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Basit Bilal Koshul
There
is a great deal of material available regarding the political, military,
and even economic encounter between the Muslim world and the modern West.
The political factors that made possible the penetration of the West into
the Muslim world, the military confrontation that often ensued, and the
economic costs and benefits affecting the parties involved — these topics
have all been well documented. Political scientists and area studies
specialists have produced a wealth of information regarding these issues.
In the present work, therefore, I propose to study the encounter between
Islam and the West from a different perspective, because it is my position
that prior to being a political, military, or economic challenge to the
Muslim world, the West represents an intellectual challenge.
One would not be far off the mark by noting that
the political, economic, and military triumph of Western powers across the
globe is a by-product of the triumph of Western thought and ideas.
Currently there is considerable debate regarding the longevity of this
period of Western domination. One school of thought, best represented by
Francis Fukuyama, argues that the triumph of Western thought and ideas is
permanent and irreversible. An opposing view, best represented by Samuel
Huntington, argues that even though Western thought has triumphed across
the globe, its continued domination in the indefinite future is not a sure thing.
In spite of their differences regarding the future course of events, both
schools of thought agree that the closing decades of the 20th century have
witnessed the global triumph of Western thought and ideas. In light of this
discussion, it makes sense to ask the question: How the Muslims have
responded, on the intellectual level, to the onslaught of Western thought?
This question needs to be asked because the response at the intellectual
level determines the concrete policies that are adopted to meet the
challenge. It is the goal of our current survey to analyze the various
responses that the Muslims have formulated over the past century or so to
the intellectual challenge posed by the West.
The necessity of such a survey is highlighted by the
fact that Western ideas and thought are exercising ever-increasing
influence on not only the Muslim world but throughout the globe as a whole
— the global village is in reality a Western village. The proposition that Western
thought and ideas have been generally accepted throughout the world is a
curious one in light of the fact that today the globe is more politically
fragmented than ever before. But a closer look behind the facade of
political fragmentation reveals that the political and intellectual elite
in virtually all the countries share similar values and ideas — values and
ideas that are rooted in Western thought. The intensity of the impact of
the West in the 20th century can be best measured by glancing at the
oppositional ideologies that have arisen as a challenge to the West. To a
greater or lesser degree, even these oppositional movements have been
shaped by Western thought. As in the case of fascism and communism, some of
them have been nothing more than extreme expressions of the very thought
that they ostensibly opposed.
In the following pages I will first identify the
fundamental concepts which have shaped the modern West. These will be
identified as being an epistemology based on scientism, a sociology based
on secularism, and an ideology based on capitalism. It will be argued that
the cumulative effect of these concepts in the modern West is a total loss
of faith in any transcendent, spiritual, and/or metaphysical reality, i.e.,
a loss of faith in the possibility that a reality other than the one which
we can comprehend with our physical senses may exist. This loss of faith
will be identified as being the one characteristics that differentiates
modernity and its progenitor (the modern West) from all pre-modern modes of
thought and all pre-modern societies. It should be stated at this stage
that the real purpose behind this survey is to present evidence to support
the argument that even the contemporary Islamic resurgence has been
significantly impacted by Western thoughts and ideas — the protests of the
Islamists notwithstanding. The Islamists clearly recognize and loudly
assert that Islam strikes a balance between worldly concerns and concerns
for the Hereafter. In other words, it deals with matters of the spirit as
well as the temporal affairs of the world. But when one looks beyond this
initial statement and analyzes modern Islamic thought in some detail, it
becomes apparent that, practically speaking, this balance is nowhere to be
found. Comparatively speaking, the emphasis on the aspect of Islam which
deals with worldly affairs is so pronounced in modern Islamic thought and
the emphasis on the metaphysical and spiritual aspect of Islam is so
paltry, that any talk of a “balance” between these two aspects is rendered
meaningless. This loss of balance is a direct result of the penetration of
modern Western thought into the Muslim world.
This work is a survey of Islam´s encounter with the modern
West. It is necessary to make this qualification because the dynamics of
Islam´s encounter with medieval Christianity were quite different from what
they are today. Even though the modern West is the product of an organic
process of the development of medieval Christianity (which itself was
significantly influenced by Islam), its unique characteristics are truly
novel inventions. The fundamental concepts on which the modern West is
built represent a rupture in the intellectual tradition of not only the
West but of humanity. The following survey of these fundamental concepts
will show that these concepts are not only entirely novel, but they have
come to be commonly accepted only after a long and bitter struggle. In
other words the conceptual paradigm is the result of a historical process,
not of any self-evident truths that have suddenly become apparent to
everyone.
Each human society contains certain unique
characteristics that distinguish it from other societies, and imbue it with
its peculiar character. These unique characteristics are invariably based
upon certain intellectual propositions that shape and mold the visible
institutions and practices of the society. In the following pages we shall
identify those characteristics of the modern West which set it apart from
other human societies. In other words, we will identify the foundational
intellectual propositions on which modern Western thought is based, which
in turn are responsible for the unique character of not only modern Western
thought but also of modern Western society.
Scientism as
Epistemology
How does one arrive at an accurate description of
Reality and Truth? Epistemology is the study of the various ways in which
man has attempted to answer this question. This question has been the
preoccupation of all civilizations known to man, and the manner in which this
particular question was answered greatly determined the character of each
civilization. Modern Western thought has answered this question by
categorically stating that only “scientific” knowledge is capable of
providing an accurate description of Reality and Truth. There are varying
definitions of “scientific” knowledge, some of which seem to be at great
variance with others. But in spite of the apparent differences, there is a
common theme that runs through all these definitions, viz., “scientific
knowledge” refers to all the information that can be collected using the
five human senses and synthesized using the powers of the human intellect.
Scientism is the belief that “scientific” knowledge alone is capable of
providing an accurate description of Reality and Truth, to the exclusion of
all other sources of knowledge. In other words, it is the belief that
scientific knowledge is the only reliable source of knowledge. It is worth
noting that there are sources of knowledge which scientism does not regard as
being valid and reliable, i.e., Divine Revelation, individual religious
experience, and inner intuition.
Here, a distinction needs to be made between “science”
and “scientism.” “Science” is a particular way of investigating and
exploring the nature of reality, while “scientism” is the belief that
science provides the only reliable and valid way of carrying out this
investigation. Throughout the present work, the focus will be on scientism
the belief, not science the method. A corollary to this belief
is the conviction that technology and “scientific” methods are capable of
solving all the problems that affect human individuals and society.
Even though the selection of science as the only
reliable source of knowledge is a subjective choice, it is by no means an
irrational one. Nearly three hundred years of European history made this
choice virtually inevitable, and the past century or so seems to have
justified this choice. The only other contender that could, and did,
challenge science´s designation to this privileged status was religion — or
the Catholic Church, to be more specific. While tensions between the
established religious authorities and a few individual scientists were
present just under the surface in the 16th century, the conflict between
religion and science exploded into the open in the first quarter of the
17th century. The catalyst for this explosion was Galileo´s observational
finding that confirmed Copernicus´ heliocentric theory. This confirmation
of heliocentricism conflicted with the official Church view that advocated
a geocentric view of the cosmos.
Prior to the advent of modern science, all religious
and philosophical systems in the West assigned man a special and central
place in the universe. The Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, Augustinian, and
Thomist systems place the earth in the center of the universe and man as
unique among all the inhabitants of the earth. According to this
traditional view of the cosmos, the whole drama of creation is centered
around the earth and humanity, and the geocentric model was an expression
of this belief. For obvious reasons the geocentric model corresponded with
the religious teachings of the Church. Copernicus´s heliocentric model
removed the earth from its privileged, central place in the cosmos and made
it just one of the many heavenly bodies orbiting the sun, thus directly
challenging Church teachings. Following in the footsteps of Copernicus and
Kepler (who provided the mathematical proof supporting the heliocentric
model), Galileo came up with the observational evidence confirming
Copernicus´s theory, using a powerful new invention, the telescope. Even
though the Church authorities were temporarily able to silence Galileo, the
passage of time only strengthened his position. The scientific description of
Reality and Truth proved to be sounder than the “religious” description.
This victory of science over religion in the 17th
century, significant as it was, proved to be minor when compared to the
events in the 18th century. The debate between the geocentric and
heliocentric models revolved around a single issue and in this particular
debate science had proven its worth. The 18th century witnessed the triumph
of the Newtonian description of the universe. This description posed a
systemic challenge to religion because it professed to describe universal
laws that governed the cosmos. Moreover, this was not a capricious claim;
it was confirmed by overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence in the form
of mathematical equations and precise predictions of planetary motion. The
claims of the religious authorities that the heavenly bodies obeyed the
“the Will of God” which was beyond the comprehension of mere mortals,
sounded dry and pale when compared to Newton´s laws and descriptions. The
Newtonian description of the universe was so accurate and astounding that
progressively all alternative and competing descriptions had to be
discarded — including the religious one. This point is poignantly
illustrated by Pierre Simon de Laplace´s comment when he presented a book he
had written to Napoleon. The book, titled Philosophical Essays on
Probabilities, dealt with various laws governing the working of the
universe. When asked why his book contained no mention of the Creator, Laplace firmly replied: “I have no need of that hypothesis.”1
By the beginning of the 19th century there was hardly
any doubt among the intellectual elite in Europe
that, epistemologically, science was far superior than religion. So when
science turned its gaze upon man himself in the middle of the 19th century,
its findings carried the same import that Divine Revelation had carried at
an earlier stage in history. Whereas the heliocentric theory had removed
the earth from its privileged place in the universe, Darwin´s theory of
evolution completed the task by removing man from his privileged place on
earth. The defense raised by the religious authorities to uphold the belief
that man is a special creation of God was far less vigorous than had been
the case two and a half centuries earlier during the confrontation with
Galileo. The result of the confrontation between the religious view and the
Darwinian view of human origins was a foregone conclusion. By the end of
the 19th century, therefore, the belief in scientism was not only confined
to the intellectual elite in Europe but
was found to be spreading among the general population as well. The spread
of this belief among the populace had less to do with the discovery of
heliocentricism or the theory of Natural Selection and more to do with the
practical fruit of science — technology.
During the period of its decay, which lasted several
centuries, religion had begun to preach that one´s fate in this life was a
matter of Divine Decree and this fate should be accepted passively. Often
in league with the political authorities, the religious authorities
preached a doctrine of passivity that promised the believers immense
rewards in the Hereafter for patiently accepting all the difficulties in
the present life. At certain times the religious authorities went even further
and preached that any attempt to change the social-political order of the
day was a sin against God. In the midst of this fatalistic view of human
potentialities came science, which not only advocated that one should work
to improve one´s conditions but also provided the wherewithal with which to
do it. New technology continually increased man´s control over space, time,
and nature — consequently increasing his control over his own fate. At just
the time that belief in scientism was reaching a pitch among the
intellectuals in the West, the masses began to taste the fruits of the
Industrial Revolution. Beginning in England
and then quickly spreading to the rest of Europe and North
America, the byproducts of science radically altered the
living conditions of the ordinary citizen.
By the beginning of the 20th century the results of
the centuries old struggle between religion and science came to an end and
science emerged as the clear victor. The exuberance of the victory is aptly
portrayed in these words of an Italian futurist written in 1910:
Comrades,
we tell you now that the triumphant progress of science makes changes in
humanity inevitable, changes that are hacking an abyss between those docile
slaves of tradition and us free moderns who are confident in the radiant
splendor of our future.1
The confidence of these moderns in a radiant and
splendid future produced by science suffered an unexpected and severe shock
with the outbreak of WWI. The very science and technology that was supposed
to create a virtual heaven on earth was employed to wreak havoc and
destruction of unprecedented proportions. A brief glimpse of the magnitude
of this destruction was provided by the outcome of one of the numerous
battles during the war. At the Battle of Somme in 1915 “...more lives were
lost than in the whole previous centuries of conflicts.”2 As
terrible as the events of WWI were, they proved to be only a prelude to
what was to come. The following decades saw the birth of Fascism,
totalitarianism, total war, the Final Solution, and the Atomic bomb — all
made possible by the very science and technology that were previously
believed to be capable of producing only beneficial results for mankind.
The fact that faith in scientism survived these
cataclysmic events seems remarkable. But as recorded by history, not only
has this faith survived, it has in fact become stronger in the post-WWII
years. The second half of the 20th century has witnessed a revival of the
total commitment to scientism. The doubts engendered by the events of the
first half of the present century have been nullified by the explanation
that “evil people” were the root cause of all the death and destruction,
not science and technology. Subsequent experience apparently vindicates
this view. Science has broadened man´s knowledge to unparalleled heights,
giving him profound insight into the workings of the universe as well as
his own self. Sputnik, Moonshot, the Hubble telescope, gray matter, DNA,
and the Genome Project are all fruits of modern science. Similarly,
technology and “scientific” planning and methods have produced a standard
of living in the West to which the rest of the world aspires. This is a
standard of living that no human society has achieved in recorded history.
The following quote by Jawaharlal Nehru not only
expresses the basic tenets of scientism but also reflects the globalization
of an idea originating in the West:
It
is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of
insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom, of vast
resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving
people.… Who indeed can afford to ignore science today? At every turn we
have to seek its aid.… The future belongs to science and those who make
friends with science.3
In the closing decades of the 20th century, leading
scientists are confident that science has the capacity to not only fulfill
the material needs of man, but also to answer the most perplexing questions
that have haunted man for eons. In their search for the Grand Unified
Theory (also called the Theory of Everything), theoretical
physicists are looking for an equation that will enable man to answer any
question which comes to his mind, whether the question deals with physics
or metaphysics. The discovery of this equation would enable man not only to
definitively explain the origin and history of the universe but also its
ultimate end. The explanatory power of this equation is to be so
all-embracing that, with its aid, a scientist will be able to precisely
outline the personal history, present circumstances, and future fate of any
individual down to the minutest detail by just plugging in the variables
into the equation. The quest for this equation has been likened to the
quest for the “...mind of God.” And if the contemporary prophets of
scientism are to be believed, we are only a decade or so away from finding
this equation.4
The claim of modern science that it has the ability to
unravel the mystery of the “mind of God” marks the point where science enters
the field of philosophy and metaphysics, those fields which it has
consciously avoided in the past. The fact that modern science is delving
into these fields denotes the confidence which contemporary scientists have
in their faith in scientism. The claim that science has the ability to
understand the mind of God is an explicit statement that Truth and Reality
can be adequately discerned through the medium of science — that science is
the root of epistemology.
The remarkable similarity between the methodology used
by Karl Marx and Francis Fukuyama arguing for the ultimate triumph of their
respective socio-political systems aptly summarizes the degree to which
scientism has come to dominate Western epistemology. Marx claimed that he
had discerned certain “scientific” laws that govern the evolution of human
society, laws that his later followers developed into the theory of
dialectical materialism. According to Marx, the analysis of human history
in the light of his materialist interpretation of history made it
inevitable that all of humanity would eventually come to be organized into
a global communist society. A century and a half after Marx, Fukuyama claims that
the “…historical directionality implied by modern natural science”5 makes
the emergence of a global liberal-bourgeois society inevitable. Leaving
aside the question as to whether one agrees with the one thinker or the
other, the point to note is that the fundamental root of their argument
rests on “scientific” principles. For both thinkers “the logic of science”
combined with man´s need to acquire material comforts make the ultimate
triumph of their respective socioeconomic systems inevitable. The
similarity in the epistemological basis of the leading contemporary
ideologue of liberal-bourgeoisie society and the father of Marxism
illustrates the degree to which scientism has come to dominate the modern
Western mind.
Secularism as Sociology
Secularism is often associated with the notion of
rejection of religion. In the context of the present discussion, however,
it refers not to the total rejection of religion but confining it merely to
the private sphere. Secularism is the attitude that religion has no role to
play in the public affairs of society and that it should strictly remain
the private affair of the individual. This may appear to be an extension of
the concept of scientism, but the two terms are not synonymous. There are
two major reasons for treating scientism and secularism separately.
Firstly, early scientists whose work contributed to the emergence of
scientism were by no means secularists. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton were
profoundly religious men who viewed their work as contributing to a better
understanding of the working of the Creator, and this is expressly stated
in their own writings. None of them had nearly the antagonistic attitude
towards religion that their latter-day followers display. Secondly, whereas
scientism emerged as a result of the advances in the physical sciences,
secularism is a product of the evolution of the social sciences and
institutions in Europe. And it is well
known that the development of the social sciences is distinct from, and has
lagged behind, the development of the physical sciences.
When one looks for the factors that provided the
initial impetus for the rise of secularism in Europe, two major factors
stand out: a) the violence that engulfed virtually all of Europe
in the Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation debate, and b) the Church´s
alliance with the ancien regime.
Even though it initially began as a reform movement
within Catholicism, the Reformation quickly evolved into an open schism.
Seeing the ecclesiastical authority of the Church being challenged along
with their own political preeminence, the leading Catholic countries, Spain and Italy, initiated a
Counter-Reformation at the Council of Trent in 1543. Generally speaking,
the rest of the 16th century saw the demarcation of the Catholic-Protestant
divide in Europe. This proved to be
significant in the religio-political conflicts that erupted in the 17th
century. Commenting on the overall character of the 17th century, a
contemporary historian notes: “...European rulers and their people indulged
in the seventeenth century in an orgy of hatred, bigotry, massacre,
torture, and brutality which has no parallel until the twentieth century.”6
This violence and bloodletting ran across the Protestant-Catholic divide
that had emerged in the previous century.
The scale and intensity of the violence that erupted
in the aftermath of these “religious” debates led to an indelible impact on
the Western psyche. Having the advantage of hindsight, today it is clear
that much of the violence that expressed itself in religious idiom was
actually a demonstration of simmering social and political grievances. Not
having the advantage of hindsight, however, some of the leading
intellectuals of the day blamed the violence and bloodshed of these wars
entirely on religion. By the end of the 17th century, therefore, more than
a few people in Europe were attempting to
formulate new principles of political organization that would extricate the
political state from theological issues. Even though the practical
implementation of this idea did not occur until the founding of the United States of America
in 1776, the factors that led to the desire for such an order are rooted in
the religio-political violence from the Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation
period.
The alliance of the Church with the ancien regime
is another significant factor that contributed to the emergence of
secularism. In this case, the Church was allied with a system of social
thought and organization that was being bypassed by history. The concept of
the “Divine right of kings” to rule their subjects without any restrictions
was expressed in religious terms and, more often than not, officially
advocated by the religious authorities. Additionally, the Church itself was
the largest landlord in Europe. As the
demise of feudalism set in, the Church was perceived to be the major
defender of this antiquated institution. Consequently, religious
authorities were seen as a major obstacle in the development of social
institutions.
The bloody history of 17th century Europe
and the Church´s continued support of the ancien regime made
religion vulnerable to criticism from a number of quarters. This criticism
found its most articulate expression in the writings of the French philosophes
during the last quarter of the 18th century. Symbolizing a movement that
has come to be known as the Enlightenment, the attacks of the philosophes
on traditional religion and traditional modes of thought provided the
intellectual framework in which the principles of secularism were
eloquently expressed. Holding the Church to be responsible for practically
all the bigotry and intolerance that was to be found in the European
society, the philosophes argued that religious teachings were the
major obstacle to the growth and progress of man. Under the guidance of
Denis Diderot they compiled the Encyplopedie, with the purpose of
demonstrating the grandeur of human achievements if rational and empirical
thought was adopted, contrasted against the conservatism and obscurantism
of religious authorities. The enlightenment attitude towards religion is
best expressed in the thought of Voltaire. The only redeeming feature that
Voltaire could find in religion was that it provided the masses with an
incentive to behave morally. For Voltaire, if the masses were to find out
the real nature of religion they would all lose faith in its doctrine, thus
leading to anarchy in society.
By the end of the 18th century, the Enlightenment
critique of religion had become a part of the intellectual debate taking
place in Europe. The position of the philosophes
on the need to remove religion from the public sphere was strengthened by
developments in the socio-political realm. The modern nation-state was
emerging to challenge the political supremacy of the Church in Europe. Centralization and administrative uniformity
are essential prerequisites for the efficient functioning of a modern
nation-state. But this is hardly possible if the very geographical land on
which the state is based is not under its jurisdiction and neither are the
educational institutions that are present in its realm. This was the
situation that faced the forerunners of today´s European republics. And
everywhere it was the Church that was proving to be an obstacle in the way
of “modernization” and “development.” The claims of the Church carried the
weight of tradition, cannon law, and papal authority behind them. A rival
claim to jurisdiction over lands and institutions implies a critique of the
very principles on which the established claim is based. Hence, by the end
of the 18th century, we find the development of a political theory in Europe that totally divorces the process of
legislation from any reference to religious authority.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the principle of
legislative sovereignty became an integral part of progressive political
theory. The European mind came to accept the principle that as long as the
political authority of the state is in legitimate hands, the state is
absolutely free to draft any legislation as it sees fit. The only argument
in this context is regarding the definition of legitimate political
authority. The thinkers following the Hobbesian tradition place this
legitimacy in the hands of a single ruler, those following the Lockean
tradition place this authority in an elected assembly. But it is clear to
all that absolute legislative sovereignty now rests with mortals, without
any need for a reference to the Divine. The acceptance of this idea was a
radical break from the past because it had always been assumed that there
were certain laws, dictated by God, that could not be superseded by those
of man.
The acceptance of the principle of legislative
sovereignty was a clear signal that religion had become marginalized in the
public affairs of society. Even though it was marginalized at the societal
level, religion found a refuge in the individual conscience of the
believer. But the events of the 19th century would prove that religion was
not safe even in the private sphere. Whereas the leading intellectuals of
17th and 18th century had argued that the interference of religion in the
public affairs of society hampered society´s progress, the 19th century saw
the emergence of thinkers who argued that the effects of religion are so
pernicious that it should be banished from even the psyche of the
individual. The 19th century thinkers gave numerous arguments, some of them
contradictory, for the expulsion of religion from the private sphere as
well. Nietzsche argued that religion had been invented by the weak to fool
the strong, Marx argued that religion was the product of the dominant mode
of production (thereby reflecting the interests of the strong) that
legitimized existing exploitative social relation, Feuerbach saw religion
as merely a projection of human wishes, and Freud viewed religion as a
manifestation of infantile regression.
The ideas of these critics of religion carried added
force because of developments in a new academic discipline called “biblical
criticism.” This discipline applied critical and empirical methods to a
historical study of the Bible, and in the end the conclusion was reached
that fundamental teachings of Christianity could not be traced back to
Jesus, but were additions from later periods. One of the seminal works in
this field was by a committed Christian, David Friedrich Strauss, who wrote
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1836. After noting that it
was not possible to establish the historical authenticity of the person of
Jesus, the book made an attempt to get around the question of historical
authenticity and still keep central Christian teachings intact by
explaining the teachings in purely allegorical terms. The effects of this
approach to religious belief can be gauged by the fact that the person who
translated it into English, George Eliot, spurned belief in Christianity
after reading the book.7
But this attempt to keep the Christian teachings
relevant by giving them allegorical significance failed because further
research revealed that even the authenticity of the allegories was
questionable. Another committed Christian, Albrecht Ritschl, argued that
the doctrine of Trinity had nothing to do with authentic Christian
teachings. In his book Theology and Metaphysics, Ritschl argued that
the doctrine of Trinity was introduced into Christianity as a result of
Greek influence. If the allegories in which religious doctrines were
expressed proved to be of questionable origin themselves, the question
naturally arose regarding the authenticity of religion itself. This vacuum
of legitimacy was filled by the philosophies of thinkers like Feuerbach,
Nietzsche, and Marx and by the end of the 19th century the concept of the
“death of God” had become the accepted norm among the intellectual elite in
Europe.
By the beginning of the 20th century all the elements
were in place that would eventually lead to the spread of the notion of
“death of God” among the masses. Sigmund Freud in his Future of an
Illusion notes that the educated elite, those responsible for
constructing and maintaining human society, have largely replaced religious
motives for civilized behavior by secular motives. Because “...such people
are to a large extent themselves vehicles of civilization,” it is only a
matter of time before the masses at large are also infected with this
“enlightened” attitude. Freud goes on to state that
criticism
has whittled away the evidential value of religious documents, natural
science has shown up the errors in them, and comparative research has been
struck by the fatal resemblance between the religious ideas which we revere
and the mental products of primitive peoples. 8
During roughly the same time period that Freud was
expressing his views, the concept of secularism received a “scientific”
stamp of approval from some of the leading mathematicians of the 20th
century. Bertrand Russell´s work gave rise to a philosophical school called
logical positivism. The fundamental axiom of this philosophy is that “any
statement that cannot be proven or disproven is meaningless.” The statement
that “God exists” cannot be empirically verified or refuted, thus any
discussion regarding it in any context is an exercise in futility. Even
though Logical Positivism has been supplanted by other philosophical
schools in academic circles, the application of its fundamental axiom to
religious issues is common among the masses even today.
In principle, secularism allows an individual the
right to hold religious beliefs, but in the contemporary West it is
expected that an educated and enlightened individual not hold any religious
conviction. Any suggestion that a particular matter of public concern
should in any way be referred to a religious context is to be totally
rejected. In the 20th century socialism, fascism, communism, liberalism,
and often a motley mixture of one or more of these -isms has characterized
the collective affairs of European societies. The important point to note
is that in a sociological setup based on any of these -isms, religion at
best plays only a marginal role and even then it is sometime actively
fought against. If sociology is taken to refer to the collective affairs of
society, then secularism is the cardinal principle that determines the
sociological character of modern Western society.
Capitalism as Ideology
Capitalism is the one element that has imbued the
modern West with its dynamic character. Keeping in mind the fact that the
“modern West” was earlier defined in socio-cultural terms, not merely
geographic terms, the penetration of Western culture into the non-Western
world has been fueled by the birth and expansion of the capitalist economic
system. It is well known that the need for cheap raw materials and new
markets provided a significant portion of the impetus for the colonizing
enterprise undertaken by the West in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Furthermore, the fact that the establishment of the capitalist market
system in a given society is an essential pre-requisite for the spread of
socio-political liberalism in that society is a point on which most liberal
and socialist theoreticians agree.
In spite of the fact that capitalism plays such a
critical role in shaping the character of the modern world, it is not an
easy term to define. The fundamental principle underlying capitalist theory
is that the collective interests of society are best served if each
individual is afforded the maximum opportunity to pursue his own
self-defined selfish interests. And it is taken for granted that the
selfish interest of each individual would drive him to accumulate as much
private wealth as possible. But before the capitalist ethos could become
acceptable even for the political and intellectual elite in Europe a number of conceptual thresholds had to be
crossed. The foremost among these thresholds is the concept of interest.
In a tradition dating back to Aristotle and Seneca,
continuing through the early Church Fathers and the great medieval
theologians, the charging of interest on loans was held to be an anathema
by the Europeans. As recently as the Council of Vienna of 1311, the
Catholic Church declared the charging of interest to be a crime punishable
by excommunication. And there were anti-usury laws on the statute books of
Western countries even in the closing decades of the 19th century. It is
impossible to speak of the emergence of a capitalist economy in the absence
of the concept of interest. Consequently, it is not surprising to see such
an economy emerge in embryonic form in the aftermath of the Protestant
Reformation, because Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle all favored the allowance
of the charging of interest.
Whereas capitalism imbues the modern West with its dynamic
character, capitalism owes its own dynamism to a banking system based on
interest!
A related concept that had to be accepted in order for
a capitalist economy to come into existence was the notion of “profit.” The
simple idea that engaging in a business enterprise in order to accumulate
personal wealth so that one would be able to use that wealth to obtain more
wealth ran contrary to the teachings of a thousand year old religious
tradition. As late as the mid-17th century, people were being put on trial
in the American colonies for engaging in commerce that resulted in accruing
a profit of as little as sixpence on a shilling. One of the basic teachings
of the Church in the Middle Ages was this: “No Christian ought to be a
merchant.” The force of the precept against the accumulation of wealth can
be gauged by the apologetic that was produced in order to justify it. John
Locke in his famous Second Treatise on Government dedicates a whole
chapter — “On Property” — endeavoring to prove that the accumulation of
wealth is sanctioned by morality, the Scriptures, and is above all also
logical. Not content to prove that the simple accumulation of wealth is
moral, Locke´s main argument was that unlimited accumulation of wealth was
also moral, religiously sanctioned, and logical. Similarly, Adam Smith´s
masterpiece The Wealth of Nations attempted to maintain an
“objective” balance while discussing the benefits of wealth accumulation
and its negative effects. But in the end Smith comes down definitively on
the side of the positive benefits of wealth accumulation. The notion that
one should work hard, accumulate wealth, and improve one´s standard of
living still had not taken root in the minds of 17th century Europeans.
During this period, those who engaged in commerce and work in order to
accumulate wealth were the outcasts of society, not its pillars.
A third concept that was crystallized in the Western
mind with the emergence and development of the capitalist ethos can be
described as “commodification.” Even though today the buying and selling of
land causes the modern individual no conceptual — to say nothing of
spiritual — malaise, for a medieval baron such a concept simply did not
make sense. For him the “selling” of his land made as much sense as the
buying and selling of a Fulbright or Rhodes scholarship makes to a modern
individual. Even though land has existed before man, it has become a
commodity only in modern times. Similarly, even though work is as old as
man himself, its commodified version — labor — is a modern invention. The
notion that one has to “work” in order to earn a “wage” simply did not make
sense to a medieval European, and even in the early part of the 20th
century to most inhabitants of the non-Western world.
By the middle of the 18th century, then, the concepts
of interest on money, profit, and commodity had become acceptable to a
significant enough portion of the European population to give birth to a
new way of conducting trade. In these early years there was a great deal of
confusion regarding the mechanisms and rules that governed this new method
of exchange, and a number of bizarre and contradictory theories were
offered as explanations. It was the genius of Adam Smith to rise above the
conceptual morass that was surrounding the subject and write his monumental
work, titled Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
in the fateful year of 1776. He argued that the matter of exchange of goods
among the citizens should not be regulated by any authority or restricted
by custom. Smith argued that a mechanism called “the market” is best suited
to provide the optimal results in the area of trade, if it is allowed to
function freely. In providing evidence to support his argument, Smith noted
that if each individual is allowed the maximum freedom to pursue his own
selfish interest then society as a whole will accrue the maximum benefit.
The proposition that the collective interests of society would be best
served if each individual in society is allowed to pursue his own selfish
interest is in sharp contrast to the opposing assertion that the collective
interests of society are best served if the individuals in society obey the
edicts of a central government or certain traditional or religious
principles. If anything, in the capitalistic ethos the interference of the
governmental, traditional, and/or religious authorities in the private
affairs of individuals (be they economic or otherwise) are deemed to be
negative factors in the development of society. Even though this basic
premise underlying the capitalistic ethos is taken for granted today,
having the status of a self-evident truism, it has not always been the
case. In fact it is only over the last few decades that this premise has
come to be accepted by the majority of the inhabitants of the West, to say
nothing of the rest of the globe.
Less than eighty years after Smith wrote his book
detailing the benefits of an economy governed by the market mechanism, the
survival of a market economy in Europe
seemed to be in serious jeopardy due to strong challenges from two opposing
quarters. First, there was the revolutionary upheaval of 1848, which the
feudal aristocrats attempted to manipulate to their own benefit and ride
the revolutionary wave back into a position of prominence. These aristocrats
were the bitter enemies of the emerging capitalists because it was at their
hands that they had lost their political and economic clout. As Marx has
noted, the French Revolution of 1789 abolished feudal property in favor of
capitalist property. And in 1848 the feudal lords made a desperate attempt
to undo the events of the previous six decades, and for a while they
succeeded. The events of 1848 in both France
and Germany
were a sharp reaction to the unsettling effects of a market economy and an
attempt to return to the safe and familiar world of the guilds, manors, and
apprenticeships.
While the still emerging capitalist system was facing
a political challenge from the conservative quarters in the middle of the
19th century, it suddenly had to face an ideological challenge formulated
by a young man named Karl Marx. Whereas the revolutionary upheaval of 1848
represented the disaffection of the peasants and aristocrats with the
capitalist system, the ideological challenge of Marx was the voice of the disaffected
industrial working class. Marx argued that all the misery that was the lot
of the industrial working class was the result of the workings of a market
economy. He argued that the only way to alleviate this misery is to adopt a
planned economy that would be run by the workers, not the capitalists.
By the close of the 19th century, it was not entirely
clear whether capitalism would survive on mainland Europe.
Powerful forces were advocating the organization of society´s economic
system according to the dictates of a central authority, not to the working
of a free market.
While capitalism was being challenged on both the
ideological and political fronts on mainland Europe, the capitalist system
continued to mature in England
and the United States.
Comparatively speaking, these two countries remained unaffected by upheaval
on mainland Europe. And it is not a
coincidence that it was these very two countries that emerged as the
dominant economic and political powers in the West in the first quarter of
the 20th century. The citizens of the United States enjoyed a
standard of living that no previous generation in recorded history had
achieved. And England
for its part ruled an overseas empire that was greater in extent than any
empire in history. The spectacular performance of these two countries
vindicated the capitalist system in spite of the shocks that it suffered in
mid 19th century. And, quite naturally, people began to once again take
note of the benefits of a market economy. But this confidence in the market
economy suffered a severe blow in 1929 with the crash of the stock market.
The effects of this shock to the capitalist system
were more severe and longer lasting than any of the previous shocks. In
order for the United
States to dig out from the collapse of
the stock market, strong intervention on the part of the government was
needed, and it is doubtful if even this intervention would have sufficed
had it not been for WWII. The two decades after WWII proved to be even more
trying because of the emergence of a rival system that claimed to be the
successor of the failing capitalist system. Due to both the unsettling
domestic situation in the United States
and the rapid expansion of communist influence throughout the Third World in the 1950s and ´60s, it was almost
taken for granted that communism would very soon supplant capitalism as the
dominant global power. But by the end of the 1980s communism itself, to say
nothing of its claim to global domination, had collapsed and capitalism had
emerged as the clear victor in this ideological struggle.
Even though Marx and his followers had astutely
recognized the weaknesses of the capitalist system — the cycle of boom and
bust, the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands, the disruption
of social development etc. — they grossly underestimated its one strength.
The Marxists failed to realize that capitalism had the ability to improve
the standard of living of the industrial worker much more competently than
their own proposed alternative, and that it had the ability to adapt to
changing circumstances.
The days when apologists had to put forth arguments
justifying the charging of interest on money and the concepts of profit and
commodity have been long forgotten. Today it is often assumed that the
legitimacy of these concepts has always been accepted by all people since
the dawn of time, that these concepts are part and parcel of the natural
order of things. Today, the concepts on which capitalism is based carry the
import of self-evident, eternal, universal truths. It would be tedious to
go into a detailed discussion regarding the degree to which the market
system has become the dominant instrument that is shaping the modern West.
It would suffice to discuss the broad outlines of Milton Friedman´s and
Francis Fukuyama´s thoughts on this issue.
These thinkers are the leading ideologues of
liberal-bourgeoisie society. Both of them see a direct correlation between
the emergence of a capitalist economy in a given society and the emergence
of a liberal/democratic political system. They argue that the emergence of
economic capitalism is a pre-requisite for the emergence of political
liberalism. The converse of this argument also holds true. Friedman and Fukuyama contend that
government interference in the free workings of the market economy is
either a prelude to or a symptom of the usurpation of political freedom. In
the developed societies of the West the free-market economy is the
principle guarantor of political freedom, and in the developing countries
the adoption of the capitalist system is the principal pre-requisite for
political liberalism.
This is not the place to discuss the validity, or the
lack thereof, of these arguments. It merely needs to be noted that the
drive to maintain and strengthen the existing free-market system on the
domestic level is justified by the claim that the free-market is the best
guarantor of political freedoms and economic well-being. In the domain of
foreign policy the incorporation of those areas that are still outside the
global market system (and a more efficient exploitation of those already
within) is the principal factor that shapes the foreign policies. If
ideology is defined as a conceptual framework used by a group in order to
justify its actions to itself, then capitalism is the ideology of the
modern West!
At the end of this discussion, it is worth noting that
this description of the fundamental characteristics of modernity is neither
novel nor original. The manner in which the argument has been presented may
be different, but the fundamental ideas underlying the above description of
the modern West closely approximates the position of some of the leading
thinkers who have studied the birth and development of modernity. J.
Lyotard, Marshall Berman, Bryan Appleyard, and Anthony Giddens are among
the thinkers whose analysis of the development of the modern West at least
partially resembles the description presented above. It would be tedious to
discuss the position of each on the subject, but it would be certainly
useful to choose one and look at his thought in some detail.
Anthony Giddens identifies the institutional
dimensions of modernity as being capitalism, industrialism, military power,
and surveillance. He goes on to describe capitalism and the nation-state as
being “...the great institutional elements promoting the acceleration and
expansion of modern institutions.”9 He agrees with Marx that it
is the dynamism inherent in the capitalist system that imbued the modern
West with its aggressive expansionist impulse. Giddens notes that from
“...its early origins capitalism is international in scope.”10
Even though he never identifies capitalism as being the dominant ideology
of the modern West in as explicit terms as we have done above, he is keenly
aware of the fact that the elite in the West justify their actions to
themselves largely according to concepts rooted in capitalist thought. He
notes that the stimulus to accelerate the rate of economic growth in the
West is so overwhelming that it “...inevitably pushes economic interests to
the forefront of the policies which states pursue in the international
arena.”11 Samuel Wallerstein is even more candid in identifying
capitalism as being the dominant factor that shapes the behavior of the
modern West.
Giddens also recognizes the importance of the
nation-state in the modernization enterprise, and criticizes Wallerstien
for overlooking the role that this institution has played and is playing.
He notes that the coming of the nation-state into existence was essential
for the proper functioning of a capitalist economy. He goes so far as to
state that, “[a] capitalist society is a ´society´ because it is a
nation-state.”12
In light of the critical importance that Giddens
attaches to the role played by the nation-state, it is very curious that he
does not discuss the pivotal role played by the emergence of secular
political thought. Medieval Christianity saw itself as a universal enterprise
that was not limited to any geographical locality and also saw itself as
the instrument through which the dictates of God were to be implemented on
earth. Two crucial concepts on which the modern nation-state is built are
absent from the medieval political arrangement, a) territorial boundaries
(i.e., well defined borders), and b) absolute legislative sovereignty. We
cannot imagine the emergence of the modern nation-state in the absence of a
political theory limiting the administrative powers of a claimant within
certain geographical boundaries, and also providing the claimant with
absolute legislative sovereignty. Such a political theory can only emerge
outside the framework of a religious reference. The fact that Giddens
recognizes the key role played by the nation-state in the project of
modernity, while simultaneously disregarding the contribution of
secularism, represents a noticeable oversight on his part.
Giddens notes that before a break with tradition could
even be contemplated, a new criterion for establishing certitude had to be
articulated. He maintains that the project of modernity was made possible
by the enthronement of reason as the yardstick to measure certitude. The
enthronement of reason replaced revelation and tradition as being the supreme
source of knowledge regarding Truth and Certainty. This shift of the
epistemological sources marked the beginning of a new process and
represented a new (i.e., modern) way of looking at the universe and of
man´s place in it. It is only after this shift had been made that concepts
such as the nation-state, capitalism, secularism, etc., could even be
envisioned by the modern mind that was emerging in the 17th and 18th
centuries. Consequently we find that Giddens explicitly identifies
capitalism and scientism as being the two fundamental pillars of modernity
and the third (i.e., secularism) is implicit in his discussion of the
modern nation-state.
Modernity and the Death of the Transcendent
The cumulative effects of an epistemology based on
scientism, a sociology based on secularism, and an ideology based on
capitalism has given birth to a society that has lost all faith in
transcendence. Concepts such as God, life after death, beauty, honor,
virtue, vice, evil, etc., are virtually meaningless in the modern world. In
the words of Vaclav Havel, these terms and concepts “...represent merely
some kind of psychological idiosyncrasy, or some kind of stray relic from
times past.…”13 One cannot discuss the validity, or the lack
thereof, of any of these concepts within a conceptual framework that is
defined by scientism, secularism, and capitalism. If anything, the
discussion of some of these terms and concepts is emphatically held to be
not only worthless in the modern setting but exceedingly deleterious to the
well-being of the individual and society, because discussions about such
concepts is a waste of valuable energy and time. Huston Smith notes that
the modern mind is capable of taking ideas, concepts, and propositions
seriously only to the degree that they can be quantified. The realm of the
transcendent, metaphysical, and spiritual reality is relegated to the
category of “excluded knowledge,”14 because this realm cannot be
defined and/or explored using the modern quantitative methods. During the
pre-modern era, the human mind was profoundly concerned with issues related
to God, vice, virtue, evil, beauty, demons, and angels, etc. Relegating
discussion about these things to the domain of “excluded knowledge” is a
radical shift in human concerns. Smith summarizes the parable of the map
that E. F. Schumacher used to describe the philosophical education that he
received at Cambridge
University:
Most
of the things that most of mankind has considered most important throughout
its history didn´t show on it. Or if they did, they showed as museum pieces
— things people used to believe about the world but believe no longer.15
It is exceedingly important to get a full grasp of the
significance of the loss of faith in the transcendent, metaphysical, and
spiritual realm in the modern setting if one is to fully appreciate the
complex issues surrounding the encounter between the modern West and Islam.
A failure to realize the import of this issue is responsible for much of
the misunderstanding that characterizes the relationship between the two.
Before being anything else, Islam is a belief system
centered on belief in One God, the institution of Prophethood, and life
after death — these are all transcendental principles whose validity cannot
be determined by any instrument or theory available to modern science. In
other words, these are transcendent, metaphysical realities that cannot be
discovered and/or described using modern quantitative methods. On the other
hand the modern West, because of its utter inability to accept the existence
of transcendent, metaphysical, and spiritual realities, is unable to
comprehend the importance of belief in such principles as being a
legitimate motivating factor in the behavior of individuals. Consequently,
Western scholars have offered a myriad of explanations for the “revival” of
Islam in recent decades, arguing that it is the result of oil money, an
inferiority complex, a way to justify their poverty to themselves, or a
reaction to the modernization process on the part of the Muslims, etc. The
simple notion that Muslims might be adhering to at least some Islamic
principles simply as a matter of faith is not even in the realm of
possibility as far as many Western “experts” are concerned. Similarly, the
Muslims often take every perceived hostile action on the part of the West
to be evidence of its hatred of Islam. The possibility that the West´s
(perceived) hostility towards Islam is not the result of some special
attitude towards Islam per se but a byproduct of hostility towards
any system of belief based on transcendent values is left unconsidered by
the Muslims. Both parties often address each other from within the confines
of their own particular conceptual framework, without taking into account
the fact that the categories and concepts often do not make sense to the
other side.
To bridge this gap of miscommunication is reason
enough to investigate, in greater detail, the modern West´s loss of faith
in a reality that lies beyond science and the instruments of science. But
for the purposes of our current discussion this is of secondary importance.
The central purpose of this investigation is to outline the ways in which
this loss of faith has caused a radical shift in the Western view of
reality, and to describe the alternative vision of reality that has
replaced the old.
Since the very dawn of modernity in the 17th century,
Western philosophers have been keenly aware that the birth of this new
phenomenon signaled the death of transcendence, and consequently of
certainty itself. Any description of Truth and Reality exclusively based on
science is, in the final analysis, open to revision and change, and is
therefore fraught with uncertainty. Whereas traditionally knowledge was
considered to be the gateway to certainty, in modernity the relationship between
the two is shattered because the propositions made by scientific knowledge
always remain subject to modification.
The fact that science cannot provide a firm basis for
certainty was recognized by the individuals who not only witnessed the
birth of modern science but also served as midwives. Writing in the middle
of the 17th century — the century of Newton
— Blaise Pascal noted in his masterpiece, Pensées,
It
is in vain oh men that you seek within yourselves the cure for your
miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that is not in
yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers
[i.e., the scientists] promised them to you and they have not been able to
keep their promise.16
Echoing the sentiments of the early moderns like
Pascal and Descartes, Ludwig Wittgenstien noted three centuries later that,
“we feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been
answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.”17
It has been clear to many astute thinkers throughout
the past three centuries that not only does science not have the ability to
provide a firm basis for certainty, but that it is quite limited regarding
issues of crucial importance to the individual human being. The problems
that such a flux would present for an individual, to say nothing of society
at large, alarmed the early moderns. They attempted to formulate
philosophical systems in which transcendent principles would remain
meaningful in spite of the corrosive effects of science. Pascal and
Descartes from the 17th century and John Wesley, Rousseau, Berkeley, and
Kant from the 18th century represent thinkers who attempted to construct
philosophical systems in which a reality beyond scientific equations and
instruments remains meaningful. It must be noted that for a limited time
their efforts did bear fruit. It would be useful to look at the thought of
one thinker from each century in order to gain additional insight into the
issue.
The attempt to keep the transcendent alive in the face
of advancing modernity is clearly visible in the thought of René Descartes.
Considered the father of modern philosophy, Descartes asserted that reality
consists of two dimensions. One dimension is the realm of matter, which is
characterized by spatial extension; and the other dimension is the realm of
consciousness, which is characterized by the process of thought. For
Descartes, both of these dimensions exist independent of each other with no
mediating agent. Consequently, it is the individual´s awareness of his/her
own existence that provides the foundational basis for certainty, as
expressed in his famous assertion “I think, therefore I am.” These
assertions easily allow themselves to being formulated into a theory in
which thinking/cogitating minds survey a materialistic and mechanistic
nature in order to arrive at an accurate description of reality. As noted
above, this is the fundamental premise on which modernity is based, but
Descartes managed to keep transcendence meaningful in his philosophy by noting
that in the end it was God who was the foundation of all things. As
Whitehead has noted, this Cartesian dualism signaled the onset of a process
where “…science took charge of [describing] the materialist nature and
philosophy took charge of [describing] the cogitating minds.”18
This was to have profound repercussion in the coming centuries. According
to Descartes, the certainty of his thought process could only be supported
by a belief structure whose foundation was God, because it was easier and
more certain to know about the existence of God than anything else.
But it must be noted that Descartes´s God could hardly
be recognized by a medieval Christian, because his God is not to be found
in the natural world insofar as the workings of nature point towards the
existence of God. He argued that the existence of God could only be proven
because the process of human reasoning led to this conclusion. He
maintained that it was possible to explain the workings of the universe
without reference to Divine interference. Armstrong notes that “instead of
using the world to prove the existence of God, Descartes had used the idea
of God to give him faith in the reality of the world.”19
By the beginning of the 18th century faith in a
transcendent reality was still alive in the West, though its condition was
very precarious. This is best illustrated by the fact that, in his famous
work Discourse on Method, Descartes argues that it is possible to
devise a system of inquiry that would put all truth at the disposal of
humanity. In other words, it was within the ability of the human mind to
arrive at an accurate description of Truth and Reality without any
reference to external sources.
A century after Descartes, Kant took a different
approach to the problem of keeping a transcendent reality meaningful in an
age when the progress of science continued to weaken such a proposition.
Kant caused a furor among his contemporaries when he wrote Critique of
Pure Reason in 1781. In this book he argued that none of the
traditional arguments for the existence of God are valid. Any attempt to
prove the existence of God based on logic and reason is doomed to fail,
because every such argument can be proved to be self-contradictory or
incomplete. The same could be said for any arguments that purport to prove
the nonexistence of God. At this stage Kant´s critique seemed to nullify
the precarious foundations on which Descartes had built his argument in
favor of the existence of God. But in a companion volume written in 1788,
titled Critique of Practical Reason, Kant put forth his own evidence
supporting the contention that a transcendent reality, in the form a
Supreme Creator and Supreme Judge, does exist.
In this second volume Kant argued that a careful,
concerted contemplation focusing on “the starred heaven above” and “the
moral law within” provides one with the most compelling evidence for the
existence of God. Armstrong notes that Kant attempted to do in the
Christian world what Al-Ghazzali had done centuries earlier in the Muslim
world, i.e., make personal experience a valid source of religious
knowledge.”20 Taking this as his starting point, Kant was able
to formulate a philosophy in which the determinism of science is
challenged, the irreducibility of the human being is asserted and a
metaphysical basis for belief and morality is provided.21 In
other words, Kant was able to construct the philosophical foundations of a
reality that cannot be measured by any scientific instrument, but whose
existence is nonetheless very real. Even though Kant´s argument began from
a different starting point and followed a different route, he essentially
concluded his argument on the same terminus as Descartes, i.e., proof for
the existence of God is to be found within the human being.
It was noted earlier that the attempts of these early
moderns to keep transcendental values alive in the West were not entirely
in vain; for a while their efforts did bear fruit. But a stream in the historical
process strongly worked against their efforts, and they could not achieve
any lasting success. The Cartesian dualism of mind and matter provided room
for a division of the sphere of influence between science and philosophy,
and, as Whitehead notes, this division of the sphere of influence was not
only affirmed but also actualized. The world of matter was to be studied by
science, the world of the human mind by philosophy. This “division of
labor” remained possible only as long as science concentrated its gaze on
the natural and material world, but as we noted in our discussion on Secularism
as Sociology, by the beginning of the 19th century science was already
turning its gaze upon man himself. Initially it was only the institutions
built by man which were studied, but eventually his body and ultimately his
mind also fell within the domain of scientific inquiry. Once this happened,
philosophy was gradually squeezed out by the increasing intrusion of
science. By the beginning of the 20th century, philosophy ceased to exist
as an independent entity, and the survival of its very name in the closing
decades of the 20th century is only made possible by the fact that it now
merely serves as the hand-maiden of science. With the disappearance of
philosophy it is not surprising the philosophical systems laboriously
constructed by Descartes, Kant, and others attempting to keep a vision of
the transcendent alive in the face of the corrosive effects of science have
also disappeared.
Up till this point in our discussion we have offered a
very general definition of “transcendence,” much more general than what we
have in mind, because it was deemed more necessary to understand the fate
of “transcendence” in the modern West than its specific meaning. At this
point we will spell out in greater detail what we mean by the death of
transcendental idealism in the modern West.
All cultures known to man have been profoundly
concerned with metaphysical questions, and each society has shaped itself
in accordance with its understanding of certain metaphysical beliefs.
Questions concerning the nature of God (or gods), the nature of the human
spirit/soul, and the nature of life after death are to be found in every
culture studied by anthropologists. To list the ways in which the modern
West is distinguishable from all other cultures known to historians and
anthropologists could fill up many pages. If we were to summarize this list
in two sentences then the following would provide a good summary: The
thought process in the modern West is dominated by the study of the
material reality, to the exclusion of concern for metaphysical and
spiritual issues. Consequently, all of its mental faculties and
attention are focused on the study of the material universe, man´s physical
needs, and providing the means to make man´s earthly existence as
comfortable as possible. Comparing this position to the traditional
approach, the modern West has chosen to focus its attention on the created
universe to the exclusion of the Creator, on the human body to the
exclusion of the human soul, and on earthly existence to the exclusion of
concern for the life after death. One way of illustrating the distinction
between modernity and pre-modernity is the following:
The Shift from Pre-Modernity to Modernity
The Creator of the Universe ®
The Created Universe
The Human Soul ® The Human Body
Life Hereafter ® Life Here-and-Now
Metaphysics & Spirituality ® Physics &
Materialism
Since the beginning of the 19th century, nearly twenty
different philosophical schools of thought have emerged in the West. Such
diverse and distinct philosophies as naturalism, humanism, dialectical
materialism, existentialism, and behaviorism, to name only a few, are a
part of this group. But in spite of their diversity, the one common
characteristic that all of these philosophical schools share is the
disregard for ideational and transcendental concepts. As far as all of
these schools are concerned, concrete fact and physical phenomena are to be
the sole subject of human inquiry. The concepts of God, soul, and the
Hereafter are not a part of the conceptual framework of modern Western
thought. On the theoretical level, some of these schools of thought leave
open the possibility that God, soul, and Hereafter may exist, their
existence and hence their importance is neither affirmed nor rejected. But
in practice this avowedly agnostic position has led, quite naturally, to
the gradual elimination of these concepts from the realm of inquiry. The
only philosophical school to emerge during this time period that maintained
the validity of a transcendent reality is idealism. Tracing its lineage all
the way back to Plato, idealism asserts that the physical world is only a
defective replica of actual reality. Because the human being and the human
mind are a part of this imperfect replica, they can only have imperfect
knowledge of true reality. Plato attempted to illustrate this point in his
famous allegory of the “people of the cave.” In modern times, idealism did
find proponents, most notably in the thought of Kant as we have already
discussed. Even in the late 19th century, Appearance and Reality
(1897) by F. H. Bradley stands out as a first rate work of philosophy. But
the lone voice of idealism has been easily overwhelmed by the combined
weight of the other materialist philosophies. Today, idealism is considered
to be only a curiosity that challenged the dominant assumption of the 19th
and 20th centuries, viz., that which cannot be measured or explored by
science is not worthy of investigation.
It is again worth noting that we have not offered any
original insight by pointing out that the modern West has no regard for
ideational and transcendental concepts. Throughout the modern period
leading thinkers have recognized this condition, and some have even voiced
grave concerns regarding it. Reviewing the history of modern Western
thought it is difficult to find a person who recognized the death of
transcendence with such brutal clarity as Nietzsche. Hannah Arendt points
out that for Nietzsche “God” symbolized “...the suprasensual realm as
understood by metaphysics.”22 Taking this insight into
consideration Nietzsche´s utterance regarding “the death of God” in his
famous work Thus Spoke Zarathustra takes on a new significance. He
clearly recognized the fact that it was the work of man himself that was
destroying his faith in any metaphysical reality, and he described this
loss of faith in metaphysics as “the death of God.” He was acutely aware of
the fact that any attempt to keep any transcendent value meaningful in the
absence of belief in some metaphysical principles was an exercise in
futility. He urged modern man to recognize this reality and stop wasting
his energies trying to salvage the morality, ethics, and metaphysics of a
bygone era. Nietzsche preached that it would be better if modern man spent
his energies creating his own morality, ethics, and metaphysics; in fact,
this was the need of the hour. He considered the attempts of Kant and
others to preserve the traditional values of Christianity in the face of
advancing modernity with hostile disgust. This is clearly evident in his
description of Kant as “a catastrophic spider.”23
The 20th century has also produced prominent thinkers
who have noticed the death of transcendence and metaphysics in the West.
Rene Guenon, one of the leading French intellectuals of the inter-war
period, noted that a “normal” civilization is;
...one
that is based on principles, in the true sense of the word, one where
everything is arranged in hierarchy to conform to these principles, so that
everything in it is seen as the application and extension of a doctrine
whose essence is purely intellectual and metaphysical.24
Guenon goes on to note that the “doctrine” on which
the modern West is based is neither “purely intellectual” nor “purely
metaphysical.” Looking at the work of some of the leading Post-WWII
thinkers, it becomes clear that neither “pure intellectualism” nor “pure
metaphysics” are to be found anywhere in the modern West. Lyotard describes
the nature and function of “knowledge” being produced by the modern Western
intellect in these words: “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be
consumed, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new
production.”25 He has accurately described the degeneration of
intellectualism into crass consumerist operationalism. Marcuse describes
the last rites that have been performed over metaphysics in the West. He
notes that the disciples of positivism have seen to it that “…the
metaphysical dimension, formerly a genuine field of rational thought”26
is relegated to the realm of irrational hysterics. The triumph of
postivistic rationality has meant that metaphysics is consigned to the
realm of “…obscurationist and regressive modes of thought,” along with all
other idealism and transcedentalisms.27
Thus, it was this modern West — profoundly shaped by
scientism, secularism, and capitalism and divorced from any connection with
metaphysics, idealism, or transcendence — that swept across the Muslim world
in the 19th century. The West´s occupation of the Muslim world was
two-dimensional: military and political on the one hand and cultural and
ideological on the other. In its early stages the Muslims saw this
occupation primarily as a military/political challenge and reacted
accordingly. They attempted to achieve military parity with the West
through adopting modern weapons and methods. Consequently, we witness the
drive to modernize the Egyptian military, initiated by Muhammad Ali, in the
aftermath of the humiliating defeat at the hands of Napoleon in the first
decade of the 19th century. After two disastrous wars with Russia in 1813 and 1823, Iran
embarked on a military modernization campaign. The Tanzimat Reforms
(1839-76) in the Ottoman Empire also focused on military modernization to
counter the increasing gains being made by the West in Eastern
Europe. Military recovery, reform, and strength were seen by a
vast majority of Muslims as the primary vehicle that would lead to societal
regeneration, up till the last decades of the 19th century.
Towards the end of the 19th century, a more
sophisticated view linking the socio-political backwardness of Muslim
societies to the existing institutions began to be articulated by
influential Muslim thinkers. The exponents of this view argued that the
superiority of the West was rooted in its socio-political institutions and
principles, not in its military strength. Therefore, they argued, the
Muslims had to adopt Western principles and institutions if they were to
have any hope of escaping from their backwardness. It is at this juncture
that the intellectual encounter between the modern West and Islam began,
thus providing us with the starting point of our analysis.
The realization that military superiority was only the
most obvious manifestation of strength rooted in ideas and institutions
inevitably led at least some Muslims to start to grapple with Western ideas
and institutions. This encounter on the intellectual level was to
profoundly change the character of Muslim society during the 20th century.
It is well known that a Westernized ruling elite soon emerged in the Muslim
world, whose attitude towards the metaphysics and transcendental themes in
Islam hardly differed from the attitude of their Western teachers towards
Christian metaphysics and transcendental themes. But the reaction of this
segment of Muslim society to the Western intellectual challenge is not of
pressing concern to us, because they totally disregarded any reference to
an Islamic framework in the course of their interaction with Western
thought. Of more pressing concern to us are the attempts consciously
designed to keep Islamic teachings meaningful in the face of the Western
onslaught. It will be shown in the following analysis that even this
“religious” response to the Western challenge has been profoundly shaped by
Western ideas. All Muslim thinkers who formulated a religious response to
the West acknowledged the fact that a balanced attitude towards
metaphysical and spiritual concerns on the one hand and worldly concerns on
the other is a defining characteristic of Islamic teachings. According to
them, Islam contains the prescription for both worldly (i.e., material)
success and salvation in the hereafter (i.e., spiritual bliss). But a careful
scrutiny of this religious response reveals that their emphasis on the
prescription for worldly success offered by Islam is so pronounced in
modern Islamic thought, and reference to the metaphysical and spiritual
dimension of Islam so paltry and insignificant, that any talk of a
“balance” between the two is rendered meaningless.
Summary
The modern West is shaped by three fundamental
concepts that emerged during the 17th and 18th centuries, and evolved and
matured in the 19th and 20th centuries.
*Scientism as Epistemology: Scientism is the belief
that scientific methods and instruments alone are capable of providing an
accurate description of Truth and Reality. A corollary to this is the
belief that technology and “scientific” planning can solve all the problems
which afflict individuals as well as society at large. Modern Western
epistemology is based on scientism.
*Secularism as Sociology: Secularism is the belief
that religion has no role to play in the public/collective affairs of
society and should remain the private affair of the individual believer.
The exclusive claim to legislative and territorial sovereignty on the part
of the modern nation-state is the starting point as well as the most
pronounced evidence of secularism. Secularism is the foundation of modern
Western sociology.
*Capitalism as Ideology: The underlying assertion on
which capitalist theory is based is that the interests of the society as a
whole are best served if each individual is afforded the maximum
opportunity to pursue his own self-defined selfish interests. The role of
the state is limited to assuring the smooth working of the free-market, not
being a hindrance in the process of its expansion. The modern West justifies
its actions to itself and to others almost totally within the context of
the capitalist logic, thus making capitalism the ideology of the modern
West.
The combined effects of scientism, secularism, and
capitalism have led to the death of transcendence and metaphysics in the
modern West. This is evidenced by the loss of faith in anything that lies
beyond the visible material universe, and which therefore cannot be
measured by scientific instruments. This is the defining characteristic
that distinguishes the modern West from all pre-modern societies.
Endnotes
1.
Quoted by Marshall Berman in All
that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (NY: Penguin
Books, 1988) pp.24f.
2.
Appleyard, B., Understanding
the Present: Science and the Soul of Man (New York: Anchor Books, 1993)
p.111.
3.
Quoted by Appleyard in ibid,
pp.3f.
4.
These claims are being made by
such prominent scientists as Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, and to some
extent Roger Penrose.
5.
Fukuyama, F., The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The
Free Press, 1992) p.81.
6.
Roberts, J.M., The History of
the World (New York: Macmillan Press, 1991) p.480.
7.
Appleyard, op. cit., p.93
8.
Freud, S., “The Future of an
Illusion” in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
edited by James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1961) vol. xxi, p.38.
9.
Giddens, A., The Consequences
of Modernity (Stanford, California: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990) p.62.
10.
Ibid., p.57
11.
Ibid., p.72
12.
Ibid., p.57
13.
Havel, V., “Vaclav Havel´s New Year Address” in Orbis,
Spring 1990, p.255.
14.
Smith, H., Beyond the
Post-Modern Mind (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 62f.
15.
Ibid., p. 72.
16.
Quoted by M. Muggeridge in The
End of Christendom (London: Scribner Press, 1978) p.12.
17.
Quoted by Appleyard in op cit. pg.
15.
18.
Whitehead, A. N., Science and
the Modern World (New York: Mentor Books, 1964) p. 131.
19.
Armstrong, K., A History of
God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1991) p. 301.
20.
Ibid., p.315.
21.
Appleyard, op. cit., pp. 64f.
22.
Hannah Arendt quoted by Huston
Smith “Can Modernity Accommodate Transcendence” in Modernity and
Religion, ed. William Nichols (Canada: Canadian Corporation for Studies
in Religion, 1987) p. 162.
23.
Quoted by Appleyard in op cit.,
p.78.
24.
Guenon, R., East and West
(London: Luzac and Co. Publishers, 1941) p.241.
25.
Lyotard, J.F., The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minnesota: The Univ. of Minnesota
Press, 1984) p.5.
26.
Marcuse, H., One-Dimensional
Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991) p.172.
27.
Ibid.
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