Wittgenstein thought modernism dark. Surely the remark in the preface to Philosophical Investigations Ð ``in the darkness of this time`` Ð is a reference to modernism. He said of himself that he belonged in the 19th Century with Kierkegaard, Newman, Tolstoy, and Dostoievky (not a list of modernists). He wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a captured soldier in the darkness of the collapse of culture brought on by European modernism. In the Tractatus, he shows us something of his reasons for his sense of dislocation from modernism in three adjacent remarks:
6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.
6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.
The basic remark (6.37) is a grammatical remark about causal laws. It notices of causal laws that we do not say they are logically necessary. When we say that something must happen because a causal law is involved, that idea of ``must`` or ``compulsion`` is not that of logical necessity. What happens, does not have to happen in that way, but it only as a ``matter of fact`` happens in that way (Hume).
The following two remarks Ð 6.371 and 6.372 Ð should be read then as expanded grammatical remarks on the noted lack of logical necessity of causal laws, i.e. laws of nature. 1) 6.371 Ð that the laws of nature are in some important sense not explanations of natural phenomena; and 2) 6.372 Ð that modernism presupposes wrongly that the laws of nature are such explanations.
``Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as if they were something inviolable É`` (6.372)
Wittgenstein is uncovering a picture of how we think of a law of nature. The picture is that such a law is in the structure of the world and consequently what follows from the structure must be. This picture has two aspects. One is that the law is, essentially, discovered. A lawful pattern is there to be discovered. The aspect of a law as an apriori structure or a scientist with a language and a complex human form of life is forgotten. This forgetting allows the second aspect of the picture to emerge, namely that nature`s structure produces an inexorable result. What happens must necessarily happen. And here the confusion of inevitability or inviolability gives rise to the feeling that what the scientist discovers is the necessity of the progression of events. We feel that the more we know of the laws of nature, the more we understand why what happens must happen.``
The confusion can be untangled by recognizing the double aspect picture operating in modernism. First: A law of nature is a sentence. The sentence is formed by a scientist working in a community of scientists, after experiments, dialogue, mistakes, corrections, etc. The sentence might have been formed otherwise. It might have been shaped differently within a different system. The sentence might be reformulated, revised, or even discarded at a later time. Second: That certain results must follow from a law of nature, is a use of the word ``must`` that must be examined. ``Must`` hides within it logical as well as causal necessity. Any matter of fact, as Hume reminds us, can be conceived otherwise. In nature one fact follows another regularly, but might not have. The inevitability of flowing facts in nature is nothing more than observation and prediction of facts. There is no logical necessity to the sun`s rising, the earth`s turning, or my stubbing my toe. Logical necessity is discovered in grammar, not in laboratories, observatories, nor experiment stations. There is no logical ``must`` in a law of nature`s ``must.``
6.372 ``É the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.``
In the Symposium Dialogue, Plato has Aristophanes tell the myth of the globe people, when it is his turn to speak on love. The explanation of human sexual love and relationships is that we were once globes with four legs and four arms and two heads. Because of pride, Zeus cut us in half. When our wounds healed, we longed to find our other halves and return to wholeness. In this, Plato exhibits a clear consciousness of a terminus. We may explain community in terms of family and family in terms of sexual relations and sexual relations in terms of desire Ð and then what? We were once globe people. This is consistent with Plato`s use of myth throughout the dialogues. He introduces a myth as an acknowledged terminus. We can explain from an acknowledged starting point, but we cannot explain the starting point. External forms can explain why the world looks as it does, but what explains the eternal existence of the forms? We recall the forms. And when did we first have knowledge of the forms? Ð ``I have heard a tale from priests and priestesses that each of us lived before we occupied our present bodies.``
Think of all the would-be-scientists of community, family, and sexual relationships: Freud, Darwin, Dr. Phil, e-harmony.com. ``Scientists have discovered that É .`` Ð natural selection, the gene that carries divorce behavior, the synthetic chemical that enhances sexual performance, the co-relation between mother-child bonding and successful marriage. And Plato`s wisdom is: ``We were once globe people.`` Why not? Why not simply acknowledge the terminus in a myth? One is inexplicably attracted to another. We do not understand why. Leave it at that.
6.372 `` É just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.``
Laws of nature are thought of as inviolable in the modern age as God and Fate were thought of as inviolable in past ages. God and Fate are thought of as alike in this remark, despite their places in different worldviews Ð Hebrew and Greek. In what sense are they ``inviolable``? When Wittgenstein sorts out the confusions about the inviolability of the laws of nature, he separates logical necessity and its inviolability from causal necessity and its inviolability. We have formed a collective, confused ``must.`` We feel that we have explained the why and not just the how. We feel that we understand events and things as they are without presuppositions or arbitrary starting points. We believe we are explaining why things have happened, taking the laws of nature as inviolable in the confused sense, not recognizing them as resting on presupposed arbitrary starting points.
God and Fate are contrasted favorably with this modernist picture. It is not that God and Fate are not presuppositions and arbitrary starting points. Rather, it is acknowledged in their respective traditions that they are, while not acknowledged as such in modernism. When someone in the ancient world, according to Wittgenstein`s account, interpreted an event as the product of Fate, it was understood that he was offering an explanation based on an interpretation that Fate was at work. Another person might not see it that way. The same is true of ``It was God`s will.`` In this expression there is, ordinarily, an implicit acknowledgement that things might be understood differently. It is this acknowledgement that Wittgenstein finds lacking in the modern view. The modern view presents an explanation as if it were the true account over against accounts that begin with God and Fate. The modern view uncritically believes that it holds no beginning conventional assumptions. Is this because the modern view holds the picture that its laws of nature are descriptions of reality? Philosophical Realism (Who said: Realism is a distortion of reality?)
Modernism is conscious of itself as replacing what it regards as a past and primitive worldview Ð one of superstition, magic, myth, nature gods, and other forms of pre-scientific darkness. Modernism believes that science begins with Copernicus and that God and Fate are centerpieces of a pre-modern world. To the modernist there were glimpses of light in this darkness Ð Democritus and Hippocrates perhaps brought glimmers into a dark age. The Renaissance and the Reformation were steps out of darkness into the light of modernism, acknowledging the centrality of man in the universe and the advances of science against the subconscious forces of pre-scientific religion Ð God and Fate.
Wittgenstein recognizes this self-conscious attitude of modernism, although his remarks in the Tractatus at first seem only to address the uncritical attitude of modernism toward its presuppositions. There is more to the shortfall of modernism than its failure to acknowledge its terminii. Specifically: The religious point of view is lost. God and Fate, respectively, are lost. The church is lost. The community of faith and all its enabling benefits are lost. The uniqueness of the human being as a language speaker is lost in a morass of causal laws. Virtue is lost. Modernism, it seems, contrary to its claim to bring light, ushers in a new dark age.
God and fate are acknowledged starting points. We may think of these starting points as embedded in religious cultures. They are presupposed in the lives of those associated with communities of believers: Fate, with the ancients, and God with the Jews and Christians. Although presuppositions are the basis of argumentation in science and philosophical systems, religious beliefs are ways and not sciences nor philosophies Ð not philosophical systems arrived at by argumentation. Kierkegaard marks this distinction by the terms ``subjectivity`` and ``objectivity.`` Religious belief is not an objective logical system, nevertheless it begins with God or Fate as acknowledged starting points.
Like religious belief, modernism is a framework through which the world is seen, Nevertheless modernism would categorize itself and should be categorized as objectivity rather than subjectivity. Modernism removes faith and removes passionate inwardness. In modernism one sees the world scientifically. Everything in it is explainable by causal laws only. In modernism, faith in God is excluded, even if God should find a place in it. That is, even if God were thought to be a part of the universe, in modernism there is still no faith Ð no relationship with God Ð no tests for Abraham, no appearance of the Lord to St. Paul on the road to Damascus, no prayer, no subjectivity. The world of faith is lost to modernism.
So modernism and faith have different starting points according to Wittgenstein, but the modernist does not acknowledge his. In faith the terminus ``God`` is acknowledged. Wittgenstein praises this as a philosophical advantage. That is, from a philosophical perspective, it is better to acknowledge one`s starting points.
For the present, let us put aside the objectiveÐsubjective difference between religious belief Ð God/Fate Ð on the one hand and modernism on the other. Belief in the God of Abraham and the Christ of St. Paul are not like the beliefs in a philosophical system. The criteria for such beliefs are different. Religious beliefs, that is, are not further grounded nor formed on the basis of argument, as metaphysical beliefs purport to be.
Modernism, by contrast, does hold specific philosophical claims and should at least acknowledge that it holds them as ungrounded presuppositions. For example, modernism holds the ungrounded belief that everything is explainable by the laws of nature. (Every event has a cause in the natural world.) This law of causality, if held uncritically, would seem to exclude a world of miracles and mystery. Modernism holds the ungrounded belief that a person is finally reducible to brains, the central nervous system, and physics Ð that our mental life is determined by a combination of genes, physical environment, and drugs. This would seem to exclude the world of prayer, confession, and virtue. And so on. The world of faith holds different assumptions and presuppositions. It believes in miracle, mystery, the unseen, prayer, confession, and the possibility of virtue. But in faith, these possibilities are acknowledged or regarded as terminii. Belief in them is confessed, not argued for. This at least, is how I understand Wittgenstein`s remark.
``Modernism,`` granted a vague term, is a label characterizing the thinking of an age. It is not a philosophical system that one will find articulated by a particular philosopher. And, as the characterization of an age, it is not explicitly thought as a philosophical system. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein points out its uncritical failure to acknowledge its terminii. It is among the tasks of philosophy to critically examine the idols of the cave and the tribe. Wittgenstein posts the critical notice that the tribe of the modernist thinks itself outside the cave in the full light of the sun, when it actually lingers in the umbra of the moon.
AN APPENDIX
I don`t know what modernism is, but I know I don`t like it. How is that?
I suppose it is like a flavoring. One can taste it in various foods Ð like fennel. But I like fennel. I notice the taste of modernism mostly in the scientific attitude towards life. ``Scientific attitude`` isn`t right. I mean there is nothing wrong with a scientific attitude when it is held in the appropriate contexts. Rather, the taste I dislike in modernism is the seeing of everything from a scientific point of view: water, flowers, weather, health, the human body, love, political relationships, history, education, addictions, wine, hunting, baseball, work, the stock market, music, high tea, men`s clubs, woman`s roles, architecture,. These are not in science`s exclusive domain. What happens if you try to think through these as a scientist would? Love, between a husband and wife, for example, cannot be thought profitably in the scientific category. What trouble we get into if we try to think ``compatibility`` by means of genes, chemistry, or even paired interests like dog training, camping, motorcycle riding, or skydiving! No, we had better leave science out of this. What do you lose if you see water as H2O, a flower as stamen and pestle, a frog on a dissecting table, or wine as fructose, bacteria, hydrometer, and sulfates? You lose the flavor these words have absorbed having soaked in their usages over the history of the English language.