[Buddha-l] The Malaise of Modernity

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 11:51 +0100, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> I'm not sure that reviving the inquisition is an effective way of 
> resolving our problems these days.

Well, on that point you and Taylor and I are in full agreement. As I
mentioned before, he has said repeatedly that no one should rejoice at
the demise of modernity. What he says he means by that is that the
values of modernity made steps in the direction of liberating people
from such social ills as the inquisition, the crusades, systematic
anti-Semitism, the doctrine of the divine right of kings and so on. His
fear is that the demise of modernity could result in a return to
pre-modern ways of thinking and acting, and that such a return would be
the worse thing we could endure. (And he said that even BEFORE George W.
Bush demonstrated what a disaster can result from discarding the values
of the European Enlightenment.)

Taylor is essentially a modernist who would like to preserve the best
features of modernity while discarding those features that cause the
malaise he talks about in his book.

> In my view his strategy of save values 
> and going back to the old days when the Pope ruled the civilised world 
> does hold water.

I have attended quite a few lectures by Taylor and have had several
conversations with him, and I have never detected anything even slightly
like that in his thinking. I'm pretty confident that he would agree
fully with you that going back to the old days when the Pope ruled the
civilized world does not hold water.

>  Taylor has no idea of the ways the world has changed 
> since the globalisation and mass reproduction economy.

Again, I see no evidence that that is the case. On the contrary, I think
he is profoundly aware of all the changes that have been taking place,
and he sees a raft of intricate problems to which there are no obvious
solutions. At the same time, he recognizes (rightly, I think) that just
shrugging and doing nothing to try to address all these intricate
problems is no solution. We have no alternative to trying and facing the
very real possibility of failure. No doubt his life-long enterprise of
finding a satisfactory solution to the so-called Quebec problem in
Canada (how to make a single country of two distinct nations that have a
long history of mutual hostility) is a testimony to his willingness to
work to find at least a partial solution to a problem that many people
deem insoluble and unworthy of any further thought. His analysis of that
issue shows a thorough familiarity with the way the world has changed in
same ways and yet cannot change in other ways because people hang on
doggedly to ways of thinking that no longer have validity.


-- 
Richard P. Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
University of New Mexico