Outline Lecture Eighteen—Embracing Uncertainty on the Cusp of Modernity

Time and Location of Review Session: Monday 12/9 8:30-9:20 pm, Ledden Auditorium
(Muir College Area)
Time and Location of Final Exam: Thursday 12/12 3:00-5:59 pm, Rec Gym next to
Main Gym (Muir College Area)

1) With dismantling of traditional institutions and assumptions, what kind of wisdom is

necessary to confront the uncertainty of the modern age?

I) Intellectual Uncertainty
a) Enlightenment Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s Positive Spin on Uncertainty: Freedom
We are more free in this new age of uncertainty and we must have the courage to exercise
that freedom to think for ourselves
i) “Sapere aude” (dare to know)—fitting motto of the Enlightenment
(1) Motto or spirit of enlightenment
ii) Freedom of one’s own mind over the “tutelage” of others
(1) Pejorative way – negative way
(2) We are trapped in the way of following others instead of thinking for ourselves
(3) Why do we take the tutelage of others for granted?
(a) It’s easier to let other people do the thinking
(b) More convenient
(c) Shows a mental and/or spiritual lethargy (like dark inertia from the Gita)
(4) We must use our own reasoning to think of things and have the courage to
question established truths and beliefs
(a) Enlightenment era was all about investigating inherited notions
(b) Developing a skeptical and critical mind
iii) To develop a skeptical and critical mind
(1) The core of what Kant promoted
(2) Reason of learning more
b) Mocking Certainty: Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” 1607
First European ‘novel’ – genre of novel is a very modern genre
i) Questioning the very stability of “what is true”
(1) A satirical twist on a question as basic as Don Quixote’s name
(a) Plating with the very notion of the stability of the truth
(b) Playful nature and self-conscious narrative that is aware of its own
performance is a completely modern approach
(c) This novel is a new genre and a new way of looking at truth
(2) “We do not depart by so much as an inch from the truth of telling it”
(a) Tongue-in-cheek, self-conscious narrative
(b) Wink wink nudge nudge – playing with the idea of truth
(i) Reflecting modern sensibility of a novel
(ii) Backdrop is instability of truth
(c) Destabilizing the assumption of reason itself (Don Quixote is insane)
ii) Undermining the hegemony of rationalism
 (1) “The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason, so weakens my
reason that with reason I complain of your beauty”
(a) Wordplay as a way of exposing the hollowness of this thing we call reason
(b) Aristotle couldn’t decipher meaning
(2) Underscores the relativism, not absolutism, of “reason”
(a) Highlighting the relativism of the truth that we are preaching
(b) We will always use reason to confirm the ideas convenient to ourselves
(c) Cervantes is the threshold when these things change

II) Uncertainty towards Authority

a) In Politics: The Rejection of Absolutism
Few questioned the supremacy of rulers
i) Reign of the 17th century “Sun-king,” Louis XIV--the “last hurrah” of absolutism
(1) He did everything he could to assert his absolute power but things were changing
(a) Like Cromwellian civil war leading to the execution of King Charles
(b) After this bill of rights established in England
ii) By the end of the 17th century, the sanctity of absolutism was already eroding
(1) English Civil War and execution of Charles I
(2) 1688 “Glorious Revolution”
(3) French Revolution of 1798
(a) Culmination of all of these things
(b) Reign of Napoleon
(c) Transition of one set of assumptions to another
b) In Religion: Intimations of a World beyond Faith
Reaction against traditional religion
Sums up some key ideas of the Enlightenment era
People in their private role do not have the power to express themselves – they do in their
public role
i) Kant’s insistence on the freedom of thought
(1) Private vs. public freedom
(a) “Private” as in professional role; “Public” as in civic responsibility
(b) Why this distinction?
Wants reform to happen in a managed and orderly fashion
More conservative socially
(i) “Argue all you want, but obey the laws” (civic duty) vs. “Obey without
questioning” (tutelage)
1. Captures the two sides of his arguments
2. Don’t blindly follow whatever you’re told though
3. This is his way of battling the uncertainty relating to religion
ii) Voltaire’s Radical Deism in the 18th century Enlightenment Movement
(1) Motto of “Écraser l’infâme”
(a) Erase the institution of the church
(2) Convinced all religious institutions were abhorrent
(a) E.g. Massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572
(b) Solution is get rid of religious institutions that were the cause of these big
violent acts
 (3) Philosophes like Voltaire advocated total overhaul of faith
(a) I know how to hate because I know how to love – basically I know and care
about faith and God
iii) Deism—Universal religion based on reason and tolerance (Believed these were
antithetical to the established church)
(1) Why is my ant-hill necessarily cherished by God more?
(a) One faith system is not based on another
(b) “We are correct and better than them over there”
(2) Faith as a basis for justice?
(a) “If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”
(i) Not positive that God exists, but even so he has to exist as a concept
(ii) Because he believes the concept of God can be used as a source of good to
inspire justice, compassion and benevolence in people
(iii) He’s thinking of a God that is like Socrates’ conscience (Daemon)
(iv) God as positive source of our conscience
(b) Voltaire’s deathbed plea “Love God and your neighbor”
(i) Without visible presence and imminent being of god the best we can do is
be just and do nothing that is against our conscience

III) Course Conclusions

a) The Legacy of the Axial Age (7th and 4th centuries BCE)
i) What distinguished Axial Age wisdom from earlier ages?
(1) Saw it as a period of pause and self-examination that occurred during this time in
different parts of the world
(2) Pivotal because it established many of the traditions that influenced the
progression of society
(3) Established many philosophical traditions
(4) All had the commonality of self-examination and broke away from the
domination of superstition that previously purveyed the premodern world
(a) Steeped in the idea of supranationalism of a being that determines what
happens
(b) No empowerment for the human person
(c) Job’s integrity and interrogation of his faith – assuring himself that it is true
(d) Confucius insisted on a person always pursuing learning until his dying day as
if pursuing a person one can never catch up with
(e) Buddha’s belief that the ultimate emancipation has to be self-emancipation
(i) Not a magical power outside of your control
All are very much oriented towards self-empowerment
Socrates dying for his beliefs – the unexamined life is a life not worth living

Remember these individuals as who they were – human beings with the same fears, insecurities
and anxieties of now (The Buddha’s stages, Confucius’ worries)
Don’t assume that they are perfect or unattainable – they were just like us
ii) Heeding the lingering voices of the Axial Age
b) The Relevance of the Axial Age for today’s world
These people were like us
i) To search for “the lost heart, the spirit of compassion that lies at the core of all our
traditions”