For decades I asked, “What is the evidence or argument for this worldview?” (for example, Marxism, Existentialism, or Christianity). It was the wrong question. I had been assuming that “worldview” always means an explicitly held ideology, philosophy, or theology, a system of ideas one is obliged to justify (or counter) with evidence and argument.
One does not, however, argue for one’s worldview, at least not one’s basic worldview. Rather, one’s basic worldview—a network of nonnegotiable beliefs about one’s relationship to others, to the cosmos, and to God—is the foundation upon on which one argues or asks questions. One’s basic worldview is implicated in the effort to argue or justify. It gets expressed in socially and historically conditioned ideologies, philosophies, and theologies. They are many, but the worldview-forming capacity, like the language-forming capacity, is anthropologically one.
One may rationally vindicate one’s theorized worldview by showing its superiority to any other on offer, but the worldview will even supply the criteria of evaluation. As followers of this blog know, I’m developing a manuscript entitled Philosophy after Christ. Today I’m continuing the line of thought sketched in Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident.” I want to develop the idea of a pre-theoretical (yet theorizable) worldview which, without conscious effort, forms as we mature from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood. It forms in tandem with our capacity for language (without which the theorization can’t be expressed).
I’ve come to distinguish between the worldview one spontaneously comes to have and any reflection upon it. I’m also aware of the temptation to conflate the two. That is, having reflected upon one’s basic beliefs, one identifies and labels the result of that reflection. Between the two, the human heart’s imperfect love of truth inserts a wedge. The possibility of faithless, rather than faithful, reflection emerges.
In other words, if worldview-reflection occurs, if we attend to our incorrigible beliefs and then say something about these “nonnegotiables,” we introduce the problem of truth, adherence thereto and suppression thereof.
Let’s consider the distinction between what I’ve called our “birthright” worldview (see, e.g., this and this) and our attempts to articulate and label it (our “ideologies” or “philosophies”). Our linguistic capability is also our birthright: there’s nothing we need to do attain it.
Those attempts, being partly products of our decisions in response to our social and physical environments, may capture the birthright worldview accurately and flesh it out fruitfully. Or, those attempts may distort it and weaken its logical “pull.” Some writers have helped me think this through this problem. One of them is David K. Naugle, Chair of Dallas Baptist University’s Philosophy Department. He bears no responsibility for my imperfect grasp of his work.
No ideology, philosophy, or theology is innate. What is innate is the faculty that forms and finds expression in an ideology, philosophy, or theology. According to German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), Naugle writes:
[T]he chief problem associated with the study of Weltanschauung [worldview; kosmotheoria] as a synthetic concept is that it stands outside, and is indeed prior to, the domain of theoretical reflection. That is to say that a worldview is not a theoretical but a pretheoretical phenomenon: it precedes and conditions abstract thought. Contrariwise, there is a strong tradition that equates worldview with a culture’s rational constructions, whether they be philosophical, scientific, or religious. The collective pronouncements of these disciplines constituted as culture’s essential philosophy, i.e., Weltanschauung.
Though Mannheim originally embraced this perspective, Wilhelm Dilthey [1833-1911] was the first to demonstrate that worldviews are not synonymous with theoretical systems, but stand in an antecedent relationship to them as their a priori foundation. Mannheim cites Dilthey’s remark that “Weltanschauungen [worldviews] are not produced by thinking,” that is, theoretically. If this is the case, then there is some intellectual distance between the “atheoretical” and “irrational” Weltanschauung, as Mannheim calls it, and the theoretical networks emanating from it.[1]
What Naugle calls “intellectual distance” I’m trying to capture with my distinction between “the worldview one spontaneously comes to have and the reflection upon it that one may engage in.” Naugle then quotes Mannheim:
If this totality we call Weltanschauung is understood in this sense to be something a-theoretical, and at the same time to be the foundation for all cultural objectifications, such as religion, mores, art, philosophy, and if, further, we admit that these objectifications can be ordered in a hierarchy according to their respective distance from this irrational, then the theoretical will appear to be precisely one of the most remote manifestation of this fundamental entity.[2]
For Mannheim, according to Naugle, “worldviews are virtually unconscious phenomena, having arisen spontaneously and unintentionally. As deep, unformed, and germinal entities, they are taken for granted by those who embrace them, and yet they are the prime movers in thought and action.”[3]
The Christian worldview is the rational construction that theorizes our birthright worldview, the “God-installed” pre-theoretical worldview based on the data of Scripture. The theoretical construction, a possible object of affirmation or denial, is the innate worldview clarified. This enterprise depends upon our use of language, the capacity for which develops with our capacity to form a worldview.
Yes, the whole business is circular, but not viciously so. As Naugle put it: “any theory or definition of ‘worldview’ is itself a function of the actual worldview of theorist or the definer.”[5] There is no worldview-neutral vantage point from which to evaluate rival worldviews. Citing Michael Polanyi (1891-1976)—“Any enquiry into our ultimate beliefs can be consistent only if it presupposes its own conclusion”[6]—Naugle comments that Polanyi was there expressing “inevitable commitment-based circularity” and that “presuppositions form “the inarticulate context for life.”[7] Our claim is that the worldview expressed on the pages of Scripture uniquely makes sense, not only of sense-making, but also of worldview-making and -evaluating.
Naugle formally defines a worldview as “a semiotic system of world-interpreting stories” that “provides a foundation or governing platform upon or by which people think, interpret, and know.”[8] The basic worldview that we spontaneously form (via an “innate,” inborn, created capacity) we cannot help but presuppose.
We do not, however, presuppose the Christian worldview in the same way. What Christians do (here I’m going out on a limb) is to identify the Christian worldview as the “innate” worldview come into its own. That is, the Christian worldview the only faithful, concrete expression of the spontaneously formed product of our innate worldview-forming faculty. The only one, because it alone grounds intelligible predication, that is, makes sense of sense-making.
Consequently, while we may suppose the truth of the Christian worldview in our discourses, we virtually presuppose it: practically speaking, we do not distinguish the conscious, theoretical product from its subconscious, generative source. It’s a subtle distinction, but I believe it’s one we must maintain, on the warrant of Romans 2:14-15:
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them . . . (Emphasis added)
According to Naugle, Scripture locates worldviews in the heart. They form the “cardio-optical” and therefore pre-theoretical, pre-theological, and pre-confessional “atmosphere” that our minds breathe.
Notes
[1] David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002, 224. Emphasis added.
[2] As quoted in Naugle, 224. Karl Mannheim, “On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung,” From Karl Mannheim, edited and introduction by Kurt H. Wolff, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, 13.
[3] As quoted in Naugle, 225. Mannheim, 16.
[5] Naugle, 253.
[6] Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, 1958, 299. Emphasis in the original.
[7] Naugle, 193.
[8] Naugle, 291.