First, let me note that "the people's choice" on Time's
person-of-the-century poll was:
(1) Elvis
(2) Ischak Rabin [I can't spell his first name, sorry]
(3) Hitler
"Ray E. Harrell" wrote:
>
>
> Brad said:
>
> > Needham's orienting
> > question was: Why, when China was in many ways more
> > advanced than Europe even in the 1500s, did Europe "take
> > off" but China remained in feudalism? His answer,
> > which he did not like, was that Capitalism seems
> > to have been the engine which drove not just
> > the West's economic exploitation of the whole world,
> > but also the great flowering of genuine
> > Enlightenment in the West.
> >
>
> When Kazantzakis wrote out the "story" to explore these questions in
> Odysseus a 20th Century Sequel he came up with the answer that it
> was war that did it.
I haven't read Kazantzakis. Obviously, the question does not
have a single, simple, univocal answer. All I can say is that one of the
great scholars of the 20th century spent most of an almost century-long
lifetime on this question, and I gave what he concluded. Needham must
have been a remarkable person -- his massive erudition was even
coupled with a fine sensitivity to human sexuality (see his Preface
and Afterword to Jolan Chang's _The Tao of Sex_).
>
> "I praise you Helen for your heaving thighs that lit in slothful men a
> raging war that opened minds and widened seas."
She deserved to be the object of one of those American
Express celebrity "Who?" ads.
[snip]
> No one wanted Cortez or Pizarro around in Spain. The same could
> be said for Ceasar and Rome. Better that they fight "out there."
> See what happened when he stayed home too long! If El Cid
> had lived, he would have been off to America in no time at all.
This may also have some connection with the custom of
"primogenitur"? In any case, I seem to have heard that
my paternal grandfather was shipped over here from Poland
by his father because he was "incorrigible".
[snip]
> As to Needham, the real question for me and my tradition, is why a
> "sedentary China" is considered less advanced than a predatory Europe?
[snip]
I think I made it clear in my posting that "Europe" has
been an ambivalent phenomenon. (Not that most other
cultures have been unalloyedly beneficient to all their
"members".... --item: widespread ritual female genital
mutilation practices in numerous non-European "cultures".)
But let me spell out yet again
my thesis: *Universal culture* seems to have only
once appeared on earth, and that appearance was in
Europe. Probably the European people didn't deserve it,
but they (i.e., at least some of them)
got it, and if they (we) lose it, it may
disappear from the face of the earth. And what am I
talking about here? Galilean mathematical exact
science is *one* part of it, but the highest achievement
of it so far (at least as far as I know) is Edmund
Husserl's phenomenology: The thematization of humanity
as devoting it(my/our)self to the *Infinite task* of self-critical
comming to self-accountability in *all* aspects of
life, including all the details of childrearing.
Does it matter if this disappears from earth? Probably
not. Does anything matter? Equally probably not.
For nothing is necessary -- not even does any person need
oxygen. It's all a question of what people (and, perhaps,
other sapient creatures...) *want*.
"Yours in [the fragility of...] discourse...."
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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