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“People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than they themselves may realize.” “Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.”
What are the presuppositions, broadly, throughout history?
“The Greeks and later the Romans also tried to build society upon their gods. But these gods were not big enough because they were finite, limited.” “The gods were amplified humanity, not divinity.” Later they looked to the emperors as divine. But this failed and Christianity (which became the state religion in 381 AD) rose.
A Christian’s “strength rested on God’s being an infinite-personal God and his speaking in . . ." the Bible. “Thus the Christians not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind that people cannot find out by themselves, but they had absolute, universal values by which to live and by which to judge the society and the political state in which they lived. And they had grounds for the basic dignity and value of the individual as unique in being made in the image of God.”
In the Middle Ages, the church drifted from Biblical foundations and introduced humanistic concepts, with “man taking to himself that which belonged to God.” “Soon European thought would be divided into two lines, both of which have come down and influence our own day: first, the humanistic elements of the Renaissance, and second, the Bible-based teaching of the Reformation.”
In the Renaissance, “Philosophy was gradually separated from revelation—from the Bible—and philosophers began to act in an increasingly independent, autonomous manner.” “Renaissance humanism steadily evolved toward modern humanism—a value system rooted in the belief that man is his own measure, that man is autonomous, totally independent.” And “with this came an increasing loss of anything which gave meaning, either to the individual things in the world or to man.”
Counter this to the Reformation, who believed that man was fallen and thus “people could not begin only from themselves . .” We need God. And the Reformation was “centered in the infinite-personal God who had spoken in the Bible.” “The Bible gives a unity to the universal and the particulars.”
In the Enlightenment, humanism came to the fore (though some Reformation-based worldviews undergirded society). In this age, the focus was on “reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty.” And everything started breaking down; the drive to find a way to meaning and values through pure reason ended in despair. A split started emerging between meaning/values and measurable things. Man alone cannot bring the two together, so modern man is a dichotomy:
- Reason: man is a machine and meaningless.
- Non-reason: optimism about meaning and values (totally separate from reason). This is existential methodology.
“Many types of things can be put in the area of non-reason. And it really does not matter what one chooses to put there, because reason gives no basis for a choice.” Thus, it's all about feelings, experiences, and everything is relative. Hence our postmodern society today.
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This was a good book, in a similar vein to Glenn Sunshine's Why You Think The Way You Do. Here the focus was not only on the strands of thought but also art and how worldview permeats through it (with lots of examples). The book's final chapters sounded a little alarmist (and dated; this was written before communism fell), but overall, this is a worthy read.
Rating: A-
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