Foundations...

Before I discuss anything further in my main thread, I think that I need to set up what kinds of things I am opposing. To do this, we must look at the foundations of the current philosophical and theological position.

For today, I would like to talk a bit about the Enlightenment.

Ahhh...yes...the Enlightenment. That magical time when the European branch of mankind progressed out of the Dark Ages. Philosophers, artists, mathematicians, theologians and scientists all looked at the previous millenium or two and asked, "Why have we always done it this way?"

While I cannot claim any solid expertise in the realm of philosophical history in any significant depth, I have gathered some understanding of some of the major trends. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on three major ideas: resurrection of reason, rise of empirical evidence, and adoption of individual identities.

First, I must note that these are very clearly interelated. There is no way to separate the process of devloping a concept of the individual from empiricism or reason. Nor would we want to. Still, it is important to talk about these as different processes in light of how they have evolved in contemporary society. Second, we should all be fully aware that these are not processes that can be said to reach a "conclusion". We should think about these as new lenses which became more readily available to the general populace, although in fact this was limited by gender and class identity.

Let's start by talking about bit about the resurrection of reason. I say "resurrection" because it is fairly clear that the ancient Greek tradition had a significant reliance on the reason and spent a good deal of time defining and refining it. However, with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, among many other events, reason as it is classically defined became a small concern to almost everyone in the Western world.

With the advancement in the arts and sciences, reason began to be seen as a very real way to improve the lot of humanity. By following a logical process, one could exert some measure of control on the environment and be considered more fair. Furthermore, reason represented a significant separation between humanity and the wilds of the earth. It separated man from beast. (Indeed, it was seen to separate man from woman as well.)

Moving into the realm of faith in the Enlightenment, this separation presented a valuable tool for a church in crisis following the beginning of the Reformation. On one hand, reason allowed Luther to see the reasons and ways that he opposed the policies of the Church and, on the other, it presented a valuable weapon for advocating a position of humanity in a special role above the natural world.

Empirical evidence and methods give a method for framing and repeating operations of the mind. Again, these are ideas that existed in the ancient Greek traditions. The Enlightenment served to reintroduce and broaden the scope of inquiry with the resulting advancements of technology and communication.

Side Note: Empirical evidence seems tied in many ways to the advancement of printing and navigation. With these tools, information could be reproduced relatively quickly and disseminated quickly as well. The production and export of ideas, especially facts, provide a mode of consistency that furthers the sense of order and control that directly opposed the chaos of previous eras.

Finally, we must note that philosophers of the late Enlightenment (17th-18th century) began to spread some of the individualism of the reformation theology into the political spheres. This advances the concept of individual rights, which, in turn, begins a significant understanding of people (at least economically stable people) as individual moral agents that think and act alone.

The genealogies of these sorts of ideas are most important when we look at the movement of the contemporary church. Many of the current assumptions of Conservative Christianity go back to the philosophical changes of this period rather than having a basis in the presented authority of the Bible.

Next week, I will talk a bit about how these ideas changed with the rise of industrialization and modernism.