Tag Archives: modernity

Must we come to terms with postmodernity?

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in French Tradition, Politics, Social Science

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This post is a followup to last week’s, and is best read in tandem with it. I argued that the difference between modernity and modernism (which is to say, the difference between modern and modernist) really matters. The question for this week: can the same be said of a difference between postmodernity and postmodernism?

It is not disputed that there is a set of ideas, however vaguely specified it may be, which became popular sometime after the mid-1970s and has regularly been referred to by the label of postmodernism. Postmodernism has some points of agreement with modernism, but generally tends to define itself in terms of its differences from modernism. But is there such a thing as postmodernity? Continue reading →

Modernity and modernism

31 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Metaphilosophy, Politics, Social Science

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It can feel pedantic to insist on the distinction between modernity and modernism (as I do in my tag cloud). I’ve seen eyes roll when I do it, and understandably so. Two nouns both deriving from the word modern: surely between them is the ultimate example of a trivial distinction, a hair-splitting, a difference that does not make a difference?

In fact the difference between modernity and modernism can make all the difference in the world. The importance of the distinction may become a little bit clearer when we move from the nouns to their corresponding adjectives. Modernity is simply the noun form of “modern”, as we might expect. But modernism is not. Modernity is merely the state of being modern. Modernism is the state of being modernist. And that is a difference that makes a huge difference. Continue reading →

A way forward for Wilber?

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy

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I have not yet had a chance to hear a response from Dustin DiPerna on my post replying to his. However, his friend Mark Schmanko emailed me a response which I found utterly fascinating – one which takes up the arguments of my article as well. (I am posting these remarks with Mark’s permission.)

I had argued, following current work in religious studies like that of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass, that replicable mystical experience is more of a modern construction than we make it out to be, certainly not something at the core of premodern traditions. The conclusion in my article argued that, if my claims were true, a Wilberian could take two legitimate options: either rethink Wilber’s model heavily so as to incorporate the non-mystical elements of traditions, or “bite the bullet” and admit that it is accepting only the mystical elements and not other elements that would be closer to the tradition’s cores. Continue reading →

On hating the real world

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Christianity, Confucianism, Early Factions, Place, Politics, Supernatural

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A few months ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is particularly given to pithy epigrams. We were discussing the Stata Center: a brightly colourful building on the MIT campus, designed by architect Frank Gehry, which is designed deliberately to look chaotic, unfinished, random. It’s not a building that leaves many people feeling neutral. My friend disliked its artifice, disjoint from the things around it. I said I thought it would be terribly inappropriate in the middle of a historic neighbourhood, but that it’s just right for a school like MIT, so focused on progress and the future. She didn’t think it was appropriate anywhere, and added: “Frank Gehry hates the real world.”

I’ve been thinking about that quote while reading articles by Patrick Deneen and others at Front Porch Republic, who would probably agree with my friend about Gehry’s architecture (though not about much else). Continue reading →

On innovation through conservatism

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Confucianism, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modern Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, Shinto, Social Science, Vedānta

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I noted two weeks ago how Ken Wilber’s recent post/modern turn (“Wilber-5″) is right in important respects, but suggested important problems with it. Last week I noted empirical problems: sociological data on Christianity show a very different picture from his. This week I want to turn to a deeper philosophical problem, which I suspect underlies last week’s sociological picture.

We cannot go back to premodernity. This much is true and important. Our options going forward must take account of the post/modern world, be developed within it. On all of this I agree with Wilber. But what I don’t think Wilber makes room for is this: one can take account of the post/modern world, understand it, know it, and still reject it. Continue reading →

The Christianity that changes is the one that dies

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Christianity, M.T.S.R., Sex, Social Science, Supernatural

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As I discussed last week, Ken Wilber’s recent work argues that spirituality must be taken to a new and higher level, one associated with the “orange” and “green” worldviews of modernity and postmodernity. What does such a higher spirituality entail? Wilber points to examples of liberal Christianity like Hans Küng and John Shelby Spong. This is well and good; I’ve drawn a lot from liberal Christianity and I think it offers crucial methodological lessons for the study of Asian traditions. But his enthusiasm for them goes much too far. He claims that “any premodern spirituality that does not come to terms with both modernity and postmodernity has no chance of survival in tomorrow’s world”. (IS p225)

I would have little problem with this claim if by “come to terms” Wilber meant only that they must acknowledge and react to the existence of post/modernity – as fundamentalism does, by mostly reacting against it. But in his explanations it becomes clear he means significantly more: they must embrace and adopt it. In this claim Wilber echoes the title of one of Spong’s works, a work he names approvingly: Why Christianity Must Change Or Die. Continue reading →

The monk’s independence

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Death, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Generosity, Jainism, M.T.S.R., Monasticism, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Self, Social Science, Tranquility

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It’s often said that “individualism” is an invention of the modern West – meaning the approach that defines human beings as independent and autonomous from their social context. The French sociologist Louis Dumont made this claim directly in contrast to India, seeing India as a highly communitarian place where an individual’s community and social status much more. Dumont applied this communitarian view not only to Indian society at large but to its theoretical thought.

Many students of other cultures soon come to see individualism as a Western conceit – a bizarre peculiarity of an eccentric society that went wrong with Descartes. If indeed the modern West is a complete solitary exception to the rule, then there would seem to be something to this view.

I wrestled with it for a while myself. I used to believe Dumont’s classification of India was correct. It certainly resonated with my personal experiences, seeing how much more my Indian family cared about family and community ties. But those experiences, combined with the communitarian stereotype of India found in the likes of Dumont and Max Weber, blinded me to things I read every day in graduate school for years without actually noticing. Continue reading →

MacIntyre against Wilber’s worldcentrism

12 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Confucianism, Foundations of Ethics, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Psychology, Self

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While recently poring over Ken Wilber‘s works, I’ve thought repeatedly about his ideas in relation to Alasdair MacIntyre‘s. Wilber, ever since he identified the pre-trans fallacy, has been an arch-modernist: the world from the Enlightenment onwards has been far better than the traditional world that preceded it. His most recent phase has taken a more postmodern, relativistic turn, but even as a postmodernist he is still a modernist: for Wilber the pluralism of a postmodern worldview is a clear advance, a development, and a pretty unambiguous one.

This is not the worldview one finds in MacIntyre. Continue reading →

Chinese intimacy and Indian ascent

11 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by in East Asia, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Social Science, South Asia

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I have repeatedly returned to the categories of ascent and descent, and intimacy and integrity, to classify philosophies; and I have found that the two intersect in important ways. When I discussed that intersection the first time, skholiast asked the important question: “What is the itch in us to make such schematisms?” What is the purpose of trying to classify philosophies in this way?

My first response was that these two are perennial questions, questions that recur throughout the history of philosophy around the world. While I continue to think more or less that that’s the case, I don’t think it did enough to say what’s important about these particular two categories. As I noted later, there are plenty of perennial questions beyond these two. But at the same time, I do see something special about these two classification schemes that merits particular attention to them. Continue reading →

The story of Buddhism’s Descent

04 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, East Asia, Jainism, Mahāyāna, Mindfulness, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism

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This week I did a new podcast interview with David McMahan, about his book The Making of Buddhist Modernism. The “Buddhist modernism” of the title is what I have typically called Yavanayāna: the new forms of Buddhism that have emerged in the past two centuries, which sometimes portray themselves as if they’re what Buddhism always was. (In what follows I will use the terms “Yavanayāna” and “Buddhist modernism” interchangeably.)

McMahan’s chapters are topical rather than chronological, so that he can examine the various features of the transition to Buddhist modernism. Naturally, he rounds up the most common topics: the asserted compatibility between Buddhism and science, and the idea of meditation as the most central Buddhist practice. He takes a genuinely balanced perspective on these topics that’s a welcome antidote to others. But he also touches on a few less widely noticed topics: interdependence, nature, and ordinary life. During the interview, I began to think about how closely these topics are connected with each other – and how they share a history in Buddhism that goes back long before the rise of Yavanayāna. Continue reading →

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