Mor al
Sentiments
in Modern
Society
A New Answer to
Classical Questions
Edited by
Gabriël van den Brink
Moral Sentiments in Modern Society
A New Answer to Classical Questions
Edited by
Gabriël van den Brink
Amsterdam University Press
Translation: Gioia Marini, Amsterdam
Cover design: Maedium, Utrecht
Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout
Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by
the University of Chicago Press.
isbn
978 90 8964 775 7
e-isbn
978 90 4852 570 6 (pdf)
nur757
© Gabriël van den Brink / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations
reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is
advised to contact the publisher.
Table of Contents
Introduction 11
Gabriël van den Brink
1
2
3
4
5
Why this topic?
Why the Netherlands?
Why now?
Personal motives
Word of thanks
11
14
16
19
20
Part 1
1 Research questions and theoretical framework
Gabriël van den Brink
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The theory of moral sentiments
Morality and society
Will the real Adam Smith please stand up?
On modernity and modernisation
Three fault lines
Theories and trends
Degrees of modernity
The tension between morality and modernity
The moral effects of modernity
What this book is about
2 An archaeology of altruistic behaviour
Gabriël van den Brink
1 Insights from biology
2 The transcendental order
3 The uniqueness of Christianity?
4 The beginning of the modern era
5 The secularisation of society
6 The moralisation of politics
7 Solidarity at the local level
8 Solidarity at the national level
9 Solidarity at the global level
10Conclusions
25
26
31
36
39
41
45
49
55
58
62
65
66
70
75
78
80
85
90
92
95
97
Part 2
3 The Netherlands as a liquid society
Gabriël van den Brink
1 Economic modernisation
2 Political modernisation
3 Cultural modernisation
4 Higher expectations
5 The erosion of institutional frameworks
6 Rise in social mobility
7 Family life
8 Civic life
9 Professional life
10Conclusions
105
105
108
111
112
116
119
122
125
128
131
4 The hardening of the social climate
135
1Secularisation
2 More sports
3 Intense experiences
4 More violence
5 Greater visibility
6 Moving in the wrong direction
7 Decline in tolerance
8 The immigrant problem
9 Moral uncertainty
10Conclusions
136
140
142
144
146
149
152
155
157
160
Gabriël van den Brink
Part 3
5 The truly important things in life
Paul Dekker, Erik van Ingen & Loek Halman
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Many deflective reactions
Examples of views regarding ‘something higher’
Four types of ideals
The link to religion
Forms of spirituality
Social background
Social involvement
167
168
170
173
175
178
180
182
8 Motives for helping
9 Characteristics of the volunteers
10Conclusions
6 Changes in norms and values
Erik van Ingen, Loek Halman & Paul Dekker
1 Two dimensions of modernisation
2 The Netherlands and Europe
3 Changes in values at the individual level
4 Hierarchy of values
5 Values in private life
6 Values of citizenship
7 Decreasing tolerance
8 Public morals stricter
9 The significance of work
10Conclusions
186
187
190
193
194
196
199
202
206
209
212
215
216
220
Part 4
7 The role of ideals in professional life
227
1 Integrity and openness
2 Problems with the organisation
3 Social commitment
4 Companies in the private sector
5 Social values on three levels
6 Vitality and spirituality
7 Forms of moral deliberation
8 The mission statement
9 Professional codes of conduct
10Conclusions
230
232
234
236
239
241
244
247
251
253
Heleen van Luijn & Nicole Maalsté
8 Moral imagination at work
Karen Woets & Heidi de Mare
1
2
3
4
5
The status of fantasy novels
Two (or more) imaginary worlds
Personal relationships
Morality and personal development
The status of television series
257
261
264
266
268
270
6 Visual qualities of the hospital drama
7 Moments of empathy
8 Visual qualities of police series
9 The rule of law and self-sacrifice
10Conclusions
274
276
279
281
284
Part 5
9 Signs of moral resilience
Wieger Bakker, Gabriël van den Brink & Erik van Ingen
1 Lasting religious interest
2 The scale and trend in volunteering
3 Mixed motives
4 Types of development aid
5 Changing images
6 Caring for nature and the environment
7 Social initiatives
8 Rediscovering public values
9 An old and modern phenomenon
10Conclusions
10 Europe and modern morality
Gabriël van den Brink
1Spirituality
2 Belief in democracy
3 Human dignity
4 Social involvement
5 Professional life
6 Civic life
7Intimacy
8 Nature and the environment
9 Cultural modernisation
10Conclusions
291
292
294
297
300
304
307
310
312
313
316
319
321
323
326
328
329
332
335
337
338
342
Part 6
11 An outline of modern morality
349
Gabriël van den Brink
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Back to the original question
Negative effects
Ambivalent or neutral effects
Moderately positive effects
Clearly positive effects
The modernisation of morality
The moralisation of modernity
A void in the public domain
The idealistic side of politics
Schism in the public sphere
12 Reinventing civil society
Erik Borgman, Gabriël van den Brink & Paul Dekker
1
2
3
4
5
349
352
355
358
362
366
371
376
382
386
†
The proliferation of moral ideals
The importance of the public imagination
The ‘issues’ that matter
The fiction of the Public Good
The development of ‘civic talk’
393
394
396
398
401
403
Bibliography 411
Index 429
Introduction
Gabriël van den Brink
For two centuries, the greatest minds have voiced their doubts about the
morality of man and society. Scholars have argued that spiritual values are
a function of social structures, neurological networks, economic interests,
political power or dominant discourses. Philosophers and writers have
taught us that ethical principles are little more than a fig leaf for our basest
instincts. And whoever still believes in moral values only has to follow the
news for a few days in order to realise that humanity betrays its ideals day in,
day out. One would expect people in the modern age to have understood by
now that morality is an illusion. But the opposite is the case. Moral questions
are once again (or perhaps still) at the top of the agenda, and public debate
is conducted in highly normative terms. This is why we initiated a study
six years ago into the meaning of moral sentiments in modern society.
Although empirical data was gathered on the situation in the Netherlands,
the interpretation of the data is relevant for an international audience.
In this introduction, we will briefly discuss three questions: Why did we
conduct this study? Why is the case of the Netherlands so interesting? And
why is the issue so timely now?
1
Why this topic?
Looking back on the past century, one is surprised at the levity with which
many intellectuals peddled their ideas. Take Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed the death of God one hundred years ago. Numerous philosophers,
writers and scholars have felt moved to echo him, but history has proven
otherwise: God is not dead. Large parts of the world continue to hold onto
a faith in something divine. Indeed, in the last ten years we have seen a
revival of religious interest in many modern countries – one that is also
leaving its trace in the academic literature.
In the Netherlands, the Scientif ic Council for Government Policy
(Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, WRR) was one of the
first to pick up on this signal. In 2006, it published Believing in the Public
Domain, a substantial collection of theoretical considerations and empirical
findings to which more than twenty authors contributed. Although their
conclusions differed, they were all convinced that religious life has gone
12 Gabriël van den Brink
through a remarkable transformation that also has consequences for civic
life.1 The WRR was certainly not the only one who sensed the emergence
of a new mood. The following year, the journalist Koert van der Velden,
who works for the newspaper Trouw, published a book entitled Religious
Experiences. His research for the book involved speaking to more than
a hundred people in the Netherlands about how they experienced God.
They described their encounter with the divine as a sudden experience
that threw them off balance but at the same time gave them more zest for
life.2 Then Joep de Hart published a book, Floating Believers, in which he
demonstrated the profusion of religious phenomena in the country, thereby
disproving the notion that the Netherlands is a secular society.3 There are
those who will shrug their shoulders about this type of book and believe that
it is a Dutch aberration. But they would be shutting their eyes to the many
studies on this topic that have appeared in the last ten years, also outside
the Netherlands. To illustrate, there is the collection of essays edited by Hent
de Vries, Religion: Beyond a Concept, in which 45 world-renowned scholars
try to develop a new way of thinking about religion. 4 There is Ulrich Beck’s
Der Eigene Gott which describes how a new type of spirituality is developing
in the West, a development that poses both opportunities and risks.5 Or
take American Grace in which Robert Putnam and David Campbell report
on their investigation into the significance of religious differences in the
United States.6 All this underlines the fact that a new theme has appeared
on the intellectual horizon. Put another way, it illustrates the desire on the
part of many researchers to reflect in a new way on an old subject.
On closer examination, this theme appears to be part of a general trend
that boils down to the rediscovery of moral values, spiritual ideals and
philosophical principles. This includes, for example, Susan Neiman’s book
entitled Moral Clarity. She argues that moral questions involve not academic
issues but existential ones and that this is why the public discourse can
never disregard moral issues.7 She was supported in her stance by Michael
Sandel in his book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? He opposes the idea
that governments should never take a stand on moral issues. This is not only
impossible, according to Sandel, it is also bad for the public good. In the
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Donk, W. van de 2006.
Van der Velde 2007, Janssen 2008.
De Hart 2011.
De Vries 2008.
Beck 2008.
Putnam & Campbell 2010.
Neiman 2008.
Introduc tion
13
debate on how to organise a just society, one’s own ideas and preferences
about the good life inevitably resonate.8 We would note that the theme of
moral values or ideals has been taken up not only by political philosophers
but also by scholars with an alternative background. For example, in his
book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris attempts to answer old questions
about good and evil from a new angle – the neurosciences.9 Joshua Greene
takes a behavioural theoretical perspective in his study entitled Moral
Tribes.10 And the psychologist Jonathan Haidt looks for modern society’s
connection with ancient philosophical traditions such as Hinduism or
Buddhism in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis.11 Given this diversity of
perspectives, we cannot expect to find a consensus on the right approach
to moral issues anytime soon. But it does confirm that these issues have
become highly topical in various areas of intellectual life.
The issue has even penetrated academic fields that have always avoided
moral questions. The best example is the work of Frans de Waal, an ethologist who has discovered that forms of altruism and social behaviour also
occur in animals. He believes that the human capacity for moral behaviour
has an evolutionary basis. It is no coincidence that his most recent book is
entitled The Age of Empathy and that it discusses what nature can teach us
about creating a better society.12 The importance of empathy is also brought
to the attention of the general public in other ways. For instance, Marco
Iacoboni’s book The Reflective Brain outlines how mirror neurons affect our
human interaction. They allow us to perceive what another person feels
or intends, which then forms a basis for moral action.13 There is apparently
growing interest in this theme, as the number of publications on this topic
is expanding at a rapid pace. Within the Dutch language, books with titles
such as The Empathic Brain, Why We are More Social than We Think,14 or The
Moral Brain: Evolution, Emotions and Ethics15 appear regularly. Given the
global popularity of the cognitive science approach, this is probably the
case outside the Netherlands as well. A few scientists have attempted to
synthesize insights from the life sciences, cognitive sciences and neurology.
In his book The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin writes that we are
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Sandel 2010.
Harris 2010.
Greene 2013.
Haidt 2006.
De Waal 2009.
Iacoboni 2008.
Keysers 2012.
Tyra 2013.
14 Gabriël van den Brink
moving into a new era – one that is no longer marked by reason but by
empathy. According to Rifkin, the survival of human civilization essentially
depends upon whether we are able to develop a global form of compassion.16
Against this background, it is not surprising that this book also addresses
the issue of moral values and sentiments. We are not indifferent to the
questions that have played an important role in the public and academic
debate in the last ten years. At the same time, we hope to add something
by linking this topic to the way in which modern society has developed
over the past half century. That link is not obvious because most studies
of modernity steer well clear of the topic of moral values. Therein lies the
academic value of our book.
2
Why the Netherlands?
There are two trivial reasons the Netherlands was chosen for our research.
First, it is a society that we know well because we live and work in it. And
second, many aspects of this society have been documented, which is important if one is conducting empirical research. The most relevant question
is, however, the extent to which the Netherlands is a suitable case if one
wants to investigate the fate of moral values in modern society. And we
believe this is the case on several counts.
To begin with, there are few countries where one can observe the
functioning of modern society better than the Netherlands. I would even
dare to say that it is one of the most modern societies in the world. This
has everything to do with the birth of this country and its subsequent
development. Several factors contributed to the rise of Holland as a world
power in the seventeenth century. There was a developed money economy,
trade networks that stretched around the world, an army that functioned in
a rational manner, a high degree of urbanisation, and an urban bourgeoisie
that was subjugated to a limited degree to the power of a national state. In
other words, the former Republic had virtually everything we would expect
to find in a modern society. This applies equally to the spiritual aspects
that characterise modern life. There was a relatively tolerant climate in
the Republic which led critical minds from all over Europe to take refuge
there. Numerous scholarly works were published at this time, and cultural
life exhibited an unprecedented boom.17 While we clearly cannot draw
16 Rifkin 2009.
17 Frijhoff & Spies 1999.
Introduc tion
15
a straight line from the past to present-day Netherlands, many modern
traits have prevailed over the centuries. Think of the importance of trade
for the Netherlands and its strong international orientation; the influence
of the urban bourgeoisie, with its penchant for egalitarian relationships;
or even the spirit of liberalism and entrepreneurship, which are still very
palpable today in Dutch cities. As a result of all this, the Netherlands was
until recently the prime example of a modern and tolerant society, with its
progressive laws drawing admiration from around the world. If one wants
to examine in depth how moral sentiments and modern living interact,
then I would venture to say that the Netherlands is a perfect case study.
This is all the more so because the Dutch are experiencing the full brunt
of the crisis of modern living, a crisis that was incidentally predicted by
few. Until well into the 1990s, the Netherlands was governed by a progressive elite that cherished enlightened ideals. Conflicts and possible
tensions were resolved by mutual agreement. Many saw the emergence
of multiculturalism as something that enriched society. Nationalist sentiments were regarded as outdated, and people were convinced that the
world would become a better place as a result of globalisation. But around
the turn of the millenium, more and more dark clouds began to gather
over our peaceful social order, eventually culminating in a storm that
broke loose over the polder. And hence the country that liked to think
of itself as the champion of tolerance and openness was rocked twice by
political assassinations. In 2001, the politician Pim Fortuyn, who was on
the brink of winning the general elections, was shot dead by an activist.
In 2004, Theo van Gogh, a well-known but controversial filmmaker, was
stabbed to death by a supporter of radical Islam. In the years that followed,
a type of national populism began to emerge that many had considered
impossible. Large-scale resistance to the process of European integration
began to develop, a process the Dutch business community had put all
its money on. The issue of immigrants became a topic that engendered
fierce clashes and one that every columnist felt compelled to address. The
country’s need for a strong leader grew, and the idea arose – especially
abroad – that many Dutch people wanted to get rid of their open, tolerant
and democratic tradition. While it is true that these changes also took
place in other countries, the fact that this happened in a country that had
first embraced freedom of conscience in Europe gave cause for reflection.
This is one reason why our investigation into the fate of moral values could
be relevant.
Another reason is economic. We already mentioned the strong international character of the Dutch economy. This causes business cycles to
16 Gabriël van den Brink
have a particularly strong impact here, as was evident in the economic
crisis that began in 2008 and whose effects are still being felt to this day.
The crisis led to a programme of major cutbacks in public spending as
part of the government’s attempts to slim down the welfare system. The
idea is that citizens and other social actors must themselves assume the
tasks of a large part of the public service. However, this radical shift in
policy masks the fact that the bureaucratic elite had adopted a neoliberal
agenda much earlier. Already in the 1980s, the Netherlands had switched
to a relatively radical (but little thought out) programme that had led
to the privatisation and streamlining of many public services. This led
to all sorts of problems in the public sector and frustrated the work of
professionals. The result is that there has been much discussion in the
Netherlands in the last decade about the practising of one’s profession
and also about moral or normative questions related to it. There is a high
degree of dissatisfaction among professionals. This is also the case for
many citizens who for one reason or another are not satisfied with the
way politicians are representing them. Increasingly they are developing
their own initiatives, sometimes sidestepping laws and regulations. Those
who closely follow these trends in the Netherlands will notice that there
is a revival of interest in public moral that is hardly acknowledged by
established politicians. We are heading for an interesting and at the same
time risky confrontation between moral values and political rules. This
also makes the Netherlands a highly relevant case, as we can observe how
modernity and morality interact with each other.
3
Why now?
Just as it is no coincidence that moral issues are playing a prominent role in
the Netherlands, we would say that it is no coincidence that they are appearing right now. The more relevant question is what trends are contributing
to this re-emergence of moral issues.
One cannot claim that moral issues have only become topical in recent
years, as their history goes back a very long way. There have always been
theologians, philosophers and historians who have explored this development in depth. Interestingly, some of them also appeal to a broad audience. This is the case with the theologian Karen Armstrong, who has been
publishing books on the history of major world religions for many years. In
The Great Transformation, she submits that inter alia Hinduism, Buddhism,
Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a number of values in
Introduc tion
17
common.18 The philosopher Charles Taylor has forged another path. He has
written a number of monumental works in which he analyses the meaning
and genesis of modern humanism. Among other things, he asks why around
the year 1500 every moral and spiritual striving inevitably referred back to
God and why this is virtually unthinkable now, half a millennium later.
With books such as A Secular Time and Sources of the Self, Taylor throws
new light on contemporary forms of engagement. These authors are not
the only ones who turn to the past to find answers to the question of how
we should understand the spiritual life of our time.19 In A History of Our
Gods, Frédéric Lenoir argues that we are witnessing a reversal of religious
history. While monotheistic traditions have for centuries pursued some sort
of rationalisation of religious life, we are now seeing a growing fascination
with the emotional side of religion.20 This illustrates that there are still
researchers who reflect on the times we live in and who attempt to establish
a relationship with the great moral questions of the past.
Apart from intellectual history, political affairs are also forcing us to
deliberate anew on classic issues. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
West assumed that other countries would welcome our model of democracy.
Recent years have taught us that this was a most naive assumption. Russia
and other Eastern European countries may be free from communism but
have yet to embrace democracy. In China, it is unclear whether the country’s
phenomenal economic growth will lead to political democracy. Attempts
to implement democracy in countries like Iraq, after having dislodged their
dictators, have failed miserably. This forces us to fundamentally reflect
on the political order in which we live.21 There are also domestic reasons
for this reflection. Consider the failure of the Third Way, which had social
democratic parties in the West pursuing political modernisation.22 Or the
question of how one might implement a renewal of civil society.23 Or the
impact of new media on the behaviour of our politicians, as illusions and
sentiments becoming increasingly what matters.24 As a result, less attention
is given to the rational or the instrumental and more to the affective or
normative dimension of political life. This has also ensured that questions
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Armstrong 2005, see also 1995.
Taylor 2007, 2009.
Lenoir 2010, 2013.
Fukuyama 2012, 2014.
Blond 2010.
Alexander 2006.
Nussbaum 2013.
18 Gabriël van den Brink
about values have once again risen to the top of the public agenda.25 What
emerges is the need to develop a new vision of political life as it takes shape
in the contemporary world and the changing opportunities that this offers
citizen participation.
The last and most recent event to trigger a discussion of moral values
is the economic crisis that began in 2008. The outbreak of the crisis is a
problem for economists. Although they like to present their field as an
exact science, most economists did not see this crisis coming. And what is
worse, they also do not know how to solve it. This has to do with the fact that
economists work with mathematical models that are detached from social
reality.26 Moreover, economists have a narrow view of human nature: they
see humans as calculating creatures who pursue their own interests in a
rational way. Moral motives do not play a role in the economists’ hypothetical economy. It is therefore not surprising that several authors argue for a
critical reflection of the assumptions and methodology used in economics.
Robert and Edward Skidelsky, for example, argue not only that the current
problems arise from a lack of moral values but that the economy itself is
part of that problem. Economists concentrate on the means and never allow
themselves to elaborate on the ends.27 A related perspective is found in the
work of Tomas Sedlacek, who believes that scholars need to consider the
interconnection between economic and moral motives.28 This theme of the
interconnection between economics and moral values also pops up in other
disciplines. I am referring to David Graeber’s study on debt, which showed
how indebtedness in both the monetary and moral sense of the word have
been linked with each other for millennia.29 Coen Simon sees the issue from
a philosophical perspective in his book entitled Guilt.30 In his book Without
Values, the former banker George Möller critically analyses the functioning
of banks.31 All these books deal in a penetrating way with the relevance of
moral thinking to the economy.
All in all, it is logical that the issue of moral values has become topical
precisely in recent years. We see connections occurring between an intellectual reflection on modern life that has been going on for much longer
and the political challenges of democratic states that have been struggling
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Hurenkamp e.a.2013.
See the contributions by De Grauwe and Buiter in: Hemerijck et al. 2009, p. 82-89, 122-123.
Skidelsky & Skidelsky 2013.
Sedlácek 2012.
Graeber 2012.
Simon 2013.
Möller 2012.
Introduc tion
19
for two decades, confronted with the questions brought on by the recent
economic crisis. It would go far beyond my intellectual abilities to take this
all up, but it certainly plays a role in the background. What this book offers
is a philosophical perspective that might shed new light on this matter.
4
Personal motives
The foregoing demonstrates that the question asked in this research stems
not only from a scholarly interest in the matter but also from issues and
events that have affected public opinion in the Netherlands. Additionally,
there are personal reasons for why I have dedicated myself for quite some
time to the fate of moral values in modern society. It seems useful at this
point to briefly go into this, if only because foreign readers will not be
acquainted with me or my work.32
My longstanding fascination with the tension between morality and
modernity is undoubtedly related to my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s
in the countryside of North Brabant, an almost entirely Catholic region that
had developed into an industrialised society within a relatively short time
span. The ambiguity of that change made a big impression on me. This was
evident in 1969 when I enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of
Nijmegen, where I – along with thousands of my peers – embraced Marxism
within weeks. Throughout my entire period of studies and long after, I
immersed myself in the work of thinkers who assumed a critical – or at
least a distanced – attitude towards modern capitalism. My intellectual
heroes were not only the obligatory Marx, Nietzsche and Freud but also
thinkers such as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss and other French theorists who
drew attention to the drawbacks of modern life. Although their point of
view evinced an involvement in ethical issues to some extent, it took some
time before I could develop my own, more balanced approach.
That only happened when I began conducting historical research in 1986.
My research delved into the modernisation of everyday life observed in the
Brabant village of Woensel between 1670 and 1920. This study, for which I
32 Although I have been conducting research into many aspects of modern life, I have published
very little in English until now. There are two reasons for this. First, I like to combine theories
and ideas from several disciplines, which makes it less attractive to write articles in specialised
journals. Personally, I prefer to write books because they give me the opportunity to develop
an argument that is more complex. Second, I deliberately address the general public in order to
play a role in the public debate. An important disadvantage of this is, of course, that my work
is unknown outside the Netherlands.
20 Gabriël van den Brink
received a PhD in 1996, taught me that the process of modernisation cannot
be reduced to economic forces and conditions, although these clearly had a
major impact on the daily lives of those in the village. Political and cultural
changes also play a role. I came to the conclusion that the weight of the
latter was greater than had been assumed by Marx and many other thinkers
on modern society. In fact, I tended to adopt a Hegelian view of history in
which the development of society is primarily understood as a spiritual
process. In any case, I was able to show that efforts in the fields of education,
religion and morality had contributed substantially to the development of
modern society in Woensel. All this forced me to dramatically change the
theoretical inquiry that I had once started and to give more weight to the
question of values, ideas and other spiritual aspects.33
This has been decisive for the work I have done since 1996. I have researched various aspects of modern life in the Netherlands, ranging from
family life to political dissatisfaction and from citizenship to aggressive
youngsters. In the process, I realised more and more that the image of the
Netherlands as an open society was rather biased. There was indeed a large
degree of freedom within Dutch society, but at the same time it imposed
exacting expectations (though never fully expressed) of a normative nature.
In 2005, my appointment as Professor of Social Administration at the University of Tilburg followed. I was able to continue my theoretical inquiry
into modernisation there, although the focus now lay more on political and
administrative processes. In the meantime, a substantial turnaround in
public opinion was taking place. While before the turn of the millennium
an almost naive optimism prevailed in the Netherlands, by 2004 this had
transformed into an atmosphere increasingly dominated by cynicism and
resentment. Remarkably, it was mainly the ‘progressive’ intellectuals who
relativised moral issues. This prompted me to start a major study in 2008
on the role of religious ideals and spiritual principles in a modern society
such as the Netherlands. The present book is the result.
5
Word of thanks
My explanation above is not intended to suggest that I have devised or
implemented everything in this book The insights presented in this volume
are the fruits of a collective effort in which thirteen people contributed. I
would like to express my deep gratitude to Professors Erik Borgman, Paul
33 Van den Brink 1996.
Introduc tion
21
Dekker, Peter Nissen and Willem Witteveen – colleagues with whom I
have had a very enjoyable and fruitful cooperation over the past years. My
acknowledgement also goes to Hanneke Arts, Wieger Bakker, Loek Halman,
Erik van Ingen, Heleen van Luyn, Nicole Maalsté, Heidi de Mare and Karen
Woets, each of who took on one (or more) parts of the research. My gratitude
also goes to Richard van Zwol and Ellen van Doorne who, as civil servants
at the Department of General Affairs, contributed to the financing of the
project. I would also like to say a word of thanks to Philip Eijlander who
always showed interest in our project – first as dean of the law faculty and
later as Rector of the University of Tilburg. Finally, I would like to thank
several individuals and agencies who made a second operation of the project
possible but who would like to remain anonymous. They prove that altruism
still exists in the Netherlands.