Synthesis and Humility: Integrative Mindset and Values after Postmodernity

This reflection presents a framework for creating, integrating and evaluating values needed for our time. Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern perspectives are taken as complementary reflections, offering an integrative paradigm of what is healthy, ethical, and spiritual, i.e., what really matters in our time. This integrative perspective is an opportunity to reflect critically on the last centuries of our Western intellectual development, creating a perspective that balances what is knowable and unknowable, while simultaneously rejecting any radical positions. The integrative perspective balances faith and reason, spiritual and material, relative and absolute, authority and freedom. Such synthesis requires a humble and open mind that does not pretend to know absolute answers but instead is willing to learn afresh from past experiences and present challenges.