Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

Louis Dupré

Description

Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture describes and analyzes changing attitudes toward religion during three stages of modern European culture: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period. Louis Dupré is an expert guide to the complex historical and intellectual relation between religion and modern culture.

Dupré begins by tracing the weakening of the Christian synthesis. At the end of the Middle Ages intellectual attitudes toward religion began to change. Theology, once the dominant science that had integrated all others, lost its commanding position. After the French Revolution, religion once again played a role in intellectual life, but not as the dominant force. Religion became transformed by intellectual and moral principles conceived independently of faith. Dupré explores this new situation in three areas: the literature of Romanticism (illustrated by Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin); idealist philosophy (Schelling); and theology itself (Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard). Dupré argues that contemporary religion has not yet met the challenge presented by Romantic thought.

Dupré’s elegant and incisive book, based on the Erasmus Lectures he delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2005, will challenge anyone interested in religion and the philosophy of culture.

Of all the burdens man has to carry through life, I wonder whether any weighs heavier than the transient nature of all experience. All life inevitably moves toward decline and death. The continuous passage of time allows no phase of human existence ever to reach a definitive meaning. Transitoriness and oblivion mark life as a whole as well as each one of its segments. In his theological anthropology, De hominis opificio (On the Creation of Man) the fourth-century Cappadocian bishop Gregory of Nyssa describes existence in time as an imperfect condition that, after the fall was introduced into the plan of creation to forestall the inevitable punishment of the human race’s instant destruction. At the end of the world, however, time will be abolished. The futility of a life in time continues to oppress our contemporaries as much as Gregory’s and the countless generations that preceded him. Nietzsche said it well. That what was no longer is, and that what is will soon no longer be, is the condition from which man most urgently desires to be saved. “To redeem those who lived in the past and to recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’—that alone should I call salvation.” Through the idea of an eternal return Nietzsche attempted to salvage something stable from the all-dissolving impermanence of time. With others I doubt whether he succeeded. Only in utopian dreams have humans ever envisioned the return of an ideal age in which the efforts of history will at last be crowned with an enduring new beginning. As Virgil sang in his Fourth Eclogue: “Then shall a second Tiphys be, and a second Argo will sail with chosen heroes: new wars shall arise, and again a mighty Achilles be sent to Troy.”

Even historical faiths such as Judaism and Christianity, which consecrate the passage of time by assigning to each event a permanent significance, postulated at the end of history a return to the beginning. Endzeit ist Urzeit (the final time is the original time). Nor have the secular dreams of our own age abandoned the eschatological hope of ever arresting the motion of time. Marx’s vision of the future, however far removed from a sacred age, still recalls that fullness of time in which human efforts will at last reach completion. Meanwhile men and women of all ages have felt the need to order and structure the flux of time by recapturing, again and again, the founding events of the beginning. By recalling the past in archetypical gestures interpreted through sacred words, they hope to convey at least a permanent form to the continuous indefiniteness of the present. What is it that gives ritual, particularly when interpreted by myth, this mysterious power to regain, even in the midst of time, the awareness of an irreversible present? Which bond links the ancient narrative to the enduring gesture?

(excerpted from chapter 12)

Foreword by Peter Casarella

1. Philosophy and Faith

Part 1. Farewell to a Symbolic World

2. The Modern Idea of Culture and Its Opposition to Its Classical and Medieval Origins

3. The Fragmentation of the Symbolic World

4. The Sources of Modern Atheism

Part 2. Philosophical Reinterpretations of Theology

5. Hegel’s Spirit and the Idea of God as Spirit

6. Philosophical Reflections on the Mystery of Creation

7. Evil and the Limits of Theodicy

8. Intimations of Immortality

Part 3. Phenomenology: Philosophy Reopens its Doors to Mystery

9. Phenomenology of Religion: Limits and Possibilities

10. Phenomenology and Religious Truth

11. The Enigma of Religious Art

12. Ritual: The Sacralization of Time

Part 4. Mysticism: The Silence of Faith

13. Is a Natural Desire of God Possible?

14. Mysticism and Philosophy

15. Justifying the Mystical Experience

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Surveys
• Modern
• HISTORY
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Sociology
• Modern history
• Urban
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Renaissance
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268077617
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 16 Mo

Extrait

Religionand theRiseof Modern Culture

Erasmus Institute Books

Religionand theRiseof Modern Culture d LO U I S D U P R É

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2008 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu AllRights Reserved

Designed by Wendy McMillen Set in 11.8/14 Pavane by EM Studio, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dupré, Louis K., 1925– Religion and the rise of modernculture / Louis Dupre. p. cm. — (Erasmus Institute books) Includes index. ISBN -13: 978-0-268-02594-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN -10: 0-268-02594-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1.Christianity and culture—Europe—History.2. Europe—Intellectual life. 3.Christianity and culture—Germany—History.4.Germany—Intellectual life. 5.Church history—Modern period, 1500–I. Title. BR 735. D 862008 261.0943—dc22 2007051040

Preface

 c o n t e n t s

Introduction: Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

The Form of Modernity

Nature and Grace

The Crisis of the Enlightenment

On the Intellectual Sources of Modern Atheism

God and the Poetry of the New Age: Classicism and Romanticism in Germany

Schelling and the Revival of Mythology

The Rebirth of Theology: Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard

Conclusion: Religion at the End of the Modern Age

Index of Names

vii

1

5

17

29

41

57

75

95

111

119

 p r e f a c e

The following pages contain the text of the Erasmus Lec- tures, delivered at the University of Notre Dame during the academic year 2005–2006. For me the meaning of the occasion was enhanced by its occurring at an institute that bears the name of the father of Europe’s spiritual unity, a teacher at my alma mater. Erasmus taught tolerance at a time of intolerance and remains a guide in the religious turmoil of the present. Writing down a previously spoken text proved to be a sobering experience. The expectant faces, probing questions, intellectual chal- lenges, which had made the delivery so exciting, no longer sustained the writing. To compensate for their absence, I have attempted to preserve at least some of the spontaneity of the original setting. Still, as lectures turned into chapters, theses proclaimed with the pre- sumed authority of an invited speaker often assumed a tentative qual- ity. Questions never asked or never answered glaringly appeared through the assertiveness of the spoken words. I became painfully aware of the provisional character of the ideas expressed, especially in the second part of the lectures. I hope to cast them in a more de- finitive form during the next years. As the lectures appear here, they nevertheless recapture for me the stimulating dialogue with an intel- ligent and generous audience engaged in a common search for the na- ture of modern culture. They also revived the gratitude I continue to feel toward my won- derful hosts, Robert Sullivan and Dianne Phillips, the director and

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viiiPreface

associate director of the Erasmus Institute, as well as the joy of reliv- ing the presence of friends long out of sight yet marvelously un- changed, Cyril O’Reagan and Kathy Kaveney. I gratefully recall making the acquaintance of men and women with whom I felt an in- stant spiritual affinity, especially Dean Mark Roche, Professor Fred Dallmayer, and poet Henry Weinfield. To all of them I dedicate this memoir of a shared experience. Special thanks to Barbara Hanrahan, the director of the Notre Dame Press, and to Rebecca DeBoer, its managing editor, for their gracious kindness and patience. The first three chapters recapitulate much that I have developed inPassage to Modernity(Yale University Press, 1993) andThe Enlight- enment and the Intellectual Development of Modern Culture(Yale Univer- sity Press, 2004). Parts of chapter 4 have been published in “On the Intellectual Sources of Modern Atheism,”International Journal for Philosophy of Religion45 (1999): 1–11.



Introduction Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture

The title of this book might raise questions. Does man’s par- ticipation in the eternal ever change? Interpretations, rituals, even moral precepts become transformed over the centuries. Yet does the religious attitude not remain constant within the flux of time? It does, indeed. But the individual and social response to religion also includes the task of integrating that attitude within the warp and woof of existence in a particular culture at a particular time. The manner in which the devout fulfi ll that task differs from one period to another. Its nature is at least in part determined by the social and intellectual conditions prevailing at the time of the response. In the history of Christianity, cultural transformations may have been more substantial during the modern period than in any preced- ing one. The seeds of change were planted much earlier, some at the height of the Middle Ages, some even before. I shall trace them in the first two chapters. For over a millennium Western culture had been the culture of Christianity. At the beginning of the modern age, culture and religion assumed a certain independence vis-à-vis each other. During the Enlightenment, separation turned into opposition.

1