‘In considering the history of Western thought over the past five hundred years, it seems that there has been a movement from belief in God to belief in human reason to belief in nothing’. Explain this statement, using class readings and discussion. What relevance does this have for Hong Kong people today?
“Stand on the shoulders of giants”, a tag found on the Google Scholar homepage, perhaps is a good illustration of how Western philosophers and thinkers have influenced the ‘meanings’ of the Western world, and later as a result of these developments, influenced the meanings of the world including Hong Kong, today. These thinkers and philosophers were giants upon which the world found its meanings. Tracing their influences and the developments of their beliefs over the past five hundred years would help us understand the world we are in today and why the contemporary thoughts are the way they are.
The Western world, dominated by the Roman Catholic churches five hundred years ago, saw a revolt against its power by Martin Luther who advocated the idea that “every believer, through one’s own Bible, could personally comprehend the Scripture and thus God, bypassing the church” (Lecture Notes, Oct29). Martin Luther’s thinking influenced the Protestant Reformation which radically changed the Western World and through the Protestant Reformation, Bible started to be translated into vernacular languages which made the Scriptures more accessible to the people. What all these changes represented was a return to God on a more personal level, from where God was behind everything, but through a more subtle institutional power of the Roman Catholic Church. Although God continued to remain as the centre of belief, this subtle shift from belief of God through Roman Catholic Church to that of belief of God by each individual was the start of a series of changes that were to take place in the next few hundred years.
John Calvin, who “succeeded in making Geneva the capital of militant Protestantism” (Baumer 1978: 190), was another thinker whose ideas have profoundly impact on the Western thinking. He advocated that ‘our very existence is nothing but subsistence in God alone’ (Baumer 1978: 190). His thinking suggested a radically God-centered belief. His theory of ‘predestination’ also influenced a small group of people frantically searching for evidence of salvation through their hard work as under his theory, people could not exist outside of God, searching for evidence of salvation and hence their meanings, through hard work was central to their lives.
The Protestant Reformation influenced a group of people who believed God bypassing the Church, although there remained other groups of people who remained to believe God through Roman Catholic Church. In both cases, God was the center of their belief.
Later in the 16th century, Galileo argued that God could also be understood through nature as nature was a creation of God too. To him, truth should not just come from Bible Scriptures but ‘from sense-experiences and necessary demonstration’ (Baumer 1978: 317). In this, both nature and man entered the picture of the determination of truth and meaning and there emerged the pursuit of understanding the world through scientific knowledge till today.
Once man enters the picture of the determination of meaning, a belief in the ever bettering of human mind to make this world a better place was demonstrated by Condorcet’s optimistic view on the capability of human minds that ‘no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties’ (Baumer 1978: 454) and God was not even mentioned. His belief in the progress of human mind and how it could be relied upon to achieve the general welfare of the human species form the basis of many concepts that we still hear today: liberal economy, equal universal human rights etc. Huxley also believed that nature is the enemy of our morality and it is our responsibility to make ethical choices, an indication to show his belief in human reasoning.
Condorcet’s optimistic view on the human reasoning was then overshadowed by Freud’s view that human ‘mental processes are in themselves unconscious and only reach the ego and come under its control through incomplete and untrustworthy perceptions’ (Baumer 1978: 711). His argument suggested that the human reasoning Condorcet so optimistically believed in was actually ‘not master in its own house’.
This change in belief from God to human reasoning to nothing influenced by thinkers from John Calvin, Galileo, to Condorcet and finally Freud leaves traces that can still be seen in Hong Kong today. There are people in Hong Kong, who are either believers of God through Catholic Church or through the way preached by Protestantism. Understanding how the world works (mainly natural world) through scientific discovery is still the undertaking of many today, although not a major industry in Hong Kong today, schools in Hong Kong churn out students trained and understood the world through scientific theories such as evolution and the big bang. Liberal economy is what Hong Kong has stood for since its founding day and is what sets it apart from the more controlled mainland. Idea such as universal human right is also valued in Hong Kong with Equal Opportunities Commissions overseeing its working. There are also people who do not fully believe in anything and is high skeptical of the way capitalism has developed in Hong Kong that leave the marginal groups with little ways to fend for themselves. The impact of Freud’s theory on ‘the ego is not master in its own house’ might have impacted the way people who suffered from certain confirmed mental illness are given different sentence under the judicial system. On a larger part of the society however, his theory seems to have less impact on the people of Hong Kong today. People are largely expected to be responsible for their own moral choices.
A snapshot of Hong Kong society’s beliefs reveals that the beliefs in God, human reasoning and other Chinese cultural values form a composite of value system that people in Hong Kong are free to pick and choose the ones they prefer, very much like the way they pick and choose their favorite restaurants in town. One single version of reality was never a belief in the Chinese culture since the early days and hence a change in the belief from God to nothing in the Western hemisphere simply added more items for people in Hong Kong to pick and choose on top of an array of values already full of different items.
