[MD] Ideas and Gods

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Jon,

Jon said:
My point is that these ideas originated in an understanding 
of God, and hung around and were applied in new ways in 
new areas, even when the culture was becoming secular 
and atheistic.

Matt:
Yeah, and my point is that unless you also add "and these 
secularized God-ideas are bogus without God" then it isn't 
clear why us rejoicing secularists (at God's metaphorical 
death) should care so much.  And further, it is the point 
of people like Blumenburg and Yack that no, not all of these 
ideas did come out of "an understanding of God."  And 
what's more, the more commonsensically non-believing 
intellectuals we get developing their ideas, the more 
unlikely it seems that their ideas originate in "an 
understanding of God," or why they should care if, once in 
the past, people who were bandying about similar ideas did 
believe in God.

Jon said:
But whatever you call this age, or the one that preceded it, 
what do you see as the root ideas, the metaphysical roots 
of this age. Or what do you see as the root ideas of the 
age that preceded it.

Matt:
Oh, I don't have a Pepperian system of "root metaphors" to 
snap at you or anything.  And I think "metaphysical roots" 
a misnomer.  And I'm not sure how useful it is to have a 
system of "root ideas of the age."  It can be nice sometimes, 
but I like narratives better than systems, and narratives are 
notorious for avoiding systematic reduction (as hard as we 
try to do it anyways).

But I tell you what, I can sense that your hemming after an 
idea that didn't evolve out of "an understanding of God," so 
how about this one:

The modern notion of "authenticity" arose from the 
combination of the technological development and 
dispersion of writing (principal players being the printing 
press, rise of middle classes, university education, and 
democracies) which produced a rising tide of preserved 
writing, which produced in intellectuals the fear of 
repeating the past.  For those who wanted to be unique, 
principally poets, they really for the first time had to 
struggle with the burden of a past.  The notion of being 
"authentic" came out of this material development and the 
conceptual innovation, stemming from Rousseau and Kant, 
that "society" or "culture" is what puts us in chains, and 
that true freedom (and authenticity) comes from spurnning 
what you've been taught.

We might be able to find many similiarities with theological 
ideas, but it isn't always clear what the point is in pointing 
them out.  For example, I think Martin Buber's I and Thou 
to be a wonderful way of describing a lot of these tensions 
that began erupting in Romanticism, but I also think I can 
use the notion of "thou" without finding much use in "God," 
at least not in any way a theologian would recognize as 
doing justice to the Heavenly Master.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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