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Modern Man in Search of Meaning

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Modern Man in Search of Meaning MODERN MAN IN SEARCH OF MEANING The Quest for Significance in a World of Disenchanted Enchantment Author: Supervisors: Arthur Mathieu van Kooten Prof. dr. J. de Mul Prof. dr. G. J. Buijs Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam 2018 Word Count: 29,186 ECT: 15 Date of Completion: 22/06/2018 ii iii ABSTRACT This thesis addresses the impact of the force of modernisation on man’s ability to conceive of the world as a meaningful whole. Even though modernisation is a tremendously energising and progressive force that transformed European society throughout the modern era, many thinkers have also addressed the ‘dark side’ of modernisation that can be found in its disenchanting, disruptive, and disembedding character. This thesis, therefore, explores how the challenge of a meaningful order can still be met by modern man in light of this uprooting character. As developed in this thesis, the quest for meaning starts with the realisation that despite the disenchantment of the world, moderns still find themselves in a condition of disenchanted enchantment, where meaning and significance can be found in existence through attunement and ontological involvement. This can only be achieved through the insight that man is fallible and finite, and therefore in dire need of an embedding horizon, found in structures of tradition, myth, and narrative. To this end, modern man needs a dialectical perspective that does not deny the energising and progressive force of modernisation nor refuses to acknowledge man’s fundamental need for a horizon of meaning that provides embeddedness in the uprooting chaos of modern existence. Keywords: Modernity, (Dis)enchantment, Meaning, Hermeneutics, Embeddedness iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. vi Part One: Modernity and the Force of Modernisation ....................................................... 12 1.1 Sapere Aude: Immaturity Overcome ........................................................................................ 14 1.1.1 Scientific Revolution ................................................................................................................. 14 1.1.2 The Philosophes and Tradition ................................................................................................ 16 1.1.3 The Modern Self ........................................................................................................................ 17 1.2 The Modern World....................................................................................................................... 19 1.2.1 Natural World as Neutral Background ............................................................................... 19 1.2.2 Time and Space Modernised .................................................................................................. 21 1.2.3 Modern Dynamism ................................................................................................................... 22 1.3 Modernity and Progress ............................................................................................................... 22 1.3.1 Industrialism and Capitalism ................................................................................................... 23 1.3.2 The Bureaucratic State ............................................................................................................ 24 1.3.3 Reason, Autonomy, Progress ................................................................................................. 26 1.4 Informatisation as Hyper-Modernisation ................................................................................. 26 1.4.1 From Mechanisation to Informatisation ............................................................................... 27 1.4.2 Technology and Overcoming the Human Condition ....................................................... 29 1.4.3 The Red Thread of Modernisation ....................................................................................... 31 Part Two: The Tragedy of Modern Life: Disruptive, Disembedding Disenchantment .... 33 2.1 Officieal Defatalisation & Unofficial refatalisation .................................................................. 35 2.1.1 From God’s Goodness to God’s Nonexistence ................................................................ 35 2.1.2 The End of God as Unofficial Refatalisation........................................................................ 36 2.1.3 The Rebirth of Tragedy ........................................................................................................... 37 2.2 Disenchantment and the Death of God: Nietzsche, Weber, & Taylor ............................ 39 2.2.1 Nietzsche and the Madman .................................................................................................... 39 2.2.2 Weberian Rationalisation & Disenchantment .................................................................... 41 v 2.2.3 Charles Taylor and the Malaise of Modernity .................................................................... 43 2.3 Disembedding Disruptivity .......................................................................................................... 49 2.3.1 Modernisation as Disembedding Force................................................................................ 50 2.3.2 Tachogenic Alienation .............................................................................................................. 52 2.3.3 The Discontents of Modernity............................................................................................... 54 Part Three: The Quest for Meaning in the Modern World ................................................ 56 3.1 The Modern Self Attuned ............................................................................................................ 58 3.1.1 The Primary Sphere of Embeddedness and Enchantment ............................................... 58 3.1.2 Being-in-the-World: Embeddedness and Attunement ..................................................... 59 3.1.3 The Spatiotemporal Character of the Embedded Self ..................................................... 62 3.2 Hermeneutics of Embeddedness ................................................................................................ 64 3.2.1 Philosophical Hermeneutics: Man as Self-Interpreting Animal ....................................... 65 3.2.2 Horizon of Hyper-Goods ........................................................................................................ 67 3.2.3 The Quest for Meaning in Light of Constitutive Homelessness .................................... 68 3.3 Horizons of Meaning: Tradition, Myth, and Narrativity ....................................................... 69 3.3.1 Persisting Tradition as Source of Meaning .......................................................................... 70 3.3.2 Narrare Necesse Est ................................................................................................................ 71 3.3.3 The Continuing Relevance of Tradition in Modern Life .................................................. 73 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 75 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................ 81 vi INTRODUCTION Perhaps one of the most influential perspectives on reality that one can find in the twenty-first century world has found its origin in the mixture of political, social, intellectual, economic, and technological developments that have unfolded and merged synergistically throughout the period most commonly denominated as ‘modernity’. And indeed, it seems like the underlying process of modernisation, as a sweeping force, has lifted out Western man from his predicament of dependence, and put him at the centre of the universe. From the dawn of modernity onwards, no longer he would have to rely on superstitious narratives and mythological explanations of the world, as he unmasked their illusionary character through his newly discovered capacities for scientific inquiry, opening up the way of relating to the world as a set of neutral objects awaiting manipulation to achieve material progress. Modern man, looking down on his predecessors, has finally come to see himself as the culmination of history, as he traded the primitive for the developed, the violent for the just, the tribe for the state, myth for reason, and suppression for freedom. Abandoning traditional forms of life and their perspective on the world as a coherently meaningful order which embeds man in existence, he has come to embrace himself as the neutral and autonomous force of manipulation that, guided by optimistic reason and his belief in scientific explicability and technological manipulability, has the disposition to achieve infinite progress. Accordingly, the world itself, or so it seemed, was rid of its magical and spiritual
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