I've been reading through Russel's History of Western Philosophy and have
gotten as far as Locke. I'd been exposed to each thinker, most of them
anyway, but hadn't seen how the "story unfolds".
My principal reaction so far is HOW UTTERLY EMBARRASSING Western philosophy
is; as I read about each guy, I kept saying "Is that all there is??", "Is
this guy serious?"
There's a lack of depth, of wisdom, of connection with common sense or
sensitive human experience. It is well characterized by "rational" and
"creative", but as much by lack of other virtues as excellence in
rationality. Almost anything from the "East" is in color and sterio
compared to the West's black and white mono drudgery.
It expresses what I'd call "fundamentalist rationality" -- nothing but
concrete verbally exressible reasoning is given any credence. Descarte's
"cogito ergo sum" expresses it concisely. A punch in the nose might have
woken him up to the greater totality of his being, but I doubt it. The
western philosopher might as well be a brain suspended in an isolation
tank. We know from Goedel that any system which is consistent is
incomplete: Western philosophy is woefully incomplete because it worships a
narrow notion of consistency.
It would all make for a great comedy act: your straight-man would express
each of the philosophers, and the other guy would poke fun. "Is that a
chair?"... "Well sort of, but it's not the IDEAL chair"... "Oh, yeah, what
does an ideal chair look like?"... "Well I can't really say, that can't be
known"... "What was the state of nature?"... "A guy in his cave"... "Oh,
did he hunt alone?"... "Uh... I'm not sure"... "Did his wife help?"...
"Uh... I guess they had a contract of their own"... etc. etc. The
audience would be rolling in the aisles by the time they got to Locke,
because real people have SENSE. "State of nature"?... give me a break;
"social contract"?... wake up and smell the coffee. I had recalled
Pythagoras and his bean-ban -- a good chuckle -- but I hadn't realized how
archtypal that was.
It started with the Hebrews and the Greeks. The Hebrews banished most of
the wisdom of mankind to the garden to promote the primacy of their fantasy
great-father-in-the-sky and acclaim their unique specialness, and the
Greeks decided they needed to invent everything from scratch. The Romans,
spiritual pygmies that they were, picked up on these impoverished threads
and we're stuck with them still.
Creativity, though it has admirable virtues of its own and some of us
thrive on it, is primarily a DESRTUCTIVE force, especially if it starts
from scratch rather than complementing what's already known. One phrase
will suffice to make this point: nuclear energy.
It seems clear to me that Euro expansionism and dominance was primarily due
to this focus on creativity and narrow rationalism. They were always
looking for the new, and always willing to sacrifice the old. China, allow
me to suggest, had more sense that to seek far-flung dominions -- they knew
it would disrupt their society as much as the other: if something can't be
integrated, it's destabilizing.
The Western apes didn't give a shit about what was lost (my connection to
the ape.shit thread) and we see that today yet again in globalization --
which is willing to throw away everything for the sake of yet another
stupid isolated brain concept "market forces", which has no more grounding
in reality or common sense than "ideal chairs" or "state of nature".
Marxist opponents are no better -- Marx was just another guy who wanted to
throw everything away for yet another narrow ungrounded mind-concept called
"labor valuation".
Partly the Western pattern is one of "tools looking for problems" -- people
come up with ideas they're in love with, and then they (and their
generations of followers) keep trying to make reality fit the fantasy.
"Perfect markets" is perhaps the overall most destructive example. Western
"schools" are cults: members see the world through a narrow slit, while
outsiders are baffled.
But there's another pattern too, and that's "rationalization of power".
How many of our thinkers were no more than power sycophants? (eg, social
darwinism).
The West can make a claim to science, but it's "philosophy" is juvenile.
And the science is fatally flawed: it has grossly inadequate grounding in
social utility.
-rkm
___________________________
11/27/97, Bill Schell wrote:
> Weber's concept of rationality is complex and he is often not clear about
>how he is using it. Nonetheless, it seems to me that Blaut misrepresents
>Weber's constructs.