Tom Walker wrote:
[snip]
> Underlying this almost
> instantaneous decay of the system has been the slow erosion of morally
> defensible (traditionalist) structures of individual motivations. As
> Habermas argued, "Bourgeois culture as a whole was never able to reproduce
> itself from itself. It was always dependent on motivationally effective
> supplementation by traditional world views."
[snip]
I am not an expert on the history of Early Modern Europe,
but one only need read Elizabeth Eisenstein's monumental
text: _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ (Cambridge Univ.),
which she says she wanted to title:
The Master Printer as an Agent of Change
, to understand that something has been lost between
the true giants of early capitalism: the great master
printers whose work laid the foundation for the modern
world, and "the bourgeois".
The former, who devoted their mornings to
"business" and spent much of the rest of their
time in study and correspondence with their peers (an
earlier "Internet" / "Europe Wide Web"...), had no need
to supplement their motivational horizon with
"traditional world views", for they were busy
and transforming the very notion of the past, in
the production of *uniform printed editions*.
They *created* the past and "reality" as we know those
things.
They both employed and read Erasmus.
I would guess Bill Gates and Donald Trump do neither
(although Bill is busy muddling the equivalent of
"uniform printed editions" for *our* time: SGML
and other computer *standards*...).
Tom's diagnosis seems right on target for *our*
[lumpen-]bourgeoisie, to whom the appellation:
consumers
well applies (as an article in one of
yesterday's New York papers described a
Greenwich CT stock broker looking at
Porsches and wondering whether to buy a
"mate" for the one he bought in February)!
\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
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