skip to Main Content

David Walsh’s The Modern Philosophical Revolution: Henrik Syse

This is a great book. Period. But it is also a difficult book, much like the term post-modernity, with which this book certainly deals (although it mainly prefers to use modernity as an encompassing term). I will never forget my philosopher colleague who was invited to a group of politically active labor unionists to lecture. These eager unionists wanted enlightenment in the challenging field of political theory. My colleague had given them, for this purpose, a lecture on the postmodern, whereupon a listener commented afterwards that he truly appreciated this topic being raised, since he so much disliked the way the post office had been modernized.

Hard to understand, indeed . . .

Reading this book prompts me to ask the following, very basic question: What does the mainstream of modern (and postmodern) philosophy in general, and modern (and postmodern) political and moral philosophy in particular, represent? Are we faced with a trend leading us into the abyss of pure relativism and the destruction of tradition, or do we see the opening of new vistas, leading us to a much deeper realization of what it means to be a human being? It is, in a way, fascinating to see such a book come from a teacher at Catholic University of America, given the vehemence of much of Catholic political theory’s stand against the relativism of modernity, which is said to question all standards, remove trust in tradition, shatter the authority of dogma, and make man himself the measure, a measure that cannot be measured since all measures are said to be subjective. (I was at a conference with several very conservative Catholic theologians and philosophers some weeks ago, and to them Kant, just to mention an example, was truly a four-letter word—and not merely in the literal sense.)

Even the most anti-modern theologian or philosopher can, admittedly, acknowledge the importance of the challenge posed by Nietzsche’s transvaluation (or revaluation) of all values, or Derrida’s radical deconstruction of language, and even applaud the way in which a radical attack upon instrumental reason can help us take a critical stand against the ego that aims to rule the world by, if necessary, destroying it. But it is within this radically subjectivist turn of modern and indeed postmodern philosophy that Professor Walsh finds not only unity but a turn toward existence, luminosity, and even God. This turn indicates, and I now partly quote, partly paraphrase, a “shift from an account of entities and concepts to an existential meditation on the horizon within which it finds itself”, and this implies that while metaphysics may have been killed in thought through this modern turn, this shift has at the same time “meant the return of metaphysics in life. God, immortality, and freedom . . . not only remain real but have acquired an existential force that is all the more powerful for our inability to contain them within discursive limits” (p. xiii).

The book’s riches, many of which I have not penetrated or fully understood yet, imply that my comments—which take what I just read as their point of departure—must be quite preliminary. These are a reader’s questions, in the midst of his reading. Yet, they force themselves upon me as I read.

First: What is the underlying view of the tradition or history of philosophy actually articulated in this book? The book is replete with statements claiming that utterly new ground has been broken, that insights not before articulated have been articulated, and that the realization of the limitations of thought and language, limitations heretofore not seen, even if prefigured in some thinkers such as Plato or Augustine, change the whole way of thinking available to human beings. (Indeed, the book’s title bears the name Revolution.) Within such a reading of the history of philosophy, how should we approach the earlier tradition of philosophical or religious thought? Is it simply inadequate, or merely a prolegomena, and a much deficient one at that?

What are, just to take an example, the lessons to be learned from the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, if he did not penetrate to the core of the existential challenge of living within a world of change, where we are part of nature and therefore cannot behold it as a standard? How should we read the scholastics, or the great medieval mystics, or even the biblical authors, or Plato and Aristotle, after having read this book? Is there some kind of abyss between them and us, given their assumption that the existence of an outside world of phenomena which we can observe, and yet partake in, is indeed a pre-given, to use a term employed by Eric Voegelin (e.g., in his correspondence with Leo Strauss); i.e., not something radically problematic and clearly not the most basic problem of philosophy?

A closer reading of Professor Walsh’ book betrays that he never claims that existence as a horizon of philosophizing was simply absent from earlier thinking. Those who know his other writings know also that he is exceptionally well-versed in the history of philosophy. Yet, the overall thrust of the book is exactly this: that philosophizing has moved since Kant from propositional metaphysics—from making claims about objects, life, right and wrong, true and untrue, and building teachings and dogmas on those claims—to a more and more existential metaphysics, which realizes the inescapable limitation of human thought: that it cannot grasp the whole, that its existence cannot be bracketed or abstracted from the perceived objects, and that existence therefore has to be the starting point of all future metaphysics. And there is no moving back. And so, I ask again: What does this do to our way of approaching earlier philosophers—what does it do to our hermeneutics of reading and indeed teaching?

The answer to that question has consequences not only for one’s reading and understanding of pre-modern philosophy, but equally strongly challenges the standard political-theory account of modern philosophy as being mainly a reaction to religious pluralism leading to an emphasis on individual rights and individual freedom. Which leads me to my second question: Although this just-mentioned challenge—the tension between this book’s account and standard textbook accounts of the political significance of modernity—is touched on several times in the book, it deserves even more focus and questioning. This is so, I would claim, because the greatest practical change that we can observe in the way everyday human beings lead their lives today as compared to 400 or 500 years ago can clearly be argued to consist in the increase in individual freedom and rights. This increase, in turn, is inextricably linked to pluralism: the fact that pluralism is protected and accepted in most democratic and also many other jurisdictions, and the fact that we constantly encounter this mixture of individual freedom and pluralism in a way that defines the way we lead our lives. Maybe the author should say more about how his story of the existential turn is linked to the more obvious development in freedom and pluralism? Are they simply two sides of the same coin, or does the one lead to the other? If so, which leads to which?

Third question: What is left of moral realism or natural law, on the one hand, and of tradition as a guide to human action, on the other, in the philosophy outlined herein? To be human is to be open to the luminosity of existence, says Professor Walsh; it is to live in uncertainty, with one’s own existence as the start and end point. But how does such a philosophical approach give a grounding for what is arguably the most basic constituent of a good society, politically speaking, namely, the defense of human dignity? Is not something more needed in our moral discourse: an anthropology, a set of basic moral propositions and standards, and, not least, a tradition in which these standards have been reflected on, differentiated, and refined?

Of the philosophers mentioned in Professor Walsh’ book, Kant and Hegel would traditionally be the ones to look to in order to solve this quandary; Kant as emphasizing the irreducible freedom, dignity, and rights of the individual, and Hegel as rooting such ideas and institutions in actual human history. But this is obviously not the way in which this book’s account moves; witness the author’s absolutely fascinating account of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, one of the most exciting exegeses of a great work I have read in a long time, but certainly an account that challenges what has to me, until now, seemed the political and moral significance of that text, namely, the doctrine of right, and based on this, the importance of freedom and basic political rights.

Against this background, I feel compelled to ask: Is there not a danger inherent in the philosophical movement portrayed in the book that the process of moral discourse is actually uprooted and disentangled from metaphysics as well as tradition, without any chance of finding a new home; even if ethics (as in Lévinas) becomes “first philosophy” and the face of the other is moved front and center in philosophy?

Or to put (more or less) the same point in another way: Is it necessarily the case that morality cannot be grounded in certain basic propositions about human nature, developed and debated in a tradition which combines authoritative texts with propositions about nature, albeit with a discursive openness to alternative formulations and views? In his discussion of Kant, Professor Walsh says that nature cannot provide a ground for law or rights because “we are incapable of stepping outside of the nature we are” (pp. 61-62). Is that actually true? Does natural law really have to be dead? Is Thomas Aquinas’s masterful, three-level account of the basic constituents of the natural law, as found, for instance, in questions 91 and 94 of the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae, simply meaningless now?

Fourth, how does this movement in philosophy help us address what is truly important, in an everyday, political sense, to the upholding of a good society and a decent, dignified life for human beings? Many of the real challenges confronting us do need the help of a sturdy, realistic political philosophy to be grounded and given direction—if I had not believed that, I would not have become a political philosopher. And that is true whether we are talking about climate change, the fight against poverty and disease, or the building of peace in place of destructive and ideologically charged civil wars. Does the turn to existence so impressively portrayed in Professor Walsh’s book help us in such endeavors? I have a very dear travel companion this year: my brother, a leading Norwegian diplomat of foreign affairs, and an intellectual and man of action at the same time. If I were to describe to him how this book outlines for us the groundwork of life in the modern world, how should I do that . . . ? I know this is not a book of practical action, but of intellectual trends. But still . . . .

Finally, would it be presumptuous to ask why Gadamer and Wittgenstein are not mentioned in this book? I know it is bothersome to get such questions, when such an impressive number of truly important authors is covered and discussed so knowledgably. But their names and philosophies came to mind.

As a Scandinavian, let me just say in closing that Professor Walsh’s reading of and meditation upon Kierkegaard is wonderful, moving, clearly worth the price of the book alone, and very much a fitting ending to what I, in spite of my questions and my own unfinished process of reading—or maybe because of them—find a simply masterful book. It is one I could never have written myself, and that is indeed one of the greatest compliments I can give. 

 

An excerpt of the book is here and other reviews of book are as follows: reviews of book are as follows: James V. Schall, Brendan Purcell, Thomas Heilke, Glenn Hughes, and Rouven J. Steeves.

Avatar photo

Henrik Syse is Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He is author of Natural Law, Religion, and Rights (St. Augustine's, 2004).

Back To Top