Thomas Lunde wrote:
[snip]
> ...However, the challenge
> is to decide which of the aspects of work is releveant and to find an
> underused word that you can attach your new meaning to.
>
> To give you a small example, I am currently reading a book called
> Cosmopolis. Now, this book was referred to on the Internet and I requested
> it from the library without really thinking about the meaning. When I got
> the book, I tried to decipher what Cosmopolis might mean - to no avail.
> However, after reading the book, I now know the author meant the word to
> mean there is a relationship between the Greek words cosmo and polis which
> was explored in the 16th and 17th centuries by the philosophers of the day.
> A new word, complete with meaning has been added to my brain/memory system
> and yet if I use that word, for most it will have no meaning as it took time
> and effort for the meaning to develop in my mind.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Thomas Lund
It has been a while since I read it, but *Cosmopolis* was
one of the *transformative* books I have read. As I remember
it, Toulmin goes back and looks at the roots of "modernity", and
finds that there were two paths modernity might have
taken, and that, as usual, the one that became hegemonous
pretty much obliterated awareness that there even *was* an
alternative.
The one that "won" was Cartesianism, which has led to everything
from the Laplacean Weltanschauung (which really argues that
there is no world but only physical universe of material *stuff*),
to Taylorism, and all sorts of other humanly ambivalent
(at best) stuff. The alternative was a genuinely humanistic
(as opposed to merely taxonomically "human", i.e., not
animal or vegetable or mineral) Weltanschauung, grounded
in the work of such persons as
Rabelais and Erasmus.
Had this alternative path to modernity ("Enlightenment", to use
Kant's phrase) been followed, capitalism (i.e., *the
worker as object (AKA: human resources)*), etc. could never
have colonized reasonably informed minds, because everybody
would have known that it was obvious that the social world
is the collaborative product of community, i.e., dialogical
intercourse of peers who relate to each other in
mutual respect, and who collaboratively shape their
environment (social *and* natural).
The Rabelais / Erasmus alternative would have been
even less tolerant of dogmatism than the Cartesian
form of modernity (because it would even have been
critical about Reason itself, e.g., about empirical /
mathematizing
method, and the so-called "social sciences"). It would
not have been *inconsistent* with or inimical to
mathematical science, although it would unquestionably
have kept technique in its place: subject to politics
in the Classical Greek sense of the collective
deliberations of the citizenry --> real, not "representative"
demo-cracy!
Had Rabelais / Erasmus won (how could
they: they were creatures of the weakness of flesh, not
the power of machinery!), today we might live in a
genuine *society*, i.e., a social world of comaraderie
rather than Marxian Ab-welt of alienation (where, as a lovely
article in this weekend's New York Times magazine has
one boss say to another (I paraphrase):
"The employee did a really
great job for us last week; she worked on her hands and
knees for at least 60 hours." And the second boss
replies: "Yes, we'll put her in for 50." The first:
"Sounds good.").
Had Rabelais / Erasmus "won" (there would have
been no *losers*, then...), we might live in
Theleme, rather than in the shadow of Wall Stret!
Cosmopolis: Kaspar Hauser's vision (in Werner Herzog's
film) of cities on the plain. Freemasonry's vision
of the radiant city of Reason (a house on a high
hill / e.g., Monticello). The polis as cosmos.
Husserl's great vision of a humanity transformed
in universal self-reflection.... (Jean de Coras, the
Inquisitor of Martin Guerre:
"For the spirit alone lives; all else dies.")
- - - The sorrow an the pity - - -
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
