- I'm particularly thrilled
that Professor Taylor is with us this week for three lectures and also for the better part of two weeks, as part of this project and he'll be interacting with faculty and students in smaller venues as well. Let me say a little bit
about the Berkeley Center and about the lectures
before turning it over to President DeGioia who
will introduce our speaker. The Berkeley Center's two
and a half years old now. It was created in the President's office as part of the University-wide effort to make Georgetown a global leader in the interdisciplinary study of religion and in the promotion of
inter-religious understanding. It's an effort that seeks to build on some of our strengths
here at Georgetown, our academic strengths, our location in Washington DC, or international networks and on a Catholic and Jesuit identity that is open to other religious traditions and to the wider secular world. The Berkeley Center
lectures and annual event are an opportunity to bring
a global thought leader to campus, to carry on a conversation, extended conversation
with students and faculty on issues at the intersection of religion, society, and politics in
our contemporary world. It's now my pleasure to
introduce President DeGioia who will introduce Professor Taylor. Dr. DeGioia is well known
to everyone in this room. He served as President of Georgetown since 2001, and before that,
served more than two decades in administrative positions as Senior Vice President for example, as Dean of Student Affairs. He received his Bachelor of
Arts in English from Georgetown and his PhD in Philosophy and as President he has
continued to teach courses in the philosophy department on topics including the practice of leadership, and ethics in global development. Dr. DeGioia is a member of
the US National Commission for UNESCO and share
as education committee and he represents Georgetown
in multiple venues including the World Economic Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations. And it is under his leadership that our work at the
Berkeley Center on Religion and Inter-religious understanding and similar work across
our campus has flourished. So please join me in
welcoming President DeGioia. (applause) - Thank you very much,
Tom and welcome everyone. It's an honor to join you this, this afternoon and I
would like to express my deep appreciation for Tom and
to Professor Jose Casanova of our Berkeley Center for putting these lectures into place. We have an extraordinary opportunity to gather as a community
over the course of these next few days to
have the privilege of listening to Professor Charles Taylor, three lectures on
narratives of secularity. Our lecturer, Charles Taylor is an internationally recognized philosopher in the areas
of modernity, secularity, and religion. Someone who the late
Richard Roy said in 1996, was quote, "Among the dozen
most important philosophers "at writing today." Having received in 2007
both the Kiyoto Prize for Arts and Philosophy, and the Templeton Prize and with the recent
publication of A Secular Age, it's obvious that Professor
Taylor's influence has not only continued, it has never been greater. He, he spent a good deal of his career in his home of Montreal at McGill University. Their Principal and Vice Chancellor, Heather Monroe Bloom
characterized Professor Taylor's legacy as this. Professor Taylor has set an outstanding example of how a University professor can change the world. We're honored to have him on our campus to share his thoughts and engage our community. As I mentioned, born in Montreal he received his Bachelor's in History from McGill University. He then moved to England to study at the University of Oxford as a road scholar where
he completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy. His dissertation was
advised by Isaiah Berlin. He's published on a wide
range of philosophical topics including Hegel, Theories of Identity, Multiculturalism, Modernity,
and Human Sciences. Many, many of you have
been strongly influenced by his extraordinary
achievements, sources of the south and perhaps only more extraordinary
is his more recent work, A Secular Age. In his work, he shares with us his belief in the importance of recognizing the role that religion and spirituality play in our understanding
of ourselves and our world. "We cannot adopt," in his own words, "a stripped down secular outlook "without any religious dimension "or radical hope in history." Professor Taylor was described by John Templeton Junior upon the awarding of the
Templeton Foundation Award as having staked an often lonely position that insists on the inclusion
of spiritual dimensions and discussions of public policy, history, linguistics,
literature, and every other facet of Humanities and the Social Sciences. With this position there
is a deep resonance with the ethos of Georgetown, our very motto, Utraque Unum taken from Saint Paul's
Epistle to the Ephesians meaning both into one. Speaks to the joining of faith and reason that is at the core of
our Jesuit tradition, our heritage of scholarship. And our work here and the
work of the Berkeley Center, the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center, our program for Jewish civilization
and so many other areas we seek to explore the
spiritual dimensions of human action. As I said in the next three days, we have the extraordinary privilege of having Professor Taylor here among us in our community and the
following three lectures he will present a survey of the master narratives
that have underpinned secularization specifically exploring the master narratives of modernity, the meaning and implications
of disenchantment and re-enchantment and the relationship of western secularity with
present political religious mobilization. So I'm thrilled to be here
this afternoon with all of you and I look forward to these lectures and to the discussion
that they will generate and our campus. It's now my pleasure to introduce, Professor Charles Taylor. (applause) - Well, thank you very
much, President DeGioia and I'm very pleased
and a little bit rattled by that very, very positive introduction. And I'd like to say how
pleased I am to be here, Georgetown, I know that you have this running continuing, dialogue going on between different phase positions and none and so it's in this context that I'm very, very pleased
to have a discussion about the, what I'm gonna try to present. Now while I'm gonna try to present, I'm afraid I was asked
to layout three titles and I laid out three titles and then when I thought about it, for the different lectures, it may not quite workout that way so let me trying to explain a very simple structure of these lectures and I know how much I'll do today, how much tomorrow, how much the next day, but I think this is a very simple structure. I don't know, if this is,
says something about my age there's a many, many, years
ago there was a popular song about gangsters in Chicago called, Put The Blame On Me. I don't know if you had ever, and nobody here knows, 'cause everybody dates me. So, but anyway, each verse, somebody does. Good (laughs). Each verse describes some terrible doings of the gangsters in Chicago and (mumbles) and so on and then the refrain came back saying, "That's the story that went around "but here's the real lowdown, "put the blame on me." Well, that's a structure of my lectures. I like to give a little
bit first the story that's been going around about secularization in
the west and then when I have, I hope deconstructed
that to some degree. We'll come the real lowdown. And so exactly when I moved from phase one to phase two, I can't entirely predict but
let's try to dive into it right now. So, what I, part of what I
wanna deconstruct is the people called the secularization thesis but it's gonna come to
be bigger than that. Now the secularization thesis which was common in Sociology
a couple decades ago was roughly speaking, that modernization brings
about secularization. I mean, modernization is something that was broken down into a series of different developments that
we're all familiar with economic growth, industrialization, higher education levels, science and technology, social and geographical mobility, urbanization, globalization,
mass communication, you could go on in this list and the different variance of the thesis of course, picks up
different features of this but roughly, development's in this area, were thought to have
brought about in the west secularization, and that
was generally understood in terms of two developments. Is that religion ceases
to dominate how the public sphere, public life, and so in one variant becomes privatized, of
course that was a great oversimplification in Jose Casanova's work has already shown how that
was a great simplification but I'll come back to making that psyche more, I hope sophisticated later on. The second development apart from this moving religion out of the public sphere was meant to be the decline of faith and practice. Of course, not equally, maybe
some more than the other but this decline. And the thesis was, you see I mean that's, these later developments have been won since or other occured particularly decline of belief in practice in the west is undeniable though very unequally
in between societies. Very much more in some society pretty much best than the other. But the, what I wanna take as a target is the explanation of this in terms of these various forms of modernization. Now why this is important I have (mumbles) I mean,
it's not just enough scholarly abstract
discussion about history, what happened in history, because when you unpack this you see that a great many assumptions about religions, spiritual life and so on
are built into this thesis. Deconstructing that you
also get a new take on what does religion is like today, I mean, what the spiritual
options are today. So all these things ride on understanding properly, what came about in our, in the last few centuries and once again, I'm confining myself to the west. That's also gonna become
evident as a political point to that which
I'll bring out later on. Now, the this, this secularization thesis is one of two that have
been circling around in the west, right? There, in the 19th century one saw a lot more, I mean, a lot, not a lot of secularization theory as a whole but those who were propounding the idea that
modernity brings about secularization, had a much simpler thesis generally. I'm thinking of the (mumbles) is the French author in the 19th century of (mumbles) and so on. Whom had this very clear and lapidary quote that I'm gonna read you. (speaks in a foreign language) The day will come when
humanity no longer believes but it will know and these meant faith on one hand, science on the other. Science will come to the point
where no one will have any motivation to believe any more and that was, lots of (mumbles) Ponte, lots and lots of people
articulated this kind of view. Modernity if you like, dries out religious faith, a simple reason for that it brings it's weight, modernity. Science and science will
show that religious faith has no foundation. Now you still hear that today, but it's not the center of those on a central point
of those who believe that religion is on the decline. You hear it from, there's
this angry atheist (mumbles) who are, keep pounding the table, "Why hasn't religion disappeared?" But you don't, the mainline
theory which dominated the academy for the 40, 50 years
after the second World War, you might say, almost 30 or 40 years, was this other one that
I'm gonna talk about. That's say there's the (mumbles) which is the rationalistic theory. Science dries up religion and there's the more
subtle sociological one, that all these various or some subset of these developments
that I've been describing urbanization, social mobility,
et cetera, et cetera. They create social conditions in which religion can't sustain itself and it eventually, it eventually withers away with some you
know, rear-guard action. A very good book to read this in is, recent I mean, relatively recent 2000, I think, by Sottish sociologist, Steve Bruce, God is Dead. This is a very catchy title where he tries to take
account of the various criticisms that have been made and bring this thesis back again, right? So, I really wanna talk about
that sociological thesis because that's the one
that people still cling to. Now, I wanna do this though, by taking a step back in this, by looking at this particular thesis as embedded in something
much more powerful and more pervasive which are why, what I call master narratives a set of master narratives of western modernity. Now what do I mean by master narrative? What I mean, exactly what
but various post-modernists who attack master narratives mean by it. That is a kind of general
encompassing story of how we got to where we are today reaching right, sorry, reaching quite far back
in history perhaps. Which is also, can be in many, many cases, mostly actually is, held
in a rather implicit way. People hadn't worked this out exactly. They don't know the detail that is kind of general sense, that's the thrust. And this story provides the
context which gives meaning to the events people are going through. It's one thing to have you know, I lose my faith, my friend lose faith and so on. It's one thing to see that. Well, it's just a, individual event. It's another thing to see this as part of a massive movement through history which is coming forward and bringing about this kind of event as it goes along. It gives a quite different
sense of the meaning of this particular event. To see it in those, in that context. Now, a lot of people say that of course, master narratives are a terrible thing. This is what it's (mumbles) said at various times, these are dogmatic, schemata, they push onto reality
and fail to be able to see what's going on and we have to scrap them all. We have to do away with master narratives. This would shorten my lectures
by about two and a half hours if I did it, but that's not (laughs) not the reason I assure you, not the reason why I'm resisting
this particular suggestion. I'm resisting it because I don't think it's possible. I think people always tend
to understand themselves in terms of some big scale narrative. The only remedy for a bad,
oversimple, not reflected master narrative is a better more complicated, more elaborated and consciously expressed
master narrative. We can't really get away without them and if you listen to people around you, you can see that people are even in the vocabulary they use they're using terms that don't make sense outside of (mumbles). For instance, some idea can
be condemned as medieval. What's medieval? Positively medieval. Or another idea can be praised as progressive or some figure. Perhaps some figure we're
writing about in the past can be praised as being ahead of her time. I just read a Florence Nightingale (mumbles) ahead of her time. It's a, quite a interesting concept. I mean, we just take all these things in and we understand them. We think we understand them immediately but when you think of this term doesn't make sense. Unless somehow times are
allotted to different stages of development, right? She was, at a stage that normally is coming much later on. She was kind of forerunner or behind somebody's else's behind and so on. And that person if they get far enough behind they're positively medieval. Now, it's very interesting that everybody understands this language, even people who taken, not only, not Honors History, taken no history at all. And they know very little about history and you would say (mumbles) French Revolution, how did that happen? Yesterday? (mumbles) they have no knowledge
of the detail of history but they deploy this vocabulary and this vocabulary carries with it a certain
set of assumptions. So, we have to I think, recognize that these are relatively unavoidable and when you
think back in human history, you can see that something like this has always been going on. I mean, not this kind of narrative. That is something which
has has to do with our kind of civilization in the modern west and maybe in modernity now, we've kind of hoisted this on everybody and modernity in general, but human society is from the beginning of when we have any record of them or can have any access to them. They've always had a way of placing what they're doing now, in the cosmos and in time and if you like in cosmos timing could be a cyclical view of the cosmos, like the Aztecs every 52 years, the
cosmos go through a cycle and so we place ourselves at the stage we are in a cycle or it could be some idea of a golden age that we
since fallen away from. Or a heroic age like the Greeks with (mumbles) heroes
that we've fallen away. We can't really reach but
we're trying to imitate, we're trying to use them as models. And then we get of course,
in our religious tradition a notion of an eschatol, of an end of things which on the contrary is not simply a falling away but is a new, a new creation or a new, going to a higher level, et cetera. Well, my case I'm trying to make here by just a few suggestions and some people get off after this and tell me that there are exceptions but what I'm trying to suggest is that we almost always have this placing of the events we're living in now, in some kind of larger framework. (mumbles) it's place in the cosmos and it's place in time even if this isn't a place in time of the kind that we recognize with our linear narratives, it's a cyclical time. Nevertheless, they're so placed. And that's why the only way to
get rid of a master narrative altogether would be perhaps if we can recur to something, the stoic idea of the great year in which a cycle in which the universe ends up and the configuration starts again. We always have some
kind of larger picture. Now we in the modern west have this kind of picture
which is really what people very roughly call the progress picture but it's more complicated than that. We can see that we are the heirs in a certain sense, and modifiers, of the (mumbles) historical consciousness, master narrative which was it? There was a magnificent period, the ancient period where the, where literature and the
clarity of human thought and the perfection of writing achieved kind of leveled. And then we dropped off from that and we're trying to recover that level again through
humanistic studies and that of course is the reading that creates the concept of middle ages, the period in between that great height and the height we're
trying to climb back up to. And this this is modified, in the famous quarrel, the ancients and moderns where some people begin to say, "On the contrary, "modern literature has achieved heights "that ancient literature didn't attain." So we're not simply trying to climb up to their level, we're going
beyond them, you know. Quarrel around Shakespeare, around what that represents. And finally we get the
kind of master narrative that I wanna point to which crystalizes in the 18th century. And with major figures, like for instance of the
Scottish enlightenment like the two Adams, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson with the idea that human
history can be understood in terms of stages and I'm gonna call this
a stadial theories 'cause it's through stages my
computer insists that stadial isn't proper English
but I decided to rebel. (laughter) And declare independence. I hope that you understand,
I mean, stadial theories I mean, which begin to be defined in terms of the way in which human beings at a given stage made the means to life so one very common one was humans were originally hunter gatherers, and there were nomads and
the agricultural societies and then now, now the 18th century we find ourselves entering into what is called commercial society and the understand behind this was that these different stages brought about quite different
what we would call today cultures. I mean, most notably the thing that people talked a great deal about, (mumbles) talked about (mumbles) talked about this and later becomes a common place with a
lot of European thinkers. Is at the agricultural stage but again as we saw it, in the ancient polais and
also in the middle ages was won in which war, warriors going to war and making conquests and so on, was a very privileged activity either because you by conquest, you gain resources, or at
least you could prevent others from conquering you, so war became a very important activity. The property everyone thought of the commercial society is that it puts the emphasis on production in exchange for which peace is an absolute condition. War is a catastrophe. War is at were greatly reduces the over all pie which you are trying to, to share in. And it privileges peaceful production an so you get a different
kind of human being coming to the (mumbles)
what we would say today value is becoming central. So, commercial society comes about and this is a great, can be
thought to be a great events on two grounds. First of all, begin to see the idea of growth, continuing growth as it were not in history before where you have prosperous periods after non prosperous periods and then it crashed
because of war or famine and then you go back down again, and up and down and we never, as it were, go through a certain ceiling but rather, the prospect
of continuing progress, continuing economic growth. Secondly, so that's on the material level, but on the human level, it's thought well
surely, we all agree that having, making peaceful
production and exchange our top goal is much higher than making war our top goal. And along with idea of peaceful production in exchange goes the notion of greater and greater intercourse between human beings at farther
and farther ranges, right? The business of trade
is a business of trading all over the world and so we get eventually increase of the zone in which
people feel themselves at home with people like them, not just their narrow village, not just their nation, but the whole world or in terms of certain 18th century theories of sympathy
are immediate sympathy for other people grows beyond for our family or villages and so on and becomes eventually
sympathy that we feel for all human beings and the ethic which which springs from sympathy
that we treat people properly and so on is
something that we now experience as or see as universal ethics. So we have this idea that
in this stadial theory is built-in the notion that we're making progress, we're getting there. Now, we'll see that secularization theory slots into this mold of stadial theory in a sense that it's seen, by certain as it were, ways of working this out. See religious faith itself as being something that
belongs to a certain age and that age in past. Something that we've gone beyond. And the important thinking
about the stadial theories is that and I wanna look at them these two, always in these two frameworks they're supposed to
explain our own western progression, our own western history but they're supposed also to be universal. So we rapidly get the notion that what the stage that
we have been through are stages for all human beings and we can understand
other societies that are quote behind us as existing at earlier stages and
therefore in a certain sense we are charting their future and they are helping us to
understand our past, right. So these, these are two ways
in which the stadial theory is played out. So let's look at some of the issues that arise from this because
I've given the very simple, very upbeat version of it all, but from the very beginning, you find that there were doubts and problems. I mean the two great Adams, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, yeah, they thought that a modern society is one in which there is a more, what's the word, emphasis on it and endorsement of peaceful production. But they weren't sure that losing the heroic ethic of the
ancient polais (mumbles) republics was necessarily
an unambiguously good thing. There was, they had a lingering idea. You see this in Ferguson's work, and you see this in Smith's work. Those who take the trouble to read through the
whole Wealth of Nations which obviously most
neo-liberals haven't done, you'll see that various pages father on you get this notion surfacing. Well perhaps, a free society, a society which can
maintain it's independence and also have some elements of self-rule, in the population, requires, here's an influence from Machiavelli coming over a number of centuries, requires people who are not just citizens but as citizens ready to be warriors, ready to be part of the army, right? So a simple emphasis
on peaceful production doesn't necessarily produce a citizenry, but can maintain free institutions. There's a sense here of real, there's a real dilemma going, so I think, I wanna look
at these stadial theories in a few different frameworks where we can see emerging various kinds of ambivalence. The stadial theories, the idea of moving from stage to the other had three possible consequences, right. You had the consequence on one hand, of, it could be conceived
as having a consequence, of relegating some kind of activity or some kind of value or some kind of sense of norms to an unrecoverable past. That was okay then, that's possible then, but it's not possible now, right? And you could think of that, if you think that sort of
unrecoverability notion of such a thing as the
warrior ethic of the agents. I mean, for instance, (mumbles) you know, at the
end of the French Revolution after the French Revolution
and the Restoration writing is very, very famous so I'm sure some of you have seen this in your courses. (speaks in a foreign language) The liberty of the ancients is the liberty of the modern. He makes exactly this point which is drawn from the stadial theory that in the ancients, they
had an idea of liberty which consisted in
having a say in the life of the Polis. It didn't matter indeed, nobody was asking for a
personal independence. As a matter of fact, in those polais in those republics, he had a very austere
notion of the right morality and they imposed it on everybody. There's no question that
people deviating from this. So there was nothing like
what we will call today negative liberty but there was this positive libetty in a sense that you as a citizen, you have a say. You are part of the decision process and we the moderns (mumbles) entirely buying into they are three quarters buying into this modern stadial view. We moderns don't have that idea of liberty. For us, in commercial society we want independence to act the way we feel we want to act. And that's why I mean, this is Constance reading about what was terribly wrong about the Jacobian faith of the French Revolution. They following the (mumbles) made the terrible mistake of trying to make moderns to live like ancients. And we can't do that, that's not our way. You read, there again you got to read til the end of the lecture. And then doubts begin to creep in. I mean, we also want to have I mean, there was speaking of
the time of the restoration, you don't wanna go back to you know, the absolute monarchy, we wanna have some kind
of input from citizens through a regular Constitution and representative institution. So the questions arises, in his mind, maybe we need some kind of mix of the two, rather than simply moderns against ancient. Okay, so there is this, this one thing you could think about is that stadial theory could say, "Whatever you want you can't go back." Another thing you could be doing, is saying, and very good too. I mean, well lost. We've not only lost all that, but it's great that we've lost all that. We don't have to have that
kind of stuff around any more. It's you know, many people think of this, when they see religion in the context of a
stadial theory as my best. It's a world well lost as been said. The third thing that you might say is, that not only is it a world, a world lost and world well lost but that looking at history
from the point of view we are now, we understand it better. We gotta, so we got a kind of moral gain. That's point two. We got a kind of epistemic gain, we understand history better. But each one of these things is contested, so that the actual structure of the stadial theory is really the structure of a
set of continuing arguments go on in the west. And those people who
accept, I think too easily the secularization thesis, have accepted too easily, they oversimplified not version of a stadial theory, not putting question, not
questions raised about whether it was a good thing. Questions raised about we understand the process better than our predecessors (mumbles) standpoint. Questions about whether
it is really unrecoverable after all. Now, what I think is true in the stadial theory or some version of it is true, is the first point. Some things become, do
become unrecoverable and it's clear that if you
look at history in general, that since the development
of city civilization and in the Mesopotamia and the millennia before the present era, it's been just about impossible to do away with it. I mean certainly Barbarians sweep in and they wipe to you and you know, we have given walking around Rome, seeing the moss growing and all these ancient monuments, and so on, be he comes back. It's something that seems to come back. There are the certain where threshold we cross in history where it's virtually impossible to bring people back anyway in a permanent way. So there are, let me call
these ratchet effects like when you pull a ratchet, it clicks and you can't as it were, get it to move back. There are ratchet effects in history but the great issue is, identifying exactly what they are and then facing the issue whether these are unambiguously good things with gains and no loses, unambiguously bad things, and there are various as it were reactionary theories would say that they are. And whether thirdly,
they're properly understood only from one or the standpoint. I mean the certain reactionary theories that say that's development
in modern equality for instance, has made
impossible community among human beings, imply
not only that we've lost a good deal but that we don't,
you don't understand any more what we've really lost. Only people who were had one foot in the old world, whoops. People like Burke, I have
to somehow make compromise between my irrepressible
tendency to gesture and in these, I'll standback and so, only people like Burke really understand the
world that they were just in the course of losing. So, what, this is a lot to say what I'm gonna try to do here. The, what I'm gonna try to do here is not oppose or scrap master narratives as such. I think that's futile, and I
think it's not really helpful. But what I think we ought to try to do, is refine, take a serious version of some kind of stadial theory where we first of all, identify correctly the ratchet affects, what things really are
relegated to the past, we're gonna give it best. And raise seriously the issue of whether when these exist they are simply gained, simply loses or as I
would almost in most cases wanna argue, a mixture
of gains and losses. So we have to take the master narrative which is going the rounds in an unreflective way and purge it of it's naivete, and purge it of the confusions and illusions in it's unthought. Use that expression as (speaks in a foreign language) sort of, unreflective elements which you find in these master narratives. Okay, so I now wanna launch into a set of criticisms of
very common versions of the stadial master narrative which I think are, have tremendously damaging and (mumbles) confusions and illusions that are unthought. Now the first, the first is, about the very structure of them. I've said beginning that for people like Ferguson and Smith the important definition of the stage came in terms of the way people made, produced the means of life. I mean, there's hunter gatherers, agriculture, commercial and so on which is not to say that the
anticipated marks necessarily in holding that there's
some causal priority of these. I mean they could, this could
just as easily be a kind of as it were upheld by Viberian thesis that it took some kind of cultural change in (mumbles) case, took some kind of cultural
and religious change in order to launch modern capitalism. But so it's not, it isn't connected with some causal thesis. But it is connected
with what I would call, like a bundle thesis, that you can't have the important interesting,
institutional changes, like a new way of making
a living for human beings, without certain cultural
changes that you couldn't have for instance, modern capitalism with a certain kind of individual. You couldn't have a modern
capitalism without a certain kind of work ethic, which in this case, is found
in all some relationship to the original (mumbles) view. This as a theory is part of the unthought and it has catastrophic consequences when you start to look outside the European case 'cause what it does is it canonizes a certain constellation which
did indeed go together, a certain cultural changes and certain economics
changes in the European case or in some of the European
cases and it imagines that this kind of thing is
always gonna be happening. In any other case, where the same institutional and practice changes come about. And then of course, just isn't the case. As a matter of fact, when you begin to break down even the western case into subcases into different national and regional and cultural itineraries and trajectories, you see that already very simple illusion of certain
elements of modern culture and certain kinds of economic
development won't work But this is very powerful idea. People, in New York Times, which (mumbles) but no, I mean, to say what is a needed
in these other places is they have to get a
notion the individualism and important to education and importance to production, drop all that other stuff and then they'll be able to go
through the proper courses. But of course, that's not
the way it really works. I mean, to give a sense of how much that isn't the way, can work. Look at something like Indian democracy, we all say India is the greatest, the biggest, I mean, the most extensive democratic society and at some sense this is certainly true. This may change you know, Dolly and Polly (mumbles) representative institutions you actually turnover the government. It happens from time to time. But the way in which mass democracy has come to India, connected in many cases with the mobilization around cast or groups of cast and so on. Is so, out of whack with
what people understood as the development of democracy in the west and it's a, it's rising at the same time as individualism itself. Indeed, one of my favorite authors, Dr. (mumbles) will have
to say that you know, he wrote as well as writing in American he wrote in India, he said, "Can't be a ordinary (mumbles) "because the importance of cast." I mean, of course I don't
wanna hold him to this and I don't wanna say that this is a catastrophic mistake. Who could predict, but
just an example of how the way in which certain in this case, institutional structures. I mean, in a certain sense, it's exactly like Westminster. It's exactly. I mean, exactly will Canada. 'Cause it's Westminster system in a federal structure. This is a tremendous analogies between the Indian Constitution and ours, but the way in which
the thing actually functions the way in which political
mobilization actually takes place is tremendously different. It's difference as it were, reflects the quite different context out of which it grows. So, right away, maybe
I don't need to hammer this point any more. Maybe what I wanna say already, now I wanna justify the fact that my talking about this, my running about this in my (mumbles) talking about secularization here with you today, has been confined to what I think of as Latin Christendom and part, some of his successor societies. I do that deliberately because I think that we can write some kind of fine grained story by this, or even this may be too big a subject but we can't assume from that that this is gonna be
a trailblazing template for other parts of the world. And I think at this point needs less hammering then it did when (mumbles) and it needs even, I mean, still needs less hammering than it did 20 years ago. I think this getting
evidence to everybody. So I won't go on about that. I'll, let's go on thinking about the western case. Well another big, big I think mistake in a simplified version of this stadial theory is what I call it's weakness for subtraction stories. Now, by subtraction stories, I mean, stories that see these developments of modernity that I described earlier, the mobility, industrialization, and so on as having the effect of undermining previous context which in turn had the fact of inhibiting some tendency which is in human beings in a more or less, timeless way. I mean this very simple, version of subtraction
stories you very often find is human beings are based they're like, (mumbles)
maximizing individuals, right. They are individuals who
seek maximum utililty. Now, this if you go back
to (mumbles) Babylon or the medieval France
it's on this tenancy was severely hemmed in by the reigning conception of authority of community, what we owed others, what we dare do in ways in which we do or not dare deviate so this tendency was not at all in evidence in the way it is allegedly today in modern capitalists
consumers in society. What was needed was, simply removing that context and this normal human
tendency will simply emerge. And then of course, we
have a whole stories of how, certain modern developments. For instance, the tremendous degree of social and geographical mobility which the last three centuries have brought about. In the west people would've
traveled the ocean, across oceans to set themselves up in America, or they traveled
from the countryside to the industrial suburbs of Liverpool or they move socially even
without traveling and so on because they become capable of rising, becoming more rich and therefore breaking the bonds of a certain class position which went along with certain idea of what their conception would be and how they oughta dress and so on. So you can look at this
whole set of developments and simply breaking obstacles to what? Well to the underlying feel like human nature, now this is perhaps a very, this particular notion turning around instrumental individuals and (mumbles) very simple and crude is what you find more commonly in the, in the Utilitarian type theory. But this can, this kind of theory can exist in a more refined level. I mean, on a, on a catium (mumbles) dare I say. I mean, this is the cantium
if you lost (mumbles) at the very activities
of crudity and (mumbles). But the same kind of
idea that we end up when we properly get when we
get rid of the earlier, conditions that are hemming us in we end up as beings who
want to make judgements which are universally acceptable. Or we have another version
of this which is not a subtraction story, it's not quite right but it is the same kind of,
it's the same kind of effect. A story like Adam Smith's. Attribution to human beings from the very beginning of a tendency to truck and barter. They're always were engaging in small scale in barter and (mumbles) metering situation. But of course this is at the beginning very hemmed in, only but a few neighbors, and exchanging a few things. With the implantation of markets where one is beginning to
exchange with much broader, and broader, a bunch of people, with the extension of markets so that more and more things that
enter into human life. Pass through the market. We don't, even to the
point where now we have families that are kind of (laughs) no longer even as it are free from the market. But each one is getting
income and more or less exchanging services and so on. This tendency to truck and barter as it were universalized itself or as it were, breaks
through all the barriers and that gives us the kind of behavior we see in a modern economy. Now that kind of theory as you see it's not, it's
sort of like a subtraction story but a little bit
more complex than that. It's not simply subtracting
certain obstacles. But what it assumes is that there is some set of tendencies
in human nature which are perrenial and eternal. And what we see emerging in later stages is these tendencies in their pure unadulterated un as it were unimpeded form, right? So that is, that's the kind
of account which lies behind lots of readings of the stadial story. Now it seems to me that
that is clearly wrong. That what one has rather than that as one moves from one stage to the other. As one moves for instance,
from the agricultural society. Futile Europe to the commercial society that's growing up in 18th century Europe, is you have okay, I'm gonna use a word which I'm then gonna crossout, (mumbles) but I can't
find anyway of doing it. We have a construction of new kinds of identity, new kinds of understanding
about the human good is, or what it is to be a human being, and what we should aim at and what the exellences are. Now, let me come to the (mumbles). Construction is a bad word because it implies two things. But at the (mumbles) ask you to give me the correct word and I'll
finally get over this dilemma. It's a bad word because these things are not
consciously constructed. When I talk about constructed, the development of a new conception of the free individual or the fully responsible individual or the individual seeking his or her authenticity, is there
three kinds of individualism that have developed in the west. Is not something which somebody sat down and constructed. It's something which is
constructed over along period of time by certain changes the beginning, the earlier members of which as were had nothing like this in their sights but ended up producing this. So constructed doesn't mean
consciously constructed but it does mean the
development of a new kind of human being with new kinds of norms and standards by which
to judge human life. Secondly, constructed is bad if it implies that anything goes. It's just you know,
anything could constructed, any kind of human, new kind of human agency could be constructed because plainly some attempts succeed and others don't. That is you have to see
the ones that succeed I mean, let's take this example which is very you know, very relevant for us today. The example of the modern western individual now universalized the ethic of authenticity that I owe it to myself to become what I really am, find my true identity and act it out not to accept simply being, taking over models from my society, from my environment, from my parents and so on and applying it to myself. Now, that understanding of the human being and human excellence it could easily have been the case that as did happen various elite writers and so on in the dramatic period began to talk about that and it could've been the case that that just never took on as a kind of mass phenomenon even at some (mumbles) at
other Socialist writers in the 1830's talked about society of total, total as it were Altruism where people would just operate with others in total anarchic freedom at the same time, without any conflict with a complete consideration
for the welfare of others. That was another idea put forward but plainly hasn't taken on. So, the fact that some of these constructions all unwitting as they were, were actually possible. Tells us something about human beings. They do answer if I can use this refer to this (mumbles) language which still sounds right to me, they answer to a certain potentiality of human language. So in that second sense, than
I'll construct it either. So what am I trying to say
with this term constructed? I'm trying to say that
we have to go through and we do go through
important transformations in our very understanding of
what it is to be human being. And we do go through those in history, partly because the drift of
the whole culture around us pushes us through them. And partly because when
we are pushed through them we, if you like relate
to them, we take them on. We assume them. We take them up with a sense
of yeah, this is what it, what it's all about. But the important point
I want to make here is that that kind of,
okay, I want to go back to (mumbles) it, that kind
of constructive activities totally ignored by subtraction stories. And that's where they make
a really terrible mistake. If you take this fact of
construction in the way I'm using it, seriously
the notion of the direction of history being fixed from
the beginning, direction of the stadial development
being fixed from the beginning by certain constants of human nature that just need to be liberated and just need to have the
obstacles taken out of their way rather like a good football
game where you know, every possible tackler
is blocked and so on. If you think of it that way then of course it wouldn't been impossible way back then in the very beginning to
have predicted the direction of human history. And of course, it'll be possible. Now we go back to the error,
the ethnocentric error that's often built in here. It would be possible now
seeing the full flowering of instrumental
individualism in our culture. It's, that's human nature,
just a matter of time before all of these other
societies do likewise. You can see that this tendency
for ethnocentric projection of the western tragedy is
partly intellectually based on the tremendous grip of
this subtraction story. Once you accept that,
we innovated in various rather surprising ways. I mean the development of the, if you like individual concerned with his or her authentic
development is something no one could have predicted. It's a very interesting
western development. It's not necessarily promised
to be a development everywhere or to the extent that it's borrowed, it may be borrowed like Indian Parliamentary democracy. It may be borrowed with
such an incredible degree of new readings and variations on it that each won't really
count as the same kind. Once you get out of the grip
of the subtraction story, the temptation to, if
you like ethnocentrism, ethnocentrocize if I can put it this way in looking at the western tragic dream, largely falls away, right? So that is that along with my criticism of the structure is a
criticism I would want to make our stadial theories. Now, perhaps this is a place to break. I have have one of two
other such criticism which I think I'll make
'cause I like to have time for discussion which I think
I'll make at the beginning of tomorrow's lecture and then
the real load I will start. I will start with an attempt
to reconstruct a better, I mean, I'm sure this is
going to be, you know, change and change and change again but a slightly better
stadial story of the kind that is directly relevant to
understanding the processes of secularization in western
culture but let me leave you with where I am now. It's not a, it's always
going to be a confusing place so that's (mumbles) and
let's have some questions and objections and
strangle cries of protest. (applause) - Thank you. As you can see, this is going
to be an ongoing conversation we have about 30 minutes now. There's a microphone at
the center of the room. I'd ask people to line
up if you have a question and introduce yourself
briefly and keep your question brief as well so that we can get through as much material as possible. - Could you briefly
characterize how your view differs from other
thinkers, like for example, Hannah (mumbles) or (mumbles)? - Mm-hmm. Well, I mean there's a
big story in each case. You see, I, (cough) I don't think Hannah (mumbles)
really tackled this problem of, I mean she wrote some
extremely interesting work on the modern democracy on the, I think she's one of the most
important twentieth century writers trying to understand
that great tradition of thought that you can
call civic humanists. That is a ideal of
citizen self government. I think she, and she
relates it brilliantly to the ancients and she writes
very telling me about it. But I don't think that this
whole issue of how we develop from the middle ages the
(mumbles) was really very strongly on her, on her radar. I may be wrong about that. But (mumbles), you're absolutely right. This is exactly covering territory that he tries to cover. And I think that, and I'll
make some of this criticism in the beginning of next
time from another angle, Tomorrow another angle
but let's go at it now. He has a notion, very barbarian notion of the differentiation of spheres. This is you know, one of the
really, really big themes of standard sociological
secularization theory, that the difference between
us and or your societies is that certain activities
which were carried on before without being
clearly distinguished, differentiated from other activities like (mumbles) economics
now have developed a set of norms, a set up of how to,
a set of jobs and functions and so on, making an entire sphere, right. And Vaber ties to argue this
into one of the possible causes of decline of British. That's not (mumbles) root
though, but (mumbles) tries to distinguish three spheres and to put forward the striking
idea that one of the big, one of the big set of crunch points of that big ratchet points,
the big points where we pass into a new, a new era is
where you see, as he thinks, that the criteria for correctness
in these three spheres are radically different. So there's this sphere of
scientific fact gathering where they, we all understand
that and he is absolutely, his face is set against the
various kinds of post-modernism. There is a right and a wrong here. He used to think this was
something that could be explained in a way in a (mumbles)
theory of convergence on, but he really is abandon them. So it's, it can be thought as purely in a correspondence theory of truth and then there's the leave
the aesthetic sphere aside 'cause it'll take us away from. It is very interesting but
the really crucial difference is in this sphere I just described and the normitus sphere. And there there's a
completely different criterion for correctness which is something like development of the catium that you know, it's a norm which
everybody in situation of freedom (mumbles) someone could endorse. That's the correct norm so it's not, it doesn't correspond to anything, it doesn't,
it's not like Aristotle corresponding to human nature and so on. And I think this is where (mumbles) uses his expression
of post-metaphysical ethics and so on (mumbles) so I think you have this massive really if this were right, a really massive stadial theory (laughs). I mean, the trouble is all of us are still wandering around the earlier stage and not realizing we're making nonsense of ourselves and so be this would be a massive stadial theory, of you can't go back. I just don't see how
this stands up, right? I mean, we could go into sub (mumbles) depth but I, but it is a very interesting and very powerful stadial theory. You know, inspired by Vaber. - Yes, my name is Robert Goff. I'm a non-academic so I might be asking a non-academic question but I was, as far as the
take libertarian notion I was wondering how you,
if you truly believe that the notion of free will,
that's it's actually the free will that humans exercise is actually different over the centuries and how do you reconcile your constructionism theory. I mean, that's the term you used, with the idea that that free will among people have pretty
much in my opinion seem to have stayed
constant over the centuries. - Well, if I mean, I can see a sense in which you can define
free will in which also define it as constant but which doesn't seem to me to enter to conflict with as you say, constructivism and I've already feeling that's you know, I feel a certain amount of
inner tremor at that worry. I'm sorry I launched it but that you know, people
become in a certain and it's very different, they become to, become to understand themselves and to seek norms that are very different but in all cases, they exercise choices. And they exercise
choices how to live up to or whether to live up to these or they even to a certain degree, you could argue because
this is part of the self understanding of
the age of authenticity they had some say in even defining more exactly what they're
identity is, right? It's not simply choosing like that, right? But in all these cases, no matter how you define the human being whether you define human being that way or a way in which there
is one single model of what it is to be human and you've either live
up to it or you don't. There are important choices to be made and we're
always making them, right so they I mean the, the
problem with any fatalist or determinist theory is
making sense of our experience of choice. I mean, there are moments when
we know we can go this way or that way and it's very important which way we go and we
hesitate and we think about it and we deliberation and so on. And think this is always
part of our lives. I don't know if that helps,
probably not (mumbles). - (mumbles) center from
(mumbles) Christian understanding Georgetown. I have two questions or one
question with two parts to it. First one is, in your, the
earlier part of your presentation you talked about theories of modernization leading up to secularization
and you basically said that they turn out to be
false, not able to explain what's happening in the world today, even though you didn't use the words but I assume that underlying
argument or reasoning was that religions are back. They're coming back in different forms, in different parts of the world, in politics and (mumbles) and my question is, in the
context of your explanation of secularization, is what is the modality of the coming back of this religions? How are they coming back? Are they coming back as if, like without being affected or tainted or colored by what happened
over the last two centuries in the western tradition
and the rest of the world, or are they creating their own identities, you know, in different context? What's the modality of their coming back and secondly, give the example, of India, and I know you're interested in the non-western world also, to a certain extent. So my question, how do
you read the developments, the major intellectual developments
in outside the westerner tradition as far as the narratives of modernity. Our concern. The reason I ask this is even though there are
this multiple readings, parallel histories happening, I give the example of India,
different mode of democracy and all the other core
values and institutions that support the kind of democracy are kind of rising and
becoming part of the discourse. But there's also an urge to basically go with this stadial theories that you were explaining
that there seems to be more sticking to that way
of thinking, that sense the west has gone through all the stages, you know, the non-western world somehow has to go through
some of the stages so that you know, we can compete, we can share the power, we can share the wealth of the world, et cetera, and that seems to be driven not just by some will to power, but some very practical realties you wanna compete with modern capitalism. I mean, global institutions an multi national corporations you to do what they have
done or what they are doing. So I mean is there a way I got the sense that you
want, I mean there's some hope in what you say in the sense that, the stadial theories are not necessarily through there are other ways of
looking at these things but in terms of practical necessities, what is the likelihood of something different
happening on a global scale. - Mm-hmm, well these are two
very, very good questions. Thank you. Well the first, about return I don't like to talk of return of religion because I think people who do that only do that because they loss sight of it in the first place and then they were blindsided or surprised why they were certain phenomena that they couldn't deny any more but and the second reason why I don't wanna talk of return of religion is you hinted at the end of your question I think a lot of the new
forms are genuinely new. In other words, religion
is not a single thing. It's you know, there are tremendous variety of different religious phenomena over all of human history, over different societies, and even what we think of as
the same religious tradition it can go through various mutations an changes and I'll talk about this particularly in my third
lecture but a lot of the forms of mobilization
around religious markers today are quite new. I mean, are unprecedented in the various traditions, right? So for those two reasons, I don't like to talk about return. I like to talk about people once more in noticing religion and a lot of the things they notice are new, what I call, re-composed forms and
that has certainly knocked the post-war sociological theory off it's perch. I mean, it figures like,
I'm gonna quote Peter Berger on an earlier epoch. Tomorrow who now has turned totally around and saying
it's all a big mistake, it wasn't a theory. Okay, the second point you
make I think is very, very well taken and that's what I'm, one of the reasons why
there are things like ratchet affects. That certain kinds of cultural changes in the west have gone along
with certain institutional changes to produce for instance, the modern bureaucratic state, the modern disciplined army, the modern economy, which grows constantly and therefore can support a larger
and larger armed force. And this is something
which other societies have to find if you like
a functional equivalent to, or they will be taken, I wish they were. Many were for centuries taken over, as part of European empires and the ones that have avoided this like Japan, because they
made moves to bring about if you like, functional
equivalences of these practices. Now what's interesting and the reason why the stadial theories are severely wrong is that
they did this on the basis of other kinds of cultural changes, which made sense in their tradition, who were not carbon copies
of the western ones. So in a certain sense there is here, what I call a ratchet affect that is you, you can't function in the modern world in the end without a, something like a a (mumbles) state, something
like a bureaucracy, something like a market economy, something like et cetera, et cetera. You can make a list of
these institutional musts. If you don't have that, some
people take you over and build that kind of thing anyway, right? In your society and then you manage to throw them off and then build it yourself. But what that entails in
the way of cultural change is tremendously different and it's that which
gets lost from (mumbles) in the western stadial theory. - Thank you so much for
this first of your lectures. My name is Patrick Lee Miller and I'm at the Center for Hellenic Studies here in Washington. I have two related questions
about a subtraction stories and they're both about the Greeks. First of all, you mention Aristotelian potentialities and yet you're also talking about construction. And as you know, 'cause you
were the first to teach me this that the Aristotelian Potentialities connote a language of teleology and human nature. How is that compatible with
the construction stories? And then the second question is about yes, you make very good criticisms of subtraction stories but where then do subtraction stories fit into your, your own stadial theory as historical moments and I'm sure we'll hear about that more but my anticipatory question is that yes, they appear in the
17th and 18th century full blown but they're
also there in the Greeks with the Sophist and especially in the cities where you get (mumbles) plague or the
Corcyrean Revolution these moments where
societies are stripped away and (mumbles) thinks we all revert to a fundamental human
self interested nature. - Yeah, okay. So these are the several very
interesting questions there. I mean, let's go back to Aristotle. I'm borrowing from
Aristotle but I'm making terrible amendment or deviation which I think you have to
if you're looking at it from modern conditions if
you wanna take out some bits of the (mumbles) ethics which I do, that is you have to accept that human cultures are tremendously different. So even the list of virtues are gonna be different and the (mumbles) but not only that, the human cultures change over time so that the same, same society if you like, France or
whatever you wanna call it this century and that century, it's two different cultures. And so, what you have here is a conception, I still wanna hang on with the conception of potentiality. Why? Well, because I think one of
the most powerful experiences that Aristotle and Plato
were building themselves on, it's not the only thing they did, but was, the sense that we have that this is right. We were made for this, this meets something very deep in our nature and we in it understand it as fully as we might
before we realized it but now we do. I think the that is very, very deeply rooted in human beings. So you take the, well
the example I'm using here which is the modern
ethic of authenticity I mean, what is that but
the idea of you know, there's a certain way of being which is mine in one sense. But what I ought to develop,
what really corresponds to me, it corresponds to what? The word almost forces itself on us but I've made this very, very big, I think but necessary
from our standpoint now, we have seen so many cultures go by and become so different ourselves from what Aristotle was great for. So I think that's a, an
amendment I'm making. Now is it like (mumbles) I don't think it's like
these subtraction stories or like (mumbles) in two ways. That yes, it's when you
say people get reduced to that and we all would like to say this at certain, certain circumstances terrible appalling
stories of what it's like and you know, in concentration caps where people become almost animals and so on, people get
reduced to the animal. We don't think of that as the cost and tendency of human nature as it were, which reaches it's, it's happy outcome if we just strip away the, the conditions that hand it in. Because we don't think of at least I don't think. I mean, maybe some people do. We don't think of the fact that people can behave in an appalling way as some obstacle being taken away from what they always wanna be. We think of it as as them in
terrible state of deprivation. And I would hate to be that worried myself and I don't know, I wouldn't go there, but it's not, see, it's totally different. We're talking about
something quite different conceptual space 'cause this
is not the proper fulfillment human nature. It's not something which
is just produced by as it were removing obstacles. Now there are some people who do claim that certain violent behavior, who wanna argue that certain
violent behavior arises when you lift you know, this great Lord of the rings, by Golding, right. The picture there is, you lift the, the headmaster,
the various discipline from these boys, and this
terrible thing emerges now. But they're gain, see it's not, it's not the whole story. I mean, (mumbles) you
see this quite different kind of story. So I think that, it's utterly different through some subtraction stories. What place do they play in mind, narrative none. I can't (mumbles) totally wrong. - [Man] Alright, thanks. - I hope you know (laughs). - I'm Michael Lane, unaffiliated. I wanted you to, to ask you
to comment on monotheism. It seems to me that among
those mastered narratives of western modernity,
there's the idea that the, with the medieval or the primitive there's polytheism and idolatry and paganism, et cetera, animalism. And then of necessity, as people progress in their thinking, they
move towards monotheism. And there's a whole progression there of-- - [Professor] Judaism and beyond Paganism and in Christianity as the new covenant and Islam is correcting the corruptions of Judaism and Christianity and re-establishing the true religion. I'm wondering how, why, is there some reason why monotheism is associated with, with modernity as a maybe part of that
unthought of course as people progress they
will move towards monotheism and also is it that that will be essential if there is going to be a religious alternative to secularism in the modern era, will it of necessity be
a monotheistic religion? - Yeah, well I think that
there's several levels of answer and I wanna, another level I wanna talk a great
deal by this tomorrow. But, this is very interesting
point you're making there because obviously, the
Christian revelation later on, the Muslim one were perfect cases of supra-session, of ratchet effects and
you can't go back, right? I mean, as they, as each conceived it. But I think that the, the way in which this plays
out in the modern west requires we bring in more stuff and I'll just mention it but
we'll talk about more tomorrow. Require if you bring in
the whole idea of reform, that these monotheistic religions are in a context where they have various practices which
they see as leftover from the earlier period
and the life as lived is a kind of uneasy balance between these. In ritual practices, which
are sometimes called magic. And the drive to get
rid of these altogether is a very important part of the story, the drive in particular, the western, western Latin Christendom. So we're gonna see that
that's, that's a very important part of the story. Whether it's the answer (laughs) I think it's part of the problem, not part of the answer. I mean, I think that a, a very naively and badly understood reform movement is part of what produced all this but I wanna make that case tomorrow so I'll come back on me tomorrow thinking, yeah. - Hi, I'm Christian, Christian Golden. Thanks for the lecture. So a quick question
about the ratchet idea. - [Professor] Yeah. - Just like verify that if you might. One thing you might mean by that is there's, 'cause the
initial presentation the idea had it there's
something about the past irretrievable, there's
no point in (mumbles). - Yeah, you can't go back. - In a strict sense. So I don't think that's
a very plausible reading of what one might mean, because you know, a contemporary
and industrialization might annihilate, so it might happen with the nuclear technology
that it's given rise to, right? I mean, it almost happened in 1962, according to some people, right? So it can't mean if we
talk about rationing if it's to be plausible it
does not seem like it can mean that we can't go back, we can't revert, our way of life might disintegrate and revert in some
sense or your (mumbles). - Oh, in that sense, yeah. - But a Agrarian or complete (mumbles). - Oh yeah. - Pre-sedentary form of
life or something like that. - Yeah, you're right. - [Man] So there's strict sense
in which is possible right? So what one might mean is that it's not rationally possible, that it will be a really bad thing if that were to happen. Which implies that there's
kind of an inherent tendency so long as things are going well, so long as we would be in a position of wanting to evaluate them positively it had a they would
not go in that direction. So I guess, one part of the question is, if we disclaim this sort
of strict reading the sense in which we can't go back which seems false, is there
an evaluative component to this language of rationing that seem (mumbles) but the
descriptive characterization that you gave us at first, and I guess I'd like you also if you could to distinguish between the
language of not going back and irretrievable of the past. And whether there's an
evaluative conponent there from the language of
there being preconditions for going from one stage of development to another which was an idea that
associated with the language of rationing and earlier
response to a question. 'Cause that was gonna be
much different from the idea of irretrievable. It seems that that's the idea
of a certain set of conditions that have to be fulfilled to
the extent that we go forward. Which is a separate idea from (mumbles) not being able to go back. - Yeah. - [Man] So could you
distinguish these things and clarify the idea a little bit? - Yeah, very good point, yeah. You're absolutely right, I mean, it means you can't go back, niche of some terrible catastrophe. But it doesn't mean a simple or doesn't mean you can go back rationally or some kind of normatives. Let me give you an example. So after the restoration
of the French monarchy after the Revolution and so on you had Louis 18th and then he died and his younger brother took over who's a real reactionary and (mumbles). And he thought we gotta get
back to the full (mumbles) so I'm gonna have a
coronation ceremony at last exactly modeled on the
middle ages including people coming up with (mumbles) and the thing you know, it felt complete flat, did not they? Now when you, what the
hell's going on here? What is this all about? That assumes a whole society which is moving along with
all that symbology and so on and it just, he couldn't do it. Now, it's not that he was irrational, you know, maybe from his point of view, he read (mumbles) and be the best possible thing he could do for France or (mumbles) the sacred monarchy back again, back even
before Louis (mumbles) but there were certain preconditions if you like to put it that way which were just not present. So you could, you could present yourself the project but you couldn't carry it out, see. That's a really a purity factual I mean you may agree with that thinking, oh, what a
terrible thing, you know. We could've saved France and saved Europe. - [Man] So that with
a of putting disclaims any idea that there
was a kind of an actual tenancy in history to
go with one direction rather than another. It's just a (mumbles). - That's right, I mean,
a ratchet affect, yeah. A ratchet affect can be noted independently of what direction you think it's going. There's people with opposites normativities can you know. - [Man] Thank you, thank you. - Yeah. - I'm Yoshi Shane and I'm a professor here at Georgetown. Thank you for giving us so much and I want to go back to your first point that you made. You made a very interesting
dichotomy between the scientific story and
the sociological analysis of that. The scientific story is such that you do not
start to deal with it but it has sort of, a feeling to it that it has a universal truth to it. Much more sort of like
something which is more coherent, cohesive perhaps unimpeached in that respect. In Sociology, however, there's so much noises in the system and so many variations here so perhaps we have to stop looking for the as you say, the master narrative because the master narrative will confuse us. So perhaps, we kind of like
because of the difference between human nature and science, so maybe there is not, I don't know. You will choose the other to say, "Look, perhaps we don't want "to look for the ultimate answer here." Or maybe there is something there that science itself failed us in what you began that once we know we will stop to believe perhaps knowledge here some more lacking. So we're, that's kind of the dichotomy that perhaps is. - Yeah, I think that (mumbles). - [Man] Eluding us. - Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not sure I get the impression because you see I'm denying both versions of the theory. Now, the, it seems to me, one is easier to sweep away than the other that is the scientific one. I mean, look at the New
York review of books couple of, a couple of numbers ago. You have Steven Weinberg giving his his real account of how you can't believe in God any more. Well, part of it is based on the idea that, we're all
made of matter, right? I mean, we can understand our our brains and thoughts
in terms of our brains and our brains in terms of matter. And there's a massive non (mumbles) in the argument because obviously I can't think without my brain but it does not mean
that understanding why I'm thinking what I'm thinking can be accounted for, in a scientific terminology, which doesn't recognize purpose, intention, and so on. Which of course, standard post (mumbles) and scientific terminology doesn't and which is the source of this great success in the things that it
deals successfully with and it doesn't acknowledge that. So, there is this you know, massive unargued premise behind the view that science rules a God, which is that everything that happens with
human beings can be understood by a neuro-physiology
which is not enriched with any of these contents that actually make sense of our lives. And therefore, you know, et cetera. So, this is pretty well confined, this particular view, in a religion must disappear because of this is pretty
well confined to people who are still hanging on to, you know, there's lots of them, lots of them. But they're not as respectable in the world of, in
the republic of letters as they were at one time. So, we look at the sociological theory and that is trying to show I mean, not that religion is wrong any more but that it's bound to wither away because it depends on let's say for instance,
certain kinds of social relations which are being undermined by the sociological developments. It's a different kind of thesis and much harder to chase down because it's more complex that's all. - [Man] But is the, is the question that you talked about that we're using certain language with
certain assumptions about it, and of course, the
example that was mentioned again of India for example, but we still can understand
the same language. We still can look at the same phenomenon Identify it notwithstanding
the variations, and not withstanding the pattern that we have arrived at a certain manner that we can still look at it and say, "This is democracy, "and this is a democracy." But certain principles
that we can agree upon that exist within this evolution even if it is not a complete revolution and that's the (mumbles) in fact the whole idea of (mumbles) in my opinion, at least,
with whole notion of the idea of type style. This is how it works. It will not work always and it's own critique of India or other religious practices. But there's something there
that that's how it evolves and even if it's-- - I don't really see that because take any kind of idea that's typical, categorization, well somebody might argue, well India is so different
from what we think of is democracy. Look at (mumbles) with Communist party and West Bengal and sort of, (mumbles) not there any more but but his success here (mumbles) is that democracy? I mean, we could have
endless arguments about this, about whether we shouldn't
throw away all our basic (mumbles) and start again, in
the light of this phenomenon. Or whether we should say, this is not a democracy and therefore save our (mumbles). I mean, we're arguing this kind of thing all the time. These are essentially contested concepts, you see what I mean. It's not this nothing. - [Man] Thank you. (chattering) - Thank you. I'm Joe Early. I'm a chemist here at Georgetown. You mentioned that you weren't happy with the use of construction. - [Professor] Construction, yes, yeah, yeah. - You erased it but then-- - [Professor] Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm taking it back (mumbles). - And you ask for another verb. - [Professor] Yeah. - There's one that comes to mind, it's used quite a bit in
scientific discussions these days. It's not widely generally accepted or widely accepted but
not generally accepted and it's use in the scientific sense is, somewhat different
from it's derivative. Since it's linguistic sense. I'm referring to the concept of emergence. And you could say these things emerge. - [Professor] Yeah. - [Man] Now you have a
different voice there. This is not the active voice. So, and you've certainly heard this word even (mumbles) Kim has discussed it at some length but you know, what's your reaction to that? - Well, I, I mean I note that certain people that I know in philosophy and science and so on, they go ape when you see (mumbles) think that you're trying to smuggle in various things, and so
I don't like sending it. (laughter) But I also, I think that we can give in every given case, in any given case, quite a good circumstantial account of how these new forms emerge. So, just saying emergence doesn't really get to it. What I'm trying to characterize is some way of describing the human agency involved in this, right? And that's which is why I reach for this word, construction
and I immediately shrank away from it, right? So, unless I get another word which can characterize the human agency involved, I'm not off the hook yet, but I still am stuck with this. - [Man] You wanna
characterize the human agency. - Yeah. There is a certain human agency involved. - [Man] The word emergence means in it's origin just something pre-existing coming out of the-- - [Professor] That's right. - The ocean. - [Professor] Yeah. - So dragon coming up out of the ocean. But that's not the way it's used. It's used as a new ontological level-- - [Professor] Yeah. - Emerges. But not necessarily with human. - [Professor] Yes, and so
it's very useful, yeah. - The conscious. - [Professor] Yeah. - It's in one sense not human. - [Professor] Yeah. - If it's not conscious, it's not, it's not a human act. - [Professor] Yeah. So I think it's, this is a very good place in the whole discussions of evolution though as I said, in a sense, certain people up the wall and so. But, it's not gonna get me off my hook. Thank you very much for trying. (laughs) - [Man] Thank you. - Well, I think we have
a homework assignment for tomorrow, so. (laughter) (applause) Thank you. (applause)
