What Remains of Modernity? Some Remarks on Philosophy and Culture in the Transition to a Global Era

 William Sweet

President, Canadian Philosophical Association

Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Religious Studies, St Thomas University, Fredericton, Canada.

 A view of philosophy attributed to many of the major thinkers of the modern period, such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Kant, is that philosophy is independent of particular cultural or historical or contingent concerns; that it seeks to provide arguments that all rational beings, independent of their culture or tradition, can recognize as sound; and that its objective is to arrive at certain universal and absolute truths. On this view, then, while philosophy may emerge from a culture, it seeks to leave cultural specificity behind, and to separate itself from the particularities of these cultures. This view of philosophy has been challenged extensively since the early 19th century and the development of hermeneutics – and it has come increasingly under fire during the late 20th century, largely as a result of the recognition of the diversity in ethical practice and ways of knowing found throughout the world. How conclusive are these challenges to modernity and to ‘modern’ approaches to philosophy? Is there anything characteristic of modernity in philosophy that can remain after this contemporary critique? What conclusions can we draw from this critique concerning the relation of philosophy to culture?

 In this paper, I wish to focus principally on issues related to this latter question, namely, What does it mean to say that philosophy emerges from culture, and what reasons might one have for saying this? To respond to this, I begin by outlining what is generally considered as the contrary view – the one that is putatively characteristic of ‘modernity’ – and show in what way philosophy’s relation to culture could be said to be a merely historical issue and that says nothing about the philosophical enterprise itself. I give a brief illustration of this view drawn from ethical theory. Next, I outline a critique of this view, together with a constructive alternative, taken from the perspective of ‘postmodern’ thought, showing how one might conclude that philosophy emerges from culture. Again, I illustrate this by an example from ethical theory. Finally, I note some criticisms of this postmodern approach, and offer another constructive alternative to both the modern and the postmodern views which allows us to say that philosophy emerges from culture and nevertheless reflects many of the characteristics of modernity – a view which has an affinity with ‘idealism.’