The Enchanted Imagination
Part 4, The Value to Fact Shift
In this post about the enchanted imagination, I want to swing back to Part 2 and revisit an implication of our shift from teleology to causality.
Recall, the enchanted imagination of the past was teleological. The created order reflected divine plans and purposes. Humanity existed for a reason, a goal, a telos. As did every created thing.
This teleological imagination was a glue that bound facts to values. As I've shared before, consider a watch. If you know what a watch is for you can tell if a watch is good. Values (judgments of goodness) flow from facts (observations of material reality) and teleology makes the connection. The telos of a watch is to tell time. That's what a watch is for, its purpose. So if the watch fails to keep time we call it a "bad" watch. By contrast, a watch that keeps time is a "good" watch. The point is clear: If you know what something is for, you can tell if something is good.
When we turned away from teleology facts became divorced from values. This is called "the fact/value split." Consider a human life. What is the purpose, the telos, of human life? What are we here for?
The enchantment imagination, rooted as it was in teleology, had an answer to that question. You existed for a reason, a purpose. Your life had a telos. But when we turned away from teleology toward causality we lost our ability to say if our lives were good or bad. Since we don't know what life is for anymore, it's hard to say if our lives are worth living. How do you judge a good life? Opinions are all over the map. And the reason for this is because we have no clear answer about life is for, and lacking that telos we can't tell if the watch is broken or not.
The point to be observed is that the disenchanted imagination focuses upon facts, the material description of reality. The enchanted imagination, by contrast, is focused upon values, haunted by questions concerning the goodness of life.
What makes life good?
To answer that question, you have to know what life is for.
This is a good point. Once you move beyond metaphysics/teleology and the human person gets cut in half--between an external realm governed by mechanical laws of cause and effect and an internal side absolutely unfettered by any restraint--the result is a strict fact/value dichotomy.
This kind of looks like the old gnosticism in which a person purifies their mind but indulges in bodily pleasures because the body doesn't matter in the end. There is a significant difference, though. The shiny new "secular" gnosticism doesn't see embodiment is something that will ultimately be transcended (i.e. after death); it sees it as something that is already transcended (i.e. right now).