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" The Modern Predicament: "
Cardwell, Rhea Arlene
Nolte, A. J.
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1106967
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2423783917
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| Main Entry
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Cardwell, Rhea Arlene
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Nolte, A. J.
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| Title & Author
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The Modern Predicament:\ Cardwell, Rhea ArleneNolte, A. J.
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| College
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Regent University
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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M.A.
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| Page No
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65
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| Abstract
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Liberalism is a highly contentious political philosophy that observers either love or hate. Despite its place as the guiding philosophy of the West, scholars do not agree about its history or about how to define its major precepts accurately. This project looks at the potential Judeo-Christian roots of liberalism, identifying the moral assumptions that liberal institutions rely on but that are often taken for granted by modern people. The wide-ranging historical research, beginning in ancient Hebrew theology and culminating in the late Middle Ages, revealed four pillars of the liberal tradition that undergird the institutions utilized by all strands of liberalism today: morally equal souls serving as the basis for legal systems; liberty of conviction and freedom from compulsory moral behavior; individual rights preserved as natural rights; and representative government’s position as the only viable form of government for morally equal individuals. This paper focuses on moral equality specifically, because that is the ineliminable core of all other pillars to the liberal tradition and, as such, must be recognized as the primary root of Western liberalism. Although these assumptions have never been abandoned by the West or by the governments that they inspired (generally speaking), they have been used in ways damaging to the overall health and well-being of the West and its people. The beginning of the end was the Renaissance, when Italian humanists chose to elevate the kind of freedom sought by Judeo-Christian assumptions without responding to or caring for the duties that such freedoms imposed. Lacking a moral foundation, the Western person chose to worship freedom—and a succession of other meaningless pursuits—as the ultimate end, eventually resulting in the belief that there is no objective truth and that life is meaningless altogether. The conclusion of the project is that nihilism, as a creed, is wholly unsustainable (not to mention terribly brutal to endure) and that the liberalism of ancient and medieval days can offer an escape if the West is willing to recommit to its requirements: ethical concern for neighbors, restrictions on immoral expressions of freedom for the sake of the good, recognition of the human dilemma, and teamwork in building humble, compassionate, and dutiful communities of morally equal souls.
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Philosophy
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Political science
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Theology
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