By: N Pepperell

N Pepperell — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 07:40:50 +0000

Prelapsarian! Now there’s a word that brings back memories – not, in my case, of the Protestant sermons of my youth (although my youth did entail periodic doses of Protestant sermons, these tended to relate to more ominous topics – I remember a lot of evocations of hellfire and brimstone, but very little idylling by anyone of any sort…) – but I spent years mapping out how medieval mendicant movements, in particular, understood the prelapsarian state…

But yes, I think you’re right – both that a similar form of thought is involved in this kind of romanticism, and that my appeal to rationality is, so the speak, outside of the frame – that rationality would also be perceived as part of the problem, in this framework.

What makes my position a bit more of an immanent critique, though, is that these quotations (assuming they’re accurate) come from an academic – and, as I’ve blogged before, while I don’t buy Weber’s epistemology, I do buy his notion that claiming academic authority binds us to specific standards – among them, a commitment to principles of rationality and evidence. If someone wants to step into a religious space, I’m happy to have them offer all kinds of jeremiads on the fall from grace of humankind – I draw the line when they cloak what are essentially mystical claims in an academic aura…

That said, I’d have left this piece alone if I had thought it was a true “outlier” – or if I perceived it as something that would appear only in a journalistic medium. The article irritated me, though, precisely because I have seen this sort of claim in more formal academic discussion… So I’ve sacrificed my sunny Sunday afternoon (no idylling!!!) to defend the academy from this sacrilege… ;-P

By: L Magee

L Magee — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 06:15:59 +0000

I would add that this sort of sentiment belongs to a certain strain of Romanticism which is also very sceptical of the very rationalism that you seem to imply is required to “confront a complex problem like global warming”. In other words, rationalism is itself “outside nature”, and even responsible for taking us “out” – how can it be used to get us “back in”? Better then to rely upon some pre-rational (if rational can be equated with, since it is the cause of, modernism) insights that can be used to reverse-engineer the current situation in some way… Of course you don’t need cave representations to suggest that we in our time are “out of nature”, and the problem with such interpretations is that they tend to project the evils of “now” against the prelapsarian idylls of “then”, in a way that is all too familiar to those reared on Protestant sermons in their childhood… The only step “forward” in the logic of this sort of myth, is to make collective peace with the “nature” we have disturbed, rather than step yet further “outside” it in trying to save it, and ourselves.

It might too be argued that this is reading somewhat too much into a journalistic piece on a sunny Sunday afternoon…

Comments on: Noblesse Oblige

By: N Pepperell

By: L Magee