What is one example of how global integration of cultures has affected contemporary philosophical thinking?
Despite many constructive achievements, modern differentiation is characterized by a number of problems that bar the way to integrating the global human community. For one thing, as many critics have pointed out, modernity's differentiation of domains has been only partly successful. The practices, goals, and conception of truth that characterize one particular domain--science, including applied science in the form of technology and industry have marginalized the practices goals, and conceptions of truth in the other domains. Indeed, Kant's famous differentiation of human domains into science, ethics, and aesthetics, completely ignored religion, except insofar as it had been rationalized into an aspect of ethics.
Twentieth century positivism and behaviorism, against which the revolts of the 1960s may be understood as an understandable if somewhat misguided reaction, proclaimed that all non-empirically verifiable statements (including deep personal, cultural, and religious beliefs) were merely emotive utterances and thus empty of meaning. Seeking social hegemony for the laudable goals of controlling nature and pacifying humankind, the natural and the social sciences ended up being held responsible for many of the evils of modern times. Not only widespread social anomie and personal meaninglessness, but also the nuclear arms race and environmentally destructive industrial practices. In the guise of scientific socialism and philosophical thinking and under the banner of modernity's admirable emancipatory ideal, moreover, some of this century's worst crimes were committed by Soviet Communism, which proudly proclaimed itself to be a scientifically socialist form of atheism.
Religion traditionally provided people with personal direction and meaning. In modern societies, church attendance has declined significantly in comparison with the...