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Plato and the Spirit of Modernity by E

Plato and the Spirit of Modernity by E

VIEWS TK

Plato and the Spirit of Modernity by E. Christian Kop!

I! C.S. L"#$%’% T"# L$%& B$&&'# the world of Narnia and science, as opposed to abstract thinking, universals and begins to dissolve and disappear. !e Pevensie children are absolutes, the transcendent, and tradition. Actually, ev- confused and frightened, but Professor Kirke, now Lord Di- ery theme of the "rst group can be discovered somewhere gory, reassures them that the Narnia and the England they in classical antiquity or the , and the sec- had known were only shadows compared to the they ond group continues to exist and sometimes thrive in the were about to . !en he mumbles to himself: “It’s modern world. It is hard, however, to deny the feeling, de- all in , all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them bated in German-speaking countries and simply assumed in these schools?” !e Professor’s irritation is understand- in English-speaking ones, that there is a chasm between the able, but Plato did play an important role in 20th-century ancient and the medieval, on the one hand, and the modern literature, science, mathematics, , and even poli- or truly modern, on the other. Schmitt shows how much tics. Yet the standard picture of that century, indeed, of the “modern” thinkers have lost by turning away from what modern world as usually conceived, is un-Platonic. For they believe to be ancient or, even worse, medieval. German classicist Arbogast Schmitt in his recently trans- For Schmitt Plato is a symbol of what the modern world lated book Modernity and Plato: Two Paradigms of Reality, has rejected, though he concedes that o#en would “modernity since its earliest beginnings in the fourteenth serve just as well and, occasionally, even better. In address- century can be described as an anti-Platonic age.” ing the moderns, he concentrates on Descartes and Kant, Schmitt’s book is part of a German debate on “mo- but acknowledges that he could have reached similar results dernity,” which is supposedly characterized by a belief in by studying Locke. He actually begins by discussing the experience or sensation, the individual, the empirical world, debate in the late Middle Ages between realists and nom-

12 Chronicles VIEWS inalists. Realists argued that universals, general , his encouragement of a sense of political futility exist really, independent of human , either tran- similar to that inhering in [Albert Jay] Nock. If, as scendently (Plato’s view) or immanently in the examples Weaver was to assert, “the dissolution of the West” of the or species (Aristotle’s view). Nominalists, began in the late fourteenth century when Western on the other hand, believed that general concepts— man made the “evil decision” to accept the nominal- and , or cats and dogs—are just names, constructed by ism propounded by William of Occam (d. c. 1349), humans and existing only in the of individuals. Led what the hell could be done about it? by thinkers like and , the forces of “win,” and the modern age begins. For Tyrrell, Weaver’s “writings were more likely to move Readers familiar with the conservative canon will rec- his readers to political despair than enthusiastic, back-slap- ognize this narrative, because it forms the beginning and ping action.” foundation of that conservative classic Have Conse- quences (1948), by Richard M. Weaver. In the 1940’s the free-trading individualists and grim anticommunists of the Rist from a Christian perspective, day were "ring their heavy artillery at FDR’s New Deal. A few years later Russell Kirk’s Conservative (1953) took like Schmitt from a secular one, sees aim at the 18th-century French Revolution. For Richard Weaver the decisive in the decline of the West took Plato as an indispensable resource place in the 14th century: the rejection of Plato’s !eory of Ideas and acceptance of William of Ockham’s nominalism. in confronting today’s intellectual Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, challenges. which has become the e$cient and "nal cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encoun- ter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the !e objection is clearly and vigorously stated and de- late fourteenth century, and what the witches said serves an answer. If is true and there is no to the protagonist of this drama was that man could transcendental reality, then human action and thought, like realize himself more fully if he would only abandon all other material processes, are ruled by the of physics, his belief in the of transcendentals. !e among them the Second Law of !ermodynamics. !at powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, is why things are getting worse. !e universe is cooling and they couched this proposition in the seeming- down, and jazz is followed by rock and roll, which is fol- ly innocent form of an attack upon universals. !e lowed by rap. If, on the other hand, mind and spirit are defeat of logical realism in the great medieval de- real and can shape —if ideas have consequences— bate was the crucial event in the history of Western then we can use our reason to reach an understanding of culture; from this %owed those acts which issue now truth and employ rhetoric to persuade people of the truth. in modern decadence. We can inspire Americans demoralized by the entitlement programs of the New Deal and the Great Society; we can Weaver’s belief in absolutes led relativist le#ists to accuse convert them from secularism to religion. We do not have him of an “authoritarian” who wanted to trample on to be satis"ed with providing a moderate version of what- freedom by imposing his absolute values on them. As we ever socialist nostrum the Democratic Party is peddling. now know, it is liberals with their speech codes and polit- Weaver’s history lesson has practical consequences. ical correctness who actually trample on free expression, Schmitt avoids politics and prefers discussing the intel- not traditionalists like Weaver. In (e Conservative Crack- lectual basis of the anti-Platonic commitment of Ockham, Up, R. Emmett Tyrrell mocks the charge as bogus, and he Descartes, and Kant. For Plato and Aristotle, for instance, is quite a mocker. He goes on, however, to criticize the mind can perceive the objective truth of beauty and Weaver’s view: truth; their fundamental intellectual commitment is to the of noncontradiction. For Ockham and Kant the !e harmful side e&ect of Weaver on individual achieves self-evident of empirical was not his encouragement of authoritarianism but objects through intuition. (The intellect is for less self-

May 2013 13 VIEWS evident concepts.) Descartes "nds our one self-evident of Plato’s VI. !at is why great mathematicians experience in consciousness: Knowledge aside from the like Henri Poincaré and G.H. Hardy speak of the beauty of cogito is secondary and subjective. From these di&erent mathematical formulas. sources , , and ethical emotivism For biologists Michael Denton and Craig Marshall, have characterized modernity signi"cantly and distinctive- “Protein folds found in represent a finite set of ly. !e Platonic vision did not disappear, however, with the built-in, Platonic forms. Protein functions are second- triumph of nominalism. !e explicit we "nd in ary adaptations of this set of primary, immutable, natural 20th-century English teachers like C.S. Lewis and Richard forms.” Schmitt discusses carefully and critically how these Weaver is part of a tradition that runs through the mod- views and those of Heisenberg and his students agree with ern period. Renaissance humanists in Florence loved Plato and, in part, contradict Plato’s views as expressed in works and wrote on him. In the 17th century the Cambridge Pla- like . !inking within a general Platonic frame- tonists, who today are read by only a few, were admired, work can be and has actually been productive of signi"cant but Plato’s commitment to interpreting the natural world results in biology, physics, and mathematics. Weaver’s Ideas by mathematics also inspired Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Have Consequences and Lewis’s Abolition of Man show the importance of Plato in and politics. In creative lit- erature we can mention Lewis’s "ction and the novels of We do not have to be satis!ed with Iris Murdoch, whose scholarly writings have explored the signi"cance of Plato for today’s philosophical problems. providing a moderate version of Schmitt shows why the anti-Platonic “turn” (Wende is the favorite German expression for our clumsier “paradigm whatever socialist nostrum the shi#”) has marginalized Plato in academic philosophy. One of Schmitt’s undoubted achievements is establishing Plato’s Democratic Party is peddling. continuing importance.

O! &'$% %$(" )* &'" A&+,!&$-, classicist John M. Rist, In his essay on “!e Signi"cance of Beauty for the Exact a#er a series of books exploring and interpreting ancient Sciences,” physicist Werner Heisenberg argued convinc- philosophers, has gone on to argue for Plato’s enduring sig- ingly that the Scienti"c Revolution of the 17th century was ni"cance. !e most accessible for the average reader is his based on a return to Plato by these great mathematizing sci- brilliant lecture On Inoculating Moral Philosophy Against entists. About his own early research Heisenberg reports (1999), in which he argued that, for Christians inter- (in another essay), “I was gaining the growing conviction ested in philosophy, that one could hardly make progress in modern atomic physics without a knowledge of Greek natural philosophy.” we should "nd that it is not just any philosophi- !e great Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel shook up cal framework within which Christian thinkers can the academic world by proving for any computable axi- work, but a version of the system of Plato, adapted omatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic and reformed particularly in the areas of what we of the natural numbers that, one, if the system is consis- should now call theory of action by the much more tent, it cannot be complete (“incompleteness theorem”), detailed labours of Aristotle, while still, in respect of and two, the consistency of the axioms cannot be proved the importance of a providential and transcendent within the system. !e proof that mathematics cannot pro- God, in and in core Platonic. vide the basis of its own validity has o#en been taken to support , but this was not Gödel’s opinion. He Rist from a Christian perspective, like Schmitt from a shocked when he met him at the Institute secular one, sees Plato as an indispensable resource in con- for Advanced Studies at Princeton by confessing himself a fronting today’s intellectual challenges. Platonist. !e fact that mathematics is not a closed, axiom- Rist has continued to develop his insights of 1999. Real atic system that can validate the truth of its results does not Ethics: Reconsidering the Foundations of (2002) be- mean that there is no foundation for truth, only that truth, gins with a memorable excoriation of the hypocrisy of his beauty, and justice exist above mathematics, as in the vi- philosophical colleagues, who want to retain the social ad- sion of knowledge found in the simile of the Line at the end vantages of religion and morality while building careers on

14 Chronicles VIEWS undermining their intellectual foundations. !e essays in moral , whether explicit or logically implic- What Is Truth? From the Academy to the Vatican (2008) ex- it, whether that of Athens in the fourth century '.(. plore what a critical evaluation of Plato’s and Augustine’s (which he speci"cally tried to defuse) or of twenty- insights can contribute to traditional theological problems "rst-century Cambridge, Boston, or Mecca. and the political situation of the Church of Rome. In Plato’s : (e Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics !e tradition-challenged nihilism of the academy has (2012) Rist returns to the genre of historical interpretation seeped down into the ethical thinking and practical mo- to survey Plato’s dialogues not only to establish Plato’s po- rality of ordinary citizens and politicians, and has not been sition, but in search of answers to modern dilemmas. His without consequences for STEM subjects and creative lit- conclusion is modest but challenging. erature. Arbogast Schmitt and John M. Rist remind us that we cannot start from scratch. The way forward, as C.S. What I have tried to argue is not that moral real- Lewis told his radio audience in 1943, is to go back to where ism can be defended, but that Plato believed—and I we took the wrong turn. It will be a long journey, but the re- agree with him—that only some version of the tran- ward will be worth it. It is the only way to get home. scendental moral realism he developed over o&ers any possibility of an honest defense against E. Christian Kop! is the author of !e Devil Knows .

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