From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Thu Sep 14 2006 - 18:51:42 EDT
I wrote previously: "I read a great article as a student once by David Selbourne - I think in the journal Critique - who convinced me of [the superiority of empirical research over theoreticism]. As far as I know, he's still writing great stuff. I checked through what the iconoclastic Dr Selbourne has been writing lately, and thought I should perhaps say, for the record, I wouldn't share his Toryist vision of the "Islamic threat" and so on. That is more a kind of propaganda. I tend to think, perhaps ideosyncratically, that by the time you are afraid of a religion and see it as a "world threat", you subscribe to an idealist theory of history, and show a rather poor understanding of how human spirituality works in practice, even in spite of religious doctrine. It's just as crass as people attributing the recent spate of murders in Iraq simply to "sectarian religious beliefs". Much more is at stake, as should be obvious from the fact that the different warring groups (with a few dramatic and tragic exceptions) lived at least relatively peacably together for many years. Or for another example, can you really explain the fragmentation of Yugoslavia simply in terms of ethnic animosities? I don't think you can. As regards Marx's alleged ability to "crush" his opponents, annihilate them intellectually and so forth, Marcel van der Linden offers some interesting reflections in one of his earlier short works, for example with reference to Marx's dealings with Wilhelm Weitling - see: Marcel van der Linden and Ronald Commers, "Marx en het 'wetenschappelijk socialisme'" [Marx and 'scientific socialism'] [in Dutch]. Antwerpen: Leon Lesoil, 1982. Hope to get around to translating that into English sometime. Of course, if you have "crushed" your opponent, you haven't necessarily persuaded him of any better idea than he had before. Feelings of humiliation about being crushed might lead only to more hate and animosity, rather than to a triumph of reason and good sense. There is a certain tendency in Western thought to regard emotions as irrational and therefore unreasonable things which should be eliminated from detached, dispassionate analysis, but emotional responses can in the relevant context be very "reasonable" - as suggested by the common observation that somebody "overreacted" or was alternatively "unresponsive" to an event or situation. Psychologists talk of the "moral emotions" and the triggering of these emotions involves an inferential process of some kind, even if subconsciously. Emotions often influence how scholars think, more than they care to admit. :-) :'-( Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Sep 30 2006 - 00:00:06 EDT