Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the spring of 1829 Thomas Carlyle composed his eloquent, yet biting essay Signs of the Times . Much later, in 1848, Matthew Arnold would publish his own condemnation of soulless materialism and utilitarian functionalism in Culture and Anarchy , and Ruskin would follow, in 1861, with his essays in Unto This Last . But it is with Carlyle's essay that we begin because he recognized early, before Marx, what later became known as the sociology of knowledge. He knew the importance of asking about where we stand. We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by that knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position to it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer. Postmodernity promises neither clarification nor the disappearance of perplexity. It is debatable whether theology promises these things either. Nevertheless, Carlyle's call to take stock of where we stand is pertinent, for the whole conception of there being a distinctive “postmodern theology” rests upon the notion that ... log in or subscribe to read full text