The Cross Section - RMB Blog

  The picture is the cover to Axis: Bold As Love by Jimi Hendrix.  I thought it summarized the different ways modern man tries to find meaning without reason.  Among other things he searches in music, drugs, and Eastern religion, which show up in the cover art. In chapter 8 Schaeffer explains the Breakdown of philosophy and science, which was a shift away from reason in philosophy and to strict materialism in science.  The chapter contained multiple dual or parallel ideas ending with a dichotomy between faith and reason.  Dichotomy means to cut in two pieces with the remaining parts standing diametrically opposed. There isn't any duality in chapter 9.  Instead it records the long descent into nothing that started with the Breakdown  and continued through intellectuals spreading their ideas out into the general public.  At the end of the journey, existentialism and nihilism leave people in despair, so modern man tries to escape that despair by grasping at pleasure or beauty.  Howev

          Whence Come We? What Are We? Whither Do We Go? by Paul Gaugin This is a continuation from part 1, where I introduced chapter 8 and covered the Breakdown in science.  Part 2 will cover the Breakdown  in philosophy and conclude the chapter.  Pictured above is a painting by Gaugin which depicts how the idea of the noble savage was false. The Shift In Philosophy As I wrote in part 1 , non-Christian philosophers in the previous eras were optimistic that from logic alone, they could produce a unified theory of everything.  Schaeffer then describes a process where one philosopher would give his theory of the true universal and how it explains everything in existence (the particulars).  Then, the next philosopher would prove that theory false and give his own new theory.  The third philosopher would do the same in a loop that went on for centuries.  Along the way they retained hope that reason would prevail despite the series of failures.  Then in the 18th century, philosophers lost