[lit-ideas] Re: Reason (was Faith)
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 17:08:28 -0700
on 5/19/05 2:43 AM, Mirembe Nantongo at nantongo@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Am I "suggesting" this? *Suggesting* it? I am proclaiming it from the
> rooftops and dropping it from C130s in bales of fluorescent pink propaganda
> pamphlets. Hume was right, Reason should serve -- not seize power and wield
> it dangerously and indiscriminately like some monumentally unqualified
> jumped-up Banana Republic dictator.
>
> On with the Revolution!
>
This raises an interesting possibility for the intellectual historian. How
to pin down the moment when reason got too uppity? Scientific revolution,
enlightenment...o.k. so far? Hume seems to think so. Romanticism...hearts
still seem to be going strong... Nutty Victorians...Freud...First World
War...DADA...reason promoted to the Premier League yet? Don't think so.
Fascism, Stalin, Cuban Missile Crisis...perhaps I'm looking in all the wrong
places? Perhaps the properly diligent thing for a historian to do would be
to apply for a grant to go off and spend some time in a bucolic but clearly
less reasonable place, Tuscany say, or the south of France and to trace how
and when the tribe under the thumb of reason and the free tribe went their
separate ways?
I've a feeling that the substitute for reason that Mirembe is looking for
may be found among the many art manifestos of the twentieth century.
Certainly there were prospectors looking for it. Dig among their tailings
and there'll be traces. But be careful what you touch. Some of what
remains is still pretty toxic.
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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