The History of Western Thought As it Relates to the Meaning of Life
The history of Western thought has gone through drastic changes over the years, in relation to the meanings of life. This article assesses ideologies from various thinkers, and evaluation possible shifts in the future.
John Calvin contended that men is “nothing but a subsistence in God alone.” Given that our meaning in life comes from the understanding of reality and the truth, this Calvinistic view suggests that one can only achieve fulfilment through God, by stipulating that “Lord alone are to be found true wisdom, solid strength, perfect goodness and unspotted righteousness.” It also suggests that our meaning of life comes from an ultimately reality, which exists beyond our tangible world. This heavy emphasis on religion and assertation on God’s sovereignty highlights the period of Reformation, which illustrated the community’s progressive return to God, and the idea of seeking meaning through a divine being.
Au contraire, during the Scientific Revolution, Galileo highlighted the question of whether reasoning should be restricted by faith. He believed that in one’s pursuit of knowledge, one can acquire the absolute truth through the “inexorable and immutable” nature. He also supported the significance of scientific reasoning and sense expressions, which diverges from “supernatural things which are matters of faith.” Nevertheless, one would argue that religion established a basis for scientific curiosity and thus revolution. The Scientific Revolution provided a variety to one’s source of life fulfilment – empirical truth through modern science.
Apart from the Galileo, Condorcet had shed a slightly different light on the Scientific Revolution. Condorcet claimed that our pursuit of the meaning of life depends on our relationship and “enlightenment of the natural world”. The rationale behind this idea is the definitive nature of men, and that we will all eventually die. However, he also contended that “the perfectibility of man is absolutely indefinite”, and that men can progress with no limit. In other words, the enlightenment of the nature will spur our understanding of the social world through the course of our existence, and can help us better understand reality, and ultimately our meaning of life. Condorcet here highlights the reliance of nature and reason during the Scientific Revolution.
On the other hand, Huxley represents the destruction of faith in reason by claiming that morality and duty are often at war with our natural instincts. He believed that instead of treating nature as a friend, we should see nature as an enemy. Huxley supported his belief by saying that the ethics of evolution is nothing but a fallacy, and that men should not observe other animals’ natural selection process. He argued that just because animals and plants have advanced through the survival of the fittest, doesn’t mean men must learn from “the same process to help them towards perfection,” because what constitutes as fittest depends on various factors and further conditions. Besides, perfection is not reliant on the natural world’s survival of the fittest, but from assessing “who are ethically the best”, which is challenged by our cosmic. Therefore, one might assert that according to Huxley, nature is in fact opposed to human mortality.
Additionally, Freud’s notion that we cannot trust ourselves is reflective of the erosion of faith. Freud claimed that men is under a three-layer “Narcissistic illusion” which not only makes nature, but everything, our enemy. The first layer, the “cosmological blow” to human narcissism, illustrated how men ““naively followed the dictates of his sense-perceptions” which are unreliable. This is shown through Copernicus’ theory of the earth and universe, and how one can never know what is true. The second layer of the Narcissistic illusion is the “biological blow”, which rejects the understanding that men “acquired a dominating position over” other creatures in the animal kingdom. In reality, men are no different from animals. The third layer, the “psychological blow to human narcissism”, contends that one’s instincts, contrary to one’s belief, “cannot be totally restrained” and are unconscious. Our senses are “incomplete and untrustworthy perceptions”, yet we continue to be deceived by feeling in control of our demands and desires.
So, how will this pattern shift in the future? As shown throughout this essay, most fragments of theories of life have illustrated reliance on a particular ideology or belief. Previous notions of pursuing truth and find purpose to living have been rejected, be it the divine existence of God, or scientific findings in nature. Perhaps, in the future, the question is not if there will be a God, but what will be the new God. With reference to Kaku’s reading, the future ideology in relation to meanings of life might be defined by technology. While we don’t religiously worship our phones and computers, technology has shown its God-like powers in a curious way, and it has taken control of our lives nowadays. To look beyond men’s progressive reliance towards technology, perhaps we can speculate that above technology, what we yearn for in a meaningful life, is information and knowledge. It is thus reasonable to expect that in the future, sources of information will take the place of God, since after all, history has proven to us that so far men have not found the right answer.
