Modernism may be defined as the quintessential individualist philosophy, finding political legitimacy, as it does, in the putative social contract of atomized individuals in the pre-political state of nature. The political structures of America and other parts of the Western World were in large part defined by this philosophy, even if they were until recently providentially restrained by a non-individualist culture informed by Christian and Classical virtues. Over time, however, the logic of those individualist and materialist zones in society began to work their influence on the whole. After all, modernism and its handmaiden of science and technology largely did what it promised to do: unlike the world wrought by classical philosophy and Christianity, the modern man could indeed control nature, live longer, define himself and his values, and evade much of the contingency of life that defined the human condition before modern times.
But there is a big problem, and it is readily apparent: we are not merely individuals, we are not satisfied with mere comfortable self-preservation, and new kinds of spiritual pain and malaise have emerged at the very time that modern man should be experiencing the greatest happiness.
I enjoyed a discussion of this topic in Peter Lawler’s essay on “Conservative Posmodernism,” in which he observes:
The mistake of modern utopianism is its reasoning that because the individual obsessively pursues bodily satisfaction, the individual will be happier to the extent he achieves it. The truth is that modern liberalism is about the pursuit, and not about the enjoyment, of happiness. The individual does pursue bodily security and comfort, but the more of it he achieves, the more dissatisfied he is. The more secure or free from contingency he is objectively, the more he experiences his existence as contingent and the more he is haunted by death. The more death is pushed back by modern technology, the more accidental it seems. The more accidental or less necessary death seems, the more terrible it seems.
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