based on feeling

4. Schleiemacher’s views a. The key was religious experience b. Truth was not propositional, it was existential c. Religion was about feeling d. The essence of religion lies in our sense of

absolute dependence on God e. The heart of religion is an inward and highly

personal experience of the influence of Jesus met in the community of the religious

f. That which is felt inwardly is primary over doctrinal statements

g. Religion was not to be rejected on scientific grounds, as if religion claimed to be a theory about the causal structure of the world in competition with the scientific view. Religion did not take such an analytical view, being instead a direct, intuitive feeling for the infinite in and through the finite world

h. Religion is the self –in – relationship, which is the object of consciousness. Man is not to be focused on himself, but on the other, that is, others and the realm of nature and society. Emotions are significant not simply because they are felt, but because they are inward witnesses and responses to realities other than self

i. Remember, that by this time, orthodox religion is being marginalized in the intellectual world and this was thought of as a way to keep Christianity alive, as it were, for the modern man.

D. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) (objective idealist) 1. All reality is the out-working of Spirit (the

essence of what is – history) Phenomenology of the Giest (mind)

2. Hegel was concerned with bringing a unity to knowledge. Kant had not gone far enough. Kant had brought about a connection with the particulars, but at a great expense—the loss of the universal, that is, so a person could not know the thing in itself.

3. In Hegel’s mind there was no unity of knowledge with Kant’s epistemology.

4. Reality is a continuum, not separate parts (particulars)

5.Whenever we make a particular assertion we are only partly true, because we have not spoken in concreteness; concretness for Hegel is to conceive of a particular in its relation to other things and particular to Uncle in his illustration. For example: If we say that Uncle is Absolute, we

realize that in order to have an uncle we must also have a brother and wife and so on. So when we say Uncle we have not spoken truly (concretely) until we have related it to everything, which is ultimately the Geist. Now we have unity, but we have placed truth in process.

6. For Hegel, history is the progressive self-unfolding and self-realization of the Absolute-Geist (The Phenomenolgy of History) The unfolding of the Mind is through the minds.

7. This gives a unity, but now full truth is never really known until it is related to Absolute Mind

8. The sum total of human knowledge is none other than the Absolute thinking out its thoughts through human minds. Our history, nature and human thought are the self-conscious expression of Absolute Spirit.

9. The reality is constantly on the move, changing, advancing, and actualizing the ultimate state, which is Absolute Spirit, which is the complete consciousness and freedom of reality.

10. This Is, as we can see, different from atomism which says that reality is composed of individual units and the individual is more real than the whole. Not so with Hegel; his view is organicism in which the whole is more real than the parts and the parts depend totally on the whole

11. The goal is to free Spirit from its confinement in nature so that it might be one (pantheistic)

E. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) 1. Born in Copenhagen; often referred to as

the Father of Existentialism “places existence prior to essence; the concrete and individual over the abstract and universal.”

2. Faith is irrational, absurd; that is the nature of faith; the absurd is the object of faith and the only object that can be believed.

3. We should choose the right thing without any rational criterion for doing it. Just do the right thing.

4. Either/Or: choosing the aesthetic life (the one of pleasure) or the moral/ethical life (the life of faith) which is a paradox/even absurd. a. The aesthetic man (either)

i. Life is one distraction after another because life is a bore.

ii. Boredom is the root of all evil iii. Man looks to pleasure to avoid boredom

b. The Ethical man i. Follows rules of morality out of a passion from

moral virtue ii. Independent of rationality – just do it

c. “Either/or is not so much a question of choosing between willing the good or evil, as of choosing to WILL, but by this in turn the good and evil are posited. He who chooses the ethical chooses the good, but here the good is entirely abstract, only its being is posited, and hence it does not follow by any means that the chooser cannot in turn choose the evil, in spite of the fact that he chose the good. Here you see again how important it is that a choice be made, and that the crucial thing is not deliberation, but the baptism of the will which lifts up the choice into the ethical.”

5. He reacted to the strong rationalism of Hegel.

6. What is important is to make the decision. The leap of faith to that which is absurd/ irrational/ paradoxical.

7. Faith and reason are mutually exclusive: there is no rational ground for choosing right over wrong, I hat is not even the right way to frame the situation. What is important is that you make the choice, not based on the rational, but the absurd

F. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) 1. Evolution was aided by the fact that theists

failed to take it seriously. Wilberforce (British Society in 1859) made light of it and Thomas Huxley’s rebuttal was backed by evidence . Remember the influence of Bacon and Newton

2. Origin of Species (1859) a. Organisms developed from simple to complex

structures through natural and random causes; new species, not just adaptation

b. Survival of the fittest determined which ones would be called upon to continue the evolutionary process.

c. Up until this time much of Christian apologetics was based on the teleological argument. (Palely’s Watchmaker analogy)

d. Some like F.R. Tennant (1866-1957) suggested theistic evolution as a counter weight.

3. The Descent of Man (1871) a. Man developed from animals b. The famous Scopes Trial 1925 Tennessee.

4. Man is a highly successful animal, not God’s noble creation with a divine destiny.

5. Consciousness, once was believed to rule the universe, now it was understood to have arisen accidentally in the course of matter’s evolution.

6. Man had no real certainty that anything was going anywhere and no reason to believe that his fate would be any different from the 1000s of other extinct species.

7. Man had no basis for values outside himself, leading to relativistic ethics.

8. Social evolutionary theories developed from this as well, and capitalism – John D. Rockefeller.

9. Now the last prop had been removed in the intellectual community from theism. The matter of origin. Until this time many still tacitly accepted God as the originator, but now that is all gone.

G. Karl Marx (1818-1883) A materialist like his father, a Jewish lawyer,

converted to Christianity when Karl was 6 1. Admitted that Darwin had influenced him and

wanted him to write the preface to Das Kapital. He refused. Marx was optimistic about human nature. This now tries to build an economic/political system on this notion of man.

2. Marx also used Hegel, but turned Hegel on his head by denying Spirit and in its place put materialism; kept his organicism.

3. Like Hegel he thought that he could discern the end of history.

4. He preferred Homo Faber (mar) the maker) to Homo Sapien (man the knower). Man is What he expresses in his product.

5. Division of labor created hierarchical social structures a. Laborers produce 100% but get less: the

surplus value b. Ruling class keeps goods without

contributing effort to their production

c. Marx asks, what is the fate of industrialized society?

i. It must be possible to rid society of self interest. ii. Ruling class perpetuates and legitimized

hierarchy because they support the intellectuals who make the rules that in turn favor them

d. In essence he wants to return to nature (Rousseau) before exploitation

H. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) 1. Deliberately anti-Christian 2. Christianity is worthless because it makes no

distinction between one man and the other 3. God is dead and there are no Christian morals 4. Darwin

a. Twilight of the Idols (Part X, sec. 14) i. Species do not grow into perfection. It is the weak that

prevail over the strong, and they are always in the great majority. The weak also have more intellect, exactly in proportion as they lack instinct and will.

ii. Darwin forgets that intellect holds back progress. The weak have more intellect because they need it in order to make up for their lack of instinctual power. …

iii. Any thought we may have of the basic principle of reasoning, that is, the principle of non-contradiction is only a subjective rule invented by ourselves.

(a) It cannot be an expression of something actually in the world; the world is really only an amorphous mass of becoming. . .

iv. The greater the ability to think logically, to formulate scientific formulas, and to think about God, the greater the falsity.

v. What we should be praising instead is the power of the will;

(a) The ability to take control, first of ourselves, and then of others and the world

vi. God is dead, and now the only thing worth pursuing is the production of the superman.

(a) In sharp contrast to the members of the herd, the superman stands head and shoulders above the worthless shopkeepers and ordinary people who want nothing but mediocrity, peace, and security.

(b) The superman is the supreme odd ball in comparison to the middle members of society.

(c) Even while being a person of panach [swagger], he joys the terrible, ugly, dirty, and destructive aspects of life, especially as he finds them in himself.