Meanings of Life Oct.

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The History of Meanings of Life in Europe

Why Study This? We study this because European thought has had a powerful influence on meanings of life
worldwide today--everyone has to some extent been shaped by these ideas.

The European Medieval Worldview / the Renaissance

--The medieval worldview was God-centered in a way that we can barely imagine today (the closest equivalent
today may be the Middle East). Parisian students rioted in the streets in the 11th century over theological disputes
such as nominalism versus realism, the nature of the holy trinity, and reason vs. faith. Theology was seen as “the
queen of the sciences.” The intellectual world was a mix of the Bible and the ancient Greek texts of thinkers like
Aristotle. Most people no doubt found their meanings of life closer to their daily lives; but God was indubitable.
--The Renaissance was the flowering of artists and thinkers that took place in Italy around 1500. It remained
profoundly religious: consider the paintings of the great artists Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo;
however, it also represents the celebration of the human spirit apart from God. The Renaissance in a sense
embodied a tension in meanings of life between living for God and celebrating human being.
--The emergence of printing in the late 15th century, and the ensuing shift from Latin and Greek to national
languages: English, German, French, Spanish, etc. Consider Cervantes, Shakespeare—what do they tell us about
life’s meaning? The consequences of printing for the emergence of the nation: the “imagined community” of the
nation was made possible through the printing press.

The Reformation / the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

--The Reformation was begun by Martin Luther in 1517, with the founding of Protestantism as a revolt against the
laxity of the Catholic church: it represented a radical return to God. Protestantism bypassed the church: every
believer, through one’s own Bible, could personally comprehend the Scriptures and thus God, it was believed. The
invention of printing made this possible.
--The worldview of John Calvin, who we read: human beings are worthless apart from God. Money-making as a
way of proving to oneself that God has predestined one’s fate in heaven; this became an engine for the
development of capitalism. Over several centuries, making money became its own meaning of life.
--The religious wars of the Reformation: the Thirty Years’ War, the Spanish Inquisition: why did religion arouse such
passion? Because these struggles were over ultimate reality: not this world, but the next.

The Scientific Revolution / The French Enlightenment

--All through the Middle Ages, there had been the question of reason versus faith as a means of knowing the world.
Science represents the application of human reason to the world; but all the early scientists--Bacon, Newton--were
profoundly religious, seeing scientific experimentation as a means, aside from the Bible, of gaining religious truth.
--Galileo before the religious tribunal in this week’s reading: does science contradict religion? Should the pursuit of
knowledge through empirical means be limited by the demands of faith? (this is a problem today too: consider the
debate in the United States today over evolution and “intelligent design”)
--Religion provided the unwitting mechanism for capitalism and for the scientific revolution.
--The French Enlightenment: Reason will show human beings the path to perfection: who needs God? Reason is
the key to understanding nature, and for creating human happiness. These were key ideas in founding the United
States. But ironically, one optimistic advocate of Reason, Condorcet, was beheaded in the French Revolution.

The Erosion of Faith in Reason: Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud and Their Legacies
--Darwin’s theory of evolution and its implications—are human beings only animals? If human beings have
evolved in accordance with the processes of evolution, then this conclusion becomes difficult to avoid. Given
“natural selection,” what does human morality mean? Huxley in our reading: is nature opposed to human morality?
--Nietzsche: God is an illusion created from human weakness, but human beings haven’t yet realized this yet.
Human beings must take control of their own fate, rather than relying upon an imagined God.
--Freud: Human beings are not rational beings, but at the mercy of their unconscious. The “three blows to human
narcissism, in this week’s reading: Copernicus’s discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe; Darwin’s
discovery of evolution; and Freud’s own discovery of the unconscious.
--World War I and II: The Somme, Hiroshima and Auschwitz—is this the glory of human reason?
--Over the past five centuries, Western thought has left behind God, to have faith in human reason: but now we
cannot have faith in human reason, considering this century’s world wars and environmental destruction. Thus,
what are we left with? European thought has shifted to existentialism, and then postmodernism and subjectivity as
an effort to escape from human reason and its false promise.

What Now?
--Today, perhaps human beings need neither religion nor transcendent reason, but simply a reasonably interesting
span of life. Perhaps in this we make our own meaning.
--Is Google becoming the new God? Will artificial intelligence take over from humans? Artificial intelligence
increasingly knows us better than we know ourselves. Is this the ultimate endpoint of the industrial revolution? Of
the past 500 years’ ideas we’ve just discussed? Of human beings? Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus…