The fatal mistake of Modernism - - part 2
Fallacies of reason and cultural decline
Fred Hutchison, RenewAmerica analyst
Originally published August 9, 2006
During part one of this essay, we took a tour of history, beginning with the birth of European civilization and finishing with the high watermark in Western culture (1100-1750). We discovered how Europe began with an excellent foundation for reason and how false ways of thinking and knowing began to creep into Western thought during the seventeenth century.
In part two, we will consider how several fatal myths of Modernism took hold during the period 1750-1800. After 1800, several new ersatz philosophies were added. By 1850, Modernism as a comprehensive worldview was essentially complete. Our historical tour of this two-part essay ends at 1850, because most of the key epistemological errors of Modernism had been made by then.
Economic Determinism, Marxism, Historicism, Darwinism, and Freudianism had appeared by 1900, but these were, in large part, new combinations of the elements of Modernism that were in place by 1850. New rearrangements of old fallacies also occurred in the twentieth century in several clusters of Modernist philosophy, including: (a) Pragmatism, Instrumentalism, Behaviorism, and Positivism, (b) Structuralism and Postmodern Deconstructionism, (c) Phenomenalism, Existentialism, Libertarianism, and New Age thought, and (d) Multiculturalism, Identity Politics, and the Root Causes Panaceas.
Before we begin the story of the decline of Western culture, let us take a quick look at the meridian splendor of the high culture from which we have fallen.
The meridian splendor of the West
The Western world of 1750 simultaneously enjoyed Dr. Johnson in London, Voltaire in Paris, Franklin in Philadelphia, and Kant in Prussia. This constellation of great sages was a telling manifestation of the brilliant intellectual and literary culture of the West. The brilliant intellectuals in Paris, London, and Edinburgh were versatile and creative polymaths of original genius. The American colonies, which were assumed to be an intellectual backwater, would gather their own constellation of great men of wisdom and genius 25 years later to found a new nation.
The glorious culture of 1750 included the blossoming of aesthetic culture (music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, fine craftsmanship), which was every bit as impressive as the intellectual and literary culture. Although the great day of the composition of Baroque music was almost finished by 1750, the West was on the verge of another revolution in great music. In a few years, Austrian and German composers would begin to compose some of the greatest music ever written.
Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), a German opera composer, developed the modern concert orchestra. Gluck had extraordinarily sensitive aesthetic intuitions and was a pioneer in recognizing the different "voices" and "timbres" (tone qualities and moods) of different musical instruments. By 1750, Gluck and others had laid the basic foundations for a new kind of music that we now call "classical music," to distinguish it from baroque and rococo music.
Ten years later, the young composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), music director at the Austrian court of Prince Esterhazy, began his long transition to the new classical music. He was a pioneer in the structure of musical compositions for symphony and string quartet.
Ten years after Haydn's launch into classical music, the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), a friend of Hayden, began his experiments with the new music and his movement away from the light, pretty, ornate "rococo" music of the courts that he composed as a child prodigy and teenage genius.
By the time Ludwig Von Beethoven (1770-1827) became a student of Haydn, the musical revolution was spreading through Europe. Mozart prophesied that the young Beethoven would "make a great noise in the music world." After 1800 when Beethoven became an international celebrity, his classical music well suited the popular taste. Some of his more daring later compositions straddled the boundaries of mature classicism and heroic romantic music.
During the 19th century, when some of the supports for a high culture were breaking down, great music continued as a source of cultural nourishment and invigoration. Great music and Christian spiritual renewals slowed down the cultural decline of the West. When Western music disintegrated in the hyper-modernist 20th century and cultural disillusionment poisoned the minds of the intelligentsia, the cultural decay of the West accelerated.
Fathers of Modernism and sponsors of classical music
Discussions about music thrived among the sophisticated gentlemen of Europe, especially among the "philosophes" (intellectuals) of Paris. Most of the philosophes were serious musicians or musical critics and theoreticians. The young Mozart was influenced by the new musical theory of Rousseau, as opposed to the traditional theory of Rameau.
In 1750, the philosophes were on the verge of starting a new intellectual movement, the French Enlightenment, which was the intellectual revolution of Modernism. Some of the fathers of Modernism were charter members of the classical music movement. The philosophes were rascals, but they had superb aesthetic taste.
Modernism would eventually destroy the great music that it had sponsored. Just as the French revolution devoured her children, Modernism destroyed some of the cultural gifts to the West. Modernism blessed the world with classical music, democracy, human rights, and universal education, but cursed the world with its myths, fallacies, and self-destructive tendencies.
The most subversive effects of Modernism were that it undercut Christianity, undercut human reason, and introduced moral relativism to the West. Moderate Modernism's democratic and social reform program was almost sunk during the 19th century by extreme Modernism's vicious and demented revolutionary program.
Interestingly, the intellectual upheavals and social tempests that Modernism brought to the West were triggered by a real earthquake and a tsunami.
God in the dock
The Lisbon earthquake of November 11, 1755, had its epicenter at the bottom of the sea near the port city of Lisbon, Spain. Lisbon was hit by violent shocks, followed by eighteen-foot waves at Lisbon and sixty-foot waves at Cadiz, Spain. Subsequently, Lisbon was gutted by a fire that lasted for six days, accompanied by rioting and looting. 60,000 people in Lisbon died. Many more were sick, injured, and homeless.
After every natural disaster, many people wonder why God let it happen. Men with an intelligent epistemology realized that events like this are beyond the scope of human reason to explain. The wise man is obliged to leave the answers to such questions in the hands of God. One cannot use reason to climb up above God and judge his actions. Yet Modernists, loaded with epistemological arrogance, routinely have done just this, as C. S. Lewis explained in his book God in the Dock.
A group of rationalist philosophers stepped forward and arrogantly claimed that they could explain the Lisbon earthquake from God's point of view – and justify God to man. The intellectual and cultural triumph of the West nurtured overweening pride, and Western man was feeling his oats.
The arrogance of the philosophers
The arrogant philosophers who tried to justify God committed a special kind of logical fallacy. God, the Creator, stands outside the creation. One cannot start from inside of a rational system and ascend a staircase of inductive logic to reach a first cause, prime mover, or design that comes from outside the system.
The rationalist philosophers of the era developed comprehensive systems by drawing a line around everything and attempting to explain everything by the internal logic of the system. As we shall see, such systems bring their adherents great confidence based on an illusion about what their system can explain. However, the comprehensive closed systems of the rationalist philosophers had several concealed fallacies:
1) The fallacy of reductionism. In order to explain everything, a comprehensive model must reduce everything to the level of interlocking parts, like gears in a great machine. Things in the real world that are complex and subtle must be drastically reduced and distorted to squeeze them into the closed system.
Reductionism imparts the illusion of clarity – because reductionism makes complex things simple and understandable to man's frail mind. However, as objects are collapsed in on themselves to fit into the system, they must be distorted at best and obfuscated at worst. The price of artificial clarity is the distortion of reality.
2) The fallacy of internal consistency. The fact that comprehensive systems are logically self-reinforcing within the system creates the illusion of certitude. Such systems can be impressively consistent and self-reinforcing on their own terms, but highly inconsistent with reality.
Such systems, by their nature, must be uncertain – contrary to the illusion of certitude. This uncertainty was proven with mathematics by Kurt Godel. Human assumptions that are used to construct the system are prone to error and uncertainty. Furthermore, man cannot anticipate the kind of assumptions that his system will need in order to interpret the dumbfounding complexity and subtlety of reality. The almost universal failure of multi-variable, mathematical computer systems models is due to the near impossibility of assembling all the right variables in exactly the right relationships.
3) The fallacy of closed systems. Godel's discovery of the fallacy of closed systems opened the door to the discovery of other fallacies and illusions inherent in closed systems. I am not sure how many of these other illusions were noticed by Godel. He was a great mathematician, but not necessarily a psychologist interested in illusions of the mind. Among such fallacies are these:
The narcissistic rationalists who thought they could explain the Lisbon earthquake were working from closed comprehensive systems. They had the illusion of clarity, the illusion of certitude, the illusion of comprehensive inclusion, the illusion of reality, the illusion of solipsism, and the illusion of magical thinking.
These illusions would soon be punctured by the most sarcastic wit in Europe. In particular, the illusions of philosopher Christian Wolff would be crushed by the withering sarcasm of Voltaire. This was a family quarrel between the Rationalist and Empiricist branches of Modernism.
The brilliant nonsense of Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (1679-1754) developed a rational philosophy similar in kind to the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. Wolff argued that God designed the world to have "pre-established harmony" according to His design and purpose. Evil does not disturb the cosmic harmonies, because it exists to actuate goodness. Evil actions and tragic events must be viewed from the vantage point of the overall harmonies of the universe, the direction in which the universe is moving, and the meaningful destiny and purpose of God. His meaningful design, providential guidance, and appointed destiny must be entirely good. Therefore, this must be "the best of all possible worlds."
None of the pantheistic religions or comprehensive closed system philosophies have been able to account for evil. Some pantheistic religions like Buddhism claim that evil is an illusion. Modernism has never been able to intelligently deal with the idea of evil. Wolff did not deny a nominal evil of sorts, but argued that evil is essential to the cosmic harmonies. But this is absurd.
The nature of evil is to destroy harmony. Wolff misunderstood evil because he reconfigured it to fit his system. As he made evil a construct of his system, his understanding of evil became confused. His "clarification" of evil became an obfuscation of evil.
Destructive evil and transcendent good cannot exist in a closed system. The existence of good and evil is evidence that our world is an open system.
The Christian view of evil
According to Christian orthodoxy, God created a good world that was subsequently invaded by evil. To cure the world of its destructive evil, God invaded the world from heaven (which is outside the temporal system) with an overpowering system-shattering goodness in the person of Christ. Transcendent good and cosmic evil came together at the cross where evil was defeated and sinners were redeemed.
The bodily incarnation of the Creator, his physical death on the cross, and His bodily resurrection from the dead and ascent into heaven are the ultimate proof that the world is an open system. If it was a closed system, there would be no eternal escape from the doomed temporal system.
Wolff was a Christian, yet he made up his own definition of evil. Voltaire was so outraged by Wolff's presumption that he launched an attack on Rationalism.
Voltaire's revenge
Although Wolff died a year before the Lisbon earthquake, his disciples, popularly called the "Wolffians," were on hand to explain away the tragedy by arguing that "this is the best of all possible worlds."
Voltaire, as an empiricist and a skeptic, was deeply hostile to rationalist pretenses. As a social critic, he regarded rationalist philosophers as apologists for the established regime of Royalism and Clericalism, and he was not entirely wrong.
Voltaire refuted the Wolffians, using the tactic of reductio ad absurdem (carrying an idea to its logical conclusions to reveal its absurdity). He used this potent weapon against the Wolffian signature line: "This is the best of all possible worlds."
Voltaire wrote Candide (1759), a novel in which Dr. Pangloss was a Wolffian philosopher, and Candide was his gullible student. ("Pangloss" means to gloss over everything.) Whenever Candide experienced or observed a disaster, Pangloss explained it away and concluded that "this is the best of all possible worlds." The body of the novel involves a journey of Candide in which he encounters or suffers one disaster after another. The repeated shocks of calamity are lightened for the reader by the hilarious absurdity of Pangloss' advice. Voltaire keeps us laughing on the road to cataclysmic horror. He is the unrivaled master of satire, sarcasm, and bitter irony.
At the end of Candide's journey, the verbose Voltaire is disarmed when there are no more darts of sarcasm to throw. He has nothing to say about good, evil, disaster, or the meaning of life. He closes with the lame advice that everyone "should tend his own garden." After destroying Wolff's system, Voltaire had nothing to offer in its place.
Rousseau's attack on the Wolffians was a triumph of skepticism that opened the door to the Materialism of Diderot and the Skepticism of Hume.
The rise of Materialism
If metaphysical systems like the Wolffian model cannot be trusted, perhaps we must seek reality in the realm of matter. Philosophical Materialists can be Pantheists, Deists, Agnostics, or Atheists. The defining point of Materialism is that the natural world of matter cannot be invaded and influenced by beings or forces from another realm. As such, Materialism is a closed system.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was an atheist and a Materialist. He was the editor-in-chief of the famous and influential Encyclopedie. Many of the philosophes wrote articles for the Encyclopedie. Among the literary essays and opinion pieces were many scientific dissertations. Diderot created the impression that science and Materialism must necessarily go together. This notion stuck like glue in the Western mind.
However, the resultant idea that science and bad philosophy must also be stuck together is nonsense. All the early founders of science were Christians – and were certainly not Materialists. Materialism is more of a hindrance than a help to science.
Contemporary scientist Edward O. Wilson is a Materialist. He argues that reason, free will, and consciousness are illusions of the mind. If Materialism is true, Wilson's conclusions must also be true. Wilson has fallen into the illusion of Determinism of closed systems.
Materialism is a closed system that claims that what people become is determined by cause and effect processes of heredity, biology, and environment. Therefore, man cannot possess reason or consciousness that might enable him to stand outside the system as an independent and critical observer. He cannot have free will that would enable him to free himself from the impersonal cause and effect forces inside the system. Confidence in the determinism of closed systems results in a divorce from the reality of human nature. Modern Liberalism is ultimately a misunderstanding of human nature.
As long as science drags the ball and chain of Materialism and Determinism, scientists will be compelled to come to absurd conclusions like Wilson's claim that reason, consciousness, and free will are illusions.
Standing in the ashes of skepticism
After Rationalism was discredited by Voltaire, Western man was disillusioned. His castles of reason had burned down, and he stood in the ashes of skepticism. If we cannot have authentic knowledge through reason, how then can we know and what can we know?
David Hume (1711-1776), a Scot, was part of the British tradition of empirical philosophy. The long tradition went back to John Locke, Francis Bacon, and William of Occam, all Englishmen by birth and education. From time immemorial, England had been the land of the no-nonsense practical man, with his two feet firmly planted on the ground, who is skeptical of sentimentalists and dreamers.
Hume was an "epistemological nihilist." He doubted that man can authentically know anything. He liked the famous line of Socrates, "I only know that I know nothing." Disillusioned Western man had quickly gone from knowing everything with the Wolffians to knowing nothing with Voltaire and Hume. (Voltaire was an admirer of Hume.)
Hume argued that our only knowledge is from sense impressions. He claimed that the attempt of human reason to reconstruct the subjective experiences of sense impression into cause and effect or into ideas and categories of knowledge is arbitrary.
Meanwhile, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was comfortably ensconced in his snug, orderly, academic, and philosophical world at the University of Konigsberg, a Lutheran university in East Prussia. The university favored the rationalist philosophies of Leibniz and Wolff. In 1770, Kant read Hume and said of the experience, "I was awakened from my dogmatic slumber." Kant did not propose to stand in the ashes of skepticism with Voltaire and Hume.
Kant's revolution in thought
Kant could not accept Hume's claim that man can learn nothing from his sensory observations. He posited that man has innate knowledge in his mind that he uses to perceive, define, interpret, and assign meanings to sensory experience. This interpretation of reality provides a starting point for the development of useful concepts and working principles.
Kant declared innate knowledge to be "a-priori" because knowledge precedes sensory experience in the process of learning and knowing. We know, therefore we can know more. Kant's innate knowledge contradicts Locke's dictum, that we start out with a blank slate in the mind, or a "tabula rasa."
Kant realized that there must be an observer of sensory events and an interpreter of those events. The observer and interpreter must be external to what is observed. Therefore, reasoning and knowing is a top-down process. Kant referred to this top-down process as the "transcendental analytic."
Nothing can be known except on the terms of the knower. But what if the terms of the knower are different from the terms of the object known? The possibility that our a-priori knowledge is inconsistent with what exists out there makes all human knowledge uncertain – and Kant realized this. Two centuries later, Kurt Godel would prove the same thing with mathematics.
What then can we know? Kant posited that we can know something about "phenomena," but cannot know anything about "noumena." Phenomena are what we experience through sense experience of material things – such as color, shape, and texture. Noumena are the "thing-in-itself" – i.e., the internal nature of things.
What kind of knowledge can we glean from phenomena using innate knowledge? We can gain practical knowledge that is useful to man. Scientists study natural phenomena and gain useful knowledge with practical applications.
But can we know the thing-in-itself? Kant said no, but scientists often say yes. Scientists think they perceive the "laws of nature" when they observe the orderly behavior of natural phenomena. However, the real laws of nature might be quite different from the structure of a scientific model – even if the model works for some applications. Many scientists are misled by the illusion that they know the thing-in-itself by observation.
Kant failed to cure science of this illusion. However, his epistemology gave scientists a new optimism. When he reconciled empirical philosophy with rational philosophy, scientists like Einstein realized that they could build mathematical models and test them with empirical evidence. Kant was indispensable to the rise of science to prominence in the modern world.
Kant giveth and Kant taketh away
For every beneficial contribution Kant made to the world, he injected some destructive new concept. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
1) Kant solved the family quarrel of Modernism by harmonizing Rationalism with Empiricism, assuring the ascendancy of Modernism and science. In doing so, he unwittingly unleashed the solipsism of German Idealism that bred more family quarrels. Instead of the old quarrel of Rationalism versus Empiricism, Romantic Idealism had a long-running family quarrel with tough-minded Utilitarianism. The quarrel was given literary form by the caricature of the utilitarian pedagogue named "Gradgrind" by the sentimental Charles Dickens. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
2) Kant's reconciliation of Rationalism and Empiricism encouraged scientists to combine empirical research with mathematical and theoretical models. Therefore, the science establishment gained new confidence and flourished after 1800, especially in Germany. The promise of science became one of the themes of Modernism.
Unfortunately, scientists began to fall into the illusions of closed systems. They selectively use empirical research to shore up failing theoretical models. As a result, a bad scientific model can endure for a century or more. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
3) Kant brought the West back to rational top-down thinking – but he gave only half-a-loaf of top-down thinking. He did not start with first principles that come down from a higher authority. He started with inherent ideas of the mind as did Descartes. This mistake led to his skepticism about metaphysical knowledge.
Kant brought to the world a badly needed revolution in Epistemology (the study of "how we know"). He also proved that man can gain no trustworthy knowledge from Metaphysics. Since Epistemology is a department of Metaphysics, Kant's critique of Metaphysics undercut the legitimacy of his works on Epistemology.
Kant's devastating critique led to a general discrediting of Metaphysics during the Modern Era – which crippled the reasoning powers of Western man. His Epistemology might have corrected some of the errors of Modernism. However, Western man was no longer capable of benefiting from Kant's corrections, because he could no longer think in metaphysical terms. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
4) As a metaphysical realist, Kant believed that "things are really out there." But the German followers of Kant used his methodology to prove the opposite, that things are not necessarily out there unless the mind acknowledges them. Kant would have said that if a tree falls in a forest, there would be a sound even if there was no man to hear it. The German Idealists argued that the falling tree would make no sound if there was no one there to hear it. Idealism was not possible without Kant, but if he had lived to see it, he would have been horrified.
In his refutation of Hume's epistemological nihilism, Kant unwittingly inspired the solipsism and magical thinking of German Idealism. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
5) Kant agreed with Hume that there is a hidden reality, the "thing-in-itself" that man cannot know. However, Kant contradicted Hume by saying that man can learn useful things by studying material things.
The scientists were encouraged when Kant told them that they can have real knowledge of real things. But they ignored his careful limits on knowledge because of their illusions of closed systems. The illusion that scientific knowledge is potentially unlimited has often stood in the way of new discoveries. When we try to learn about what is out of reach, we fail to learn what is within our grasp. He who tries to know everything winds up knowing nothing, as the disillusioned Wolffians found out. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
6) Kant opened new doors to knowledge, but mistakenly thought that his door is the only door to knowledge. As a result, scientists falsely claim that their kind of knowledge is the only kind worth having. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
The nineteenth-century aftermath
During the period 1800-1850, major new ersatz philosophies emerged including Idealism, Romanticism, Utilitarianism, and Progressivism. These kinds of thought all contain Modernist myths and fallacies.
Christians who learn how to think from teachers in the social sciences or the hard sciences often try to use closed systems, or else they think in a bottom-up way. Both approaches involve the separation of faith from knowledge. When a Christian separates his faith from knowledge, he will be prone to logical fallacies, and his faith will become irrelevant to his life.
A Christian who thinks in closed systems will reduce profound truth to pat answers and simplistic nostrums. He will claim to have an answer for everything, but many of his answers will be shallow or miss the central issue in question. He will refuse to believe that there are mysteries that man cannot understand, and he will analyze and mangle the sacred mysteries of God. He might become tidy-minded and scrupulous about petty legalisms.
On the other hand, a Christian who tries to think bottom-up will be pragmatic and skeptical about theology and the fine points of doctrine. He will only want to hear a snippet of truth – just enough so he can go into practical action. The pragmatist tries to keep his ministry in tune with contemporary culture so it will be "relevant." He might carry the cult of the contemporary to such lengths that he will turn his back on church tradition – and be cut off from the ancient doctrines and the streams of spirituality that are flowing forward to him from the past. The result will be a life of ignorance and spiritual shallowness.
The two kinds of Christian both like canned programs for ministry, by which they can go through the motions without thought or spiritual sensitivity.
How then shall we think?
Saint Anselm, an intellectual powerhouse, said, "I must believe so that I may understand." Faith comes before knowledge. Saint Anselm taught us how to use the gift of reason without separating faith from knowledge. (See part one.) Therefore, we can prosper spiritually, and at the same time keep our logic free from fallacies.
A message from Stephen Stone, President, RenewAmerica
I first became acquainted with Fred Hutchison in December 2003, when he contacted me about an article he was interested in writing for RenewAmerica about Alan Keyes. From that auspicious moment until God took him a little more than six years later, we published over 200 of Fred's incomparable essays — usually on some vital aspect of the modern "culture war," written with wit and disarming logic from Fred's brilliant perspective of history, philosophy, science, and scripture.
It was obvious to me from the beginning that Fred was in a class by himself among American conservative writers, and I was honored to feature his insights at RA.
I greatly miss Fred, who died of a brain tumor on August 10, 2010. What a gentle — yet profoundly powerful — voice of reason and godly truth! I'm delighted to see his remarkable essays on the history of conservatism brought together in a masterfully-edited volume by Julie Klusty. Restoring History is a wonderful tribute to a truly great man.
The book is available at Amazon.com.
© Fred Hutchison
May 9, 2013
Originally published August 9, 2006During part one of this essay, we took a tour of history, beginning with the birth of European civilization and finishing with the high watermark in Western culture (1100-1750). We discovered how Europe began with an excellent foundation for reason and how false ways of thinking and knowing began to creep into Western thought during the seventeenth century.
In part two, we will consider how several fatal myths of Modernism took hold during the period 1750-1800. After 1800, several new ersatz philosophies were added. By 1850, Modernism as a comprehensive worldview was essentially complete. Our historical tour of this two-part essay ends at 1850, because most of the key epistemological errors of Modernism had been made by then.
Economic Determinism, Marxism, Historicism, Darwinism, and Freudianism had appeared by 1900, but these were, in large part, new combinations of the elements of Modernism that were in place by 1850. New rearrangements of old fallacies also occurred in the twentieth century in several clusters of Modernist philosophy, including: (a) Pragmatism, Instrumentalism, Behaviorism, and Positivism, (b) Structuralism and Postmodern Deconstructionism, (c) Phenomenalism, Existentialism, Libertarianism, and New Age thought, and (d) Multiculturalism, Identity Politics, and the Root Causes Panaceas.
Before we begin the story of the decline of Western culture, let us take a quick look at the meridian splendor of the high culture from which we have fallen.
The meridian splendor of the West
The Western world of 1750 simultaneously enjoyed Dr. Johnson in London, Voltaire in Paris, Franklin in Philadelphia, and Kant in Prussia. This constellation of great sages was a telling manifestation of the brilliant intellectual and literary culture of the West. The brilliant intellectuals in Paris, London, and Edinburgh were versatile and creative polymaths of original genius. The American colonies, which were assumed to be an intellectual backwater, would gather their own constellation of great men of wisdom and genius 25 years later to found a new nation.
The glorious culture of 1750 included the blossoming of aesthetic culture (music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, fine craftsmanship), which was every bit as impressive as the intellectual and literary culture. Although the great day of the composition of Baroque music was almost finished by 1750, the West was on the verge of another revolution in great music. In a few years, Austrian and German composers would begin to compose some of the greatest music ever written.
Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), a German opera composer, developed the modern concert orchestra. Gluck had extraordinarily sensitive aesthetic intuitions and was a pioneer in recognizing the different "voices" and "timbres" (tone qualities and moods) of different musical instruments. By 1750, Gluck and others had laid the basic foundations for a new kind of music that we now call "classical music," to distinguish it from baroque and rococo music.Ten years later, the young composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), music director at the Austrian court of Prince Esterhazy, began his long transition to the new classical music. He was a pioneer in the structure of musical compositions for symphony and string quartet.
Ten years after Haydn's launch into classical music, the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), a friend of Hayden, began his experiments with the new music and his movement away from the light, pretty, ornate "rococo" music of the courts that he composed as a child prodigy and teenage genius.
By the time Ludwig Von Beethoven (1770-1827) became a student of Haydn, the musical revolution was spreading through Europe. Mozart prophesied that the young Beethoven would "make a great noise in the music world." After 1800 when Beethoven became an international celebrity, his classical music well suited the popular taste. Some of his more daring later compositions straddled the boundaries of mature classicism and heroic romantic music.
During the 19th century, when some of the supports for a high culture were breaking down, great music continued as a source of cultural nourishment and invigoration. Great music and Christian spiritual renewals slowed down the cultural decline of the West. When Western music disintegrated in the hyper-modernist 20th century and cultural disillusionment poisoned the minds of the intelligentsia, the cultural decay of the West accelerated.
Fathers of Modernism and sponsors of classical music
Discussions about music thrived among the sophisticated gentlemen of Europe, especially among the "philosophes" (intellectuals) of Paris. Most of the philosophes were serious musicians or musical critics and theoreticians. The young Mozart was influenced by the new musical theory of Rousseau, as opposed to the traditional theory of Rameau.
In 1750, the philosophes were on the verge of starting a new intellectual movement, the French Enlightenment, which was the intellectual revolution of Modernism. Some of the fathers of Modernism were charter members of the classical music movement. The philosophes were rascals, but they had superb aesthetic taste.
Modernism would eventually destroy the great music that it had sponsored. Just as the French revolution devoured her children, Modernism destroyed some of the cultural gifts to the West. Modernism blessed the world with classical music, democracy, human rights, and universal education, but cursed the world with its myths, fallacies, and self-destructive tendencies.
The most subversive effects of Modernism were that it undercut Christianity, undercut human reason, and introduced moral relativism to the West. Moderate Modernism's democratic and social reform program was almost sunk during the 19th century by extreme Modernism's vicious and demented revolutionary program.
Interestingly, the intellectual upheavals and social tempests that Modernism brought to the West were triggered by a real earthquake and a tsunami.
God in the dock
The Lisbon earthquake of November 11, 1755, had its epicenter at the bottom of the sea near the port city of Lisbon, Spain. Lisbon was hit by violent shocks, followed by eighteen-foot waves at Lisbon and sixty-foot waves at Cadiz, Spain. Subsequently, Lisbon was gutted by a fire that lasted for six days, accompanied by rioting and looting. 60,000 people in Lisbon died. Many more were sick, injured, and homeless.After every natural disaster, many people wonder why God let it happen. Men with an intelligent epistemology realized that events like this are beyond the scope of human reason to explain. The wise man is obliged to leave the answers to such questions in the hands of God. One cannot use reason to climb up above God and judge his actions. Yet Modernists, loaded with epistemological arrogance, routinely have done just this, as C. S. Lewis explained in his book God in the Dock.
A group of rationalist philosophers stepped forward and arrogantly claimed that they could explain the Lisbon earthquake from God's point of view – and justify God to man. The intellectual and cultural triumph of the West nurtured overweening pride, and Western man was feeling his oats.
The arrogance of the philosophers
The arrogant philosophers who tried to justify God committed a special kind of logical fallacy. God, the Creator, stands outside the creation. One cannot start from inside of a rational system and ascend a staircase of inductive logic to reach a first cause, prime mover, or design that comes from outside the system.
The rationalist philosophers of the era developed comprehensive systems by drawing a line around everything and attempting to explain everything by the internal logic of the system. As we shall see, such systems bring their adherents great confidence based on an illusion about what their system can explain. However, the comprehensive closed systems of the rationalist philosophers had several concealed fallacies:
1) The fallacy of reductionism. In order to explain everything, a comprehensive model must reduce everything to the level of interlocking parts, like gears in a great machine. Things in the real world that are complex and subtle must be drastically reduced and distorted to squeeze them into the closed system.
Reductionism imparts the illusion of clarity – because reductionism makes complex things simple and understandable to man's frail mind. However, as objects are collapsed in on themselves to fit into the system, they must be distorted at best and obfuscated at worst. The price of artificial clarity is the distortion of reality.
2) The fallacy of internal consistency. The fact that comprehensive systems are logically self-reinforcing within the system creates the illusion of certitude. Such systems can be impressively consistent and self-reinforcing on their own terms, but highly inconsistent with reality.Such systems, by their nature, must be uncertain – contrary to the illusion of certitude. This uncertainty was proven with mathematics by Kurt Godel. Human assumptions that are used to construct the system are prone to error and uncertainty. Furthermore, man cannot anticipate the kind of assumptions that his system will need in order to interpret the dumbfounding complexity and subtlety of reality. The almost universal failure of multi-variable, mathematical computer systems models is due to the near impossibility of assembling all the right variables in exactly the right relationships.
3) The fallacy of closed systems. Godel's discovery of the fallacy of closed systems opened the door to the discovery of other fallacies and illusions inherent in closed systems. I am not sure how many of these other illusions were noticed by Godel. He was a great mathematician, but not necessarily a psychologist interested in illusions of the mind. Among such fallacies are these:
- A system cut off from the presuppositions of the creator of the system cannot logically exist. The illusion of a closed system leads to the illusion of comprehensive inclusion. One perceives a complete and comprehensive world of knowledge inside the system. However, such models can never contain more than a tiny and distorted fragment of reality.
The contemporary cult of social inclusion comes from closed-system cultural determinism. Such systems breed the illusion of comprehensive inclusion and foster a horror of exclusion. Selective exclusion implies an open system where people may or may not be in the system. Closed system junkies fear that exclusion will destroy the closed system and damn those who are expelled from the system.
Inclusive education – without standards or differentiation between good and bad scholarship – breeds intellectual mediocrity at best, and animosity towards reason at worst. The horror of selective social exclusion can breed left-wing paranoia, as it did in the destructive revolutions of the nineteenth century.
- The illusion of reality involves the misperception that one has command of reality from inside the system. One who has this illusion is actually cut off from reality. This mental illusion leads to magical thinking.
- The illusion of reality is akin to the illusion of solipsism – the narcissistic fantasy that I am everything that exists and the outside world is illusory. This illusion helps to explain the exhibitionistic narcissism of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, in-your-face homosexuals, and the New Age Movement.
- The illusion of solipsism is akin to nineteenth century German philosophy of Idealism, which posits that nothing exists apart from my conscious awareness of its existence. This view is only possible for one with the illusion of reality and the illusion of solipsism.
The narcissistic rationalists who thought they could explain the Lisbon earthquake were working from closed comprehensive systems. They had the illusion of clarity, the illusion of certitude, the illusion of comprehensive inclusion, the illusion of reality, the illusion of solipsism, and the illusion of magical thinking.
These illusions would soon be punctured by the most sarcastic wit in Europe. In particular, the illusions of philosopher Christian Wolff would be crushed by the withering sarcasm of Voltaire. This was a family quarrel between the Rationalist and Empiricist branches of Modernism.
The brilliant nonsense of Christian WolffChristian Wolff (1679-1754) developed a rational philosophy similar in kind to the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. Wolff argued that God designed the world to have "pre-established harmony" according to His design and purpose. Evil does not disturb the cosmic harmonies, because it exists to actuate goodness. Evil actions and tragic events must be viewed from the vantage point of the overall harmonies of the universe, the direction in which the universe is moving, and the meaningful destiny and purpose of God. His meaningful design, providential guidance, and appointed destiny must be entirely good. Therefore, this must be "the best of all possible worlds."
None of the pantheistic religions or comprehensive closed system philosophies have been able to account for evil. Some pantheistic religions like Buddhism claim that evil is an illusion. Modernism has never been able to intelligently deal with the idea of evil. Wolff did not deny a nominal evil of sorts, but argued that evil is essential to the cosmic harmonies. But this is absurd.
The nature of evil is to destroy harmony. Wolff misunderstood evil because he reconfigured it to fit his system. As he made evil a construct of his system, his understanding of evil became confused. His "clarification" of evil became an obfuscation of evil.
Destructive evil and transcendent good cannot exist in a closed system. The existence of good and evil is evidence that our world is an open system.
The Christian view of evil
According to Christian orthodoxy, God created a good world that was subsequently invaded by evil. To cure the world of its destructive evil, God invaded the world from heaven (which is outside the temporal system) with an overpowering system-shattering goodness in the person of Christ. Transcendent good and cosmic evil came together at the cross where evil was defeated and sinners were redeemed.
The bodily incarnation of the Creator, his physical death on the cross, and His bodily resurrection from the dead and ascent into heaven are the ultimate proof that the world is an open system. If it was a closed system, there would be no eternal escape from the doomed temporal system.Wolff was a Christian, yet he made up his own definition of evil. Voltaire was so outraged by Wolff's presumption that he launched an attack on Rationalism.
Voltaire's revenge
Although Wolff died a year before the Lisbon earthquake, his disciples, popularly called the "Wolffians," were on hand to explain away the tragedy by arguing that "this is the best of all possible worlds."
Voltaire, as an empiricist and a skeptic, was deeply hostile to rationalist pretenses. As a social critic, he regarded rationalist philosophers as apologists for the established regime of Royalism and Clericalism, and he was not entirely wrong.
Voltaire refuted the Wolffians, using the tactic of reductio ad absurdem (carrying an idea to its logical conclusions to reveal its absurdity). He used this potent weapon against the Wolffian signature line: "This is the best of all possible worlds."
Voltaire wrote Candide (1759), a novel in which Dr. Pangloss was a Wolffian philosopher, and Candide was his gullible student. ("Pangloss" means to gloss over everything.) Whenever Candide experienced or observed a disaster, Pangloss explained it away and concluded that "this is the best of all possible worlds." The body of the novel involves a journey of Candide in which he encounters or suffers one disaster after another. The repeated shocks of calamity are lightened for the reader by the hilarious absurdity of Pangloss' advice. Voltaire keeps us laughing on the road to cataclysmic horror. He is the unrivaled master of satire, sarcasm, and bitter irony.
At the end of Candide's journey, the verbose Voltaire is disarmed when there are no more darts of sarcasm to throw. He has nothing to say about good, evil, disaster, or the meaning of life. He closes with the lame advice that everyone "should tend his own garden." After destroying Wolff's system, Voltaire had nothing to offer in its place.
Rousseau's attack on the Wolffians was a triumph of skepticism that opened the door to the Materialism of Diderot and the Skepticism of Hume.
The rise of Materialism
If metaphysical systems like the Wolffian model cannot be trusted, perhaps we must seek reality in the realm of matter. Philosophical Materialists can be Pantheists, Deists, Agnostics, or Atheists. The defining point of Materialism is that the natural world of matter cannot be invaded and influenced by beings or forces from another realm. As such, Materialism is a closed system.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was an atheist and a Materialist. He was the editor-in-chief of the famous and influential Encyclopedie. Many of the philosophes wrote articles for the Encyclopedie. Among the literary essays and opinion pieces were many scientific dissertations. Diderot created the impression that science and Materialism must necessarily go together. This notion stuck like glue in the Western mind.However, the resultant idea that science and bad philosophy must also be stuck together is nonsense. All the early founders of science were Christians – and were certainly not Materialists. Materialism is more of a hindrance than a help to science.
Contemporary scientist Edward O. Wilson is a Materialist. He argues that reason, free will, and consciousness are illusions of the mind. If Materialism is true, Wilson's conclusions must also be true. Wilson has fallen into the illusion of Determinism of closed systems.
Materialism is a closed system that claims that what people become is determined by cause and effect processes of heredity, biology, and environment. Therefore, man cannot possess reason or consciousness that might enable him to stand outside the system as an independent and critical observer. He cannot have free will that would enable him to free himself from the impersonal cause and effect forces inside the system. Confidence in the determinism of closed systems results in a divorce from the reality of human nature. Modern Liberalism is ultimately a misunderstanding of human nature.
As long as science drags the ball and chain of Materialism and Determinism, scientists will be compelled to come to absurd conclusions like Wilson's claim that reason, consciousness, and free will are illusions.
Standing in the ashes of skepticism
After Rationalism was discredited by Voltaire, Western man was disillusioned. His castles of reason had burned down, and he stood in the ashes of skepticism. If we cannot have authentic knowledge through reason, how then can we know and what can we know?
David Hume (1711-1776), a Scot, was part of the British tradition of empirical philosophy. The long tradition went back to John Locke, Francis Bacon, and William of Occam, all Englishmen by birth and education. From time immemorial, England had been the land of the no-nonsense practical man, with his two feet firmly planted on the ground, who is skeptical of sentimentalists and dreamers.
Hume was an "epistemological nihilist." He doubted that man can authentically know anything. He liked the famous line of Socrates, "I only know that I know nothing." Disillusioned Western man had quickly gone from knowing everything with the Wolffians to knowing nothing with Voltaire and Hume. (Voltaire was an admirer of Hume.)
Hume argued that our only knowledge is from sense impressions. He claimed that the attempt of human reason to reconstruct the subjective experiences of sense impression into cause and effect or into ideas and categories of knowledge is arbitrary.
Meanwhile, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was comfortably ensconced in his snug, orderly, academic, and philosophical world at the University of Konigsberg, a Lutheran university in East Prussia. The university favored the rationalist philosophies of Leibniz and Wolff. In 1770, Kant read Hume and said of the experience, "I was awakened from my dogmatic slumber." Kant did not propose to stand in the ashes of skepticism with Voltaire and Hume.
Kant's revolution in thoughtKant could not accept Hume's claim that man can learn nothing from his sensory observations. He posited that man has innate knowledge in his mind that he uses to perceive, define, interpret, and assign meanings to sensory experience. This interpretation of reality provides a starting point for the development of useful concepts and working principles.
Kant declared innate knowledge to be "a-priori" because knowledge precedes sensory experience in the process of learning and knowing. We know, therefore we can know more. Kant's innate knowledge contradicts Locke's dictum, that we start out with a blank slate in the mind, or a "tabula rasa."
Kant realized that there must be an observer of sensory events and an interpreter of those events. The observer and interpreter must be external to what is observed. Therefore, reasoning and knowing is a top-down process. Kant referred to this top-down process as the "transcendental analytic."
Nothing can be known except on the terms of the knower. But what if the terms of the knower are different from the terms of the object known? The possibility that our a-priori knowledge is inconsistent with what exists out there makes all human knowledge uncertain – and Kant realized this. Two centuries later, Kurt Godel would prove the same thing with mathematics.
What then can we know? Kant posited that we can know something about "phenomena," but cannot know anything about "noumena." Phenomena are what we experience through sense experience of material things – such as color, shape, and texture. Noumena are the "thing-in-itself" – i.e., the internal nature of things.
What kind of knowledge can we glean from phenomena using innate knowledge? We can gain practical knowledge that is useful to man. Scientists study natural phenomena and gain useful knowledge with practical applications.
But can we know the thing-in-itself? Kant said no, but scientists often say yes. Scientists think they perceive the "laws of nature" when they observe the orderly behavior of natural phenomena. However, the real laws of nature might be quite different from the structure of a scientific model – even if the model works for some applications. Many scientists are misled by the illusion that they know the thing-in-itself by observation.
Kant failed to cure science of this illusion. However, his epistemology gave scientists a new optimism. When he reconciled empirical philosophy with rational philosophy, scientists like Einstein realized that they could build mathematical models and test them with empirical evidence. Kant was indispensable to the rise of science to prominence in the modern world.
Kant giveth and Kant taketh away
For every beneficial contribution Kant made to the world, he injected some destructive new concept. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
1) Kant solved the family quarrel of Modernism by harmonizing Rationalism with Empiricism, assuring the ascendancy of Modernism and science. In doing so, he unwittingly unleashed the solipsism of German Idealism that bred more family quarrels. Instead of the old quarrel of Rationalism versus Empiricism, Romantic Idealism had a long-running family quarrel with tough-minded Utilitarianism. The quarrel was given literary form by the caricature of the utilitarian pedagogue named "Gradgrind" by the sentimental Charles Dickens. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
2) Kant's reconciliation of Rationalism and Empiricism encouraged scientists to combine empirical research with mathematical and theoretical models. Therefore, the science establishment gained new confidence and flourished after 1800, especially in Germany. The promise of science became one of the themes of Modernism.
Unfortunately, scientists began to fall into the illusions of closed systems. They selectively use empirical research to shore up failing theoretical models. As a result, a bad scientific model can endure for a century or more. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.3) Kant brought the West back to rational top-down thinking – but he gave only half-a-loaf of top-down thinking. He did not start with first principles that come down from a higher authority. He started with inherent ideas of the mind as did Descartes. This mistake led to his skepticism about metaphysical knowledge.
Kant brought to the world a badly needed revolution in Epistemology (the study of "how we know"). He also proved that man can gain no trustworthy knowledge from Metaphysics. Since Epistemology is a department of Metaphysics, Kant's critique of Metaphysics undercut the legitimacy of his works on Epistemology.
Kant's devastating critique led to a general discrediting of Metaphysics during the Modern Era – which crippled the reasoning powers of Western man. His Epistemology might have corrected some of the errors of Modernism. However, Western man was no longer capable of benefiting from Kant's corrections, because he could no longer think in metaphysical terms. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
4) As a metaphysical realist, Kant believed that "things are really out there." But the German followers of Kant used his methodology to prove the opposite, that things are not necessarily out there unless the mind acknowledges them. Kant would have said that if a tree falls in a forest, there would be a sound even if there was no man to hear it. The German Idealists argued that the falling tree would make no sound if there was no one there to hear it. Idealism was not possible without Kant, but if he had lived to see it, he would have been horrified.
In his refutation of Hume's epistemological nihilism, Kant unwittingly inspired the solipsism and magical thinking of German Idealism. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
5) Kant agreed with Hume that there is a hidden reality, the "thing-in-itself" that man cannot know. However, Kant contradicted Hume by saying that man can learn useful things by studying material things.
The scientists were encouraged when Kant told them that they can have real knowledge of real things. But they ignored his careful limits on knowledge because of their illusions of closed systems. The illusion that scientific knowledge is potentially unlimited has often stood in the way of new discoveries. When we try to learn about what is out of reach, we fail to learn what is within our grasp. He who tries to know everything winds up knowing nothing, as the disillusioned Wolffians found out. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
6) Kant opened new doors to knowledge, but mistakenly thought that his door is the only door to knowledge. As a result, scientists falsely claim that their kind of knowledge is the only kind worth having. Kant giveth and Kant taketh away.
The nineteenth-century aftermath
During the period 1800-1850, major new ersatz philosophies emerged including Idealism, Romanticism, Utilitarianism, and Progressivism. These kinds of thought all contain Modernist myths and fallacies.
- Idealism in a nutshell: if a tree in a forest falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound? The Idealists said no.
- German Romantic philosophy held that nothing exists but "will." German Romantic poets and dramatists held that nothing matters but the affections and passions. English Romantic poets sought deep feelings about nature. Folk Romantic poets and playwrights held that culture wells up from the soil and infuses the souls of the native people on the land. They deemed all other kinds of culture "artificial."
- Utilitarianism: Practical calculations by social engineers enable mankind to find "the greatest good for the greatest number." "Good" means seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
- Progressivism: Mystical forces of history bring about "progress." The world is in constant change until it reaches a final stasis of ultimate good, or "utopia." Reforms that hasten progress are the only good. Regressive things that block progress are the only bad. The future is our only inspiration. The past has nothing to teach us.
Christians who learn how to think from teachers in the social sciences or the hard sciences often try to use closed systems, or else they think in a bottom-up way. Both approaches involve the separation of faith from knowledge. When a Christian separates his faith from knowledge, he will be prone to logical fallacies, and his faith will become irrelevant to his life.
A Christian who thinks in closed systems will reduce profound truth to pat answers and simplistic nostrums. He will claim to have an answer for everything, but many of his answers will be shallow or miss the central issue in question. He will refuse to believe that there are mysteries that man cannot understand, and he will analyze and mangle the sacred mysteries of God. He might become tidy-minded and scrupulous about petty legalisms.
On the other hand, a Christian who tries to think bottom-up will be pragmatic and skeptical about theology and the fine points of doctrine. He will only want to hear a snippet of truth – just enough so he can go into practical action. The pragmatist tries to keep his ministry in tune with contemporary culture so it will be "relevant." He might carry the cult of the contemporary to such lengths that he will turn his back on church tradition – and be cut off from the ancient doctrines and the streams of spirituality that are flowing forward to him from the past. The result will be a life of ignorance and spiritual shallowness.The two kinds of Christian both like canned programs for ministry, by which they can go through the motions without thought or spiritual sensitivity.
How then shall we think?
Saint Anselm, an intellectual powerhouse, said, "I must believe so that I may understand." Faith comes before knowledge. Saint Anselm taught us how to use the gift of reason without separating faith from knowledge. (See part one.) Therefore, we can prosper spiritually, and at the same time keep our logic free from fallacies.
A message from Stephen Stone, President, RenewAmericaI first became acquainted with Fred Hutchison in December 2003, when he contacted me about an article he was interested in writing for RenewAmerica about Alan Keyes. From that auspicious moment until God took him a little more than six years later, we published over 200 of Fred's incomparable essays — usually on some vital aspect of the modern "culture war," written with wit and disarming logic from Fred's brilliant perspective of history, philosophy, science, and scripture.
It was obvious to me from the beginning that Fred was in a class by himself among American conservative writers, and I was honored to feature his insights at RA.
I greatly miss Fred, who died of a brain tumor on August 10, 2010. What a gentle — yet profoundly powerful — voice of reason and godly truth! I'm delighted to see his remarkable essays on the history of conservatism brought together in a masterfully-edited volume by Julie Klusty. Restoring History is a wonderful tribute to a truly great man.
The book is available at Amazon.com.
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