Re: MD Intellectual patterns? huh?

From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 02:10:19 BST

  • Next message: David Buchanan: "RE: MD The Giant (types of patterns/types of people)"

    DMB,

    > dmb says:

    > I'm not sure if
    > Barfield or Powell is talking about something that happened around 450 BC,
    > but I've encountered the same basic idea in lots of places.

    (Correction: Barfield's book is "Saving the Appearances: A Study in
    Idolatry", not Saving the Experiences.)

    Barfield is quite specific about the time, in that part of his argument is
    that one can see this sort of thinking in the pre-Socratics, but that it is
    missing in Homer and Hesiod.

    One should also keep in mind that though the S/O divide had its start at
    that time, it took 2000 years before it became so entrenched that one could
    have SOM. Barfield carries the story forward, to show that for medieval
    philosophers, knowledge was considered to be possible due to
    "participation", meaning the subject and the object still had some
    connection. Only with the complete divide could the scientific revolution
    happen, and Descartes. The interesting implication, of course, is that it
    shows that the S/O divide is temporary, a stage, not an absolute.

    > I think of the
    > social level mode of consciousness as essentially that of a conformist,
    not
    > so different than we see in people today. There was great intellegence and
    > passion and its not that people were somehow savage or ape-like, but
    things
    > like skepticism and doing your own thing just hadn't yet been invented.

    I would put it more strongly. It is not that they "just hadn't yet been
    invented", but that they COULDN'T be invented. It's not an increase in
    concepts that is involved, but a change in consciousness, namely from a
    state of connection (original participation) to a state of disconnection. It
    is not that people got smarter, but that they evolved, and henceforth lived
    (and live) on two levels rather than one (or four rather than three).

    - Scott

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