Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:02:03 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-I: Request for help


Thanks heaps Zeynep!

I wasn't aware of this quote, and it's a beauty.  As is your own comment -
Carrol has sent a note to much the same effect as your closing summary.  I
think I shall paraphrase you both shamelessly.  What a bloody marvellous
little community we have on these lists!

Thanks again.
Rob.



>>From _Full House; The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin_ by Stephen
>J. Gould, Harmony Books.
>
>"I have often had the occasion to quote Freud's incisive, almost rueful,
>observation that all major revolutions in the history of scince have as
>their commen theme, amidst such diversity, the succesive dethronement of
>human arrogance from one pilar after another of our previous cosmic
>assurance. Freud mentions three such incidents; We once thought that we
>lived on a central body of a limited universe until Copernicus, Galileo, and
>Newton identified the earth as a tiny satellite to a marginal star. We then
>comforted ourselves by imagining that God had nevertheless chosen this
>peripheral location for creating a unique organism in His image - until
>Darwin came along and 'relegated us to descent from an animal world.' We
>then sought solace in our rational minds, until, as Freud notes in one of
>the least modest statements of intellectual history, psychology discovered
>the unconscious." p.17
>
>I myself have more than a few doubts about many of Freud's claims, but I am
>not an expert in the field and one must concede some of Freud's insights are
>brilliant and indeed revolutionary. And yes, I think it is one more step in
>the dethroning of human arrogance. I'm wondering if you could fit Marx into
>the above schema? On the one hand, Marx is the last blow to a certain view
>of history. He crossed individual actors from history and replaced it with
>classes. He showed that profit wasn't the god given right of capital and
>capitalists, but rather money stolen from the working people. He dethroned
>"profit" and showed it was exploitation. His concept of history and
>economics are from the point of view of the working masses, and for the
>working masses; a very important upheaval in the history of human thought.
>As such, his ideals inspired millions. As with Freud, his followers split
>into various "interpretations" and perhaps gave what he said more weight
>than to the method and the spirit in which he had done his own research. As
>Freud reached into the human mind and tried to unravel the raw, perhaps
>unpleasant truth, about what makes us tick, Marx reached into the depths of
>society and tried to unravel the truth about what makes societies tick. His
>answer was unpleasant to the powers-that-be. There are, obvious differences
>between Marx and Freud. Marx's theory is a theory for the practice of
>struggling for true human emancipation and liberation. I don't know enough
>about Freud to make more detailed comparisons.
>
>Zeynep






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