With the high development of the economy, people finally came out of the kind of disaster and serious crisis of the middle of the 20th century, the world was generally peaceful, the economy was prosperous, science and technology were advancing, and even the plague was long dormant, but the improvement of living standards did not reduce people's insecurity. Moreover, this uneasiness occurs more among successful people, among those who have acquired considerable knowledge and prestige, power and wealth.
Why do people feel like something is missing? Modern people's material living conditions are much better than in the past, and their average life expectancy is much longer than that of previous generations of people, so why are there still loss and anxiety?
Today, Movable Type Jun shares with book lovers a book review by Mr. He Huaihong, Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Peking University, on "The Age of Nothingness". "Author Watson's book undoubtedly captures a crucial question of our time—how do people in modern society live and think after the decline of religious beliefs in the West in recent times and the nihilization of the original basic beliefs and values?"
He Huaihong Wen
Why do people feel like something is missing?
Peter Watson is a well-known British intellectual historian who has written "The History of Ideas: From Fire to Freud" and "The History of Ideas in the 20th Century: From Freud to the Internet", which have been translated into Chinese, and recently the Shanghai Translation Publishing House has launched his "Age of Nothingness: How We Live After God's Death".
The Age of Nothingness: How We Live After God's Death (by Peter Watson, translated by Gao Lijie, Shanghai Translation Press, 2021)
"The Age of Nothingness" can be seen as an extension of Watson's above work on the history of ideas, because he focuses on some of the latest developments in Western thought since the 21st century, but what is unique is that he also adopts a perspective that must be very important in his view, that is, how do people in modern society live and think after the decline of Western religious beliefs in modern times and the gradual nihilization of the original basic beliefs and values? In the recent years since the beginning of the new century, has there been a new trend of thought in the West that tries to revive religion or religion?
The authors argue that secularization peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, and at the beginning of the 21st century, more and more people turned to (or returned to) religion. I doubt this estimate a little, because at least in the broader sense of Christianity, the decline seems to continue, and the number of people going to church continues to decrease. But I also admit that there has indeed been some kind of transformation in recent years, and that the first signs of this transformation have even begun to occur in the past among intellectuals who were rather secular or even politicized, or who did not care much about faith. These new "god-seeking" or quasi-"god-seeking" quests are probably first and foremost because people feel some kind of deep spiritual deficiency.
The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci. Christianity had a huge impact on the Western world.
After the glorious achievements of modern material civilization, and after the political order seems to have reached the "end of history", do modern people live happily or at least feel quite fulfilled and meaningful? Are they satisfied with their lives? Or is there still a lot of anxiety and uneasiness, even more than in the past? Why do people feel like something is missing? Modern people's material living conditions are much better than in the past, and their average life expectancy is much longer than that of previous generations of people, so why are there still loss and anxiety?
Compared with previous eras, the world is generally peaceful, economic prosperity, and rapid technological progress, although there are still all kinds of unsatisfactory, but it seems that there is no disaster and serious crisis of the middle of the 20th century, there is no big war, no famine, even the plague has been dormant for a long time, even the newly erupted new crown epidemic is not as terrible as the plague that took nearly half of the population in the past, and people still know the pathological mechanism and treatment plan of the new crown pneumonia quite well, not as ignorant as in the past era. But why are people still dissatisfied with their lives? Moreover, this uneasiness occurs not only among ordinary people, but among successful people, among those who have acquired considerable knowledge, prestige, power and wealth.
More than half of the people in the West still believe in angels
Watson briefly reviews the thought process by which Westerners left traditional religious beliefs. Watson argues that the idea of detachment from God was pioneered by Gibbon and Hume in the 18th century (which, in my opinion, can be traced back much earlier, such as Machiavelli), and after the development of Voltaire and the French Revolution, was inherited by Kant, Hegel and the Romantics, German Biblical criticism, Comte, and the "budding of positivism" (again, I think there are some thinkers mentioned above who have only partially inherited, and they still leave a place for God). In the mid-19th century, Feuerbach, Marx, and Schopenhauer took to the stage of history (reaching a peak by Nietzsche).
The philosopher Nietzsche once proposed that "God is dead", arguing that God is no longer the source of meaning or moral standard of life.
In addition, the social and philosophical theories of Owen, Spencer, and Darwin's biology also had a huge impact on religion. This view also continued to appeal to ancient atheists such as Epicurus and Lucretius in its development. It was unstoppable, and Arnold lamented 10 years after darwin's On the Origin of Species that the sea of faith was "melancholy, long, and the tide was fading." However, the change in the atmosphere of faith in society as a whole, or at the grass-roots level of society, did not begin to be so rapid. Watson even argues that until the 1960s, Britain was largely a Christian state. But in the decades since, social beliefs in Britain and Europe and the United States have changed dramatically. God first "died" at the level of intellectuals and cultural elites, and then disappeared or diluted at the level of society.
The biologist Darwin, whose biological ideas had a huge impact on religion.
With the promise and encouragement of new ideals, people are almost all-out in the pursuit of a worldly and beautiful world. Some social and political ideologies have also tried to fill the space of faith after God's death, and the most important alternative is probably science, which may have been partially successful, but in the end it is difficult to replace. People's desire and even belief in a transcendental phenomenon is still widespread in society, and they may not necessarily believe in the God of the past, but according to british and American polls, more than half of the people still believe in gods, ghosts, angels, or other supernatural phenomena.
Among some intellectuals, there are even signs of a return from secularism to traditional beliefs. There are also intellectuals who do not want to go back to the God of the past, do not want to believe in transcendental existence, especially in personified Gods. However, they still feel the lack of faith, and even begin to re-recognize the reasonable and even positive meaning of religion.
Stills from the Diatlov Incident, a film that deals with the surreal disappearance of nine Russian mountaineers near the Ural Mountains in 1959.
Instead of going back to the religions of the past, they began to try to rebuild their faith or make up for their deficiencies in other ways. Watson describes several such famous thinkers, who had a reputation and influence in their efforts to advance a better secular society, but who in their later works were seriously concerned about the problem of faith. In recent years, they seem to have invariably explored the question of faith and transcendence, and they are trying to find various ways out, is this related to their personal twilight years or even the approach of death?
An Awareness of What is Missing
Habermas's book An Awareness of What is Missing is interesting, and it can almost be said to be a co-author of Habermas and Jesuits at various Universities in Germany, who have been giving feedback since the book's name. The Enlightenment intellectuals of the past were quite aggressive of the Jesuits, or at least avoided them. Habermas argues that even though the differences between secularists and religious believers "can never be resolved on a cognitive level," religion is far more rational than atheists can imagine, and secularists have a responsibility to accept this fact.
Unity of tradition and society
In Habermas's view, most of us feel that modernity is "out of control." "The function of various religious traditions today is that they express awareness of what is missing in our lives," he said. They maintain an active sensitivity to failure and pain. They save our social and personal relationships, which have been completely destroyed in the process of cultural and social rationalization, lest these dimensions be swallowed up. ”
Of course, Habermas is not advocating a return to traditional beliefs, saying that what we are most missing now is "unity." But how to unite? I think at least one thing can be considered: If the modern Enlightenment ever wanted the powerful religions of the time to tolerate secular thought, then perhaps people today should want powerful secular ideas to tolerate or even try to "understand" or "experience" religion.
Religion Without God (by Ronald Dworkin, translated by Yu Xingzhong, China Democracy and Legal Publishing House, 2015)
Religion without God (2013), based on his posthumous lectures, argues that "religious atheism" is not a self-contradictory statement. Religion "does not necessarily mean a firm belief in God", but "concern for the meaning of human life and what a so-called good life means", and the intrinsic meaning of life and the intrinsic beauty of nature are the core elements of maintaining a complete religious attitude towards life. These beliefs cannot be separated from the rest of one's life—they seep into existence, evoking pride, remorse, and tremors, and mystery forms an important part of this tremor. For example, he said, when confronted with the unimaginable expanse of space and the unbelievable complexity of atomic particles, many scientists have an emotional response similar to the "sense of awe" in traditional religious discourse. Dworkin says that the things that ultimately create religious attitudes are aesthetic, that is, we discover the beauty of the universe. He agreed with Einstein that mystery itself was the most beautiful thing. But it seems that he has not gone as far as Einstein—it is the beauty of a divine cosmic harmony that leads him to believe in a transcendent existence.
Secular Philosophy and Religious Temperament (by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press, 2009)
In a recent book, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, Nagel writes:
"Existence is something magnificent, and everyday life, though essential, does not seem to be sufficient to respond to existence, to be imperceptible."
"Although it sounds unacceptable, religious temperament views the life of simple people as an inadequate life, as a one-sided recognition or rejection of our way of being."
Mind and the Universe: An Interrogation of the Materialist Neo-Darwinian View of Nature (by Thomas Nagel, translated by Zhang Putian, The Commercial Press, 2017)
In his later book, Mind & Cosmos: A Materialistic Neo-Darwinian View of Nature (2012), he criticized the Neo-Darwinian view of evolution of nature, life, consciousness, reason, and even moral values, arguing that such an orthodox statement of contemporary science was "almost necessarily wrong." Life is not only a physical phenomenon, but also contains "purposeful elements". According to the natural teleological hypothesis, there may be a "cosmic pre-arrangement with which the formation of life, consciousness, and value is inextricably linked."
People need a fundamental sense of meaning
After introducing the thinkers mentioned above, Watson pointed out that these three philosophers, who were on both sides of the Atlantic and were all at the peak of their respective professional fields, said roughly the same thing. They all agree that science has been trying to eradicate many of the basic ideas of Christianity and other major faiths for more than 500 years, yet many feel that "something" has been lost. People still have a transcendental impulse.
Why do people still crave a transcendence in their hearts? It may be that there is a need for a fundamental sense of meaning that cannot be provided and satisfied by material things and worldly life. Man even needs a sense of purpose, and this sense of purpose cannot be satisfied by his own success, or even by his specific goals. One also needs a feeling that is enduring and even eternal, and which cannot be satisfied only by momentary pleasure or even ecstasy.
How can we make up for this lack? Many people talked about art and beauty. But there are two problems here:
The first is whether beauty and art can replace the pursuit of religious belief, and indeed they are both spiritual pursuits, and they can undoubtedly partially replace the latter pursuit, and in some cases even completely replace it, but they are not after all pursuits with exactly the same content and goal, because there are still some artists who can not only appreciate beauty but also create beauty, and still feel their own lack.
Second, is everyone able and willing to pursue beauty? Or can you appreciate and respect beauty even if you can't create it? Does the content of many beauties have a difference in taste?
The Roots of the Self: The Formation of Modern Identity (by Charles Taylor, Translated by Han Zhen, 2012)
Watson also introduced Charles Taylor's views. In his books Sources of the Self (1989) and A Secular Age (2007), Taylor repeatedly argues that today's people who inhabit the secular world and lack faith have lost, that they have lost what is important and crucial, something that is or even what is most important to people. According to him, it was a feeling of wholeness, a feeling of fulfillment, a feeling of meaning, a feeling of transcendent things. That "transcendent age," he says, has faded and we are haunted by "an uncomfortable, empty feeling, a thirst for meaning." Everyday life is pervasive with a terrible monotony, a sense of trivial emptiness and the need for meaning that can only be solved through the "restoration of transcendence."
Secular Times (by Charles Taylor, translated by Zhang Rongnan, Sheng Yun, Liu Qing, etc., Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2016)
Watson himself does not make a very clear point, saying that his book is mainly about the various recent ideas and currents that have been raised around this issue. But his view may be more inclined to think that we need to be clearly missing, that we need to explore ways out, but that we do not have to go back to traditional religious beliefs of the past, because religion also has a horror that may be brought about in practice and the absurdity of ideological incompatibility with rational argument.
He gives the example of Rushdie being hunted down and killed at the beginning and end of the book. Although dissenters may argue: Is the dominant religion in the traditional society to which Western intellectuals belong still so frightening? Isn't the era of crusaders and witch burns long gone? Hasn't it become quite mild or even too mild? But in any case, Watson's book undoubtedly captures a crucial issue in our time.
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