Theological Origins of Modernity

358 notes to pages 278–281
40. For a more extensive discussion of these matters, see my Nihilism Before Nietzsche
and Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History, and “Th e Search for Immediacy
and the Problem of the Political in Existentialism and Phenomenology,” in Th e
Blackwell Companion to Existentialism and Phenomenology, ed. Hubert Dreyfus
and Mark Wrathall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). I will discuss these matters only
briefl y here.
41. Nietzsche recognized this development of science as such a metaphysical transformation:
“Th e faith in the dignity and uniqueness of man, in his irreplaceability
in the great chain of being, is a thing of the past—he has become an animal,
literally and without reservation or qualifi cation, he who was, according to his
old faith, almost God (‘child of God,’ ‘God-man’).” Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1967–), VI 2:242.
42. Obviously, a defense of this claim would require a great deal more by way of argument
and justifi cation than can be given here. In lieu of such an argument, let me
give just one example. Natural scientifi c accounts face the diffi culty Kant points to
in the third antinomy, since explanations that rely on an infi nite series of causes violate
the principle of suffi cient reason, that is, they admit there is no ultimate cause
and therefore no ultimate explanation. We fi nd such an account satisfying only because
we imagine that somehow this series will end or be complete, when in fact it
simply disappears in the mists of time. In an eff ort to ameliorate this problem, contemporary
cosmology pursues a theory of origins with its notion of an initial spectacular
explosion or Big Bang. While this account is plausible (and explains much
of the available data) as far as it goes, it cannot go far enough, because it cannot
explain the reason for the “Bang” itself. Drawing on quantum theory, cosmologists
have attempted to account for this primal event as a “quantum anomaly.” While
the possibility of such an anomaly is consistent with quantum theory, its explanatory
force is essentially equivalent to the claim that “things happen” or that “miracles
occur.” Th e shadow of transcendental freedom (to use Kant’s term) or God’s
incomprehensible power (to use the terminology of Christianity) thus shrouds all
such accounts of beginnings. Th e continuing impact of such theological and metaphysical
assumptions, however, remains concealed from science itself.
43. Th e extent of the dependence of this notion of prior determination on the notion
of predestination becomes clear when one compares the modern account of the
unfolding of events in time to that of nominalism or, as I will discuss briefl y below,
occasionalist theories in Islamic thought. In its cosmology, for example, modern
science relies upon the connection of a series of secondary causes but denies the
primary cause that makes such a connection not only possible but necessary. Th at
there is such a connection and thus a unity or identity to the series is simply an
assumption, but an assumption that is so deeply buried that we have forgotten its
theological origin.
44. Republic 546a.
45. History in this way came in many people’s mind to replace philosophy as an account
of the whole. In the following discussion, I only consider those eff orts to use