Philosophy – The Modern Frame

Toward a Theory of History

Change is the defining feature of history. By history, I mean human history; specifically, the history of the human world, which exists over and above–yet never entirely independent from–the physical and biological world.¹ As time unfolds the present is influenced by the past; what is, has been conditioned by what once was; the human world of today is a synthesis of the human world of yesterday. Just as any given moment holds the necessary conditions for what is possible in the future, the necessary conditions of the world we inhabit today existed in the past in some way. Today has developed and emerged from new combinations and novel instantiations of a multiplicity of conditions existing in the past. A given moment may be said to comprise a “whole”, out of which emerges a synthesis constituting a larger, more complex, whole. Thus, there is a directedness to the unfolding of history. Like the expansion of the universe or the arrow of time, it would appear history moves in a single direction.² This phenomenon–in which the totality of circumstances constituted within the human world influences and affects itself over time–I will call historical conditioning.³

Happiness: A Brief Critique

I have said before that the implicit yet common understanding of happiness today is preference satisfaction.¹ It is the view that sees the standards of happiness to be internal to the agent, existing solely within the purview of the individual. “To each, his own.” This is closely associated with what I have described as cultural existentialism.² The increasing pluralism of Western society has birthed a state of affairs in which there is no longer a common understanding of the good.³ What remains is the individual’s assessment, protected by law–insofar as he or she does not impinge on the rights of others. But if this view of happiness is pushed to its limits, as it were, the ramifications are unsettling, to say the least.⁴

Cultural Existentialism: The Absurdity of American Individualism

In the previous essay I hoped to make clear the connection between the phenomenon of cultural existentialism with that of its formal counterpart–the philosophy of Existentialism. Again, I believe the connection between them is one of similarity rather than direct causality, and that the primary difference between the two is merely the extent to which they are articulated. Still, the average person is not a philosopher–let alone Sartre–so in many ways the accusation that cultural existentialism is widely embodied but not articulated is unfair. For a more common view of cultural existentialism, I would like to turn to the excellent work of the sociologist Robert Bellah, and some of his colleagues, such as Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swindler, and Steven M. Tipton.¹ Much of their research, findings, and collaboration on American culture from the early 1980s will help color the outline I have sketched thus far.

Introduction to Cultural Existentialism

At the close of my essay The Individual and The Human World, I spoke briefly about the contemporary West–and America in particular–as a place where “individuals determine and create themselves in their own image–rooted in the satisfaction of their own preferences–the sole authors of their lives.”¹ This phenomenon, which is admittedly broad and multifaceted, has become hegemonic in the contemporary West. Here I will attempt to explore some of its contours, though certain details will have to be postponed for the time being. As a kind of umbrella term, I will refer to this state of affairs as cultural existentialism.²

Theoretical Frameworks and the Limits of Communication

Among the starkest contrasts brought into view in the wake of 2020 (as it has unfolded thus far) can be seen in the struggle to communicate on a meaningful level. The United States in particular has witnessed an increasingly shrill level of debate over the unfolding and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic repercussions arising therefrom, and the widespread protesting in response to various forms of systemic racism. What is most alarming to me about the many related debates and discussions, which I have witnessed both privately and publicly, is the extent to which they appear interminable and incommensurable.¹ It is not merely that people disagree, it is that they appear unable to actually communicate meaningfully. Here I wish to explore, in (regrettably) inchoate form, one possible reason for this.²

An Introduction to Being and Existence in Modern and Pre-Modern Philosophy

One of the central questions of modern and contemporary philosophy is “What exists?” Do I exist? Does the material world exist? Does the soul exist? Do universals exist? Do numbers exist? Does God exist? Ancient and medieval philosophy, however, was not very concerned with these sorts of questions. Although these sorts of questions were raised and discussed on occasion, the Platonic and Aristotelian outlooks that dominated ancient and medieval philosophy in the West generally granted existence (or more precisely, being) to anything about which true and false statements could be made. The questions with which ancient and medieval philosophy were most concerned were not questions of existence, but rather questions of grounding, of which beings were more fundamental, and on what it means to be a being.¹ In this essay, I want to reflect on one facet of this basic difference in orientation between modern and pre-modern notions of reality. I want to focus on the difference in the way that the ancients and medievals, on the one hand, and us moderns, on the other, tend to think about what it means for something “to exist” or “to be.” While I will mainly talk about how “existence” or “being” is employed in the philosophical thinking typical of the pre-modern and modern West, I think reflecting on these issues will help us better understand key differences between pre-modern and modern worldviews in general.

Philosophy, Utility, and The Modern Frame

In taking a brief respite from my most recent string of essays, I wish to consider the subject of philosophy. Specifically its definition, but also its relationship to utility or what I have called instrumentality. With the turn of the modern epoch, the common understanding of philosophy has been transformed. Once the province of wisdom, it has metamorphosized into a creature of specialized knowledge–one that is increasingly called into question. In both the academic sphere and the common world of everyday life, philosophy is questioned on the basis of its utility or instrumentality.¹ And such questioning is paradigmatic of the modern frame. But philosophy cannot be so easily cast aside; its defense is deeper and more profound than many would-be critics realize. The French philosopher Etienne Gilson perhaps said it best when he wrote: “Philosophy always buries its undertakers.”² Along with Gilson, my understanding of philosophy here has been shaped most by Josef Pieper, and to a certain extent by William Vallicella.³

Some Further Thoughts on Modern Education

Given what I have said so far about education in the West, specifically about ancient and medieval forms of higher education as they relate to instrumentality and specialization, my treatment of modern forms of higher education needs to be further explored and expanded upon. Here I will continue the general focus on higher education and concerns of instrumentality and specialization, but with an exclusive focus on the modern epoch.

Education: Instrumentality and Specialization

Education in the West has taken many forms throughout history. Like philosophy, its genesis can be traced to ancient Greece, where the first schools of thought were recorded. The first rival conceptions of education–such as those advanced by the ancient sophists, Isocrates, and Plato¹–are in many ways mirrored in modernity, albeit in very different circumstances. Beginning in Greece we find tension with respect to education, which concerns the debate between theoretical and practical forms of higher learning, i.e., between disinterested truth and application or utility. Of course, there is an academic history of this thought, the aggregate of which has come to be known as the philosophy of education. It is not my intention, however, to explore the history of this thought here. It is rather to contrast the varying forms of higher education as they have existed across history in the West in terms of two specifics: instrumentality and specialization. Most important to this comparison will be the question of telos, that is, what is and what has been the goal or purpose of education? What is its raison d’être?

Happiness: A Brief Contrast

Eric G. Wilson’s little volume, Against Happiness, is a good introduction to the subject,¹ except I would argue it isn’t about happiness. Or if it is, it’s about a superficial and degenerate form of it. What is today called happiness would have in premodern times been referred to as a kind of joy–a form of psychological satisfaction or pleasure.² In the first book of The Histories, Herodotus tells of Solon’s answer to Croesus upon being asked who the happiest man in the world is. Croesus, the famously wealthy king of Lydia, fancies himself the man. But Solon names three unknown men–Tellus, Cleobis, and Biton–all of whom are dead.³ The question of how the dead may be happier than the living–and Solon is not attributing their happiness to one enjoyed in an afterlife–is one which highlights the major difference between modern and premodern–especially ancient–views of happiness. To be sure, one cannot do justice to the subject in the form of a short essay, however accurate. It is thus my purpose here to confine myself only to the major differences in the concept of happiness between the understandings of the ancient world, and that of the contemporary modern world.