In an examination of the underlying philosophical issues of our times, philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart wrote, in a 2011 article for First Things, “all of modernity is a condition of alienation.”
By alienation, Hart means a lack of a sense of belonging; the state of estrangement or disconnect from the world and from reality. Most people seem to feel this deeply, although it is often difficult to articulate.
Alienation here is not meant in the Marxist usage of the term. Whereas Karl Marx looked at alienation through a materialistic lens and saw it as emanating from workers’ detachment from the products of their labor, Hart is getting at something much, much deeper.
The modern state of alienation is tied up with nihilism and atheism, and the three of these are in a dynamic interaction. The modern world, to many of us, appears chaotic, meaningless and godless.
It is as if we are strangers to the world and it often feels as though we do not have a purposeful place in the universe.
This type of alienation arises when we either deny or cannot see the transcendent realm in the world. This realm of transcendence, in turn, can arise into consciousness when we stand in contemplation of, as Martin Heidegger put it, “the wonder of all wonders: that anything exists at all, rather than nothing.”
In a sense, this is not an easy thing to do because we are so accustomed to taking existence itself for granted.
As Percy Blysse Shelley said, “The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being.”
When we lose reverence for this mystery of all mysteries, we become alienated from the world. And without that reverence, our faculty to wonder and revere at all begins to erode.
This is the state of our modern world. Our culture is rotting from its deepest roots, from the level of spirituality, because nowadays we take so much for granted, including existence itself.
When we take things for granted, including and most importantly “Being” itself, we build up walls around our individual selves and begin the process of making ourselves absolute, isolated and seemingly self-sufficient. This walling up is precisely the state of psychological or spiritual pride.
Pride is a sort of closing-off from the world, from reality and from other people. Most fundamentally, at its deepest level, pride occurs when a being cuts themselves off from Being itself.
The loss of wonder at the mystery of existence leads to the building of the first, all-encompassing barrier between ourselves and the deepest layer of reality.
It is the road to the severance between us and the transcendent realm; a realm that is in this world but not of this world.
Conversely, reverence of the mystery of being necessarily brings one down to the deepest connection with reality, which is to say it brings one to a profound state of humility.
In a state of humility, there is a permeability between ourselves and the realm of transcendence, which intimately connects us with the world and with the Being of every being.
This connectedness produces a sense of belonging, order and meaning. And, importantly, it gives us a deep gratitude for existence which in turn allows us to be grateful for everything.
Bringing oneself down to the level of recognition and appreciation for, as Jacques Maritain put it, Being’s “victorious thrust over nothingness” is often difficult.
As metaphysician and Jesuit priest W. Norris Clarke laid out: “To bring into explicit focus . . . this deep-lying act of existence at the core of every being, as the ultimate bond of union between all real things, does not come easily to a common-sense vision of the world, more concerned with what things are and how they act than that they are.”
Clarke continues: “There is required a kind of . . . awakening of the sense of wonder at the marvel that anything is actually present at all.”
The interplay of modern nihilism, atheism, alienation and pride make this awakening difficult.
David Bentley Hart explains modern thinking as “a ‘rationality’ of the narrowest kind, so obsessed with what things are and how they might be used that it is no longer seized by the wonder when it stands in the light of the dazzling truth that things are.
It is a rationality that no longer knows how to hesitate before this greater mystery, or even to see that it is there, and thus it is a rationality that cannot truly think.”
What Hart is getting at here is what philosopher Gabriel Marcel meant when he said: “This world is, on the one hand, riddled with problems and on the other, determined to allow no room for mystery.”
By looking at things in terms of how we can use them, we can drift towards looking at life itself as a series of problems to solve.
But, as Marcel said, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”
William Blake once said: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” This cleansing of the doors of perception is the same as the state of humility where we become permeable with Being itself.
Aldous Huxley called this state “egolessness.” He said, “In the final stage of egolessness there is an ‘obscure knowledge’ that All is in all—that All is actually each.”
This level of reality is, as Huxley put it, “an infinite which passes all understanding and yet admits of being directly and in some sort totally apprehended.
It is a transcendence belonging to another order than the human, and yet it may be present to us as a felt immanence, an experienced participation.”
As Huxley goes on to say: “Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be.” Indeed, it is. And it all starts with revering the mystery of being.
Sam Dugan is a fourth-year student majoring in economics and philosophy. ✉ SD829860@wcupa.edu.
Mirabile scriptu!