The base: a humanistic view instead of Christian faith
This is one post of a series about Peter Drucker. Start here if you want to get the whole story.
The journey of 65 years of Peter Drucker’s work is amazing. His insights and foresights do stand the test of time. There is so much to learn from him. And still: to me it feels that one piece is missing as if the last chord of a musical masterpiece hasn’t been played. I sense an unresolved tension between science and faith. He doesn’t seem to have found peace between those two approaches to life — at least not in his writing.
On the one hand, he sees himself as a social ecologist, that is: a scientist. His writing comes across as the result of observing and rational thinking, both activities scientist engage in. Yet at the same time he condemns the largest driver of modern science, the Enlightenment movement, accusing them of worshiping absolute truth. He obviously doesn’t believe in this sense of absolute truth.
On the other hand, ironically enough, he comes across quite determined. His writing transmits a clarity and determination as if he knows the truth! His strengths comes from his Christian faith that allows him to make strong moral guiding statements. Yet he rarely speaks of his source of power. And while his faith certainly guides him personally he regrets that religion has lost its power in our society.
So Peter Drucker has many great insights in the dynamic and trends of our society. He presents guidelines on how to make contributions to society and life a good (professional) life that are based in his Christian faith. Yet he doesn’t truly reveal his source of legitimation and lacks the reconciliation of science and faith. I believe there are two borders he didn’t cross because he was a child of the 20th century.
First, he alleged that science is looking for absolute truth. With the rationalist at his time (and many laypeople today) who have a deterministic world view that was and is the case. But not so for advanced science as he admitted as well. Scientist know that science is relative. The scientific method holds theories as valid until proven otherwise. And all models and theories are just that: models or maps of the world, reducing complexity of reality. So science went beyond absolute truth. They accepted that there will be no final answer.
What about religion? In history, religion showed over and over again the pattern that Peter Drucker condemned in Enlightenment: the belief in absolute truth! Too often, religion became dogmatic. It makes claims in spite of the fact that we know better. This is one of the reasons, religion lost its power: people just don’t believe it anymore.
As it stands today, we have lost absolute truth on both sides for good! There is no absolute truth. This Gary Larson describes the state of affairs very well:
I wished Peter Drucker had put all his puzzle pieces together in a slightly different way. Science and faith — or better spirituality, certainly not religion — are two sides of the same coin. They are different ways to get to know the world. Science takes a third person perspective. And spirituality is about a first person perspective to understand the world, including ourselves.
For a reason, great scientist are often spiritual as well. Science and spirituality are united in their search for truth. They both practice integrity of mind. In more practical terms they apply this principle: Don’t cheat on yourself. Only take for granted (until proven otherwise) what you have experienced for yourself — either through intellectual understanding and reason or direct personal experience. [1]
In seeking truth, we are on a mission impossible: we seek knowledge even though we know we will never find a final answer. There is no absolute truth. Neither in first nor third person perspective, neither in science nor spirituality.
Peter Drucker gave names to the different phases of humanity: the spiritual man, the intellectual man, the political man, the economic man. Maybe the next phase is the one of the truth-seeking man.
Embracing the stance of truth-seeking as a starting point makes us more modest. We become more open and accepting to others. We regain the positive curiosity we had as children. We are free to choose our purpose, our role within our community, and the social rules we want to accept. I am confident that most of us, when looking at scientific findings and listening to their inner voice, will agree with many conclusions Peter Drucker draw on the basis of his Christian faith.
[1] Much more about this in Metzinger, Thomas:
Der Ego-Tunnel: Eine neue Philosophie des Selbst: Von der Hirnforschung zur Bewusstseinsethik: Piper, 2014
Originally published at timmrichter.de on March 26, 2017.
