A Review of Religion and the Modern Mind by Walter Terence Stace

A Review of the Book

Religion and the Modern Mind

Vahid Hallaj

     In 1998, when the first edition of the Persian translation of the book “Religion and the Modern Mind[1]” was published, Walter Terence Stace[2] was not an unknown author among Iran’s reading public. Previously, his books “The Philosophy of Hegel[3]”, “Selections from the Writings of...[4]”, and “Mysticism and Philosophy[5]” had been published, and those in the field were familiar with his views.

     “Religion and the Modern Mind” is, in the first instance, a report; a report of an event, the transition from the medieval world, where humanity was under the dominion of religion, to the modern world, where scientism and naturalism are the dominant attitudes. Stace’s endeavor in the first part of this book is to narrate this transition, as far as possible, impartially and without value judgment. He considers the three concepts of God, the purpose of the world, and the moral order of the world as the fundamental concepts in the medieval worldview, whose alteration was the principal consequence of the modern worldview.

     Belief in the existence of a personal God is the hallmark of the medieval world. In Stace's view, the creator God can only be used in its true sense, and this entails anthropomorphism about God. “If your conception of God is in any sense that of a person, a mind, or a spirit—however much you may realize the inadequacy of such words, however much you may try to avoid their crude and ordinary meanings as applied to men, you cannot help being anthropomorphic, you cannot help thinking of God in terms of your conception of human minds, because you have no other materials out of which to fashion your conception of him. In short, the concept of God is inevitably and necessarily anthropomorphic.[6]” We will see later that Stace rejects this conception of God and considers it incorrect. The anthropomorphic view of God leads us to another characteristic of the medieval outlook: the world has a purpose. Let us look at Aristotle's four causes: the efficient cause, the material cause, the formal cause, and the final cause. The final cause is precisely what is prominent in the medieval and religious explanation of the world and is set aside in the scientific explanation. To approach the author's intent, let us call explanation based on the first three causes causal explanation, and explanation based on the fourth cause teleological explanation. It can be said that causal explanation is the explanation of things that push the event from behind, while teleological explanation deals with things that pull the event toward themselves, forward. The purposiveness of the world's affairs brings our minds closer to the argument from design. The argument from design seeks to prove a designer, although the author extensively criticizes the argument from design on pages 103 to 111 of the book and concludes that this argument entails begging the question, in that it seeks to prove something it has already assumed. Nevertheless, if we believe in a designer God who is pure goodness, omniscient, and omnipotent, and if we consider the world's affairs as serving purposes, then those purposes will necessarily be good, and the world's order is also good. This is the third characteristic of the religious outlook, namely, that the world is a moral order. The world's being moral is equivalent to the objectivity of ethics. As Stace says, “The assertion that ‘moral values are objective’ is identical in meaning with the assertion that ‘the world is a moral order.’[7]” And “ethical subjectivism is characteristic of modern thought.[8]” In other words, every religious outlook on the world entails objectivism in ethics, although the reverse is not true, and on the other hand, subjectivism in ethics is definitely opposed to the religious outlook on the world. But what is meant by subjectivism and objectivism in ethics, and why is one aligned with the religious outlook and the other in harmony with the modern outlook? As Stace says, “Any value will be said to be subjective if its existence is, wholly or partly, dependent on human desires, feelings, opinions, or other mental states. An objective value will, of course, be the opposite of a subjective one, not being dependent on any desire, feeling, or other mental state.[9]” That is, “any theory which holds that moral values are dependent on anything which is not merely a part of the human mind, but is something of which we ordinarily speak as being outside the human mind, will be a form of objectivism.[10]” And the belief that every good and evil depends on the divine will[11] is one instance of objectivism.

     So far we have spoken of three main characteristics of the religious outlook in the Middle Ages, but the question is: upon what was this outlook founded? Stace tells us that this outlook was built upon a mixture of scientific and philosophical views. The belief in a geocentric universe and its transformation into a heliocentric solar system is a discussion to which the author devotes many pages of the book, in order to show how a change in belief regarding a scientific principle—which seemingly could have no connection to God and religion—could bring about a transition from a religious belief to a naturalistic one. The story of this change begins with Copernicus. In 1530, he published the book “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres[12]” and in this book, by proposing the heliocentric theory in place of the geocentric one, which was the dominant belief in the pre-modern era, he challenged the Ptolemaic astronomical system. The Ptolemaic system was based on three main hypotheses: “First, that the earth is at the center of the universe; second, that all celestial bodies revolve around the earth; third, that the orbits of their motion around the earth are circular.[13]” “The Greeks, including Plato, imagined that the celestial bodies were divine beings. Moreover, they thought that the circle was the only perfect shape. Therefore, since the celestial bodies are divine, their motions must be perfect, that is, circular.[14]”

     It became clear that the belief in the circularity of the orbits of celestial bodies was a philosophical-theological belief and not a conviction derived from scientific experience and observation; hence, opposing it was no simple matter, as it could entail religious consequences. Assuming the orbits of the planets to be circular confronted astronomers with problems. Astronomers had noticed irregularities in the motion of the planets that single circular orbits revolving around the earth could not explain. The solution devised in Ptolemaic astronomy was epicycles[15], that is, adding other circles whose edges rested upon the orbital circles in order to account for the perturbations in planetary motion. The number of these orbits sometimes became so great that it practically made calculation very difficult; for instance, “it turned out that seven circles and eighty epicycles, and no fewer, were necessary to explain the motion of the known bodies of the solar system.[16]” Copernicus’s innovation was to shift the center of the solar system from the earth to the sun; that is, instead of assuming that the planets revolve around the earth, we base our view on the premise that the planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun. Was Copernicus’s method based on observation and experience? No, Copernicus was still breathing the atmosphere of the rational, pre-empirical science of the ancient world. The reason that led him to transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism was simply the facilitation of calculation and the reduction of its complexity. By doing this, Copernicus was able to reduce the number of epicycles from the eighty of the Ptolemaic system to thirty-four. Yet the theological belief in the perfection of the circular form still dominated the astronomical sphere. With the arrival of Kepler, this problem was also solved. Through a revolutionary innovation, Kepler managed to rid astronomy of the thirty-four remaining Copernican epicycles as well. He posited the orbits of the planets as elliptical, and by doing so, he was able to completely set aside the Ptolemaic theory of epicycles. With Copernicus and Kepler, we are still in the sixteenth century, and we are a few years away from the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, which, according to the author, is the turning point between the medieval outlook and the modern one.

      Galileo is the next pivotal figure. The great difference between Galileo and the astronomers before him, Kepler and Copernicus, lies in his method. Galileo was an empiricist who investigated phenomena through observation and experiment. He “built the first astronomical telescope and, by turning its lens toward the moon, discovered that this celestial sphere is not a perfect spherical body, but is wrinkled with mountains and valleys. This discovery was like driving a nail into the coffin of the medieval worldview, for it had always been imagined that heavenly bodies must be perfect spheres, for the same reason that their orbits must be perfect circles; the sphere was the only flawless spatial form. The existence of mountains and valleys on the moon also made it probable that the moon is composed of coarse, rough material like that of the earth, whereas the medieval theory held that only the earth is made of coarse, rough material, and since the heavenly bodies are closer to the divine realm, they are composed of a special, subtle, semi-divine substance.[17]”  Galileo’s other great discovery was the first law of motion. Let us recall Newton’s first law: “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.” Although Galileo did not explicitly state this principle, it can be understood from his writings that he subscribed to it. But where does the importance of this principle lie? In that henceforth scientists could “explain the motions of the planets and other celestial bodies without resorting to the hypothesis of spirits or angels present in popular thought, or to Cartesian vortices.[18]” So far we have reported two important developments: one, the shift in belief from geocentrism to heliocentrism and the abandonment of considering the spheres as circles; and the other, the explanation of planetary motions through physical laws, with no need to explain them through God or divine beings. These two developments do not logically harm religiosity, but as the author says repeatedly in the book, we are faced with a psychological transition and not a purely logical one. This transition reached its zenith with Newtonian physics: the endeavor to provide a causal explanation for all events in the natural world.

     We said earlier that Stace considers two types of explanation: causal explanation and teleological explanation. In the ancient world, teleological explanation was the most important, meaning events were explained in terms of their purposes. For what reason were the cloud, the wind, the moon, the sun, and the firmament created and set in motion? To serve humanity and bring it to perfection. This is a religious explanation, but what does modern science do? It seeks the material causes of the emergence of phenomena. The question here is, are these mutually contradictory? Can one not engage in both causal and teleological explanation? Stace says one can, but what happened was that when causal explanation could provide us with an answer, there was no longer any need to introduce another explanation. In the midst of this, what happens to God? Theism turns into Deism; the God who administered all affairs and was active at every moment became a distant God who, in a remote time, laid down the rules of the universe and then sat aside, letting the rules do their work.

     In the book under discussion, two psychological effects of Newtonian science on religiosity are presented: 1) a sense of remoteness from God, 2) the explanation of all material events through natural causes. As we said, these two developments were correlated with two major characteristics of the medieval religious outlook: 1) the world is governed by God or spiritual forces, 2) the world is moving toward a purpose; and the scientific discoveries and theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seriously challenged these two characteristics. But what became of morality? We said that any theory about the nature of moral value that is not somehow dependent on human psychological states objectifies that moral value. "Now suppose that human beings lose their effective beliefs in God or the purpose of the world. What will be the consequences of this for their conceptions of moral good and evil? They can no longer define good and evil in terms of divine or cosmic purposes. Yet, because of the principle that anything valuable must have a valuable purpose, it must be defined in terms of some kind of purpose. Therefore, human beings must find purposes other than divine or cosmic ones upon which to base moral values. What other purposes are there? There are no purposes except human purposes.[19]" And this is the subjectivization of moral values.

Modern Science and Philosophy

     The seventh chapter of the book "Religion and the Modern Mind" deals with the consequences of modern science for philosophy. So far, we have seen what characteristics the religious outlook and the modern outlook possessed, and how, with the alteration of those characteristics, the transition from the old world to the new world took place. The author's descriptive work is complete up to this point; that is, he has finished his report. But Stace also seeks to present a prescriptive theory, and this chapter should be seen as a bridge between the first part of this book, which was merely a description of events, and the second part, which seeks to offer a prescriptive theory.

     Stace summarizes the prominent philosophers and philosophical currents from the sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth century in the following table:

Philosophies that express the scientific view of the world	Philosophies that react and protest in support of the religious view
Descartes	Descartes
Hobbes	Berkeley
Hume	Kant
Auguste Comte	Hegel and the post-Kantian idealists
Vaihinger	The Romantic school
Logical positivists	English and American absolute idealists

Although Stace provides an account of the philosophies of Descartes, Berkeley, Comte, Hume, and the idealists, skipping over them does not significantly harm the course of the discussion in the book; only two members of the second group, namely Kant and the Romantic school, merit further reflection insofar as they are a prelude to Stace's positive view. Kant, according to Stace's account, defends two worlds: the phenomenal world, or the spatiotemporal world that we perceive through the agency of our minds under the twelve categories, and the real world, about which "nothing can be known or proved, but we can accept as a postulate that this world is the world to which our religious discoveries and intuitions refer and in which they are true. Regarding the spatiotemporal world of appearance, the naturalistic or scientific way of thinking will be one hundred percent true.[20]" Kant said of the real world that we merely know that something exists, but regarding its nature, due to the limitations of our minds, we can know nothing. He said the same about God: "God, as ultimate reality, is not in the world of appearance, in the spatiotemporal world, but in the world of things-in-themselves. Hence, any attempt to understand what God is necessarily leads to contradictions, because the structure of our minds only allows us access to appearances.[21]"

If we consider the seventeenth century the century of scientific revolution and the beginning of modern empirical science, the eighteenth century the beginning of religious skepticism arising from the dominance of naturalism, then the nineteenth century must be regarded as the century of reactions against naturalism and a renewed support for the religious outlook. The turning point of these reactions was in the philosophy of Kant, and after him, in the schools and philosophers influenced by Kant, including Romanticism. “According to the Romantic view, the world we perceive with our senses and our reason (our head)—that is, the world of space and time—is merely an appearance or manifestation of a deeper, hidden spiritual quality that lies beyond it.[22]” The similarity between the Romantics and Kant is that both speak of two worlds: a world that appears to us and a world that lies beyond this appearance, which is deeper and more real. However, the difference between the two is that Kant said we are incapable of knowing that real world, whereas the Romantics said we can know that world with our heart and feeling—perhaps something akin to Pascal’s famous statement that “the heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.”

Current Problems

The twentieth century was the century of a return to scientism. Stace says that in this century, three movements or three schools emerged in philosophy: one was Realism, another Pragmatism, and the third Positivism, all three in opposition to Idealism, which had flourished in the nineteenth century. Since Stace published this book in 1952, whatever he says about the twentieth century actually pertains to the first half of the century. How did he view naturalism? Was it desirable to him? And did he foresee any change in the future? He himself says, “For my part, I see no sign of anything but the continued dominance of science and the naturalistic view of the world.[23]” He writes that the natural consequence of naturalism is the absurdity of human life. This emptying of human life of meaning is the spiritual sickness of the modern age, and its cause is naturalism. Is there a way to liberation? Stace, though despairingly, tries to show us a way out.

Return to Religion; the Religion of the Saints

There is another way, if you have the heart and courage.

The first way I can describe in familiar terms

Because you have seen it, just as we all have seen it,

Illustrated, more or less, in the lives of those around us.

The second way is unknown, and therefore requires faith—the kind of faith that arises from despair.

The destination is indescribable;

Until you reach it, you will know little;

You will travel blindly. But the way itself leads to obtaining what you mistakenly sought elsewhere.

The poetic fragment above is part of the play “The Cocktail Party” by T.S. Eliot. Elsewhere, Eliot says: “But such a state can only be hinted at; in myths and images. To speak of it is to speak of darkness, corridors, and the fear of minotaurs.” It is as if beyond this material life, there exists a way, a state, and a destination—this is the way of the saints. Although it cannot be described, it can be hinted at, in brief, through myths and images. Stace says, “Always and everywhere, in all the great religions, there is in truth only one destination, one state, even—with some qualification—one way, which is pointed to through the various myths and images that create the differences between religions.[24]” In all religions, we encounter stories, dogmas, and descriptions of God or the spiritual realm, but we must not take them literally. If we say there is a personal God, or a supreme intelligence, a consciousness that “devised a plan in its mind and created a world according to its purpose,[25]” this is clearly false. We have no evidence at hand that can prove the existence of such a God, though we also have no evidence that can refute it. Such a God is beyond the reach of our reason. We see that Stace here follows Kant: God is beyond the reach of our reason.

     But we are faced with numerous accounts that speak of another realm, the accounts of mystics and saints. Spiritual and mystical experiences that tell of another way of life; life in the “absolute infinite” that is pure bliss. Stace believes that what the saints have reported is entirely correct and represents the essential truth of religion. “The essential truth of religion, of every religion, is that there is a way out of this darkness of life, a way into the light. The destination of your present path is futility. The destination of the other path is bliss or happiness.[26]” The hallmark of the mystical way, which Stace considers the only valid religious way, is its oneness with existence, the dissolution of distinctions between the self and the world, and it is this very hallmark that causes the moral vices arising from selfishness and self-centeredness to disappear.

     The question may arise: can all human beings become saints? Or can they undergo profound religious experiences? Is the religion in question merely a religion for the elite, from which ordinary people derive no benefit? The answer is that “it is a mistake to suppose that there is a sharp line that can be drawn between the mystic and the non-mystic. We readily recognize that there is no sharp line between the poet and the non-poet. We are all more or less poets. This is proved by the fact that when a great poet speaks, our hearts respond to his call and his vision becomes our vision. We have that vision within ourselves, but the poet evokes it… Something of this sort is true of mysticism. All human beings, or at least all sensitive human beings, are to some extent mystics. Just as there is a rational aspect in human nature, so there is a mystical aspect in it.[27]”

The Morality of the Mystics

     And finally, morality. We said that morality became subjective in the modern era, but there is another issue as well. If all natural events in the world can be causally explained, either potentially or actually, then free will will have no meaning, and all philosophers agree that if free will has no validity, morality also has no validity. Stace’s solution is a return to the common-sense notion of free will. Consider this example:

First situation: Ali decides to fast for a day and for this purpose eats nothing from dawn to dusk.

Second situation: Ali is kidnapped by a group of kidnappers and imprisoned in a room. On the first day, the kidnappers give him no food to eat from dawn to dusk.

Now if we ask Ali, “Did you fast of your own free will?” he says yes, but if we ask him, “When you were in the locked room, did you eat nothing of your own free will?” he answers no, I was forced to do so.

In the common-sense understanding of the concept of free will, not eating in the first situation can be subject to moral judgment, but not in the second. Many similar examples can be given and various situations shown in which human beings are compelled or free to different degrees. For Stace, this very common-sense understanding, which can make moral judgment meaningful and justified, is sufficient; and causal determinism, in its precise philosophical sense, cannot be an obstacle to moral judgment.

     Let us return to subjectivism. We said that morality in the modern era became dependent on human goals and subjectivities, but the question is: does subjectivism necessarily lead to relativism? That is, if we consider individual subjectivism or its more developed form, social subjectivism, will we have as many different moral values as there are individual human beings?

Stace answers this question in the negative. He says there are three types of general ends, which he calls "rules of conduct," common to all human beings. "These ends are: 1) self-preservation 2) bodily health 3) happiness[28]" All human beings generally pursue these three ends in their lives, and it is not the case that these purposes are dependent on different individuals or cultures. These three ends form a hierarchy: bodily health encompasses self-preservation, and happiness includes the two prior ends. Happiness "may also be called by names such as well-being, richness of life, self-realization, abundance of life, power, spiritual health, and so on. The rules based on this end are called moral rules.[29]" In Stace's view, although in the modern era we are inevitably subject to subjectivism in ethics, this subjectivism does not lead to relativism, causing ethics to lose its validity. He believes that "moral rules are simply rules concerning human happiness. And in that case, they will be universal and not relative in any culture, precisely in the same way that rules concerning safety and health will not be relative.[30]"

In Conclusion

Walter Terence Stace published the book "Religion and the Modern Mind" in 1952. In the nearly seventy years since the publication of this book, we have witnessed the decline of positivism and the maturation of the postmodern and post-secular currents; in the philosophy of science, the discussion of paradigms has been raised, and in the philosophy of religion, figures such as Alston and Plantinga have challenged the epistemological foundations of naturalism. On the other hand, we have seen the strengthening of religious fundamentalism in the world, and traditionalists have continued on their path, with its ups and downs. All of these are absent from Stace's work. Perhaps if he were alive today and were to rewrite the book, he would have a different opinion about his prediction regarding the continued dominance of empirical science. Stace's book, of course, provides a good account of the medieval worldview, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century up to the mid-twentieth century, but we must not forget that his mental framework operates within the Christian West. And although he tries, in the second part of the book, where he speaks of mysticism and the religion of saints, to also consider Eastern religions, the limitation of his perspective is evident, at least in his description of the medieval and modern worlds.

Nevertheless, "Religion and the Modern Mind" is an important book; the author's style is not ponderous, and he is committed to explaining the concepts he uses. The fluent translation by Mr. Ahmadreza Jalili, with the always meticulous editing of Mr. Mostafa Malekian, has made this work even more readable.

[1]Religion and the modern mind

[2] English philosopher (1886-1967)

[3] Stace, Walter Terence. The Philosophy of Hegel, translated by Hamid Enayat, Tehran: Franklin, 1978

[4] Stace, Walter Terence, Selected Essays of Stace (Ten Selected Essays on Science, Philosophy, Value, Ethics), translated, Tehran: Printing and Publishing Organization of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, 1992

[5] Stace, Walter Terence, Mysticism and Philosophy, translated by Baha'oddin Khorramshahi, Tehran: Soroush, 1979

[6] Stace, Walter Terence, Religion and the Modern Mind, translated by Ahmadreza Jalili, Tehran: Hekmat, First Edition (New Edition), 2011, p. 32

[7] Ibid., p. 50

[8] Ibid., p. 53

[9] Ibid., p. 50

[10] Ibid., p. 55

[11] The will of God

[12] De revolutionibus orbium colestium

[13]  Ibid., p. 75

[14]  Ibid., p. 79

[15]   Epicycles

[16]  Ibid., p. 78

[17]  Ibid., pp. 86 and 87

[18]  Ibid., p. 90

[19]  Ibid., p. 139

[20]  Ibid., pp. 246 and 247

[21]  Ibid., p. 248

[22]  Ibid., p. 251

[23]  Ibid., p. 259

[24]  Ibid., p. 269

[25]  Ibid., p. 271

[26]  Ibid., p. 284

[27]  Ibid., p. 304

[28]  See: Religion and the Modern Mind, pp. 328 and 329

[29]  Ibid., p. 329

[30]  Ibid., p. 336