Nationalism is a community-tied ideology to which members devote allegiance and sacrifice. Despite the elusive criteria for a collective to be deemed a nation (a concept unique to the modern age), nationalism unites people to accomplishing a higher calling, transcendent of individual interests. Nationalism development commonly involves shared language, ethnicity, religion, culture, customs, ancestry, race, homeland, history, and constitutional order. However nationalism is triggered within a community, once members recognize their sentiment it becomes “a force to be reckoned with” on the world stage, regardless of their ability to find expression as a state (ex: the Arab-Israeli conflict). Nationalism “has engendered a cult of the nation,” having its own ceremonies, sacraments, icons and feasts, by which even Christians have been seduced. Idolatrous nationalism reveals itself in Christians when they misapply biblical promises to select geographical/political bodies, identify national-historical norms as God’s will for political or cultural life, pay homage that belongs to God to a nation, or grant power to a nation beyond the balance of created spheres.
abstracts
Koyzis – Chapter 3
In order to practice conservatism one needs something to conserve. In this way conservatism is related to other ideologies. A distrust of human nature and its tendency for chaos leads conservatives to value the achievements of society over the promise of better future by theoretical or insufficiently tested strategy. Acceptable change is small, incremental, and well tested in past experience. Traditional conservatism differs from liberalism in that it strives to restrain freedom in the name of the common good. But conservatism and liberalism are not opposites. The closest thing to an opposite of conservatism would be progressivism. Two kinds of conservatism include Burkean conservatism which is concerned with the status quo, and restorationist conservatism which is concerned with “turning the clock back” to otherwise “bygone traditions.” Conservatives often ignore the “temporal multiplicity of traditions” (how tradition develops and morphs over time), yet conservatism itself is not a unified ideology.
Koyzis – Chapter 2
Liberalism is concerned with the rights of individuals. It allots every individual the right to posses property in their own person and freely “govern themselves in accordance with their own choices, provided these choices do not infringe on the equal rights of others to do the same.” Liberalism arose out of 17th and 18th century humanism, where Rene Descartes’ mathematical exactitude defined human community from its most basic principle in human individuals. Man’s state of nature begat rights to individuals prior to community. Thus, early liberals sought emancipation from the birthright system of feudalism and demanded social positions to be vied for out of individual qualification. Hobbes (the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) and Locke (more peaceful) both appreciated society’s eventual formation of a civil commonwealth which over-arched the state of nature. Civil commonwealth served the needs of individuals as a social contract that protected freedom of choice. Thus, freedom of the individual ironically depended on political authority for accountability. This state had to be strong enough to enforce rules but weak enough to avoid totalitarianism. The range of freedom expanded through (1) the pre-liberal stage (characterized by Hobbesian management of fear and the desire to protect one’s life, where limitations on the state were primarily practical rather than legal or ethical and it was in the ruler’s interest not to oppress his people, lest they prefer the state of nature over his commonwealth and overturn his dominion by revolution), (2) the property appreciation stage (recognition of the connection between preserving one’s life and earning a livelihood lead to the embrace of the free market or capitalism, which also lead to individuals amassing private resources and people being far from equal), (3) the regulatory state (governmental power was brought into the service of freedom), (4) the equal opportunity state (sought to level the playing field with a social “safety net” or welfare), and (5) the choice enhancement state (lobbied for a spiritually/morally vacant state where no good is seen as the utmost good and the state remains as referee). However, this last evolution of the naked public square is an illusion. The privatization of religion from the public square (Jefferson’s “wall of separation”) is held above all other convictions and is thus treated religiously. Once people realize this “liberalism’s ascendancy is likely to end.”
Dooyeweerd – Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Auguste Comte founded modern sociology, the science of social facts, on the nature-motive of the humanistic science ideal. Sociology attempted to define individuals as parts of the whole that is society, while replacing historicism’s “divine providence” with the scientific method of cause and effect. Social science, then, incorporated an inherent dualism: individuals were either scientifically defined bottom-up by elements of most basic composition, or historically defined top-down as parts of an individual whole that is society. These two approaches were irreconcilable. With the inauguration of civil society as distinct from the state (Locke) class conflict emerged. Entrepreneurial freedom altered the system of production resulting in large-scale manufacturing and then mechanized industrialization. Labor was turned into a commodity and class conflicts emerged between the laborer and the entrepreneur. Comte and Saint Simon developed the concept of classes. Economics was seen as the driving force of class struggle, and class divisions explained the structuring of society. But with credence given to economics, sociology betrayed its humanist origin of freedom. Also, if the history of society was defined by class struggle there was no room for a true community and the state would be only an instrument of class domination. Beyond these issues, social science as an objective science had the problem of identifying “objective” social facts. To be scientific, sociology must seek what is, not what out to be. However the application of social norms (oughts) provides the structure that makes social society capable of being studied, though these relationships also function among non-normative aspects. In the 2nd half of the 19th century, sociology defined human society biologically (bottom-up) in accordance with the new evolutionistic movement. They sought to find relation between such scientific-method discoveries and societal values. Yet in the 20th century, with the fallout of natural laws from classical physics, scientific idealism was uprooted and “the process of uprooting humanism began.” It ought to be understood that various aspects of reality (i.e. emotions, economics, biology, history, linguistics, legal theory) maintain their sphere sovereignty and cannot be “subsumed under the same scientific denominator.” These aspects act upon a subject at once as a coalition that may be vaguely observed as cause leading to effect. Causal connection between one aspect of reality and another can only be established so far as these aspects function within the realm of the other. Since sense perception lacked objectivity, attempt was made within social science to structure total reality on generally accepted truths. But even Max Webber expressed that this method operated only by “exaggerating certain traits within “historical reality” and abstracting these from all other traits,” and that such a method would never be true to reality itself. The question remains: how do various aspects manifest themselves in society as unique individual entities? This question, along with others, will continue to be addressed from societies’ own totality structures. For this reason, and for the healthy development of society, society’s ground motives must continually remain under scrutiny from Christian citizens.
Dooyeweerd – Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Romanticism reacted to the over-extension of humanism’s science ideal. Instead of defining individuals by the rationalism of the Renaissance, Romanticism defended the autonomous freedom of man in regard to his individual disposition. To prevent anarchy, individual communities were also ascribed dispositions that individuals were to honor as members. This resulted in the ideology of temporal community as the totality of all societal relationships. Furthermore, Romanticism honored historicism in place of science as the guiding force of life. History’s inertia was commonly referred to as “divine providence.” Like the science ideal, historicism both originated from the freedom motive of humanism, and overextended itself in a similar fashion. For only in a true culture of differentiation (involving the unity of creation, fall, and redemption in Christ) is there truly room for rights of individuals independent of community membership. Universalistic historicism has been mistakenly identified with Christianity and has hampered the scriptural motive.
Dooyeweerd – Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Humanism in the Renaissance pursued the freedom and autonomy of man. Nature and freedom were the guiding ground-motives. What started as a biblical-humanism seeking return to Christianity’s focus on the simple teachings of the gospel lead to thinkers departing from the authority of scripture and deifying the dignity of human personality. Humanism embraced nature through science in pursuit of autonomous freedom for human personality. Science developed to define all things as participants in a closed chain of cause and effect observed and examined by theoretical thought (mathematical natural-scientific thinking). In this way man became dependent on the certainty of his own thought. But if science was the guiding force of reality no room remained for human freedom. This dialectical tension concerned such thinkers as Descartes, Hobbes, Bodin, Grotius, Aquinas, Hume, Locke, and Rousseau; and its influence in politics ranged from state absolutism, the French Revolution, and the origins of democracy.
Naugel – Chapters 9, 10, &11
Chapter 9
The concept of “worldview” conflicts with Christianity when it is conceived as private values instead of intrinsic facts. Once freeing worldview from relativism, it can be put to use in Christianity – since all truth is God’s truth attained by common grace. Objective truth is found in the root unity of God’s word and the creation, fall and redemption of Christ. Man receives natural insight and special revelation from God, whose principles govern the spheres of creation that man should discern. Man also receives moral absolutes from God. Thus, he cannot create his own values and choose his ideology without negative consequences resulting from his idolization of an aspect of creation. It is due to the depravity of the human heart and spiritual warfare that relativistic worldview has influence. Only through God’s grace and redemption, capable of apposing both mans nature and nurture if need be, can Christian worldview stand.
Chapter 10
The nature and influence of worldview is addressed in semiotics. Semiotics studies culture by way of the significance they place on signs, and the communication of that significance. Culture uses semiotics to comprehend the reality if finds itself in and define the meaning of life. Worldview is a subset of semiotics as it is composed of interpreted signs used in navigating life. Worldview is formulated through a set of narratives which contain and define ones standard for reason, interpretation and knowledge. Thus, worldview is a toolbox of interpreted signs that provide definition, without which reality would be unnavigable.
Chapter 11
The formation of a Christian worldview may have both positive and negative effects. It is possible for man to elevate worldview to the status of deified human consciousness. Therefore, the centrality of Gods word is vital in keeping pride in check. It is also possible to put emphasis on Christian worldview to the extent that worldview becomes the focus, and God the afterthought. So one must always keep God and his call to love as dominant, and worldview as secondary infrastructure. Worldview can then serve as a means of intellectual defense, so that believers are not easily deceived. It paints a “coherent picture of God’s larger story” and facilitates “personal, ecclesiastical, and cultural transformation.”
Naugle – Chapters 7 & 8
In chapter seven Naugle discusses the disciplinary history of “worldview” in the natural sciences through Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn. Polanyi defended the significance of the human dimension in knowing truth without succumbing to subjectivism. Humans’ critical personal knowledge, according to Polanyi, possesses an important “tacit” dimension. By accepting ones inescapable worldview-lense and understanding its limitations, humans can step toward truth in humility and community. Polanyi offers that while knowing is limited, truth is not. Kuhn argued that paradigm worldviews influence science in such a way that scientists act irrationally, “runn[ing] from one paradigm to another for reasons that have no real connection with finding objective truths.” Science is practiced, observed, analyzed, applied, and accepted based on the reigning paradigm, or worldview. It asks no new questions and finds no new results. Significant anomalies force science beyond the reigning worldview producing scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts, yet these revolutions bring adherents no closer to truth than previous paradigms.
In chapter eight Naugle discusses the disciplinary history of “worldview” in the social sciences of psychology, sociology and anthropology. These sciences are distinct from natural sciences in that intellectual models are not only influential in producing science, but are the object of science itself. Naugle names Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the two most notable psychoanalysts in the twentieth century. Freud posed science to be humanity’s best hope for an all-encompassing, true worldview entailing “a metaphysical naturalism, a scientific empiricism or positivism, and a distinctively psychoanalytic anthropology.” Jung accepted psychology’s foundation in worldview and drew attention to the importance of acknowledging the dynamics of worldview in all aspects of a therapeutic relationship.
In the field of sociology, Naugle expounds on the work of Karl Manheim, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Manheim sought to foster communication between worldviews and promote greater understanding and awareness across society by explaining the methodological principles for determining worldviews of specific eras. He succeeded in pinpointing the very spirit of an age with scientific credibility. Berger and Luckmann sought to transform the sociology of knowledge from an elitist discipline (involving primarily thought) to an egalitarian discipline (involving daily experience). Marx and Engels took worldview to a new level by solidifying it into an ideology to be used as a weapon for social interest. Their goal was to free the working classes from their false consciousness forced upon them by the ruling class. As part of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, scientific dialectical materialism made up reality.
Finally, in the field of anthropology Naugle focuses on the contributions of Michael Kearney and Robert Redfield. Kearney called for the recognition of the ideological biases informing worldview theory itself in order to develop a liberating model of worldview sympathetic to Marxist dispositions. He sought to rescue worldview from idealism to historical materialism wrapped up in daily experience. Redfield developed a universal typology of the self, others (human and nonhuman), space and time, and life and death, in order to distinguish what is true across all worldviews. He argued civilized worldviews and societies to be a corruption of primitive societies, which were the unified, interdependent, and moral expression of life.
Naugle – Chapters 5 & 6
20th Century
Edmund Husserl sought to distinguish scientific philosophy from worldview to settle philosophical disputes, overcome relativity, and set the foundation for all sciences, by means of presuppositionless study.
Karl Jaspers sought to psychologically catalogue the options of worldview by analyzing them according to subjective “attitudes” and objective “world pictures,” but upon discovering the naivety of his own worldview-stoked investigation Jaspers concentrated on philosophic communication amongst relativism.
Martin Heidegger, like Husserl, argued philosophy and worldview to be separate and distinct, with being as the subject of philosophy and interpretation of that being as the subject of worldview.
Ludwig Wittgenstein endeavored to change the way humans see the world to be confined by grammar and language, for while life exists before philosophy, without the context of words there can be no worldview.
Donald Davidson argued against Wittegenstein’s linguistically differentiated relativism based on his own examination of similarities between differing languages, or their similar conceptual schemes.
Postmodernity
Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction of Logocentrism and the Metaphysics of Presence sought to overturn people’s faith in language’s ability to accurately depict the really real, in favor of the realization that language’s only capacity is that of a self-referential system, and thus man makes his own reality.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s Concept of “Reification,” proposes since humans universally tend to create their reality based on their cultural experience, they may as well claim it as such (a “humanly fabricated, self-contained conceptual system”).
Michel Foucault’s Episteme, Genealogy, and Power argued that what people accept as frameworks for reality are actually a means by which they are unconsciously governed.
Naugle – Chapter 4
Key19th century figures contributing to the philosophical history of “Worldview” namely include: G. W. F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Hegel developed the idea of the Absolute Spirit and “the discovery of alternative conceptual frameworks,” clarified worldview as separate from philosophy and religion, and articulated worldview as individual and communal. Kierkegaard is noted for his emphasis on “lifeview,” the reflective means by which man makes sense of his world by looking back at experience. Kierkegaard argues “lifeview” to be foundational for literature, friendship, parenthood, and education. Dilthey wanted to formulate an objective epistemology for the human sciences, but discovered no absolute, scientific, metaphysical construct that could define the nature of reality with finality. While acknowledging worldviews to hold pieces of truth, he concluded, “one must never mistake one’s corner for the world.” Nietzsche intercepted this growing skepticism about truth and the ultimate nature of reality and argued “worldview” and “truth” to be only tools by which man navigated (however purposelessly) the chaos that is.
KRSTN 