One can see that the 200-year-old experiment of western modernism (roughly from the mid 18th Century through the mid 20th Century) is in every way a reaction to what was western premodernism. During the age of liberation and the development of individualism in Europe, a revolutionary new “Enlightenment” in thought and practice transformed western civilization. With the rise of scientific discovery, new educational initiatives, world exploration, technological inventions, and medical advancements, a profound optimism gripped the West. This created a radically new worldview. Writers such as David Hume in England and Immanuel Kant in Germany published works that challenged the status quo and began to influence the popular western imagination.
No longer was the West a prisoner to superstition. Secular natural explanations for all of life’s experiences were being discovered and hypothesized. With the rise of individualism, rational thought replaced corrupt monarchs and Church despots as the final authority. No longer did an individual have to languish under the autocratic rule of tyrannical rule. Every individual could question “truth,” as it had been handed down to him by government and religious institutions. No longer did life have to be governed by fear. Rather, rational thought replaced institutional superstitious ideas with reasonable principles. One could reason out an individual’s rights, freedoms, and responsibilities based on the scientific method. Individuals were now democratically free to design for themselves a personal interpretation of truth for life and faith. The most popular form of entertainment in Western Europe and America became rational debates between famous orators.
The place of God, therefore, was seen not only as distant, but as absent. All moral questions of life and faith could be answered through the application of biblical principles, in the same way as all physical problems could be answered through the application of scientific principles. In a sense, a living God was no longer needed. He could be replaced by a rational deism. The place of self in the modern paradigm was no longer seen as under the right of church and state rulers. Rather, it was seen as at the center, under no one. Each individual self was his own authority, possessing his own personal rights. American cultural critic George Steiner writes, The arbitrariness of all aesthetic propositions, of all value judgments is inherent in human consciousness and human speech. Anything can be said about anything…A critical theory, an aesthetic, is a politics of taste…No aesthetic proposition can be termed either “right” or “wrong.” The sole appropriate response is personal assent or dissent.
The place of others was seen as existing for mutual benefit. An optimism for western government fueled European missionary zeal to bring “good government” to all people. Colonial expansion brought western law, morality, and commerce to all areas of the planet. The place of creation was seen as coming under the self. Nature was no longer seen as being an equal competitor with the self, but rather as a resource to be subdued, controlled, and exploited by modern people. Likewise, morality was no longer governed by the irrational dictates of premodern rulers, but by ethics, derived from the rational interpretation of biblical principles. Ethical principles were imposed on people and society from the outside to control moral behavior. Finally, under the modern paradigm, all of life was lived for the glory of human progress. The human being was sovereign and all that served human enterprise was considered good and right.
Everywhere modernism judged premodernism as wrong, it was right. The superstitious nature of life in premodern western civilization was oppressive. Individuals were often subjugated to corrupt rulers wielding unreasonable power. Natural pestilence and discomfort were a cruel experience. Modern advances in medicine, education, technology, and science have helped the entire world. Unfortunately, in reaction to the excesses of premodernism, western civilization established modernism as a just-as-wrong alternative to biblical Christianity.
