One of the greatest practical tragedies of philosophy has been her never-ending oppression by the changing historical circumstances. It goes without saying that medieval, and partly modern, philosophy suffered from the intractable pressure of the Christian Church with its infallible dogma, placing faith (rather than its more understandable counterpart intuition) above reason, and effectively shutting the latter up.
Traveling fast forward in time, we shall find the Soviet political system maintaining the quasi-solid façade of political orthodoxy, effectively and most unfortunately shutting up the open-minded philosophical ideas, which, as a matter of fact, did not even pose a real, but only imaginary, threat to the Soviet system, but had to be sacrificed on the altar of the State-imposed collective uniformity and officially interpreted exclusively through the phony prism of Marxism-Leninism.
The philosophical tragedies of our time are many, not the least of them being the relegation of philosophy and good education to the moldy cellar of yesterday’s flukes, all deemed unnecessary for achieving success in modern post-industrial (have you ever taken time to think what this term means, and-- if you have-- have you shuddered?!) societies. But prominent among these tragedies is the tagging of certain pivotal events of the twentieth century, such as Italian fascism, German national socialism, and, to some extent, Russian Stalinism, as intellectual anathema, effectively forbidding any study of these exceptionally interesting phenomena in the proper intellectual fashion. Mind you, I am by no means talking of some kind of exoneration, but only of a thoroughly objective critical examination, free from foregone conclusions dictated by crude propaganda, and unfettered by the heavy chains of political correctness.
As a result, items of extreme intellectual curiosity and philosophical value have been caricatured, diminished, trivialized, distorted, and otherwise banned from serious consideration, and, just where we could have learned the most from history, there is an impenetrable wall of a dark-age prejudice separating us from essential knowledge, which should have helped us to deal with some very real and urgent problems of the present and the future from the position of Baconian (Hobbesian!) strength. Scientia potentia… fuisse?!
Traveling fast forward in time, we shall find the Soviet political system maintaining the quasi-solid façade of political orthodoxy, effectively and most unfortunately shutting up the open-minded philosophical ideas, which, as a matter of fact, did not even pose a real, but only imaginary, threat to the Soviet system, but had to be sacrificed on the altar of the State-imposed collective uniformity and officially interpreted exclusively through the phony prism of Marxism-Leninism.
The philosophical tragedies of our time are many, not the least of them being the relegation of philosophy and good education to the moldy cellar of yesterday’s flukes, all deemed unnecessary for achieving success in modern post-industrial (have you ever taken time to think what this term means, and-- if you have-- have you shuddered?!) societies. But prominent among these tragedies is the tagging of certain pivotal events of the twentieth century, such as Italian fascism, German national socialism, and, to some extent, Russian Stalinism, as intellectual anathema, effectively forbidding any study of these exceptionally interesting phenomena in the proper intellectual fashion. Mind you, I am by no means talking of some kind of exoneration, but only of a thoroughly objective critical examination, free from foregone conclusions dictated by crude propaganda, and unfettered by the heavy chains of political correctness.
As a result, items of extreme intellectual curiosity and philosophical value have been caricatured, diminished, trivialized, distorted, and otherwise banned from serious consideration, and, just where we could have learned the most from history, there is an impenetrable wall of a dark-age prejudice separating us from essential knowledge, which should have helped us to deal with some very real and urgent problems of the present and the future from the position of Baconian (Hobbesian!) strength. Scientia potentia… fuisse?!
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