- Apr 2025
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philosophynow.org philosophynow.org
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We begin to see what is behind Weber’s observation that modernity is marked by an absence of the highest values from the public realm.
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The problem with this view of reason is not its scepticism – scepticism is an essential and intrinsic aspect of reason. The problem is combining scepticism with a claim to self-sufficiency.
Interesting.Makes me think about a loneliness in the idea of objectivity as the idea of being able to have a "view from nowhere" in a new way. But, I think what they are gesturing to here is the issue with self-sufficiency as a potential de-contextualization of the self and and abstraction from experience and thus the self.
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situation arose came from the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). He called it disenchantment or rationalisation.
disenchantment or *rationalization*
Link to additional and more detailed explanation of disenchantment and rationalization per Weber from U of Regina.
"Weber saw modernization as a process of rationalization that affects economic life, law, administration, and religion, elminating traditional ideas and customary practices in favour of formally rational criteria. It underpins the emergence of capitalism, bureaucracy, and the legal state. The essence of the rationalization process is the increasing tendency by social actors to the use of knowledge, in the context of impersonal relationships, with the aim of achieving greater control over the world around them. However, rather than increasing freedom and autonomy, rationalization makes ends of means (slavish adherence to the rules within modern bureaucracies are an obvious example), and imprisons the individual within the ‘iron cage’ of rationalized institutions, organizations, and activities."
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first person to articulate the unease with real force was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in the late nineteenth century. His thought is sometimes formulaically expressed in these terms: the highest values devalue themselves, and there is no answer to ‘why?’. This loss of meaning and morality Nietzsche called ‘nihilism’ and ‘the death of God’ because the influence of traditional Christian morality on European society was waning.
The "highest" values devalue themselves because (?) and "how"?
The idea that there is no longer an answer to "why" seems partly true but also perhaps more to the point that the answer based on a materialist thinking. ALso makes me think of the section in the documentary about the tightrope walker (who tightrope-walked between the Twin Towers) who was asked by a journalist as he ran through a crowd into his car, "Why did you do it?" and he responded with, "Asking 'why' is such an American oddity."
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In modern society we live with an ethical predicament: as our form of society has increased our material well-being, it has simultaneously leached the significance from our experience. Our intellectual life is dominated by scientific rationality, and our practical life by bureaucratic rationality (these two forms of reason are similar); and although they are very good at securing the means of life, they drain from the world the “sources of meaning and significance that traditionally anchored ethical practices”: God, community, nature. (The quotation is from J.M. Bernstein’s 2001 book Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, which I’ll follow here, as it is one of the best accounts of these issues). So the end result of these forms of rationality and their institutional expressions in our politics and societies, has been the undermining of both morality and meaning.
disenchantment puts us in an "ethical predicament" but they have not yet indicated what the predicament is other than gesturing to morality and meaning.
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- Mar 2020
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It’s an open question whether Americans have enough social solidarity to stave off the worst possibilities of the coronavirus pandemic.
Is there social solidarity in the United States? If so, what does it look like? How do we know it when we see it?
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public well-being
Could be an interesting way to think about care. As an alternate to the focus on individual bodies, the focus can be on a collective well-being
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His health service commissioner blamed those who died for neglecting to take care of themselves.
Blame.
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