Limited Rationalism

Freud, Derrida

If, say, Einstein, Freud, Darwin and Marx have in the twentieth century helped to ‘revolutionise the modern Western conception of human life and its place in the universe’ (Leitch 2001: 913), who in the twenty-first century could be said to be of equal stature and influence?

The aforementioned came to prominence during – as a result of? -  the industrial revolution that, during their time, was still gaining in power. If we in the West have been living in a post-democracy since the last half of the twentieth century (Crouch 2009), and if our revolution has been in services rather than industry, does the question of ‘how we conceive of human life and its place in the universe’ remain relevant? Is the question actually a universal quest always to be investigated, but that provides no definitive answer?

Business publications seem to identify the movers and shakers of the twenty-first century as those people who have created the most-used businesses; or people who have become (the how is rarely questioned) the richest people on earth. It is the status of ‘rich’ and ‘richest’ that seems to fascinate readers and publishers alike. Indeed, our fascination with the accumulation of wealth seems to be our fetish (Leitch 2001: 917) so far in this century.

Other publications, touted as less Western-centric because their lists include foreign figures who are nonetheless known to Western audiences, seem to report on people who have big ideas designed to help the most wretched of the unfortunate.

But the scope of the ideas, and to get them up and running, means that the creative types behind the ideas must rub shoulders with the rich and powerful. Soon enough, the trail of who is most influential in the twenty-first century seems to lead back to the figures situated at the apex of the relationship between money and power.

But have these movers and shakers, the people in power with power, actually ‘revolutionised the modern Western conception of human life’? Or has their influence been more subtle, but no less pervasive: have they simply had the greatest impact on how modern Western human life is lived? Is the question of how we discern our place to be in the universe a topic of serious pursuit in the twenty-first century? Is it possible to have moved past the relevance of the question?

From today’s perspective of accepting the gains in gender equality, one wonders at how Freud could not see that the world he took to be normal was shot through with bias and inequality. The underlying, overlapping structures of patriarchy Freud did not identify. Perhaps this points to the truth of ‘the personal is political’: we see as issues to be addressed those issues that irritate us, personally.

If we solve the issue, or uncover portions of it as did Freud, then perhaps we have only succeeded in making the personal public, which should not diminish its truth. It is just that the motivating factors must too be taken into account, be deconstructed in order for the whole to be understood.

Bibliography

Crouch, Colin 2009.

Post Demokratie.

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Leitch, Vincent B. et al. 2001.

Marxism. In: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.