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To the contrary, despite his theoretical conception of a type of separation of church and state, Calvin seemed determined to establish a Christian society, nurtured by both religious and secular authorities. He even once used his political strength in Geneva to ensure the conviction and burning of a theological opponent. Nonetheless, Calvin enforced such a rigorous division between the spiritual and secular that the secular became conceived as purely material, bereft of any worth, substance, or purpose.

American Legal Thought from Premodernism to Postmodernism Fourth-stage modernism thus was (and is) marked by swirling and inconsistent attitudes and projects: deep despair, anxiety, anger, accusatory denunciations, and increasingly intricate modernist “solutions” that pick and choose elements from rationalism, empiricism, and transcendentalism, all the while adding layers of complexity. For example, some fourth-stage modernists acknowledged that tradition or culture had proven unexpectedly persistent and difficult to overcome: to doubt previously accepted institutions and beliefs did not necessarily allow one to escape their power.

Kant’s entire ethical theory, for instance, revolved around respect for the dignity and autonomy of the individual. ”44 Transcendentalism, while unmistakably brilliant, did not eradicate the modernist crisis. Many philosophers, goaded of course by the modernist compulsion to doubt, Charting the Intellectual Waters  questioned the authenticity of the transcendental solution and thus sent modernism into a fourth and final stage, which I call late crisis. These philosophers—call them critics—suggested that the third-stage modernists had looked despair in the face and were so frightened by its countenance that they immediately turned away.