500 years of thinking

8/3/2019 500 Years of Thinking

1/19

500 years of philosophy in one go...and quite a few revolutions thrown in too...


2/19

The plan and the why...

To help you understand how we get to a point where aliterature of alienation makes perfect sense.

What I want to do here is give you some insight into some of themajor drifts of Western thought since (and even before) theEnlightenment.

The reason Im doing this is because I believe it is far easier to

understand where we are now, if you can see some kind storylineof thinking, rather than me just saying this is how it is.

Plus, if you give it space and time, its REALLY interesting.


3/19

The best way to record this...

Practise the art of active listening, which for me means:- looking at the slide titles and writing bullet point notes

- not trying to capture everything that you see on a slide orhear me say.

What will be on the slides will essentially be bullet points forme, to help me keep this dialogue on track.

Im going to leave space at the end for you to:a) ask me questionsb) look at what other people have written


4/19

Theory

From the Greek theoria - meaning looking at, gazing at,being aware of.

Theory is a way of seeing, a lens that colours the world sothat you see it differently.

Theory gives you a framework to understand the zeitgeist;

to construct interpretations around.

All of today will be theory.


5/19

Middle Ages - pre-14th Century

Were talking pre-Shakespeare here, by quite a long way

We must imagine a completely different value system - soforeign its almost impossible to imagine

Religion, Community, Education

A greater good

Capitalism doesnt exist; science is in its infancy; theindividual barely exists


6/19

Renaissance - 15-16th Century

Shakespeares time (also quite a number of years before and after)

Invention of the printing press = the ability to disseminateknowledge

Development of the scientific method, with a shift in faith towardsmathematics and observation

Columbus discovers the New World, which essentially challengesall assumptions about the world as it existed

Religion still prominent


7/19

Scientific Revolution - 16th-17th

Century"the renaissance enabled a scientific revolution which let scholarslook at the world in a different light. Religion, superstition, and fearwere replaced by reason and knowledge" - J. D. Bernal

Copernican turn - all of a sudden the Earth revolves around thesun; the Earth is no longer the centre of the universe

Huge advances in science begin to de-mystify the world - biology,

mathematics, physics, explain the previously unexplainable

Many (in fact most) scientists are theists (believe in God)


8/19

The Enlightenment

The age of Reason (with a capital R)

The idea that through reason, everything can be explained, all truths can be

revealed

"Mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousnessfrom an immature state of ignorance and error." - Immanuel Kant

Debate over the nature of humankind - inherently good or evil?

Shift away from the devine right of kings to arguments fordemocracy/representative government

Rise of metaphysics - the study of the nature of being and the world

Immanuel Kants Critique of Reason ends the Enlightenment (kinda)


9/19

Kantian Philosophy

Where Enlightenment beliefs suggested that the laws thatgovern nature can be discovered with the mind, Kant believed

that the mind gives those laws to nature.

We are born with our own ideas and perception of the world

We cant know what is real and what is our perception -

reality is in the eye of the beholder and is therefore notuniversal

As a result, observed evidence cannot be trusted


10/19

Post-Enlightenment: The Death

of GodFriedrich Nietzsche

The role of science is to explain the world, which used to be Gods job.

Science replaces God, thus the famous God is dead

Science doesnt provide an alternative value set though, and so we areleft in a void

People need to identify some source of meaning and value in their

lives, what do they turn to?

The Will to Power: the fundamental drive for power

The flux of competing wills; a lack of a fixed being


11/19

A point of division

Industrial Revolution

Capitalism; the successof...

Socialism; the failure ofat the hand ofcommunism

Inter-linked, but...

Modernism(s)

The Absurd

The Existential

Postmodernism


12/19

Industrial Revolution - 1750-1850

Massive period of agricultural, manufacturing, transportationand technological change.

Affected almost every part daily life

The invention of the factory pulled workers from widespreadareas into central zones; thus the modern city was born

Social movement becomes possible

Capitalism is born


13/19

Karl Marx and Alienation

According to Marx alienation is the consequence of capitalism.

Capitalism puts us in a situation where we must work, and so theindividuals ability to determine their actions, their relations toothers, and to be able to use the things they produce by theiractions is handed over to their boss.

We are autonomous, self-realised humans, but our activities are

dictated by those in power - going back to the Industrial Revolution,activities are dictated by the owner of the factory.

Capitalism encourages individuality over social living - we stopbeing social beings


14/19

[Marx portrays] the situation of modern individualsespeciallymodern wage labourerswho are deprived of a fulfilling mode of lifebecause their life-activity as socially productive agents is devoid ofany sense of communal action or satisfaction and gives them noownership over their own lives or their products. In modern society,individuals are alienated in so far as their common human essence,the actual co-operative activity which naturally unites them, is power-less in their lives, which are subject to an inhuman powercreatedby them, but separating and dominating them instead of beingsubject to their united will. This is the power of the market, which isfree only in the sense that it is beyond the control of its humancreators, enslaving them by separating them from one another, fromtheir activity, and from its products....Fundamentally, to be alienatedis to be separated from one's own essence or nature; it is to beforced to lead a life in which that nature has no opportunity to befulfilled or actualized. In this way, the experience of alienation

involves a sense of a lack of self-worth and an absence of meaningin one's life."


15/19

Capitalism thrives...

We live in a capitalist society.

The way that we live, the idea of working for a living, having aboss, earning a wage, etc. is not necessarily a natural way tolive.

Capitalist culture is one model of living, one way of doingthings, but it has become so ingrained in our culture that wethink of it as completely natural.

The power of the system is that even the thought of takingoneself out of the system seems completely absurd.


16/19

Going back: Modernisms

With science challenging the way we see the world, throwingout old traditions for new one, the arts began to do the same.

The value systems of old no longer applied, but no valuesystem took its place, and so artists became completely free tocreate their own beliefs around what art should represent.

After the likes of Nietzsche, there is both no God and noessences, no fundamental truths; everything is in flux.

Art became a way of representing the human condition - oftenalone, without a God to give life meaning.


17/19

The Absurd: Albert Camus

Much of our life is built on the hope of tomorrow, but tomorrow brings uscloser to death, which is the ultimate enemy.

The world is strange, foreign, inhuman place, which is effectivelyunknowable as rational thinking and science cant explain the world -rather they just end up creating stories, which are essentiallymetaphors, and are just images of the truth.

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises

when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness ofthe world, when "my appetite for the absolute and for unity" meets "theimpossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonableprinciple."


18/19

Absurdism

Humans search for meaning in their lives.

This leads to either: the belief that life is meaningless, or abelief in a higher power, e.g. God, but also secular beliefs

like the American Dream.

Hope must be rejected. Only by rejecting hope for tomorrow

can the current day be lived to its fullest.


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Existentialism

Existence comes before essence.

There is no fundamental essence to human existence - nothing

fundamental determines who we are.

It is the choices that we make, the accumulation of our decisions thatultimately determines our essence.

Our acts determine who we are and then we must become responsible

and accountable for that person we have become.

Again, the individual is fundamentally alone. They are freed from the cageof a predetermined essence, but must face the very difficult task of takingownership of the creation of their own essence.

500 years of thinking

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