This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world in modern times, which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all. (Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Commencement Address At Harvard, June 8, 1978)

Notes

a) Since Solzhenitsyn’s view is that our problems have their origin in the gigantomachia, he notes that “the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought”, at “the basis“. If repair is possible, a retreat must be made back to this basis where another root might be cultivated and another foundation exposed. But how is this to be done? How do we start and carry through such an enterprise? How are we to begin again?

The World Split Apart segments continue here.