by Micah Tillman

Philosophers divide the history of the West into four Ages. The only real question is which we are in. Have we left—or are we in danger of leaving—the the Modern Age and entering the Postmodern Age?

Some think that Reason, that central character in the modernist drama, is under assault. Others celebrate the idea that we have entered postmodernity, leaving modernism’s false version of rationalism behind.

____

President Obama announced yesterday the coming of a new age. We are either already in it, or have the ability to begin it. Or both.

(He wasn’t exactly clear on the subject, though he was repeatedly insistent upon it.)

(Perhaps there are two ages — one in which we currently are, the other which we must spawn? Either way, the new age[s] in question is/are [a] good age[s], for President Obama.)

In this new age we must leave behind the principles and practices of the age-just-past, and must return to the principles and practices of a prior age.

And we must do so for two reasons.

First, we must do so because in doing so we will return to who and what we truly are as Americans.

Second, we must do so because doing so will enable us to move forward on all fronts (personal, national, international, environmental).

____

But whose side is Obama on? Is his new age a modern or postmodern one?

I will argue that it is still modern.

Let the rejoicings and wailings begin.

____

The modern mind lives within a cluster of five interrelated and problematized issues:

(1) power,

(2) the tension between individuals and groups,

(3) the tension between revolution and return,

(4) the tension between authority and reason, and

(5) value (or “meaning”).

President Obama’s Address employed — indeed, depended upon — all five themes. Extract those modernist strands, and the tapestry would have unraveled.

First, not only did President Obama discuss the right and wrong uses of power, but he claimed again and again that we have the power — given certain conditions — to make the new age a better age.

Second, President Obama portrayed the individual as only finding fulfillment in cooperating with other individuals, and in and subordinating herself or himself to the group.

Third, President Obama’s entire Address is an undercutting of the present authority (the Ways of Self-Centeredness and Bush) by appealing to a prior authority (the wisdom and principles of our forebears) in order to make way for something new (the new and better age).

This mixture of return and revolution is the central move that every modernist philosopher makes.

Fourth, President Obama continually appealed both to authority and rationality. He uses the authority of our wise forebears to bolster his arguments, claiming we must return to their ways.

But he also appeals to the rationality of his listeners, attempting to show them how such a return will make the next age a better age.

Likewise, he celebrates science, and denigrates “worn-out dogmas” and “stale political arguments” as prejudices which must be thrown off in coming to a true understanding of the new age.

Fifth, President Obama argues that we should return to the authority of our wise forebears, not only because they have authority, but because their way of thinking and living leads to the common good, to personal meaning, and to spiritual satisfaction.

If we return to them — that is, to our true selves — we will find value.

____

In that President Obama’s Address is essentially an extended call for “revolution by return,” it is already modernist. In that it also makes central the other four themes of modernism, it is deeply modernist.

Insofar as President Obama’s Inaugural Address accurately reflects his beliefs and ways of thinking, the modernism of his address reveals him to have a modern mind.

And insofar as President Obama is now the leader of the Free World — the most powerful man in the world — his modernism shows that the Modern Age is not yet at an end.

His Inaugural Address shows that we do not yet live in a postmodern world.

The postmodernists will have to wait.

___________
^{(This essay was adapted from a ten-page discussion piece I wrote up for my students. I may make the entire essay available on my own site.)}

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.