The American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars wrote a book I'm currently reading, entitled The Next Step in Religion: An Essay towards the Coming Renaissance. This work was published in 1918. As you might guess from its title, Sellars anticipated great things--the triumph of the scientific view and reason, the dissolution of traditional religions, the disappearance of anthropomorphic deities--which have not and possibly will never take place, at least in our Beloved Republic. That seems to be the case, in any event, a little less than a century after this grandly optimistic book came forth from the Macmillan Company.
It wouldn't be the first time such hopes, and others, were exaggerated. Think of how, in 1968, Kubrick and Clarke came up with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is it possible that reasonable men and women thought we would have large colonies on the Moon to which we traveled regularly, and could send a manned mission to Jupiter, in 2001? So it seems. What disappointments we are to ourselves.
What would poor Roy think now about his anticipated "Next Step"? We have commercials in which we are told that God is employing a dating service to find spouses for us (you would think that if God truly is a mere matchmaker, he would manage to do that himself). We are told by political and religious leaders that Satan has his sights on us, that God is angry at us and so will allow us to be punished by hurricanes and other things because of homosexuals. The return of Jesus and the Last Judgment are eagerly awaited and the subject of popular novels. The year is 2013, and it is being demanded that evolution not be taught in our schools or that alternatives to evolution in the form of creationism be taught as well. Some of us think that the world was created 6,000 years ago.
It's an interesting book, really, and worth a read despite its optimism. But one wonders what happened. Are we stupider than, or at least as stupid as, we were in 1918? Are we off schedule due to some event, such as the Second World War, which distracted us? The First World War was apparently not enough to convince Sellars that the Next Step would be postponed indefinitely.
I suspect that the good professor simply overestimated us, rather drastically. Perhaps this can happen if an academic is too sheltered from the oppressively real world which lies outside the academy, but I doubt that is the whole answer. There are still those who proclaim the end of the "God Delusion" even now. I prefer Sellars' arguments to theirs, so I anticipate they will prove to be even less insightful than he was regarding our future.
It seems clear that most of us need religion, or in any case feel it necessary and worthwhile to believe in God. If that need will ever dissipate, it is most doubtful that will take place in the foreseeable future. But should it take place?
I don't think a belief in God or spiritual or religious feelings are undesirable in and of themselves. One can believe in a God who is not busily finding ways for us to meet our wives or husbands, not obsessed with our sexual conduct and does not insist that we believe he wrote a certain book through someone and does not proscribe death and eternal damnation if certain rules are not followed. One can, in other words, conceive of and believe in a God who is not a particularly nasty, intrusive, and demanding kind of human being.
Perhaps our intellectual leaders would do better service by seeking to transform and inform our beliefs in God rather than condemning the belief in God and religion generally. These beliefs won't go away, but it is possible to have intelligent, reasonable beliefs in these matters.
Showing posts with label Roy Wood Sellars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roy Wood Sellars. Show all posts
Monday, April 29, 2013
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Magnificent Seven (American Philosophers)
There was quite a bit going on in American philosophy, starting in the late 19th century and extending well into the 20th. These names stand out, I think: C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, Ralph Barton Perry, George Santayana and Roy Wood Sellars.
Santayana was actually born in Spain, of course, but spent only his early years there; his philosophical career can fairly be called American. And, I don't mean to discount other American philosophers of prominence in the 20th century, some in the pragmatic tradition, some not. But these seven seem to me to be of particular significance. Perry and Sellars, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten, it seems.
They were all, naturally enough, influenced by the theory of evolution. They were all not religious in any traditional sense. They all had concerns which related to practical and social (science, education, politics, art, law) matters in addition to any concern they may have had with the "special" metaphysical or epistemological concerns of philosophy which seem, to me at least, so apart from the way we live our lives (Peirce perhaps can be said to have had more of an interest in certain of the "special" concerns than the others, but as the creator of the pragmatic method he was something of a revolutionary and turned the focus of those concerns to us and the world in which we live, and away from futile speculations induced by the tendency to "doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts"). And, they all felt philosophers could, as philosophers, address those concerns; and they addressed them.
One wonders if the time in which they worked contributed to their emphasis on the real. There were great changes being made in technology, the character of America was changing with massive immigration, there was the Great War, the new movements in art, music and literature. The world was rather hard to ignore. Some think we live in a similar time. Perhaps we'll be fortunate, and we'll encounter similar minds.
Of course, they differed in very significant respects as well. But they were all participants in an effort to "recover" philosophy, to use Dewey's word, to addressing the "problems of men" to use Dewey's phrase. I think that philosophy may have returned to the contemplation of the practically useless for a time. But there are indications that might be changing. In any case, I hope that's changing.
Santayana was actually born in Spain, of course, but spent only his early years there; his philosophical career can fairly be called American. And, I don't mean to discount other American philosophers of prominence in the 20th century, some in the pragmatic tradition, some not. But these seven seem to me to be of particular significance. Perry and Sellars, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten, it seems.
They were all, naturally enough, influenced by the theory of evolution. They were all not religious in any traditional sense. They all had concerns which related to practical and social (science, education, politics, art, law) matters in addition to any concern they may have had with the "special" metaphysical or epistemological concerns of philosophy which seem, to me at least, so apart from the way we live our lives (Peirce perhaps can be said to have had more of an interest in certain of the "special" concerns than the others, but as the creator of the pragmatic method he was something of a revolutionary and turned the focus of those concerns to us and the world in which we live, and away from futile speculations induced by the tendency to "doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts"). And, they all felt philosophers could, as philosophers, address those concerns; and they addressed them.
One wonders if the time in which they worked contributed to their emphasis on the real. There were great changes being made in technology, the character of America was changing with massive immigration, there was the Great War, the new movements in art, music and literature. The world was rather hard to ignore. Some think we live in a similar time. Perhaps we'll be fortunate, and we'll encounter similar minds.
Of course, they differed in very significant respects as well. But they were all participants in an effort to "recover" philosophy, to use Dewey's word, to addressing the "problems of men" to use Dewey's phrase. I think that philosophy may have returned to the contemplation of the practically useless for a time. But there are indications that might be changing. In any case, I hope that's changing.
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