Anti-skepticisms

Milbank notes in Theology and Social Theory that there are two modern responses to skepticism.  One is the Cartesian view that “thinks of the known object both as something ‘beneath’ the subject, and so as under the subject’s control, like the instruments of technology, and also ‘within’ the subject to the degree that it is fully known.”  The Cartesian responses attempts to “conceal the abyss opened to view by the post-Renaissance discovery that language creates rather than reflects meaning.  This abyss is hidden by the attempt to establish a new pre-linguistic stability for meaning in the ‘internal’ domain of the ‘subject.’”

To the Cartesian mind, the rhetorical emphasis of the Renaissance appears to lead only to relativism and skepticism, but Milbank argues that the “aesthetic” and linguistic outlook of the Renaissance, reflected in Herder and Hamann, is as anti-skeptical as Descartes, but in a different way.

“The road to transcendence here is not through an inward retreat, but rather stands both outside and before us, in the works and works which issue from us, determine what we are, and act back on us beyond the reach of our conscious intentions.  The sum of these words and works comprises culture itself, and therefore the social order is in no way ‘beneath’ human subjects, and so fully within their control; neither can they step back from this social order to recover their identity.  This is not, however, to say that the social order is a divinely revealed totality which is prior to the creative activities of human subjects, as for Bonald, de Maistre, and the positivist tradition.  Instead, Herder has a different approach to the individual/society antinomy.  As it is impossible to separate humanity and language, he envisages the human creative process, or history, as simultaneously the divine revelation which is the bringing to completion of the natural order.”

On this view, the fact that we think in language, and that the language in which we think is particular and historically determined, does not lead to relativism or skepticism, because the poiesis of language and creative action is a “road to transcendence.”