You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
At least until the middle of the 19th century, religion, underpinned by the Church, was the sacrosanct repository of human values. These values were ordained by God, the creator of all things, and although Man often failed to live up to them, this in no way threatened their integrity. By the end of the 19th century, this situation had changed dramatically, and by the end of the 20th a radically different world-view had taken shape. The planet we inhabit and Man himself are now explained by the natural sciences and what originally was a provocative and no doubt blasphemous remark of Nietzsche that God is dead is to all intents and purposes a defining feature of our time. The religious domain no longer provides an anchor for moral values and this has made for a world of confusing freedoms and a kind of moral void.
This is the cultural starting-point for David Black's interesting book which begins with two searching questions. Firstly, if there is no longer a divine underpinning of human values, how could it ever be claimed that one value should be followed rather than another? And secondly, if there is no longer a religious container for such values (a setting in which they can be contemplated and talked about), how could they ever maintain a sufficient presence in our lives to exert a guiding force?
Black's argument is broadly as follows. As the new scientific world-view based on empirical study and logical argument gained ground, the older scholastic (religious) view of Man as having a divine soul and a consciousness of good and evil was gradually eclipsed. In the world-view of natural science, Man was increasingly seen as just another part of the material world and any serious concern with non-material things such as consciousness, subjectivity and values was redundant.
The absence of values in this way of thinking is a major focus of Black's concern and he illustrates the potential consequences of such value-free science in a vignette at the beginning of the first ch