Replacing God with a Unified Spirit of Humanity

In her series on the development of European thought in modernity, Yale professor Marci Shore compares the attitudes of students in the 1970s to those of today (2026, https://youtu.be/EozQmkpHKUc?is=-jSOMgExZDzKgswG). Whereas in the 1970s students asked why idealized all-encompassing political systems such as communism didn’t work, today students ask how anyone could have believed in them in the first place. In the 19th century, Hegel’s philosophy replaced God with the Geist, a team spirit of humanity working together as history progressed forward. For Hegel, good was that which wins because the arc of history was always moving forward ebbing and flowing towards a predetermined end. Marx took Hegel’s dialectic and made it more material, seeing industrialization as the decisive factor in modernity. Agricultural workers embedded in communities had become alienated factory workers. It was at this time that nationalism arose in Europe, based on the idea that if individuals have the right to self-determination so do people groups, societies, and cultures. 

Replacing God with History

Writing 17 years after Hegel’s death, Marx’s Communist Manifesto  was a prescription and a prophecy that made no distinction between what should and what would happen. Workers would arise organically and spark an international global communist movement. This workers class was predestined to liberate humanity and usher in the final consummation of the communist ideal. According to Marx, it wasn’t that the communists were God’s favorites, but History’s favorites. The Soviet Union was the largest experiment in social engineering in human history. Whereas the fascist dictator acknowledged himself as the object of the multitude’s applause, the Marxist dictator saw themself as only the embodiment of History’s iron laws. It was History that both the Marxist dictator and the multitude humbly served (Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/Rh2FjZu2pNc?si=LJgm5VYjb0xTCbpD). Born 13 years after Hegel’s death, Nietzsche was a very different type of philosopher and marked the beginning of a shift in Western thought. While Hegel tried to put everything into a comprehensive system, Nietzsche took everything apart and famously declared the death of God (Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/MqbQ0loF3zM?is=5hUsTd_xSBpgawEo). 

Replacing God with Language

But the desire to find a universal paradigm to fill the void and alienation left by the death of God led 20th century thinkers like Levi-Strausse to develop structuralism (Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/k0ZLNVIrdcU?is=LMwoy1AmVKQZLqKr). Rather than class struggle, structuralism posited that language was the key paradigm for understanding the world. Meaning is based on a structure that has developed over time in diverse communities. We never witness the invention of language but are surrounded by it from birth. Levi-Strausse endeavored to understand the underlying structures of cultures, arguing that all cultures drew from a universal linguistic substructure. In comparison to Marxism, structuralism was ahistorical and amoralizing, that is, it didn’t seek to define meaning through a historical process or primordial ethics. According to Levi-Strausse, language was a system of differences not substances, and therefore meaning is all about difference. The relationship between the word and the thing itself is not intrinsic – there is no essential reason the word “cat” refers to that animal in English-speaking societies. Nevertheless, language is stable, based upon a structure that has developed in communities. 

Seeing God in Language

Catholic philosopher René Girard followed the tradition of structuralism, having converted to Christianity as a French professor working in the U.S. after World War II (Gonzales, 2021, https://youtu.be/qFK_sw2KLkU?is=xvnwdp7ucbEEhJWg). Against the prevalent deconstruction introduced in the U.S. academy by the Frankfurt school of Neo Marxists after the war, Girard argued that history could be understood through a Judeo-Christian lens. Girard posited that cultures go into crisis when there is a lack of differentiation (Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/PTz65ixvjjc?is=BT5A2ycwQp9Mk5-z). When established norms of difference in a society are challenged or undermined, it causes a crisis that generates foundational myths. These myths are the story of the murder of a scapegoat from the perspective of the murderers. That is, myths are generated from a people’s dealing with crisis of values. Girard also saw human desire as not originating in the object or the subject bur in the “model mediator”. Human beings imitate the desires of others, meaning that human desire does not come from within the individual but from without. Girard called this “memetic desire” which led to envy and violence (Shaw, 2026, https://youtu.be/PTz65ixvjjc?is=BT5A2ycwQp9Mk5-z). 

Filling the Void After Rejecting God

I have described some of the reflections of professor Marci Shore on the development of modern Western thought. As a Christian, I am encouraged that Western society has continued to search for meaning even after rejecting God. In large urban centers of North America and Europe we can see today the evidence of thriving communities of God-seekers. As someone who ascribes to the traditional Christian faith, I believe in the uniqueness of Jesus as the Lamb of God sent to bear the sins of humanity. But in the history of European thought, I also see many interesting points of dialogue with Scripture. The questions of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Levi-Strausse, and Girard all contribute to dialogue with Scripture. These questions are the same that men and women grappled with in Scripture and the history of the church. Secular ideology encourages us to keep such conversations cloistered in the private sphere of our homes, or even within our minds. However, even in a grand capital of Europe such as Lisbon where I live, modern man still yearns for what I know as Father God. 

References

Gonzales, 2021, https://youtu.be/qFK_sw2KLkU?is=xvnwdp7ucbEEhJWg

Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/EozQmkpHKUc?is=-jSOMgExZDzKgswG

Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/Rh2FjZu2pNc?si=LJgm5VYjb0xTCbpD

Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/MqbQ0loF3zM?is=5hUsTd_xSBpgawEo

Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/k0ZLNVIrdcU?is=LMwoy1AmVKQZLqKr

Shore, 2026, https://youtu.be/PTz65ixvjjc?is=BT5A2ycwQp9Mk5-z