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« on: January 23, 2009, 06:50:52 PM » |
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Chapter 24 - Requiem for Man on: May 25, 2008, 10:34:52 PMSome follow-up questions from chapter 24 - Requiem for Man: - 1. Who first coined the term capitalism -- was it Marx?
- 2. What's the origination of the word sacred? Has it always been a religious term?
- 3. What was the role of St. Thomas Aquinas in re-introducing Aristotle, and what's the link to the industrial revolution?
Re: Chapter 24 - Requiem for Man Reply #1 on: May 26, 2008, 11:57:35 AM- Marx was far from being the person who coined "capitalist." Here are the earliest user of the term I could find (source OED): 1792 A. Young, "A gross evil of these direct imposts is, that of moneyed men, or capitalists, escaping taxation.' (in Traveling France). 1823 Coleridge, "The poor-rates are the consideration paid by capitalists for having labour at demand." 1845 Disraeli, "The capitalist flourishes, he amasses immense wealth; we sink, lower and lower; lower than the beast of burthen." In comparison, the date of the Communist Manifesto was 1848.
- Kant did not coin numen or numinis. It dates from early Latin meaning: nod, bias, divine will, divine presence, deity, god (from the Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary).
- Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274, Luther's 95 Theses Oct. 31, 1517, and the Counter Reformation 1560-1648.
Re: Chapter 24 - Requiem for Man Reply #2 on: May 26, 2008, 01:52:00 PM capital - ...Capitalism first recorded 1854; originally "the condition of having capital;" as a political/economic system, 1877. Capitalist is 1791, from Fr. capitaliste, a coinage of the Revolution and a term of reproach.
sacred - c.1300, from pp. of obs. verb sacren "to make holy" (c.1225), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from L. sacrare "to make sacred, consecrate," from sacer (gen. sacri) "sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed," from O.L. saceres, which Tucker connects to base *saq- "bind, restrict, enclose, protect," explaining that "words for both 'oath' & 'curse' are regularly words of 'binding.' " But Buck merely groups it with Oscan sakrim, Umbrian sacra and calls it "a distinctive Italic group, without any clear outside connections." Nasalized form is sancire "make sacred, confirm, ratify, ordain." Sacred cow "object of Hindu veneration," is from 1891; fig. sense is first recorded 1910, from Western views of Hinduism.
Re: Chapter 24 - Requiem for Man Reply #3 on: May 31, 2008, 12:48:59 PM- 1. The issue is not about who first used the term "capitalist" but rather who first made reference to a social system which is controlled by those who own the means of production. Marx is credited to have been the first to identify a social system with that characteristic. The word "capitalism" could as easily have been called (or translated) as the "propertied-class system" or something similar. And as Frank found, it was originally meant as a term of reproach--as it still is two centuries later in unenlightened minds.
- 2. On the second issue, again, it is not whether Kant coined the term but whether he identified a noumenal realm (as opposed to the phenomenal) to underlie his philosophy. Prior to him, the "real" world was this world; Plato had been sidelined by the rise of Aristotelian philosophy. Kant resurrected the Platonic forms with an epistemological twist. After him, the "real" world was noumenal, one that is beyond the human senses, which can only perceive the phenomenal world.
- 3. Prediction 1: Future dictionary compilers will have to credit Ayn Rand for being the first to secularize the English word "sacred." As far as I know, no other philosopher ever attempted it. The positivists in the last century wanted to eliminate all religious as well as ethical terms for being meaningless. Linguistic philosophers after them cared not about meanings and only wanted to establish how such words are used in the social context. Rand alone rescued the word from the monopoly of religion and validated it as a secular concept.
- 4. From my limited knowledge of the history of philosophy, Aristotle's body of work known as the Organon survived continuously even during the European Dark Age. It was the rest--his metaphysical, ethical, political, and biological treatises--that was lost to them. So, logic, without a pro-life, ontological foundation, was useless and was supplanted by faith as a means in the service of the anti-life, other-worldly view during that sorry period. Then, over a thousand years later, and about a century before Aquinas, Aristotle's works began to make their way through Europe. They were then translated into Latin. The Aristotelian this-world metaphysics began to take hold. The Church was unsure what to do with the new rival. It was here that Aquinas changed the world. He adopted and retrofitted Aristotle's philosophy, and he made Aristotle's Christian-friendly. Man is rational again, and he can use reason to discover the world--this world. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas tried to reconcile and delimit the domains of reason. But reason at bottom is still for him only a handmaiden to faith with regard to theology. Historically from then on, the cat was out of the bag. It was the rebirth of reason, the renaissance. The Counter Reformation built on that foundation, etc., etc. And once man lives as man again--i.e., using reason as his primary means of survival--it's a matter of time that he recognizes that he needs freedom in order for reason to operate. Once that was historically recognized, the requirements of capitalism were set; and when statist controls were partially released for a brief time, the industrial revolution developed. And that's my final answer to how Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century contributed to the 19th-century industrial revolution. Holy Christ! If it took 600 years for his ideas to bear fruits, I shudder to think how long it will take for Rand's.
- 5. Prediction 2: When people swear by "holy Rand," then we know we've arrived at the holy land.
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