DividedQuantum said:
The human species was never meant by Nature to engage in conducting civilization. We're simply not equipped by our evolution to be able to make it work. Perhaps that is why we are so bad at it.
I think I might agree with this...
I am not sure how I can contribute to the dialogue, standing here, but maybe I can make a sidelong remark.
I often find I don't agree with what everyone often says, their theories and narratives about post "agricultural society", and this is why Iappreciate your point of view to bracketing this. Some historians I have read, and heard, are a little speculative in my opinion, and invest this point into a way explaining something about humanity. In other words post-agricultural society often becomes token of some existing narrative. I think we can mark a point of insight, without exactly running with it. I think thought experiments are warranted...
This would be effectively to say, [we don't know what is going on, when we think about human economies, even at precisely very same time, we admittedly dwell in our means and ends, and practicality.] We can think about this though, even though we bracket it. We might take it as a whole. Thankfully, we can consider our human economy, and not just in idealism, but yes, in thoughtful reflection.
You would know much better about this than me, DQ, anthropologically speaking, but when I tend to think of a point of agricultural development, a surplus of collective economy, it was not just that some additional time for human "luxuries" rather than "necessities" that arose. We tend to think of those terms immediately, when we think of any abundance, as a hierarchy of needs, and I guess justifiably. It is "human nature” too.
Yet there is much we bracket, in a question of what is going on? It wasn't just the arts, or the human artisan, or craftsman, or engineer of society, or finally technology that arose, in some simple way, it was all of this and more as a whole. Perhaps indeed, it is what Hannah Arendt called the general vita activa or vital activity of human beings, when we find something above satisfying our necessities. I think that is what we bracket, but also generally work with in post agricultural society (and I don't necessarily think it is exclusive to agricultural societies).
I think our society is pretty attached to an idea of having a definitive perception and consensus, when it comes to a collective consideration. It is our modern philosophy right? I think we overlook how we dwell in our means and work with things, and this is not just insofar as they present and accessible to ideal meaning (in nature) before us. Look around just a moment, and you can see. We produce what we dwell in, we don't just discover or find it.
I enjoy the ancient philosophy better, for admitting to this. From Plato to Aristotle, I notice that ancient philosophy arose in the burgeoning of such a basic terms. It is said that upon agricultural community, it was possible for an artisan community. Less acknowledged is that upon the arising of an artisan or luxury based community, also philosophy was able to arise.
If one thing could be said about Plato at face value, for instance, (read almost any of his dialogues) would be that he would always make the analogies to the basic technical roles we as humans play in such a society, (fishmongerers, doctors etc) where skills or crafts (techne) are reflected on as a model to discuss any excellence or philosophical virtue or basis of knowledge or expertise, that he wanted to talk about in a more general way. That analogy was not identification with techne or craftsman, but a method of inquiry and a reflection, in which he found the “good” to be a general "form" (however convincingly).
This is kind of interesting dialogue to me. The way we relate knowledge to our artisan craftsmanship or modern engineering of the world, should be considered all the more today.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/
I am more of an Aristotelian I think. To Aristotle, a human end was in itself a "good", and it was taken in general as such. This is not "idealism", such a general sketch, and is a response to Plato. I think we overlook the extent we dwell in such a reality where we dwell in out means and particular ends as “goods”, however organized they may be. Clearly we do not merely discover, and consider nature as objectively "present" before us in every case, all the time. We are part of things, and we "develop our nature".
Yet in the way Aristotle would strike our ears today, it would definitely seem to be in generally unifying our conceptions. Perhaps we can create a different kind of hierarchy of goods based on human ends, and virtue. First, perhaps most importantly, Aristotle suggests (in the argument below) that an end in itself, is by definition, a good. We dwell in these terms in a broad, and yet accessible way, as our ethical values. Then clearly the idea is to consider the same idea in a more holistic way, which we relate to as a political good.
Obviously the difficult thing about traditional philosophy also (especially with Aristotle in so many cases) is disentangling such a traditional conception, from what we have based on it. In my opinion, just reconciling with (the first proposition) that the actual reality that we dwell in, is largely our means and ends as human beings, is something that could be considered hugely important. We moderners, in modos “just now” dwell in the terms of presence of entities, and I think this is a huge blinder, because we shoot for our objects in much more approximate way.
We have to reconcile with our pyramid of heirarchies that are shaped this way, over a long time, and so why not think of Aristotle, who was for better or worse, one who theoretically set many of these heirarchies in place (well maybe Alexander the great, his student really propogated this culture, but in any case) We have seemed to organize ourselves this way, yet it has been a long time since we have in any philosophical or ethical based way.
Just a thought.
Quote:
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities...
...Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single capacity- as bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under yet others- in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued.
If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Quote:
We are still far from pondering the essence of action decisively
enough. We view action only as causing an effect. The actuality of the
effect is valued according to its utility. But the essence of action is accomplishment. To accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness
of its essence, to lead-it forth into this fullness -producere-.
Therefore only what already is can really be accomplished. But what "is" above all is being. Thinking accomplishes the relation of being to the essence of the human being. - It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to being solely as something handed over to thought itself from being.
Heidegger; Letter on Humanism
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Eskimos never wore glasses. Now nearsightedness is on the rise. This may be evidence of devolution, I don't know but I wonder. The current politics in the US probably causes some others to wonder too.
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