Modernity's Nowheresville

Neither Universal Nor Particular

Photo by Kevin Noble on Unsplash

Most of the errors and heresies in history result from the exaggeration of a single truth that should be understood as part of a larger, harmonious whole. Thus Docetism hyper-focused on Christ's divinity to the point of denying His humanity, while Arianism fell into the opposite extreme by emphasizing the humanity of Christ to the extent of denying His divinity. Or, again, in more recent times, the rationalists overemphasized man's reason, making him into just a brain, while the Romantics reacted by emphasizing emotion and intuition, making man into just a heart. Both extremes reduce him to a shadow of his true self, a partial being who cannot be whole.

This philosophical teeter-totter plays out over time, and would lead us to expect that modern culture's rejection of universal truths would lead to an obsession with the particular. But here we encounter a puzzle: because it seems to me that contemporary culture rejects both the universal and the particular, at least in terms of the practical way we live our lives. Even our excesses have an unnatural bent to them. Our pendulum doesn't swing from one extreme to the other--it flies off its hook altogether.

Let me explain what I mean. We are familiar with the fashionable rejection of objective truth and universal concepts. We've all heard the nonsensical distinction between "my truth" and "your truth." No moral absolutes for modern man; no unchanging realities; only a murky, midnight sea of individual, subjective experiences to swim through.