Theoria

This issue of Theoria addresses its organising theme, science and civilisation, in a broad and multifaceted way. The contributions range in scope from explorations of the relationship between the scientific and humanist worldviews, through identity formation in the context of ‘advanced’ technological societies, to questions of epistemology, culture, power and the institutional determinants of economic growth and prosperity.

Among the general educated public, the question whether humanism and science are antagonists would receive various answers, primarily because the question itself would be variously taken. There are those who, echoing F.R. Leavis’s retort to C.P. Snow’s call for ‘two cultures’, would insist that science has little or no place alongside humane studies in the education of the civilised person. But there are those – members, perhaps, of the British or American Humanist Association – who would insist that humanism in the modern world just is scientific humanism. The appearance of a necessary opposition between these two groups would, however, be illusory. The followers of Leavis have in mind by humanism the pursuit of the literae humaniores and their descendants, such as history. This is the humanism intended when the word was coined, early in the nineteenth century, to refer to the pursuits of the Renaissance umaniste. Members of the BHAor AHAhave something different in mind: humanism as a practical concern with human well-being which eschews religious and other ‘supernaturalist’ doctrines. Clearly a humanist in this second sense need not exclude science from a central place in education. Conversely, a Leavisite humanist need not subscribe to the antireligious viewpoint of Humanist Associations.

Identity is a key concept in psychoanalytic psychology and, consequently, in psychohistorical studies. My task here is not to say anything further about the concept itself – my use of it will be in generalised and unrigorous terms – but to extend its use in psychohistory from its normal attachment to personal, ethnic, religious, and national contexts to the global.

In a famous passage in his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein compares a language to an ancient city, saying that we can see it as ‘a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses’(1958: paragraph 18). Descartes exploited a similar analogy in his Discourse on the Method, drawn in his case between a city and a system of knowledge. His position, though, was strikingly different. Where Wittgenstein describes, he prescribes, stating, first, that ‘there is not usually so much perfection in works composed of several parts and produced by various different craftsmen as in the works of one man’ and going on to argue that the proper task of philosophy is to show us how, individually, we can ‘get rid of’ the opinions which form our existing epistemological landscape, ‘in order to replace them afterwards with better ones, or with the same ones once … squared … with the standards of reason’ (1985: Discourse 1).

Studies of political culture occupied a prominent position in the mainstream of comparative political science during the 1950s and 1960s. Both modernisation theorists, such as Gabriel Almond, and theorists of the political system, such as David Easton, argued for the explanatory power of the concept of political culture. Although they differed concerning the appropriate definition of the concept, there was widespread agreement that political culture should be taken seriously as an independent, or at least an interdependent, variable in social scientific explanations of political phenomena. Aflood of case studies of political culture appeared, many of which have subsequently achieved the rank of political science classics.

As we lean into the gusty winds of the approaching millennium, squaring our shoulders and lowering our heads against an icy unknown, we discover much to our surprise that the future has already arrived; that it has silently imploded into the singularity of the present. We are lost in a crevice in the ‘wrong side’ of history, in a furious calm at the end of a century-old breath, doing solitary confinement in the future anterior. Time has inhaled so hard that it has lodged us in its lungs, compressing us into shadowy, ovaloid spectres out of the horror classic, Nosferatu. Capitalism has authored this moment, synchronising the heartbeat of the globe with the auto-copulatory rhythms of the marketplace; deregulating history; downsizing eternity.

In his book Moral Reasons, Jonathan Dancy describes the problem of accidie as the most serious source of objections to cognitivist approaches to moral motivation. If weakness of will is possible, and Dancy himself finds it difficult to deny that it is, then it seems that the person suffering from weakness of will differs from the motivated person only in respect of his/her failing to share a desire to perform the action which is believed by both to be good. This, of course, entails that the desire to act does not necessarily follow from the fact that one holds the relevant beliefs. A cognitivist internalist is committed to (some version of) the claim that desire must indeed follow belief here and it is therefore commonly taken to be shown false by the phenomenon of accidie. For Dancy, however, accidie is not the problem for cognitivist internalists that it is normally taken to be. He argues that to suppose that it is involves making the unjustified (generalist) assumption that ‘if a state is anywhere sufficient for action, it must be everywhere sufficient’ (Dancy 1993: 22). Dancy wishes to argue that just because a state motivates in one case, it should not be presupposed that it will necessarily motivate in another (e.g. in the case of the person suffering from accidie). Therefore, he suggests, if we ditch the generalist assumption and recast our analysis of moral motivation in terms of new (particularist) notions we can rescue cognitivist internalism in ethics. In this paper I argue that Dancy’s particularist account fails to offer the independent support for cognitivist internalism that he thinks it does.

Some 200 years have passed since the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations launched the modern discipline of economics. Economics has travelled a long path since then, but a number of the questions with which Smith was concerned at the outset have remained with us and perhaps have gained increased urgency over time. It is thus not surprising that the latter half of the twentieth century has seen a renewed focus on the question that informs Smith’s original title: the determinants of the performance of economies (or nations) in the very long run.

Notes on the Contributors