The Shifting Foundation of Epistemology
When you are in the boarding line behind your new transgender Icelandic witch friend waiting to board the plane, the conversation is far from boring. My wife and I were leaving Iceland after a vacation. As we were in line, we struck up a conversation with the person in front of us. Conversation with them[1] was delightful and fascinating. They were coming to Portland, Oregon seeking adventure and belonging in the transgender and spiritual communities. What better place for them than Portland?
As we arrived in Portland and were parting ways, before we said goodbye, I asked them what was next in their adventure. They responded, “Oh, I don’t plan. I am all about freedom. I will do what feels right.” With that, we parted ways.
This encounter came to mind as I reflected on Stephen R.C. Hicks’ book Explaining Postmodernism.[2] Here’s why: with the dislodging of institutions as the authority on truth (monarchy and the church) during the Enlightenment, with the subsequent suspicion of the Enlightenment’s truth authority (reason), the epistemological lacuna we have today has multiple philosophical views vying for inhabiting the center of cultural epistemology. Arguably, the major intellectual idea we have today is Postmodernism. In this post, I will provide a brief summary of Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism, followed by a look at the epistemological disembedding of the biblical story, the embedding of the self as the source of truth that Jean-Jacques Rousseau made possible, and conclude with a brief comment on the freedom god that is unconsciously worshiped in our world today due to Postmodernism’s veiling.
Summary of Explaining Postmodernism
Hicks provides a concise, yet expansive survey of the voices that contributed to our Postmodern environment in which we live. Beginning with the Enlightenment, Hicks follows the intellectual thread that began to doubt the foundation of the Enlightenment. This started with Immanuel Kant who believed reason was cut off from reality.[3] According to Hicks, “Postmodernism is the end result of Kantian epistemology.” Kant would hardly have predicted this break with reason opening the door for Postmodernism. But the crack in the door Kant initiated was taken further by the likes of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, and Marcuse all the way to Postmodernism’s most popular voices: Foucault and Derrida. Postmodernism, being an idea that allows for a plurality of ideas based on how the self “feels”, interestingly attached solely to Marxist socialism. Hicks highlights all this to reveal the following: “the failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of Socialism made postmodernism necessary.”[4]
The Story of God is Replaced
The Enlightenment’s influence is impossible to overstate. This has led to beneficial advances for humanity – a case argued by Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now.[5] British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin wrestled with the implications of the Enlightenment. Newbigin posits “The Enlightenment … was – from one point of view – a shift in the location of reliable truth from the story told in the Bible to the eternal truths of reason, of which the mathematical physics of Newton offered the supreme model.”[6] The biblical story was replaced as the foundation of epistemology. I am not going to spend time arguing for or against this being a good thing or whether it was truly the Gospel that was the foundation and not Christendom. What I will say is religion was substituted for reason as the foundation for epistemology. This located the foundation of epistemology in reason. However, even this was being discredited and replaced with the individual. For this, we need to discuss Rousseau’s contribution.
The Self – The Source of Truth and Morality
Augustine’s Confessions was a literary innovation in its autobiographical psychological examination. Rousseau wrote his own version of Confessions. Yet his differed markedly from Augustine’s in this: “For Augustine, the moral flaw is ultimately intrinsic to him. He is by nature wicked, a sinner…For Rousseau…his natural humanity is fundamentally sound, and the sinful act comes from social pressures and conditioning.”[7] Society, not the self, is to blame for one’s immorality. Rousseau posited, Francis Fukuyama writes, “that the inner moral self was not just capable of binary moral choices, but was filled with a plenitude of feelings and personal experiences that were suppressed by the surrounding society; access to those feelings rather than their suppression became the moral imperative.”[8] When the self is the source of truth and morality, an idea Rousseau made possible and popular, this makes way for postmodernism to reign supreme in our minds and the god of freedom to reign supreme in our hearts.
Where are we now?
Freedom was the moral and existential imperative for my Icelandic friend. The substitution of God from our epistemology and our morality with reason and then “self” has caused us to worship the god of freedom to find our lives rather than laying down our lives for the God in whom is true freedom. The god of personal freedom ultimately enslaves. There is no easy answer for this. As Christian leaders, there is no clear and seamless way forward. Postmodernism is not the answer. The Enlightenment is not the answer. I would argue that the answer is found in laying down our assumed and preferred stories in which we are the center, and instead find ourselves as a part of God’s meta-story centered on Jesus.
[1] I unfortunately did not get the preferred pronouns, but they were biologically male expressing as female. For the purpose of this post, I will utilize they/them pronouns for this individual.
[2] Stephen Ronald Craig Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 1. ed, expanded ed (Roscoe, Ill.: Ockham’s Razor, 2011).
[3] Ibid. 24.
[4] Ibid. i.
[5] Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Penguin, 2018).
[6] Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 73.
[7] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020), 111.
[8] Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, First edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 92.
About the Author
David Beavis
David is Australian by birth, was raised in Southern California, and is the Youth and Young Adults Pastor at B4 Church in Beaverton, Oregon. David and his wife, Laura, live in Hillsboro with their dog, Coava (named after their favorite coffee shop). M.A. Theology - Talbot School of Theology B.A. Psychology - Vanguard University of Southern California7 responses to “The Shifting Foundation of Epistemology”
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David,
I enjoyed your post, thank you for your generation. I believe one of the strengths of your generation is to have more tolerance and take time for understanding. Thank you for your example. I believe great things can happen when we start taking responsibility for ourselves and stop blaming society or others.
Peace to you. Well done!
Thank you Greg! I always appreciate your encouragement.
David, thanks for your post! I was looking forward to reading yours as you have a way of breaking down complex concepts that make them a easier to understand.
I considered quoting Lesslie Newbigin as well! He definitely seemed to shape Yung Hwa’s (who I did reference) thoughts. I appreciated the conclusion you came to that both Postmodern and Enlightenment ideals centered on oneself, whether through reason or freedom respectively.
Amen, and Amen! Great post! “The substitution of God from our epistemology and our morality with reason and then “self” has caused us to worship the god of freedom to find our lives rather than laying down our lives for the God in whom is true freedom.” I love it, and your ability to strike up a conversation with anyone, love on them openminded, and learn from them without prejudice. That right there is the Jesus philosophy and leadership. Although sad in regard to the world placing their hope in general “freedom,” there is hope in God’s meta-story that you preach and live out each day. Keep doing it, brother!
David,
Great summary. Man, I would’ve loved to be part of your conversation with the Icelandic Witch Friend. I’m sure it was fascinating and it is a good example of different competing world-views such as “freedom.”
You point out that, “Postmodernism is not the answer. The Enlightenment is not the answer. I would argue that the answer is found in laying down our assumed and preferred stories in which we are the center, and instead find ourselves as a part of God’s meta-story centered on Jesus.”
I am curious what some pre-Enlightenment perspectives may offer this conversation. Judaism and Eastern philosophies seem to offer alternatives to reason that offer the communal voices that postmodern wants to posit – when it suits the agenda. In many ways, it seems the Self is a product of the Enlightenment (“I think therefor I am”) but postmodernism opened the playground for the Self to pursue full individual actualization. In your perspective, how do we navigate the Self within the meta narrative of Jesus?
David, Thank you so much for your post! You gave such a great summary of the book and helped me to gain some traction in understanding postmodernism a bit more. I so appreciate your thoughts here and especially liked this quote” “The substitution of God from our epistemology and our morality with reason and then “self” has caused us to worship the god of freedom to find our lives rather than laying down our lives for the God in whom is true freedom. ”
I’m looking forward to the conversation tomorrow and learning more! Have you been in the hot seat yet?
I would argue that the answer is found in laying down our assumed and preferred stories in which we are the center, and instead find ourselves as a part of God’s meta-story centered on Jesus.
Boom.
Thank you for this great post!