observe evolution at close hand, and infer from that nonetheless the
mechanism of its processes, hence of the descent of man.
As we close on the record of history, we see something else. That is a big
claim on my part. But the existence of a macro dynamic is becoming hard to
avoid. To analyze this requires a careful series of distinctions. You are
wrestling with it as you attempt, always in vain, the standard questions of
the rise of modernism, and so on. We cannot solve this question in the small,
it is a macro question, and its relation to economic issues requires careful
treatment. Witness the field littered with theories.
The question of Kant is really the question of Hegel, is really the question
of Marx, Marx + economic issues.... That is, we see a progression of separate
pieces in the emergence of German philosophy, each with an updated politics,
and then these are blended with the rising postivistic and economic
sociologies. Is the result coherent?
The result gets muddled.
The politics of this philosphy is a liberal to radical series. Kant's
classical liberalism was radical for its time, as was Smith, perhaps. But
this is not my use of Kant.
Kant, beside his vast system, wrote a tiny work on history. My use of Kant is
the question in that work, therefore a masthead invocation. The work, which
is a question, seems at first to provide an answer, 'unsocial sociability',
but a closer look shows that this is the struggle over randomness and
conflict all over again, and R. Wright fell for the bait, although the tactic
has a ghoulish cleverness. Kant senses he has not quite the answer, and
throws the question into the future. It is the best way to start a universal
history. Hegel starts exactly here, although you wouldn't know he was taking
up Kant's Challenge.
You will have to decipher that statement about Wright. Forget this 'unsocial
sociability'. It is a red herring. If you live in a wasteland, you have to
figure out how conflict could result in cooperation. Sociobiologists decided
they were clever and claim to have solved this paradox with a new sophistry.
Bull. There is a simpler answer. Cooperation springs from cooperation.
Conflict will be an undertow. However, applied to universal history, we
require a macro process to evolve these values.
Consider the question of Kant in one form, which is simply, "are there
general laws of history?" That form of the question fails, but it is a start.
Wasn't this the question Popper scotched, himself a sort of Kantian? Kant
was a fox here, I think, for his essay is, Idea for a Universal History. This
'idea' is a charged word, in light of the 'dialectic of illusion' of his
first critique. We see his critiques, very critique, metaphysics shattered,
but his work on history invokes an 'idea'. Strangely mysterious.
The fortunes of universal histories, indeed theories of evolution, ride here.
We cannot solve the question, for it generates the 'dialectic of illusion'.
What we can do is use the fragments of kant's antinomies, his third, as a
double perspective on an unknowable unitary process. A law of cause, and a
law of freedom, say. That can't be a theory, in the scientific sense. For it
is a contradiction. But we can use it descriptively, and lo and behold that
is just what the evidence of history shows. A double action process. My eonic
effect.
In a message dated 5/16/2001 11:49:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Glad you took what I said in the lighthearted manner intended.
You have to be careful, some lurkers here are easily upset if we
don't serve them and write about the cute things we do in
academia. They can't see the difference between deciding over
ideas and over 50 different flavors of ice-cream.
>From what I read in the web about your book, it looks interesting. I
also believe in universal history, that despite the inundating
contingencies, history does exhibit a rational pattern, not a
predetermined one, but simply a detectable one, right from the big
bang on. But 95% of readers are too positivistic to contemplate, let
alone think about this claim. I also like the way you try to
incoporate Kant into your account. But I am not sure exactly what
it is about this incomparable thinker that attracts you enough to
include him.
John Landon
author
World History and the Eonic Effect
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://eonix.8m.com
