Bitter partisanship has become a hallmark of public life in the U.S., and in his new book “The Universe Is on Our Side,” Duquesne University law professor Bruce Ledewitz traces this breakdown to a loss of faith – in the future, in other people, and in truth.
Although the acrimony blocks action on issues ranging from immigration to climate change and has even erupted in violence at the nation’s Capitol and schools, Ledewitz writes that Americans can find hope if they are honest about the cause and ask a serious question: Is the universe on our side?
He will discuss his answer Thursday evening as part of a program the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture series is hosting both in-person and remotely. But in an interview with 90.5 WESA, he said that public discourse began to devolve in the U.S. with “the death of God.” In essence, he said, the general population no longer believes in “a universe that had a telos or an aim, or a goal that was purposeful and meaningful.”
“The founding myth of this country was God or the secular equivalent of God that we call progress,” said Ledewitz, an atheist himself. “The framers of the Constitution did not want a religious country or religious government, but they certainly did believe in a beneficent universe and a shape to history, a good shape to history.”
Ledewitz acknowledged that the majority of Americans say they believe in God in some form. But, he said, the question is “not so much whether people say they believe in God. … [It] is whether truth, justice, goodness, beauty — whether we understand these things, whether we trust these concepts, whether we think they have authority over the future or not.”
“And [today] we don't any longer believe they have authority over the future,” he said.
It’s not about perking up
To Ledewitz, this loss of belief offers the ultimate reason for the hostility that characterizes the nation’s political climate. And while “there must be a hundred books” that cite other factors such as economic despair and systemic racism as the real cause, Ledewitz said those texts instead describe “symptoms” of the problem.
“For example, yes, we have economic inequality, but the question is, why don't we do something about it? Why do we feel that it's impossible?” Ledewitz said.
“Or,” he added, some “point to eternal conditions: ‘We’re tribal. Our minds work in a certain way.’ But why should that cause a crisis now?”
“Plus, all these books take a side. Fundamentally, they say the other side is just unreasonable and you can't work with them,” he said. And that posture, he said, undermines people’s faith in concepts as basic as truth: They no longer trust what other people say, even if it is factually accurate.
And with that understanding of the world, “We have every reason to give up,” Ledewitz said. “If the universe does not make any sense, why should you not give up? Why should you expect anything good to happen in the future?”
Far from suggesting that ”by a collective act of will we should just start perking up,” Ledewitz said the public should become more serious. “American society has become unserious, and this is an age of evasion. … Evasion is what happens when you no longer think there are answers to anything.”
That mentality allows politicians to claim that tax cuts pay for themselves when they actually add to the government debt, Ledewitz said. And in the debate over abortion, he added, “All we do is yell at each other” rather than “coming together and having an honest [debate about] when human life begins.”
Start with a question and make it serious
The public can stop evading meaningful matters, Ledewitz said, by wrestling with serious questions. And the question to begin with is whether the universe is on our side, he said.
Ledewitz credited the 20th Century Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan for posing this question to “a culture that did not know what to think about reality, did not know whether it believed in God, did not know what it thought.”
“If you pursue that question honestly,” Ledewitz added, “you can create a healthy society regardless of how you answer it.”
For Ledewitz, the answer is “yes.” The abolition of slavery is just one example that illustrates society’s impulse to advance the common good over time.
“[Thomas] Jefferson said about slavery, these people are destined to be free,” Ledewitz said. “Now why? Why should they be destined to be free? Why couldn't slavery go on forever? Because it was a lie. And that's the way the universe works.”
But even if the universe is not in humanity’s corner, Ledewitz said, “We're well-adapted to live in this universe. We know what's good for people, and we can in fact build a society that is good for people. We have to get away from the idea that it's either God or nothing.”
Lonergan, the Canadian philosopher, did not believe the universe shows any favor to humankind, Ledewitz noted.
That idea is “tragic to a certain extent,” Ledewitz said, “because it means to a certain extent that our yearnings are really an illusion.”
“But,” he said, “they are still there.”
“And I think that's a very important point because … the ‘no’ is not as harmful as we have made it out to be. We have to face the ‘no’ with confidence and hope. There's nothing about the ‘no’ that means this [aim] is impossible for us.”
