Anxiety of Modern Man, Religion, and The Central European Experience [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 121-128]

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ZDENEK SUDA
This actually should not surprise us, since it derived from the atheism of the
Hegelian left from which it had separated at the peak of the modernistic
euphoria. When later doubts began to gnaw at some thinkers in these quarters, the Marxists attributed their loss of confidence to the allegedly onsetting process of the disintegration of capitalism. It was at this point,
however, that Marxism revealed itself the most clearly as the heir to
bourgeois modernism. In identifying the crisis of faith in progress as a
symptom of degeneration, the Marxists implicitly rallied to the banner
originally raised by their bourgeois opponents. Their critique of the skeptical
mood spreading in the later part of the nineteenth century was more than
just a judgment; it was at the same time a declaration of their own position
on this crucial issue, and it was binding.
Thus the system of ideas which today supports the socioeconomic
order in Central Europe, known as communism or "real socialism," has
quite consciously and explicitly made the promise to honor the commitment which industrial capitalism had given but could not fulfill, namely
that of bringing about a new way of life, free of uncertainty and anxiety.
In assuming this obligation communism has presented itself to the world
not only as the successor to industrial capitalism in the domain of political
and social organization, but also as a solution to the spiritual problems of
modem society. A proof that the promise was given in full awareness of
what it implied can be seen in the keen interest of the Marxists in the phenomenon of alienation, shown from the very beginning. The topicality
of the religious problem in communist-dominated societies today would
seem to indicate that communism has not been able, any more than its
bourgeois-liberal predecessor, to live up to its promise.
An Excursus: Apostasy or a Revision of the Covenant?
Here perhaps a short digression into the realm of religious philosophy
would be useful. The plight of the modem man, from which his anxiety
originates, appears to be well and widely known. A wide consensus seems
also to prevail about the nature of this plight: modern man has assumed
(in the interpretation of some, "has usurped") the freedom to govern the
world and his own destiny. The awesome question raised by his fateful
act is whether man can measure up to the responsibility which this new
freedom entails. A whole library could be founded on the attempts to
answer this question, in fields ranging from science, philosophy, and
religion, to the arts. Prometheus, the accepted symbol of the modern man
seeking the mastery of his own life, meets with a very great variety of assessment. The Romantics admired him and identified with him; Dostoyevsky
condemned him forcefully. The writers of utopian fiction either praised
him-as, for example, Jules Verne-or frightened their readers by visions