ტექნოპოლისის პრაგმატიზმი და ქრისტიანული ეთიკის ახალი დისკურსი
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Date
2024-02-14
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ივანე ჯავახიშვილის სახელობის თბილისის სახელმწიფო უნივერსიტეტის გამომცემლობა
Abstract
The postmodern era, sometimes evaluated as a post-religious age,
sometimes as religious fundamentalism, gives rise to alternative assessments
of the Christian understanding of the process of secularization.
For the American philosopher and theologian Harvey Cox, influenced by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Max Weber, secularization is directly related to
“man’s coming to age” and “the disenchantment of the World”. Christianity,
as universal and radically open, is considered in a cross-cultural
perspective. A theological portrait of a secular city, with a new discourse
and a new paradigm of behavior, is created, a living and concrete
realization of the old age symbol of the “The City of God”.
Cox presents history in three epochs: mythological, ontological and
pragmatic. In the mythological epoch, the subject and the object merge
in the magical world. In the ontological period the sacred is separated
from the profane. A person is freed from the fear of magic, and an ontological
thinking is born. The thinking formed in the pragmatic era becomes
a tool for those behaviors that are needed /necessary for the functioning
of society. In a secularized world, ontological thinking is no longer
necessary, people are freed from thinking about metaphysical, supernatural
beings. If secularization designates the content of man’s coming of
age, urbanization describes the context in which it is occurring. It is the
“shape” of the new society which supports its peculiar cultural style.
In the era of pragmatism a city of a new discourse – “Technopolis” –
is created. Technopolis represents a new species of human community.
Here things are transformed into actions, nouns of ontological period
turn into verbs. Technopolis is the cumulative social face of the new secular
world – with two characteristics: mobility and anonymity. Its lifestyle
is pragmatic. Its inhabitant is “pragmatic” and “profane”, the one
who lives there does not need to ask existentially formulated “ultimate”
questions; these questions, like existentialism, belong to the past. “The
urban-secular man arrived to town after the funeral of religious worldview
was already over. He feels no sense of deprivation and has no interest
of mourningp he feels that the questions he is interested in belong
to another field. Therefore, it is senseless and pointless to force the urbanite
to ask religious questions. We have to learn to talk to him all over
again. First of all, we should accept a pragmatic for what he is.” The age
of the secular city, the epoch whose ethos is quickly spreading into every
corner of the globe, is an age of “no religion at all”. It no longer looks to religious rules and rituals for its morality or its meanings. The discourse
that the age of religion constituted in the history of Western civilization
has passed. Accordingly, the century of the “great religious narrative” has
ended. Western traditional theology is no longer able to solve the
standard apologetic task of covering the world with a single Christian
definition. According to Cox, theological discourse today is in a state of
defensiveness and retreat.
Cox’s critique of ontologism fails. Exit from ontologizing is possible
only with hidden ontologisation. The path that begins optimistically
leads from the pragmatic reform of the secular city to pessimistic relativism.
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თბილისის უნივერსიტეტის დაარსებისადმი მიძღვნილი სამეცნიერო კონფერენცია. თსუ 106, თეზისები, 2024, გვ.: 46-50 / Scientific conference dedicated to the foundation of Tbilisi University. TSU 106, Abstracts, 2024, pp.: 46-50